Remembering Day McDowell

The Cambridge School of Weston community is mourning the loss of former Board of Trustees member and past parent Day McDowell, who died last Wednesday.
The Cambridge School of Weston community is mourning the loss of former Board of Trustees member and past parent Day McDowell, who died last Wednesday.

A deeply engaged and invested member of our community, Day had served the school tirelessly as a former chair of the Board of Trustees, a parent, and in numerous other ways for more than 25 years. A celebration of life will be held on Sunday, September 28, 2014 at 1:30 p.m. at CSW. Additional details will be made available on our website in the near future.

CSW Head of School Jane Moulding fondly remembered Day in a recent letter to the community. 

Dear Friends of CSW,

It is with profound sadness that I share with you the news of Day McDowell’s passing last week. A deeply engaged and invested member of our community, Day had served the school tirelessly as a former chair of the Board of Trustees, a parent, and in numerous other ways for more than 25 years.

Day was, in equal measure, warm and forceful, thoughtful and passionate, a loyal supporter and respected leader. During her tenure as board chair from 1987 to 1994, a tenuous time for CSW, Day helped lay the groundwork for a more financially secure future. In those troubled times, she faced challenges head-on and brought the school to a new level of excellence and recognition. Day understood philanthropy in the truest sense, engaging legions of alumni, fellow parents, faculty and staff, to cultivate their love, connection, and support for the school. She helped establish the Patience Lauriat Society in honor of the alumna who was the first to include CSW in her bequest, and in the years since, encouraged dozens of others to support the school in this way. She modeled what it meant to give freely of one’s self, to make enormous difference with little acclaim, and to lead with quiet resolve.

In 2009, as part of the Changing Lives campaign, her friends and the leadership at CSW established the Day McDowell Fund for Faculty Endowment in her honor to support faculty salary and continued innovation at the school. In both spoken and written tributes, her colleagues and friends described her as “one of CSW’s finest,” “a woman of grace and dignity,” “a cultivator of people,” and “the single person most responsible for the continuation and growth of the school.”

On a personal note, I am deeply grateful to Day for having served on the search committee that brought me to CSW. Moreover, she has been a dear friend, a respected colleague, and mentor to several generations of faculty and staff, parents, alumni, and trustees at CSW. She will be greatly missed. Our hearts are with her husband Hunter and their son Robert ’87, who with Day have been stalwart supporters of our mission and vision for the future. Day will be sorely missed but her ideas, energy and love for CSW will remain a permanent testament to her and to the strength of our school.

A celebration of life will be held on Sunday, September 28, 2014 at 1:30 p.m. at CSW. Additional details will be made available on the school's website (www.csw.org) in the near future. In the meantime, if you would like to be in touch with Robert and Hunter, their address is: 451 Annursnac Hill Road, Concord, MA 01742-5412.

Sincerely,

Jane Moulding
Head of School

The Cambridge School of Weston is a progressive high school for day and boarding students in grades 9–12 and PG. CSW's mission is to provide a progressive education that emphasizes deep learning, meaningful relationships, and a dynamic program that inspires students to discover who they are and what their contribution is to their school, their community and the world.