It is with great pleasure that Head of School Bob Izzo announces that Hamden Hall Country Day School has established a scholarship to honor legendary educator Bill Hunter who will retire in June after 35 years of service to our school community. Bill started in the fall of 1983 as a member of the English Department faculty and in the ensuing years, he served as department chair, debate coach, editor of FACES, ran Professional Development, was a class dean, student advisor, and published two collections of poetry. “There’s no debate about it,” Mr. Izzo said. “We will all miss Bill Hunter. He has made an impact on so many different areas of Hamden Hall, on nearly four decades of students, and on countless colleagues and organizations. Bill embodies our school’s standard of excellence, and we’re honored to acknowledge Bill’s legacy of teaching and his dedication to our school community, both in and outside the classroom, with a scholarship in his name.” For Bill, his introduction to Hamden Hall was teaching summer school in 1983 before beginning a full-time position in the English Department that fall. He doubled up as a summer school teacher until 1990, after his first daughter, Joycelin, was born. Joycie attended Hamden Hall through ninth grade in the Class of 2007. His youngest daughter, Rebecca, is a 2012 HHCDS alumna.

Two years into the job in 1985, Headmaster Dick Dolven asked Bill to start a debate program when a new student arrived from Texas with debate experience. Bill recalled that the student, Dirk Pastorick, Class of 1986, “was quite seasoned.”

“We found Dirk a good partner, his talented classmate Frank Mongillo, and we won the first tournament we entered in October of 1985!” Bill said.

Other highlights of Bill’s coaching career included creating a new form of debate in the state called “Extemporaneous Pairs” that fused aspects of policy debate with faster, less evidence-dependent parliamentary debate. Bill noted that this form is still in use in the state.

Beyond Hamden Hall, Bill ran the Connecticut Debate Association and tournament tabulation room from 1992 to 2001. For 25-plus years, his teams attended the Harvard and Princeton National High School Debate Tournaments as well as regional competitions in New York and Massachusetts, and even ventured as far south as Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1994.

Bill said the 1993, 1994, and 1997 Lincoln-Douglas debaters who competed into elimination rounds at Harvard and Princeton achieved his team’s greatest results. Speakers from these teams finished in the top 10 twice, in fields of 300-plus varsity speakers.

As for the one debate Bill has never forgotten: “It was 1993 and Tom Hogan, Class of 1994, was in the final eight at Harvard when he out-organized his flashy Miami Palmetto High School opponent. Still, Tom was shorted 2 to 1 on ballots. I still think that the college judges were inattentive after three days of late nights with their Harvard pals.”

Bill said that Tom and his other top performers demonstrated “organized tenacity,” the key ingredient of an effective debater: “Tenacious debaters find answers for all opponents’ arguments and then present a more positive overview on their side of the topic in the final rebuttal,” Bill explained.

Other memorable debaters for Bill include Tom’s co-captain Rob Sandagata, Class of 1994, along with the 1993 team captained by classmates David Wade and Randall Smith. “These teams all did very well outside the state, as did the largest Varsity contingent I ever coached, the Class of 1997 team including stand-out pair Chris Ehrhardt and his partner, Shelly Shapiro, and dedicated Lincoln-Douglas debaters Elizabeth Keyes, Cassie Riccio, Kevin Hogan, and James McGregor—all versatile debaters, McGregor especially for debating with a range of partners.”

Win or lose, Bill found the role of coach gratifying. “Debate gives our students the chance to compete in a friendly environment against some truly talented opponents, especially in the regional and national competitions,” he said. “Students appreciate extracurricular activities as their interest in the world beyond the halls of our school begins to expand.”

Additionally, Bill says that debate is a “good growth activity for our students.” “Debate allows students to learn to weigh arguments, to plan and organize responses to opponents’ speeches, then to speak for an uninterrupted four, six, or eight minutes,” he said. “This is good reinforcement in all humanities argumentation—English, History, World Languages, Life Sciences.”

As Bill retires from Hamden Hall this June, he steps aside from debate with some central advice for future coaches. “Give novice debaters exposure to varsity practice rounds, then drive them to tournaments,” Bill said. “Debate is truly an activity where one learns only by trial and error in multiple rounds.”

As for finding fulfillment in the classroom, Bill comments that “raising the academic interest of initially diffident students, especially in ninth grade, and in improving their written articulation and range, was highly gratifying, especially as I would often teach the same students in junior or senior years and take part in their further development.”

Bill took over the helm of the English department in Fall 1992 until January 2006, and assumed the role of FACES advisor in 2002 after the retirement of his esteemed colleague and friend, Betty Lou Blumberg. This June marks Bill’s 16th and final publication of FACES, which he describes as “perhaps the most fun part of my job, though lots of work, often.”

As for teaching, his favorite course was American Literature. “It’s where my core courses in grad school lay, mainly, in modern American poetry and in 19th- and 20th-century novel,” he said. “I also enjoyed British Fiction because it allowed me to teach some visionary works of William Blake, prophet and artist, and to teach several Thomas Hardy novels over the years—my favorite English novelist.”

As for those ninth-graders, Bill maintains, “I enjoyed leading younger readers through Macbeth, The Odyssey, and Greek mythology—truly world-standard literature, containing many Western literary themes prevalent even today,” he said.

Other hats Bill wore at Hamden Hall included serving as junior class dean, student advisor, and running Professional Development from 2004 until the present, offering support and guidance to faculty to broaden their horizons with courses, workshops, and educational travel opportunities both in and outside the United States.

Bill graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy 1970, and Brown University with a bachelor’s degree in 1974 and a master’s degree in 1979. In his retirement, he plans to continue his creative writing, a longtime passion, with an emphasis on fiction and memoir this time around. He has published two collections of poetry: Land of This Bride (family and New Hampshire background, 1989) and Great Fields Behind Us (poems on youth and the challenges of adulthood, 2007).

His poetic inspirations? “I’ve spent a few years here and there outside New England, but I identify as a New Englander and much of my poetry in the first volume focuses on places around New England. I also love the work that can be done in a lyric poem of a page or two or any number of established or momentary topics and the second book is full of these—along with a few longer poems on traditional themes. Both books are out of print, poetry being a fickle business, but can be obtained by contacting me.”

In his retirement from Hamden Hall, Bill also looks forward to some more leisure time with his wife, Susan, as they plan a move to Plymouth, Mass., to be closer to their grandson, Cameron (and Susan’s daughter, Lauren, and husband, Ryan). Bill foresees the occasional trip up to Logan airport to fly west to see Joycelin and Rebecca, who now live and work in the San Francisco and Seattle areas, respectively. “I should have anticipated that college in Colorado might tilt them west,” Bill said. “The flights aren’t the shortest but both cities are great to visit, so that’s a bonus.” In the meantime, Bill hopes to help the new Hamden Hall debate coach, Bob Cutrofello, get the program off the ground in the fall. He’d also like to “do lunch” with some former colleagues, carving out time for folks who hold a meaningful place in his heart. “It’s been a great place to work all these years; great colleagues, a supportive administration, and best of all, interesting, motivated students from strong families whose belief in education has indeed lifted all boats, faculty included. I shall miss it!”