To predict that almost 18 years to the day when we first met, we would drive together to not only arguably the biggest athletic event in schools history but what in midwestern states many consider the biggest high school athletic event of the year to me is nothing short of miraculous. But Julie was not amazed. She always believed with the right mix of people magical things could happen on our campus and they have.
And as I like to say about Julie, I did meet her first in the magic kingdom.
I needed some magic in my life at that time. I had married over my head. My wife Kathy -- as is well known -- is much smarter than me. And in 1993, I had moved Kathy from Philadelphia where she was the English Department Head of Friends Central School to Jacksonville, Florida where I was working. Due to backwards Florida state teaching certification laws the only employment in education she could get was as an assistant 4th grade teacher at a private school where the lead teacher insisted on doing things like pronouncing the ancient Greek city of Thebes as..."Teb" and saying "in 1852 at the middle of the civil war." Yes, you read that right. There are actually worse stories than that. I won't bore you now. But the USA is behind in education for a reason.
I could not bear seeing Kathy languish in this position for much longer, and she was telling me that the current job I had was not what I should be doing either. I was working in the stadium and arena management business, which in a lot of ways was pretty cool, but I wasn't home much.
So, I needed some magic and posted my resume with a variety of folks in the independent school world. Then I hoped -- and prayed -- that someone would be interested in a guy who had taught history for five years, coached collegiately for a year, worked in the arena and stadium management business for three years and played the cello to be their high school Athletic Director.
In true Julie Hall form, it was the cello that got me the interview for the Athletic Director opening at North Shore.
NAIS (the National Association of Independent Schools) has an early March conference every year and in March of 1994 the conference was at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando -- otherwise known as Disney World. Being a 3 hour drive from Jacksonville, Kathy and I drove to meet Julie after speaking on the phone. It was a meeting that changed the paths of Kathy and my life.
It doesn't happen often but sometimes you meet people who you totally click with immediately. Julie was one of those people. I don't remember the interview that well other than a feeling that I liked her, and she seemed to like me.
Julie's talent as a leader was her ability to connect people who had differences. Educators can be silos. They can go in their classroom and close the door and have their kingdom. But that is not how good teaching works, and its not what Julie was about. She herself saw that good schools were about connecting across disciplines, and I think that's why my ability to play the cello appealed to her. It was a way for an athletic director to connect with the arts -- an historic disconnect in schools.
When I arrived in 1994, the school had a huge enrollment problem. North Shore Country Day School was in its 75th year but was in trouble. At some point the year before I arrived, the high school enrollment was under 100, and I heard that board members were considering converting the school to a K-8. Maybe we just could not compete with the New Triers and the Loyolas of the world was the thought. I also remember sitting in the cafeteria when an opionated faculty member went on and on about the only reason we had enrollment trouble is the economy. The economy would always dictate our enrollment. When it goes down, we go down. We would bounce up when it came back.
I think the reasons we were in this enrollment problem were multiple and way more complicated than I have time today to go on about. But it had very little to do with the economy. On my first trip here, Julie took me on a drive through the east side of Winnetka and said "Patrick, look at these homes. Plenty of people in this town can afford private education. They just don't know that they need it."
That started my first six years at the school. Julie was unique in never letting a misguided member of our community stop her from her mission to grow our school and see its connection with the world. She had this remarkable manner of letting people she totally disagreed with feel heard and worthy. She would find a way to connect academics, arts and athletics the agreeable and the disagreeable in sincere ways. Since the school is in such healthy form right now, I fear only the people who were there at that time can really understand how necessary that was to literally save North Shore.
Julie had this unwavering confidence that we were building something special together. And we did. My favorite piece of advice she gave me on administration is "Patrick, sometimes you fix problems and sometimes you keep working on them."
I learned of Julie Hall's passing on Sunday while sitting in our school weight room supervising while several of our runners came in to jump on our treadmills to get their Sunday run in on a day when snow was accumulating outside. Two of those runners went over 10 miles. In 1994, we didn't have students doing that on Sundays.
'The Church of the Sunday Long Run' is a saying in the running world. It is a metaphor that getting your hour plus run in every week on Sunday should be like church. You can't miss it. But getting Raider runners to understand the importance of this aspect of training and that it could be fun to do together has taken a while. We are 23 years out from my first step on campus and over 16 years since Julie retired.
But its one of those problems we have kept working on for a while. So I am especially pleased that on Julie's passing I was sitting in the weight room feeling we may have solved it. Julie loved nature. She loved camping in the outdoors, and she loved sharing that with friends. To me that's what running long every Sunday is kind of about. For me its a weekly connection with nature by foot. I am excited for what this hard work will bring later in the year for these runners. Since in many ways the work is built on the inspiration of Julie Hall, don't be surprised if it's magical.
Julie Hall, progressive educator and our schools seventh Head of School, passed away on Saturday surrounded by her family. There is an open house at her home in Winnetka from 3 pm to 7 pm on Friday.
Julie Hall's Obituary in the Chicago Tribune
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