to honor a producer

Don Wells

when we see a play

what’s on stage appears to have just gotten there on its own,

we appreciate the exposition, the interplay, the wonder,

almost like an organism alive before us,

that’s how Carolina Friends School seems to me now,

yet before even I came here,

there was a power at work, producing the show,

from that first summer workcamp, before any school existed,

through teaching, advising,

head teachering the middle school,

assistant principaling, being acting principal, then principal,

throughout it all, modeling by example more than by words,

throughout it all, Don has helped make real what visionaries dreamed of in Meetings,

helped staff to create what could draw parents and students

to believe that what might be, could be, then to make it so,

and, like any good producer, Don kept to the background,

like that idea of God the watch maker

who makes the clock of the universe

and then sits back to let it be,

I feel privileged to have served with him, under him,

as he served what students and staff needed,

and fought the battles to protect what was coming into being

from any force that did not see the wholeness we saw,

I have never known anyone to clerk a meeting better,

to feel the possible consensus that almost aches

to pull itself into being,

and to help us all find how to come together with it,

there’s a primal rightness,

and Don is a producer who has led us

into the play we act within every day.

by Henry H. Walker

March 20, ’14
photos courtesy of Carolina Friends School Archives, via Pam Mayer