It Takes a Village—And Good Child Care

If their travels across campus resulted in mischief, there were usually enough adults and students around to keep them out of serious trouble. “There are a lot of safety nets,” Dennehy says. “When I did screw up, there were people there to pick me up.”

Kevin Mahoney invokes the old saying that “it takes a village to raise a child.” “That certainly applies to the life of a fac brat,” he notes. “The opportunity to interact with so many exceptional people on a daily basis provided an environment that was safe and trustworthy, and one that allowed you to learn not just from adults, but also from the other kids around you.”

Campus can be a winter wonderland for kids like Nicholas and Christopher Johnson (who had never seen snow until moving to Exeter), and a place where lifelong friendships are born, as was the case for Lisa Hardej ’01 and Priscilla Parris ’01, decked out here for Andover weekend.

All the attention could come in handy for children whose fathers—and, more recently, mothers—put in long hours during the school year. “Compared to other kids’ situations, our dads were flat-out busy with school,” Swift says. “Even though they didn’t have to commute, we didn’t see them much.” And their mothers had their hands full, as well. “The faculty moms were community builders,” Heyl says. “They went out of their way to help kids grow up.”

Things have changed. “In just about all cases, both spouses are working,” Swift says. Today at Exeter, the stay-at-home faculty mom has largely given way to the PEA Children’s Center, which opened in 1988 and today provides part- and full-time care for 32 children. To better serve the needs of faculty and staff families, the Academy is moving ahead with plans for a new, larger facility that can provide daycare, a full-day kindergarten and afterschool programs.

“There has been a change in the social composition of the work force,” notes Dean of Faculty Barbara Eggers, whose responsibilities include the hiring of new faculty members. “I usually get more questions about childcare than I do about [whether faculty children can] go to the Academy.” She can also point to many family areas on campus, which is sprinkled with sandboxes, swing sets and climbing structures, and to the phalanx of booster seats in both dining halls. Eggers, who joined the faculty 20 years ago as a history instructor, is well aware of these features, having raised two children of her own here. “I think it’s a great place to raise family,” she says, “although privacy can be hard to come by. It’s a commitment to a certain lifestyle.”

Admissions director Michael Gary and his wife, Trina, live on campus with their three children. “It’s a community that appreciates family,” Michael says. The downside? In such a close-knit community, he responds, “kids can grow up thinking they can trust anybody. We, as parents, have to remind them that’s not always the case.”

When Gary’s son, Andre, entered Exeter as a prep in the fall of 2002, he no longer looked at teachers as just his parents’ friends. “You see them as your teacher, the person who’s grading you now,” Andre says. “They usually have a higher standard for you. There’s more of a drive to do better.”

As Eggers points out, the average age of Exeter faculty members has hovered around 42 for quite some time, but that may change with an expected flurry of retirements on the horizon. Of approximately 145 full-time faculty, 47 are 55 or older, and 20 of those instructors are 62 or older. As they leave, more young faculty and their families likely will arrive on campus.

Though he was aware of the demands of this lifestyle, Swift followed in his father’s footsteps. He spent 12 years teaching math at the Brooks School and then joined the Exeter faculty in 1978. “I had absolutely no thought of doing so,” Swift says. “I had a change of heart.”

But that life isn’t for everyone. Bourne and her husband, Harrison Bourne ’87, taught at boarding schools before leaving to raise their young family. Marceny is now a counselor at Thetford Academy in Vermont. “Dorm duty until 10 or 11 at night wasn’t my thing,” she says. “We did choose to leave that consciously. We like separation between work and family.”

Some faculty children never can get away from it, however. Ask him what it was like to grow up on campus, and Swift replies: “I still am.”

And Now, a Word From the Wives   Connie Brown knows a thing or two about raising a family at Exeter. Not only did she and her husband, Dick (an emeritus mathematics instructor who taught at the Academy for 35 years) raise their three children here, but she has also written a book looking at the experiences of women on campus during the Academy’s first 200 years. In a Man’s World: Faculty Wives and Daughters at Phillips Exeter Academy, 1781–1981 (iUniverse, 2003) is based on Brown’s historical research, archival material and interviews with close to 100 faculty wives and daughters. While Exeter did not become coeducational until 1970, as Brown points out “women became an integral part of the all-male school . . . [when] dormitory quarters expanded to include faculty families.” In a Man’s World is available through the Exeter Bookstore and online through iUniverse.com.