The legacy of education that Kate Cooper founded is something that we live into every day here on campus. Whether implicit or explicit, we know that those who teach and those who learn have a sacred gift given through time, energy, and financial resources. In every which way that all of us respond to what is offered, hope is found, and joy is promised. 

 

As we continue to live into our Seabury Hall EPIC values—Empowerment, Passion, Integrity, and Curiosity—we do so in the knowledge that these values enrich and strengthen us, not just for ourselves but for the world at large.

 

From the 1950s, during a seven (7) year period of planning and discussion, Kate Cooper, together with then Bishop Harry Kennedy and the Rev. Rodger Melrose, our founding Chaplain and Headmaster, spent countless hours planning and praying on what Seabury Hall might become. 

Kate Cooper, “Aunt Kate” as she often was known, yearned to promote education and to leave, as central to her legacy, a place of beauty and safety, a place of fine resources and passionate people who were dedicated to intellectual rigor, athletic excellence, and vivacious creativity. 

 

Seabury Hall was designed and intended as a place of spirituality and service, also. A Chaplain was called, together with faculty and staff, to foster and tend to a garden of purpose, a place in which every person on campus was constantly reminded of their sacredness, their uniqueness, and the abundance of God’s love for them and for all creation. 

 

Service to the community, whether through onsite events during which campus gates were flung open to welcome all or through service projects undertaken throughout the island, service which gives of oneself without expectation of anything in return, this was to be Seabury’s gift to the world, born not just of responsibility or duty—but birthed out of generous and life-giving gratitude.

Friends, I encourage you to seize the opportunity of Kate Cooper Day this Saturday. Through various activities offered in partnership with local community organizations and service engagements that you and your family plan independently, we will no doubt learn more about what it is to love all in a spirit of justice. 

In this way, Lord, make us instruments of your peace.