Rumors swept New Hampshire's famed Phillips Exeter Academy one morning last week as the school's 766 boys were summoned to a sudden meeting. "The school is bankrupt," some joked. "Girls are going to be admitted," others hoped. When Principal William Gurdon Saltonstall, 57, uncoiled his towering frame (6 ft. 4 in.) and rose to speak, the news topped the rumors.
"Life is unpredictable," said Saltonstall in his laconic way. "In sailing terms, we sometimes come about and start on a new tack, or as in this case, we jibe over sharply to an entirely different course. With the greatest reluctance, I plan to resign as principal of Exeter at the end of the school year."
In just six days Saltonstall had decided to break his 31-year career at Exeter and go off to run Africa's biggest Peace Corps operation, which by fall will have 500 U.S. teachers in the schools and universities of Nigeria. "You'll have to find a new saint,'' he said, referring to his yearly custom of a surprise holiday that the boys call Saint Gurdon's Day, "but don't you dare forget your old one."
"Call Me Salty." The Saltonstalls of New England are as prominent as their long noses and square jaws. They started being Boston Brahmins in 1630, when Sir Richard, a former lord mayor of London, arrived on the ship Arbella and founded what is now the Boston suburb of Watertown. Also on the Arbella was the Rev. George Phillips, forebear of the founder of Exeter, which in 1796 graduated, along with Daniel Webster, its first Saltonstall, Leverett, ancestor of the present U.S. Senator.
William Gurdon Saltonstall himself went to Exeter, and was the tenth generation Saltonstall at Harvard, where he earned five varsity letters in crew, hockey and football. He joined Exeter in 1932 to teach history, and after World War II, in which he saw combat aboard the carrier Bunker Hill, returned as chairman of the history department. In 1946 he was so popular that hundreds of boys marched through the rain to cheer his appointment as Exeter's ninth principal. "Call me Salty." said he when the cheermakers stumbled over his name, and so they have ever since.
Salty's wife, five children and inevitable golden retriever are all part of his headmasterly charm. A daily fixture on the playing fields of Exeter, he is famous for scrimmaging with the football team, skating with the hockey team, coaching the crew from his single shell on the Squamscott River. An avid sailor, he races off Cape Cod in his ancestrally named yawl Arbella. He may have slowed down a bit since 1961, when a flying hockey puck almost blinded one of his eyes, but he still plays tennis and beats 90% of the faculty.
Academically, Saltonstall lets the faculty win. Given complete autonomy, Exeter's departments produce strong minds and pioneering ventures; the current faculty has more than 20 textbooks to its credit. On the other hand. Saltonstall suffers the fate of "democratic" administrators: criticism for being indecisive. In contrast to Andover, its aggressive rival. Exeter has raised only one new building in 30 years. But it is a place of such impeccable teaching that last fall it got 73 National Merit Scholarship finalists, more than any other U.S. school.