On my 12th birthday (February 15, 1958), I took the McDonogh scholarship test.  Fifty years ago this past year, on September 9, 1958, I became a new seventh-grade boarding student.  Away from home for the first time, I became so home sick that I insisted on leaving McDonogh.  Four individuals prevented that from happening – my Mother (who died in 1991), Headmaster Robert L. “Bob” Lamborn (now 91), Middle School Head Q.D. Thompson (now 87), and eighth-grade boarding student, John Sieverts (now 63 and my life long friend).  In The Week of June 5, 1964, I wrote the following:

It is frightening to realize how close I came to forfeiting the greatest opportunity of my life.  Even after I conquered my home sickness, I was still unable to perceive what wonderful gates I had entered.  Tomorrow, passing through those gates in the other direction, I will make my exit as a McDonogh student.  McDonogh has given me an educational opportunity, an invigorating atmosphere, and a way of life.  I am extremely grateful to this, my alma mater.

The next day, I received my McDonogh diploma and became the first male in my family to graduate from high school.  With six years of McDonogh behind me and a scholarship to Johns Hopkins University in front of me, I understood, even as an 18-year-old, that I had a debt that I could never fully repay.  Five years later, I explained to Bonnie Lee Angevine, my bride-to-be, that the only non-negotiable issue would be where our children went to school.  Our son, Byron (a 30-year-old attorney), spent 11 years at McDonogh.  Our daughter, Heather (a 26-year-old third-year law student), graduated from McDonogh in 2000, and I was honored to be selected as the commencement speaker.

McDonogh offers an extraordinary educational opportunity, provided for its students in the atmosphere of “the McDonogh family,” its rich heritage, and its system of strong values and unwavering ethical principles.  McDonogh stands for the proposition that “it does not matter how rich, powerful, or intelligent you may be, you must also be strong of character and ‘give something more than you take.’”

When John McDonogh died in 1850, he could never have imagined the 23-year legal and political struggle that would be required just to establish a school in the city of his birth.  He could not have foreseen that it would take the Supreme Court of the United States to reinstate his last will and testament after 26 individuals succeeded in having his will declared null and void in federal court.  He could not have known that a civil war would divide the nation and cause his property to leave the United States of America when Louisiana seceded from the Union in 1861.

We, his beneficiaries, extend our undying gratitude to John McDonogh and to all who have made his dream and his legacy a reality.  A few months ago, Jim Dawson, Rick Boswell, John Sieverts, and I met for a three-hour dinner, and we celebrated “the day that changed our lives.”  Thank you, John McDonogh.

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