Hobby Lobby purchased the core campus of Northfield, including 217 acres, for $100,000 and a commitment to invest $5 million in repairs/upgrades.   Hobby Lobby promises to facilitate the establishment of C.S. Lewis College on the campus.

The Boston Globe reports that in 2007 Hobby Lobby paid $3.5 million for the Bradford College campus in Haverhill, MA, which included a total of 18 acres.  Hobby Lobby also committed to invest millions in repairs/upgrades to the Bradford campus.

At the time of the Bradford transaction the school was insolvent; had been closed for some seven years; and the buildings were generally recognized to be in very poor repair.  Furthermore, the Bradford campus had a mere fraction of the number of buildings that were involved in the Northfield sale.  

Hobby Lobby gave the Bradford College campus to Zion Bible College.

I happen to live and work not far from the Bradford campus, so I am familiar with some of the details.  I can also tell you that, while Bradford is a pretty little campus, it certainly pales in comparison to Northfield.  Northfield’s superiority in every respect cannot be questioned.

Nevertheless, Hobby Lobby paid 35 times the amount for Bradford than it did for Northfield. 

My question for the leadership of NMH is:   How can this have happened?

Chester J. Winkowski – MH ‘71

When my grandmother turned 100 I remember reading an article or hearing a public radio talk show about centenaraians and how this special group survived because they were able to respond well to change.  My grandmother certainly saw that during her life spanning from 1900 to 2003.  That story certainly resonated with me and I hoped that if I lived that long, since my genetics may make that happen, that I would be one who looked forward and not backward.

To date I have been quite sheltered from change.  Both of my parents are alive [Mom: 83/Dad: 85] and they still live independently in the home they purchased the summer I was born, 49.5 years ago. My Dad wants to stay at home until he dies and he has told me that he will haunt me if I sell the farmhouse and the accompanying property.  My answer to him has always been that I will do all that I can to preserve the property. Luckily I have not been called to act just yet.

Which brings me to NMH and the consolidation and sale decisions.  I attended NMH for two years and lived in Marquand both years.  Even though I realized the school was going to have to consolidate after attending a reunion financial seminar, it was still a shock to me when the actual decision was announced and that the Mount Hermon campus would be the new site.  I immediately contacted Dick Peller whom I had stayed in touch with since graduation. He shared with me his thoughts which were in support of the consoldation. [You can read a shortened version of this in his blog on this site "A Momentous Day". ]. I really respected Dick’s viewpoint so I decided not to let this change in location alter my support.  While I still covet the blanket with all of the Northfield Dorms on it and love to reminisce about the Marquand days, I decided to focus on the “new” school on the one campus.  At my recent 30th reunion I did not revist the Northfield campus, but rather walked around the MH campus to see/learn about all of the changes.  I have been continually impressed about all the subtle yet important ways the school has incorporated Northfield attributes to the one campus [the bells, the curve roads, the colors used in the facade of the new arts building, etc.].  I also decided to support the school with action in addition to financial. I joined the Alumni Council which has forced me to come to campus and see the ongoing changes and see for myself how the school is doing.  During volunteer weekend last fall, I was incredibly impressed by how articulate, intelligent and funny all the student were who participated in the 8 am panel.   This winter I am going to go on campus a day earlier than our planned committee meeting so I can shadow a student for a day. 

NMH could not complete the shift/change to one campus until there was a plan for this property and as the years passed, my fear was that the buildings, that needed repair at the time of consolidation, would be torn down instead of restored.  So,when the news that 5 million dollars was going to be used to restore Sage Chapel and others so greatly in need, I was thrilled.  The $100,00 sale price does not bother me since I would rather that the money be earmarked for restoration rather than for initial purchase.  As I see it the school gets many financial benefits from this sale and the buildings stay intact. 

NMH will continue to change in looks and personnel but the circle has now been completed.  The school has changed location but to me it is still the same school.  Schools do not often have to make these type of shifts but I recently attended a mini reunion of my veterinary school, University of Pennsylvania, and because of a decrease in case load and state funding cuts the school is having a hard time.  And this is one of the oldest veterinary school in the United States. So NMH is not immune but most of our schools do not get sold.

What is more common and predictable is the loss of one’s parents and potentially the loss of one’s childhood home.  I entitled this blog “Preparing for the real “sea change” because the “sea change” for me will be these  two events.  Being at part of this NMH change has helped me respond to get ready for the big hurdles ahead. I just hope that I can someone be as great a steward as Tom has been and figure out a way to save a lovely Connecticut farmhouse.  

Carrie  Niederman, 78

I am not only stunned by the sale price of $100,000 for the Northfield campus, but also by the failure of the school to inform us of this amount and to make some attempt to explain and justify it. Am I being cynical in assuming they were hoping we wouldn’t find out the details before we’d made our end-of-the-year charitable contributions? Well, in my case they were right, but ultimately shortsighted. They received my contribution to the Annual Fund before I heard the news, but it will be my last until my faith that this school is being run by reasonably competent and thoughtful men and women is restored.  Accepting this insulting purchase price is very possibly indefensible, but they could have and should have had the sensitivity to realize that thousands of alumni/alumnae would be further enraged to receive this news via the impersonal news media.

Like thousands of Northfield alums, I wrestled with the closing of the campus and the accompanying anger, then great sadness and sense of loss that filled me. For a long time I felt like my school was gone, but then I started coming back to campus on a regular basis. I worked on the history book about the schools and spent countless weekends in the archives at Northfield. I began to understand that there was a great spirit, purpose, and resiliency about the schools. And I came to feel that Northfield would always exist as long as alumni share their experience with others and as long as people continue to study D. L. Moody’s life and vision.

I also started walking the campus at different times of year. During those walks I recalled my time on campus, the people who filled my days, and the academic and life lessons I learned. The physical place will always be important to me, but during my walks I came to understand another great sadness—that of emptiness.

I wish that Northfield were still our campus, but I am grateful that the new owners appear to respect the school’s history, its buildings, and its landscape, and I appreciate that they will soon bring students back to those amazing spaces. I look forward to the time when I can walk across campus and hear students once again and know that they are making their own life-altering memories in a place I hold dear. Through those future students —and those of us who remember the campus past —Northfield will always live.

Sally Atwood Hamilton ‘65

I am a member of the last class of the Mount Hermon School for Boys, having graduated in 1971.  Like thousands of others, I benefited immeasurably from my experience there.  As many here have expressed, it was a life transforming experience on so many levels.  I sent my daughter, Julia ‘02, there.  She spent her entire student life there on the Northfield campus.  I was strongly opposed to the closing of the Northfield campus.

I do owe much to this school and I am reluctant to criticize it any manner.  Be that as it may, however, I must stand and express my shock and disbelief at this transaction.

First, the school closed a campus that means a great deal to thousands of alumnae and alumni.  The pain that this caused has been written about by many and will not be expanded upon here.  But, we accepted it and looked to move on.

Then, at the end of the process, the school gave the campus away. 

When I saw the press release in the Boston Globe stating the sale price of $100,000, I thought that it had to be a misprint.  Surely a couple of zeros hadn’t made it into the article.  I was wrong.  But, we are saving millions of dollars by way of “cost-avoidance” by jettisoning the campus.  It is good to avoid cost.  However, this campus and our heritage deserved better than to simply be cut away like a cancer or a nonperforming asset. 

The process of divestiture and the end result of the transaction amount to an embarrassment for this school. 

In my opinion, this is the product of a failure of leadership going back some years.  After all, didn’t the school create a “Freshman Village” on the Northfield campus just the year before the school decided to close the campus?

Regardless of market conditions and/or the academic landscape, one cannot absolve the leadership of this school for failing to properly plan for and to execute an appropriate, and truly beneficial, disposition of the campus.  Where was the contingency planning?

How did the leadership box itself in so much that it had to accept such an insignificant sum of money for the campus at the end of the process?  Was there no plan in place to keep the campus as part of the school if no reasonable financial offer to purchase came in?  If not, why not?

Institutions of the magnitude of NMH require managers with the skills needed to address the problems that have faced the school over the last several decades.  I do not think that the school has had enough of such managerial skill.  For sure, it has been a long path that has brought us to this place today.

I believe that there is another problem as well.  It manifests itself in the control of information and the execution of “spin” in its dissemination.  When Head of the School Mueller went on his “town meeting” tour of the country a few years ago, to “discuss” options for the future of the campus, it was clear that the die had already been cast.  At the meeting I attended in Boston, numerous inquiries and suggestions from the alumnae and alumni in the audience were either dismissed or side-stepped.  Despite the assertions that “no decision had been made” I, among others, left that meeting strongly believing otherwise.  One might have said that “it was all over but for the voting.” 

Today, we are asked to accept glowing pronouncements about how fantastic this disposition is for the school.  According to the school, we should all rejoice.  I say that if the leadership of our school had announced to us “Good News – we as an institution have engaged in an act of charity and have given the Northfield campus away to a worthy institution for a worthy cause” then fine.  It might not have pleased everyone but it would have been more acceptable for being forthright.  The “spin” applied to this disposition is undignified and not befitting a great institution.

Further, if the leadership of our school had announced to the alumni that all it was going to take to buy the campus was $100,000 and a good and worthy idea, heaven knows what the response might have been.  Certainly, we will never know.

Before the school decided to divest Northfield, we were told that the school was financially solid.  We are told now that the school is even more so.  I hope this to be the case, as I wish the new NMH the longest of life possible.  I also wish the C.S. Lewis College the greatest of success and call upon it to do great deeds; but that is in their hands. 

As to what is in NMH’s hands, I hope that the school acts to secure the strongest and most competent of leadership for the long term.  Certainly, institutions change over time and all of this may have been unavoidable.  However, I fear that at some point, some time ago, the school found itself with leadership that could not manage the assets of this great school.  Unfortunately, it was determined that the assets must go rather than ensuring that the best possible leaders and managers come to the school.

Let us not allow this to happen again.

Chester J. Winkowski MH 1971

I was fortunate enough to have been a 4-year student on the MH campus, and to have spent much time on the NFLD campus. As a member of the stage crew which spent many hours in the Auditorium, and a summer employee of the conferences for two years, I came to love the Northfield side as I did my Hermon side. Our reunions have over the years taken place more often on the Northfield campus as well. I worked the Gould kitchen, lived in Hillside, walked the expansive lawns and sat on Roundtop late in the evening watching the constellations slowly turn overhead. How many of you have explored the towers of the Auditorium, or taken a yellow bus to the drive in movie theater from the campus where we parked across the back row and sat on the ground? I had more fun on both campuses than I ever did at my family home, and have come to the realization that the schools really were my home, reunions and visits are homecomings. The houses I lived in as a child aren’t in the family any more, relatives are gone, where is there to go to muster up those feelings? I drive back to the Connecticut valley. It’s sad to see that there are some graduates who have lost their connection, who don’t feel there is anything to come back to. If you miss the Dolben library or the art studio, the carillon, give the new arts center a chance to re-enchant you as it did me. The school is more than the sum of its geography to me, it’s the people and the memories, the mission, the excitement of learning. I will be back next June, come too and give the place a chance.

Dave Stone ‘65

When I learned that the Northfield Campus was to be sold and all students permanently bussed to Mt. Hermon I felt as if I had lost my Alma Mater.  Indeed, this is the way I continue to feel–more so now that the deal has been closed.  I understand that there were multiple variables that contributed to the decision to close Northfield.  Maybe, in the end, it will be a good thing for a place called NorthfieldMountHermon.  Maybe the sale was the only choice from an economic point of view.  I do not know anything about the “poor stewardship” to which another alum has referred.  As I have read the Almunae Magazine and other pulications about closing Northfield it seems to me that there has been a valiant effort to persuade us that the change is a good one and to deny the profund loss some of us feel.  (I know I am not the only one.)  Yes, we were encouraged to write about our feelings, to come to say goodbye to the campus, but none of these gestures has persuaded me that Northfield lives.  For me, there has been a death.  I have no interest in trying to shift my loyaly and passion to Mount Hermon.  (Mount Hermon was a place where I went to see my Hermonite wrestle and where I stood in Recitation Parking lot, trying to fend off my heart’s desire and  to be a “good girl”.  Not a bad memory).  The basement of Merrill-Keep was where my classmates called home during the Cuban Missle Crisis, and where girls with curly hair ironed their locks straight.  Upstairs my love affair with the Beatles began.  Dr. Meany said in the spring of ‘64 that we never would have made it through the winter without the Beatles.  And my chapel seat is where I sat as all of us grieved and tried to absorb the meaning of JFK’s assisination.  I had been in Miss Fixter’s Latin class when Barbara Steenburg came in to tell us the president had been shot.  I do not want to embrace the new school as if it were my own.  The change that I am coming to accept is that I no longer have an Alma Mater.  Life goes on. 

Molly Hinchman, ‘65

I know that all Northfielders felt sadness when the campus was closed, but I prayed that it would be used in a way that honored its original purpose. It pleases me to hear that it will again be used to promote great literature (as it was in my days), a Chistian educational heritage, and a focus on missions.
Marjory Hord Méndez ‘69