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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Sunday, February 27, 2005

1929 - 2005
Rod McPhee, Hawai'i educator

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Staff Writer

Roderick Fulton McPhee, who served as president of Punahou School for a quarter century before his retirement in 1994, died Friday of pancreatic cancer at his Manoa home at the age of 76.

Rod McPhee, former president of Punahou School, has been called one of the architects of modern Hawai'i education.

Advertiser library photo • 1994

Associates and community leaders called him one of the architects of modern Hawai'i education, an exemplary leader in that field, and a warm and witty friend whose legacy includes generations of Hawai'i children educated well to serve the future.

Graduates remember how often they saw him striding through the elementary school units or spending time talking to youngsters. "He was a cool guy who really cared about everyone and how they were doing," one graduate said.

His successor, Punahou president James Scott, said the school community is deeply saddened at McPhee's passing and grateful for his "26 extraordinary years" including program innovations, facilities renewal, "and lasting impact not only on the school but on the many students who benefitted from his leadership."

"Rod often mentioned that he 'shook 10,500 hands,' referencing the number of students who graduated during his tenure," said Scott. "Speaking personally, Rod McPhee gave me my diploma in 1970. Ever since then he has been a source of wisdom and encouragement."

McPhee came to Hawai'i in 1968 to take the helm of one of the oldest private, independent schools in the nation. During his 26-year tenure at the 165-year-old institution, he raised $40 million and launched a building boom on campus with the construction or renovation of almost half the buildings.

"Rod was the key to Punahou's 20th century growth," said Thurston Twigg-Smith, the school's only trustee who served throughout McPhee's Punahou career. "His legacy was in providing a way for private schools to do things that public schools could then follow. Punahou could experiment, and then he brought the public schools into the results of those experiments."

Reagan honors

Rod McPhee and his wife, Sharon, got their first taste of the aloha spirit when they arrived in 1968 to begin their tenure as Punahou's headmaster team.

Advertiser library photo • 1968

McPhee and his wife, Sharon, were synonymous with the school that was chosen in 1985 by President Reagan as one of six schools in the nation in the Exemplary Private School Recognition Project. In those same years the Punahou symphony played Carnegie Hall and the school band marched in the Rose Parade.

"He and Sharon will go down as Punahou's most important headmaster team," Twigg-Smith said. "When Dudley Pratt, then chairman of the Punahou board, and I greeted Rod and Sharon as they arrived on the Lurline, we joked about not needing any immediate fund drives.

"But within months a big storm caused Bishop Hall to sink a foot and it had to be replaced. That began an almost continuous series of major campaigns that replaced many of the school's facilities — the library, Pauahi Hall, the athletic facilities, planning for the science facilities, and even the administrative building where his office was."

Educator Randy Moore, current chairman of the Punahou board, said McPhee's impact on Punahou was dramatic, not just for the physical changes but also for development of its academic credentials.

"Punahou is a huge force in the community," said Moore. "John Fox (McPhee's predecessor) grew it in physical size, but Rod grew it academically. After Rod's stewardship, Punahou was a dramatically better school educationally."

Attorney David Fairbanks, also a member of the Punahou board during McPhee's tenure, said McPhee "took education in general to another level in Hawai'i — not just at Punahou but in the community — and he did it without arrogance and conceit."

When McPhee retired from Punahou, he and his wife stayed in Hawai'i, and both continued to be visible in the community and active in charity work. He served on the boards of First Hawaiian Bank, Aloha Airlines, Persis Corporation, Hawai'i Community Foundation, and Seabury Hall on Maui. At the time of his illness he was chairman of the Board of Governors of Chaminade University of Honolulu, chairman of Barstow Foundation and president of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation.

'Let teachers teach'

McPhee addressed the school for the first time on opening day in 1968. David Fairbanks, a member of the Punahou board during McPhee's tenure, said he "took education in general to another level in Hawai'i."

Advertiser library photo • 1968

He came to Punahou from his position as superintendent of the Glencoe public school system in Illinois, just as his only son was heading off to college. Before that he spent four years as an assistant professor of education at Harvard Graduate School of Education and three years as director of the Advanced Administrative Institute, also at Harvard, and two years as assistant executive secretary of the American Association of School Administrators.

His own doctorate in administration was earned at the University of Chicago, where he had stayed after being called upon by then President Dwight Eisenhower to be the midwestern field representative of 10 states for the 1955-56 White House Conference on Education. During that time he also served as staff associate of the Midwest Administration Center at the University of Chicago and spent a summer as a staff member for the Workshop in Educational Administration at Stanford University.

McPhee was born Jan. 30, 1929 in Eau Claire, Wis.

He began his school career as a speech and English teacher in the 1950s in Kohler, Wis., and never lost his belief that you put good teachers in the classroom and then let them alone. When he retired from Punahou, McPhee said he wanted to be known "as someone who let teachers teach."

Frank Damon, a member of the Punahou board during many of McPhee's years, agreed that his administrative abilities were superior.

"Rod McPhee was a top educator and administrator who led Punahou to be one of the great schools of the nation."

McPhee was always an outspoken critic of the education process when it failed, including the state's public education system. He once criticized what he called the labor union "mindset" in public schools, saying he felt it could block good education. To that, former Hawai'i State Teachers Association executive director John Radcliffe labeled Punahou "Hawai'i's snootiest school for the moneyed classes."

McPhee stuck to his guns, saying the Department of Education was bogged down by bureaucracy and a lack of trust. "I sense a tremendous frustration of parents not being able to affect the decisions," he said back in 1994.

"He came from a public school background," said Moore, "so he had this perspective into both approaches to education and he was a regular commentator on public schools and what he thought public schools could do better. He felt there was too much meddling at the top levels and not enough empowering of the principals."

Critical of union

McPhee also was critical of the principals' union, saying restrictive union policies hinder rather than help attempts to improve schools.

"We need to turn our attention to what's good for students rather than what's good for the people working in the system," he wrote in a newspaper commentary in 1997.

"We must change the structure, or resign ourselves to discussing the same issues a decade from now."

McPhee is survived by his wife and son, Dennis, a disc jockey at KSSK radio in Honolulu.

Funeral services are pending. The family asks that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the Roderick F. and Sharon McPhee Scholarship Fund at Punahou for students with financial need.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.