All of the adults with whom we made contact knew
Chuck was ready to be a Head, and would be an
excellent one. But, what sold us on him was our pizza
lunch with ten students who were either in Chuck’s
English class or were his advisees. At first, we were
having a very difficult time getting the students to
speak. Eventually, one of them let us know that they
were conspiring to avoid saying anything nice about
Chuck because they were so hoping he would remain at
Asheville School. Once their secret was out, they were
effusive in their admiration and love for Chuck. Two
particularly meaningful examples that made it into the
memo are:
• One girl arrived at the summer program and
immediately became so ill she was placed in the
infirmary for a week. Even though Chuck hardly
knew her, he would visit her daily and would spend
up to two hours a day in her room watching television
and talking with her.
• One of Chuck’s advisees was a male in pretty much
constant trouble academically and recalled Chuck
having him in “academic games,” which consisted
of running laps and doing pushups. He had such a
degree of trust in Chuck that, when he was being
disciplined at school, he would have Chuck call his
parents before the boy had to speak with them to
“calm down his father.”
What we have experienced over the past 15 years has
been a Head who is exactly what he was represented to be.
Once hired, Chuck and I would very frequently meet
to discuss how best to run the School, since I began my
tenure as Board Chair his first week at work. We all know
of his success as a fundraiser, as a leader of the faculty and
administrators, and as an educator who has an abiding
love for the students. But, what I have seen in my years as
Board Chair and then as counsel to the School, is that he
can and does make the hard decisions when dealing with
personnel, students, and parents. I have never seen him
delegate to someone else the tasking of communicating
bad news. He always meets the person who has a
complaint about the school or about him, or the person
about whom he has a complaint, face-to-face. He is
honest, straightforward, but compassionate.
While I have found his judgment to be excellent,
he invariably struggles with making decisions that
adversely impact people because of his compassion
for the involved person or family. And, he is willing
to give a second chance when there is a promised
improvement.
When Chuck arrived at TLS, what we most craved
was stability. Before he arrived, we had numerous
Heads, a new building with a stalled Capital Campaign,
and a lot of debt, teacher morale issues, and an inability
to increase enrollment. We asked for one promise
from Chuck: ten years of service. He was true to his
word, and all the difficulties being faced were resolved.
Working with Chuck for the past 15 years has been
wonderful for me, and we have become very close.
I will miss him and his family.
Alison and Elliott Miller ’97 at Holiday
Homecoming with Chuck
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