Changing Leadership at Delbarton School

Changing Leadership at Delbarton School

Following the lengthy and formative headmastership of Father Stephen Findlay, in 1967 Father Francis O’Connell had been appointed his successor by Abbot Martin for a term of five years, although Abbot Martin planned this to be renewable. Illness, however, forced Father Francis to cede day-to-day operations to his assistant, Father Giles Hayes. When Father Francis died of cancer in 1972, Abbot Leonard appointed Father James O’Donnell who led the school for the next three years.

In 1975 Abbot Leonard appointed Father Gerard Lair headmaster of Delbarton School, again for a term of five years. Brief though it was, this would be an administration that would significantly alter the culture and the future of the school.

Father Gerard took measures that enhanced the academic standing and reputation of the school and brought it into the first rank of independent schools in New Jersey. He set a new tone in the school which has perdured and has set Delbarton apart. Discipline and order would henceforth be based on conversation and reason, the Benedictine concept of conversatio morum, the ongoing conversion and reformation of one’s life. Gone were lurking disciplinarians, demerits and “jug,” “Ds and days,” in student parlance, the dress code of jackets and ties and preoccupation with hair length.

Reacting to the difficulty in recruiting qualified boarding students and the abundance of qualified day students, Father Gerard proposed the phased termination of the boarding program. This historic change, after forty years as a residential school, was approved by the Chapter in 1978. The last boarding students graduated from Delbarton in June of 1982.

The end of the residential program left the question of the future use of Schmeil-O’Brien Hall, after only a decade of its use as a dormitory. Several proposals were advanced, but the building has found renewed purpose as a guest house and retreat center.

Father Gerard was also convinced of the value as well as the inevitability of co-education, as major, formerly, all male universities and independent schools, one by one began to admit women. He quietly initiated discussion within the monastic community, of the desirability of co-education at Delbarton, but this was one reform too far that the pressure of tradition and of alumni reaction denied him. Father Gerard completed his term in 1980 and returned to teaching.

In 1980 Abbot Brian appointed Father Giles Hayes as headmaster of Delbarton School to succeed Father Gerard. By now the five year term had taken on the power of a tradition that would not be broken until the turn of the twenty-first century. Father Giles’ accession to the office was notable in that he himself was an alumnus of Delbarton.  Under his direction the school prospered in every respect.

In June 1982, under the guidance of Father Karl Roesch, the Chapter approved the construction of what would become known as the Abbot Brian Clarke Gymnasium and the refurbishing of the St. Joseph Gymnasium to form the Lynch Athletic Center. There had been an alternate plan for an entirely new field house to be located east of Old Main and the entrance road, in the “horseshoe well” area, but this was deemed too expensive and remote from the existing gym.

The two decades of Abbot Brian’s service are marked by the physical growth of both monastery and school, a tribute to his leadership, to the remarkable generosity of alumni and benefactors, and to the labors of the development office. In 1982 the Chapter, responding to the growing need to care for aged and incapacitated monks, approved the construction of the Abbey Infirmary attached to the Mass Chapel corridor that links church and monastery. The following year saw the development of the South Gate, Fields thanks to a gift by the Shoemaker family, in an area that had once been given to pasturage and barns of the Kountze farm.

In mid March 1990 there arrived the long anticipated letter from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York enclosing a check for $1 million for the purchase of the marble sculptured terms called Flora and Priapus by Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. These sculptures, originally acquired by Luther Kountze from the Borghese Gardens in Rome, had been placed in his Italian Garden at Delbarton, flanking the east gate, but had been on loan to the Museum since 1977.

Meanwhile, headmasters come and went at five year intervals. Father Bruno Ugliano following Father Giles in 1985 and Father Beatus Lucey in 1990, professional and amateur planners had been contemplating the future shape of abbey and school. As a result of the most recent master plan, the Chapter, in September 1991, approved a major project that transformed the campus. It included the demolition of the Brothers’ House, the adjacent garages, and of the frame buildings formerly used as physics lab and infirmary. All were replaced by a large parking lot intended to serve both church and school. This was followed by the construction of the “loop” road linking the east and west sides of the campus, the West Gate entrance, and additional parking to the west of Trinity Hall. The construction beat went on with the approval by the Chapter, in February 1993, of the Findlay Science Pavilion to be joined to the south end of Trinity Hall.