Page 9 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 4 Summer 2013

when he returned from a sabbatical in 2007-08. In his work
as dean of chapel, Greenleaf built a programmatic team
ministry, started the Interfaith Chapel Council, chaired
the committee that established the School’s community
service requirement, and oversaw the renovation and
refurbishment of the chapels in 2002-03. He also helped
to convene the Province I Episcopal Secondary School
Chaplains Conference, which for several years provided
support among independent school chaplains. He has
served as president of the Graduate Society and on the
board of trustees of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale,
among other leadership positions.
But for years it has been the students and the com-
munity that have kept Greenleaf invigorated in his work
at St. Paul’s. He has been able to combine religion with
humanities in his teaching of bioethics (1994-2012) and
has taught other humanities electives in philosophy,
religious studies, and the religion of science. He has taught
humanities at every form level and next year will be a
part of the Humanities V teaching team. Greenleaf has
coached alpine skiing on and off for 25 years, counseled
students in need, guided them through the confirmation
process, and presided over baptisms and weddings for
countless members of the School community, including
his daughter, Arielle ’99.
As a child, Greenleaf lived with his family in a two-
family home in Massachusetts, the other half of which
was occupied by his maternal grandparents. Most of
his large, extended family lived within a small radius.
“I was raised by that village,” he says. “Everywhere
I have gone since I have found or recreated a similar
extended community. That is one of the reasons I love
being at St. Paul’s. There have been times when I have
looked elsewhere, but those times have only reaffirmed
my calling to be here.”
RICHARD GREENLEAF: 25 YEARS
After sitting for a three-hour final exam on the Old
Testament, Richard Greenleaf went home, ate a peanut
butter sandwich, drank a glass of milk, put on a coat and
tie, and, at the urging of the assistant dean of Berkeley
Divinity School at Yale, went to meet with Father Kevin
Fox of the St. Paul’s School Religion Department.
“I had done the school thing,” says Greenleaf, who spent
seven years as a teacher/tutor, duty master, and case man-
ager at the Landmark School in Prides Crossing, Mass.,
prior to starting to “feel the call to combine a love of
learning with my faith renewal.”
But Greenleaf’s work as a seminarian a St. Thomas’s
Church and Parish Day School in New Haven during his
graduate studies at Yale renewed his interest in pastoral
work in the scholastic setting. His visit to St. Paul’s, though
it took place on a snowy day in January, further confirmed
that interest. Three weeks later, he was offered a position
in the Religion Department and as a lay member of the
chaplaincy. He joined the SPS faculty in the fall of 1988.
Despite discouragement from his home diocese that
“school ministry was a thing of the past,” Greenleaf pro-
ceeded with the ordination process, with support from
New Hampshire Bishop Douglas Theuner. He refers to
himself as a “leap deacon,” having been ordained a deacon
at St. Andrew’s Church in Hopkinton, N.H., on February 29,
1992. His second ordination – into the Episcopal priest-
hood – followed on November 14, 1992, in the Chapel of
St. Peter and St. Paul.
In 2003, he was named the Charles D. Dickey Master in
Religion and Ethics. While continuing to teach in the
Humanities Division, Greenleaf took on the post of dean
of chapel in 1998, a position he continued until shifting his
focus more full-time to classroom work and pastoral care
ALove of Learning and Faith KATIE BARNES
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