The vocation that is education has been a constant in Jerry Ward’s life. It provided a career and the understanding that caring for others is as important as caring for oneself.
CM YEARS
In Boston, when asking any Catholic who grew up in the 50s and 60s where they came from, they would almost always tell you the parish instead of their neighborhood. For Jerry Ward ’69, that was the St. Thomas Aquinas parish where he attended the St. Thomas Aquinas Grammar School for an education that prepared him for entering his new high school. “CM at the time was enrolling a lot of kids, like me, the majority of whom would be first generation college students,” says Ward, something he and his parents aspired to achieve. However, his freshman and sophomore CM years didn’t play out the way they should of for this academically bright boy who initially earned at best mediocre grades. Ward describes this problem as one of “slow acclimatizing.” But that all changed one day sitting in the gym. “We would gather in the gym at the end of marking periods,” recalls Ward. “We would all be in the stands, and the kids who had achieved honors were seated in the middle of the gym on the floor. And Brother McIlmurray, the headmaster, who, even as a kid, I admired as an intelligent, serious man said to us, ‘I want to speak directly to all of you who are seated in the stands. You are quite capable, and that is why you are here. You know you should be there among the honors students; you can be there. Hold yourself to that standard.’ And I was sitting there as a 15 or 16-year-old listening and thinking to myself, ‘Yeah, he’s right.’” By his junior year, the true student within returned. For this, Ward credits his homeroom and U.S. history teacher, Edward Sokolowsky as the catalyst. “He taught us superbly in U.S. history and periodically would play Bob Dylan records for us,” recalls Ward. “He was an intellectual and a gentle guy, and he was wonderful, and I came alive because of it. In the last two years at CM, I grew into a first honors student, returning to the guy I was in grammar school.”
LIFE AFTER SCHOOL
Upon graduating, Ward wanted to try something new. “I decided to go to the exotic Boston University” says Ward. “Many of my classmates were going to BC but I was ready for something new.” Which he was, graduating with a degree in sociology and leaving college to work as an assistant probation officer for the Boston Juvenile Court. “I understood from my parents and from Catholic teaching you’re responsible for others as well as yourself,” he adds. But when it came time, Ward’s calling was teaching, inspired by his older sister Margaret. He began his career in 1975, during the desegregation of Boston public schools working at an elementary school in Dorchester. He then moved to teaching at a Catholic school in Everett, of which the students he taught he calls “blue collar kids who were fantastic.” In 1977, he returned to Boston University to take on the role of assistant director of admissions. For Ward, BU evolved into a touchstone of sorts that he would return to throughout of his professional life. “I’m grateful to Boston University. I later worked for them and met my wife there. It defined my life.” Ward’s career was one governed by the need to give back, socially, through education. He was now on the path that would define his career as an educator and finally as headmaster of the Fenn School which he steered for 25 years. Ward likes to describe the underlying quality of his professional life through something he read by a Quaker educator, Parker Palmer who said that teaching was about “humanly connecting.” “I’ve always been drawn to connection,” says Ward. “It drew me to teaching.” This connection wasn’t exclusive to the students he taught; Ward enjoyed connecting with faculty which he would do as the academic dean and assistant head at St. Sebastian’s School before moving on to the Fenn School in 1993.
RETURN TO CM
Around 1994, CM’s Board Chair Brian Leary ’73 asked Ward to join the board. It would be one of two stints that Ward served his alma mater. “The first time I served I was motivated out of gratitude for what Catholic Memorial had done for me. It had launched me, and it put me on an educational path that opened up the world for me.” Of his current board term, he notes, “I serve not just with continued gratitude but huge inspiration for what CM has become. CM is exceptional in our time— the best of boys’ education.” As someone who calls himself an “open hearted seeker,” Ward credits CM’s influence that has embedded itself in his life. “CM was from the start and remains in the present, a school which reflects the values that were imbued in me by my parents and were reinforced in Catholic school and beyond. CM gave all of us the tools to carry out its charge, Vince in Bono Malum, and helped set our collective and personal moral compass. For me, that’s what it’s all about.” As a life-long educator, Jerry Ward is inclined to cite the educational wisdom of others that he has come across, be it current or venerable. But his journey through Catholic Memorial as student, invited speaker, serving on the board, twice, and having his closest friends either as classmates or serving the institution has left him with one line that can sum up his 60-plus year connection. “I love the quote from the founder of Phillips Andover and Phillips Exeter, John Phillips who said, ‘Knowledge without goodness is dangerous. Goodness without knowledge is feeble.’ And that says it all to me and I think CM aspires to that.”