NMH Magazine : Fall 2003

Honor Roll

W. Graham Cole Jr. ’61 is headmaster of Westminster School, an independent boarding school in Connecticut; he has led the school since 1993. Cole began his career as a teacher and coach at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. In his 20 years there, he served roles including admissions officer, dean of faculty, and acting headmaster. Prior to that, he worked in US Air Force intelligence as a Russian language specialist.

Education: Williams College, BA, 1966; Northwestern University Law School, 1966–67; Columbia University, MA, 1969

Nickname at NMH: Fuzz

Most valuable lesson learned at NMH: How to be independent but simultaneously how to live with and learn from others.

Worst memory from NMH: Nick Najaka, our class president, had his feet in the water during Rope Pull our senior year. Fortunately ’61 rallied!

How did NMH shape you? Put simply, my four years at Mount Hermon prompted me to consider teaching in a boarding school in the first place.

Best borrowed tradition: Let me confess that Mountain Day now ranks among Westminster’s favorite senior experiences.

What’s been the biggest surprise in your life? How much I’ve enjoyed teaching in independent schools. As I left college, I considered a legal career and then teaching at the university level, but after two months teaching at Lawrenceville, I knew this was what I was meant to do. I had the opportunity to teach bright, motivated kids, to coach sports I loved, and to live in a dormitory—a setting brimming with opportunities to teach young people in the broadest kind of way.

What are your greatest challenges as headmaster? The pressures of modern-day headmasters to spend significant time away from their campuses raising funds and friends competes directly with keeping a finger on the pulse of daily life on campus. I try, often vainly, to live up to the wise counsel of a Westminster trustee who said that a good head in a small school should know something important about every student. At the same time, I strive to be a good spouse and parent. All this with only 24 hours in a day.

What are your passions beside your work? At age 59, I remain passionate about lacrosse. I captained the 1961 Mount Hermon team, played at Williams, and coached for 20 years at Lawrenceville. Only half in jest, I tell people the hardest part of my decision to become a headmaster came in giving up coaching lacrosse. I follow Westminster’s lacrosse teams very closely; I spend the bulk of my spring vacation traveling with our boys team and I almost always watch our home games from the sidelines.

What advice would you offer students? As Satchel Paige said, “Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one is watching.”