Page 60 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 1 Fall 2013

60
PERSPECTIVE
The Quiet Revolution of Bill Oates
by Todd Purdum ’78
It was no accident
that when I arrived
in the doorway of the
Rectory as a frightened
Fourth Former in the
fall of 1975, the mem-
ber of the St. Paul’s
School community
whom I already knew
best was the smiling
man who shook my
hand: Bill Oates.
After all, I had come
to SPS solely because
of my family’s long
friendship with Bill’s daughter-in-law Muffy
Macy Oates, who grew up in my hometown in
Illinois. On my visit to the School, I had met the
director of admissions, of course, but I couldn’t
shake the feeling that my interview with Bill
himself was the one that counted.
So I was surprised to realize, when former Vice
Rector Bob Duke asked me a couple of years ago
to edit a compilation of Bill’s writings, just how
much I did not know about the Eighth Rector, and
his transformative role in the life of this school.
For one thing, I had not understood the depth of
Bill’s own Midwestern roots, the unlikely path
that had taken him first to Harvard and then to
Millville, the tremendous drive and achievement
he had shown from the earliest age (he was an
Eagle Scout by age 13-and-a-half) or the full
depth of the complex challenges he faced in drag-
ging St. Paul’s into the late 20th century, and
preparing it for the 21st.
In my student days, Mr. Oates was a formidable
figure. In his crisp Brooks Brothers suits and polished
Peal & Co. shoes, he could have been one of the
corporate CEOs with whom he served on the SPS
Board of Trustees. His rule was absolute. To the
faculty, he could sometimes seem imperious; to the
students, remote. He did not suffer fools – of any
age or station – gladly. Yet always, at the start of
each term, and at every Saturday-night open house
in the Rectory, there was that warm smile, that
firm handshake, that calling-by-name that had
begun with first acquaintance and never wavered.
It was this abiding civility, this trust in the
smallest signs and symbols of community life,
which shone through again and again in the
voluminous materials that Bill and his faithful
assistant, Emily Bruell, culled for consideration
as we worked on Views from the Rector’s Porch .
To a school long known for rigidity and orthodoxy,
Bill brought – in a measure I had never fully under-
stood – a quietly radical humanism. He introduced
co-education in carefully considered stages that
ensured its success. He permitted upper-class
students to smoke (with parental permission), and
thus so diminished a bad habit’s illicit appeal that
it had died out almost entirely by his tenure’s end.
He expanded the faculty to include psychologists
and counselors and encouraged role-playing and
experimentation. He resisted simplistic black-and-
white notions of discipline or dress code (to the
frequent frustration of faculty, parents, and alumni
alike), all the while maintaining St. Paul’s most
cherished traditions, folkways, and aspirations
– from regular Chapel services and Cricket
Holiday, to unyielding standards of personal
honor and academic achievement.
“A considerable quiet revolution had taken
place,” as he himself would write.
Historians teach us that revolutions occur in
times of rising expectations, and the revolution
over which Bill presided would bring its own
challenges, complications and recalibrations, as
the School sought to adapt to new pressures and
realities from the wider world. Nearly 40 years
after I first met him, I am approaching the
age that Bill was on the occasion of our
first handshake – and he is approaching
his centenary!
But his quiet civility remains an ageless
inspiration, as do the opening words of
one of his favorite school prayers: “Grant,
O Lord, that in all the joys of life, we
may never forget to be kind.” May we
never forget what Bill Oates has taught
us, either.
GASPER TRINGALE