9
in our every act or our acts are without value. We remem-
ber that the word love embraces intellectual, moral, and spirit-
ual qualities such as good will, brotherliness, and friendship.”
Bill Oates followed Paul’s advice and sought to create, in
his rectorship, a ministry of love. As carefully as he attended
to every aspect of the School’s operations, he was never too
busy to see to the needs of each individual student. Whenever
he announced the outstanding achievement of a student or the
results of a student’s transgressions, his eyes would brim with
tears because he truly shared that student’s joy or that student’s
pain. When
The Pelican’s
roving reporter asked the commu-
nity, “What will you remember most about Mr. Oates?” one
student said, “I will always remember how understanding he
has been to me and to all of us students. His encouragement
has profited so many students during the years.”
Here is one clue as to why Bill Oates loved students as easily
as he breathed. He was and is so quintessentially a family man
that all students at St. Paul’s School were his sons and daugh-
ters. As a devoted husband and father, so loving of Margaret and
Jean and his three sons –Bill, Jim, and Thomas, empathy for stu-
dents was a natural and beautiful extension of his own life. No
wonder that one of his favorite prayers was [the School Prayer].
Bill Oates loved St. Paul’s School in the abstract and in the
concrete. For 40 years his life was fired by a Platonic idea of
perfect schoolness, and he rose every morning at 4 a.m., to
labor on and make that vision live in
this little corner of New
England. That Bill and Jean virtually never missed a Saturday
night open house at the Rectory in 12 years is an outward and
visible sign of a seven-day-a-week labor of love.
As one respondent to the
Pelican
poll commented, “I will
remember his dreams and the energy he had to make them
come true.”
Even a brief listing of some of the items that Bill has written
about in his Annual Reports, 1971-81, indicates the scope of
achievements during his rectorship: the Development Office,
the Sixth Form year, the move of the Alumni Association to
Concord, the arrival of girls, academic requirements, the disci-
plinary process, Form Agents, Human Relations, the demolition
of the Lower School, School Year Abroad, Independent Study,
the dress code, female trustees, the faculty internship program,
the admissions process, the Faculty Leadership Committee,
intervisitation, record giving by the Parents and Alumni Funds,
the Fund for SPS, the arts and the Performing Arts Buildings,
creative ambiguity and personal growth, victories at the Henley
Regatta, a celebration of the School’s 125th anniversary.
Even as Bill and Jean departed the grounds for their home
in Kennebunk, Maine, the School workers were busily digging
trenches for an updated telephone system and “pointing” the
Schoolhouse – drilling out the old mortar and replacing it with
new material in order to buttress the building.
Now there’s as vivid an emblem, a metaphor, and a symbol as
one could ask for. The goodly heritage of Bill Oates’s rectorship
is a school crosshatched by diverse and complex lines of com-
munication, knitting together a vibrant community, and a school
whose structures are solid and strong – in the abstract and in
the concrete.
[SallyRousse ’82]
“Bill Oateswas a champion for the Dance Department
at SPS and, therefore, my hero. I believe he had a dancing heart.”
[ClackyKing ’48]
“One of the outstanding gentlemen of our time, a great
educator, and a most loyal friend.”
[Dorien Nunez ’75]
“My lesson from him is that we can all be ofservice
somehow – and that we should.”
[David A. Clark ’74]
“Howmany times did he welcome all of us into the
Rectory for Saturday-night feeds andmake his home feel like our own?
One night during a one-on-one conversation, I shared the nicknamewe
had givenhim– ‘Wild Bill’ – and he absolutely delighted inmy confiding
this to him.”
[John Bankson III ’81]
“His stewardship of the School during the late
seventies and early eighties was filled with genuine heart and concern
for the kids around him.”
[Jean ‘Murph’ Barker, former faculty, 1974-78]
“Mr. Oates’s standards
and ideals made me a well-respected educator of children, particularly
those who were hardest to reach. Without his guidance, I would not be
who I am today.”
[JoseWiltshire ’73]
“I think the most endearing quality about himwas
that you could actually talk to Mr. Oates and he would listen to you.”
[John Donnelly III ’82]
“I loved how for four years Mr. Oates always
talked to me about hockey on Saturday nights at the Rectory with his
lovelywife. They both really thought my name was ‘Wheels.’ When he
handed me my diploma, he said, ‘Enjoy college, Wheels.’ I asked him if
he knewmy first namewas John and he said he had no idea – too funny.”
[Alex Tilt ’73]
“Mr. Oates had a wonderful smile and beguiling sense of
humor when we traded places for a day in spring 1973 and Horace Hen-
riques ’73 and I somehow convinced him at the Rectory tea the night
before to allowme to readmorning reports if he, in turn, woulddon this tie
and make a cameo appearance in our weeklyMish skit – truly priceless.”
[William R. Matthews Jr. ’61, Twelfth Rector]
“I remember2006, when
Marcia and I invited Bill and the 19 pioneering young women back to
School to celebrate 35 years of co-education. These women shared a
sense of pride in their achievement and they loved and respected Bill.
They were thrilled to be with himagain.”
[KatyMcWilliams ’75]
“I had been at St Paul’s formaybe twoweeks and
a friend offered to teachme how to drive a golf ball on the Chapel lawn.
(Yup!) After many, many divots, a stray ball landed at the Rectory. Yes,
Mr. Oates had seen us and, yes, we were punished. I remember the next
day we passed by one another; he was going in one direction and I in
another. I was ashamed and could barelymeet his eyes. He did a double-
take and I thought he was trying not to laugh. I have never forgotten
the power of the little things to affect people’s lives.”
[Ed Shockley ’74]
“Mr. Oates was the personwho startedmy life. There
were knives and guns in Philadelphia many times. There were white
men in Virginia I know hated me every summer when I was a colored
kid. I still didn’t want to live in Concord and was leaving after my first
year. I went to Boston with only Mr. Oates. Rather than talking, he lis-
tened to me, asked me questions. He then taught me there is always
something worthwhile in everything. I love him still.”
[DavidHolt ’72]
“I hadmany good chats with himover a couple of years
and always felt that we had a meeting of the minds. Those times of
transitionwere not easy and I felt at the time that Mr. Oates was a great
person for the job.”
Personal Reflections
