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NMH Magazine : Fall 2004

Parting Words

Letting Go of Dickerson House 

by Dick Peller

 

These days, if you look up the word irony in the dictionary, you’re likely to see my smiling face.

I’ve been one of the faculty members most outspoken about the school’s need to move to one campus. Who knew that a result of the decision to consolidate would be the razing of Dickerson House, my home since 1980?

The first inkling of this came shortly after the trustees’ decision in January 2004. As an academic department head,

I was invited to an architect’s presentation about siting a new arts facility and two dorms. It became clear that the preferred site for the new dorms was close to my home. As I recall, the architect said, pointing to Dickerson House, “Then there’s this building over here. I don’t know what its function is, but it likely will have to go.”

I was too flabbergasted to speak.

I had fully expected to move out of Dickerson House in June 2004. My children are grown and on their own, and I was ready to relocate to smaller quarters. But it came as a shock that our old home might cease to exist.

When the fate of Dickerson House was confirmed by our new head of school, Tom Sturtevant, I felt like I’d been hit in the belly. First I called my children, Annie and Michael, who’d grown up in the house and associated it closely with their mother, who passed away from cancer seven years ago. Those were not easy calls to make.

This June, immediately following commencement, my wife, Ellen Turner, and I moved out of Dickerson House and up the hill to Breckinridge House, along what was once known as Senility Row. It’s a fine house; it doesn’t have the character, history, or charm of Dickerson House, but at this point in our lives, it’s perfect for us.

To celebrate the 109-year life of Dickerson House and to mourn its demolition, Ellen and I hosted a party in June. Alumni, friends, staff, and faculty came and so did my son Michael, who made a surprise visit from California. Our good friend Sheila Heffernon walked through the house with a video camera and shed tears when she came to the room where she visited my late wife during her illness.

Noel Stookey, husband of NMH’s chaplain and a member of the folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary, offered a customized rendition of “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” with a final verse that said goodbye to Dickerson House. Standing next to Michael during the song was the hardest point of the evening for me:

I associate that song with Mec and with my kids growing up. More than anything else, it brought home what had been and was going to be lost.

I’d always hoped to watch another family enjoy Dickerson House as much as we did. When I moved out, the echoes off the bare walls sounded with memories of Mec, our children, and the students who enriched our lives. At the house, brides—including my daughter—had changed into their gowns, students had their Chat pictures taken, and soccer and baseball players crowded the kitchen.

In June I transplanted our flowers and shrubs from Dickerson House to Breckinridge House. It’s been a labor of love: I couldn’t have left them there to be bulldozed, and now they’re flourishing in a new location, within sight of where they used to grow.

With change comes loss, and Dickerson House has been a big part of this sacrifice. I’m convinced, however, that in ten years, our two new dorms will be the residential centerpiece of a more vital NMH—and so, regardless of irony, I eagerly await autumn 2005, when the school enters its third incarnation. Meanwhile, I’m putting my bid in to name these new dorms Northfield House and Dickerson House.