Friends Mourns Loss of Joyce McCray, Beloved Principal (1977-1989)
With sadness, we report the death of Joyce McCray, Friend Seminary's 33rd principal (1977-1989), who passed away on November 1. The School has lost a true friend whose passion for this institution continued to grow over the years following a remarkable 12-year tenure. A memorial service was held in the Meetinghouse on November 12.
Click here to read Joyce's obituary in The Washington Post, published November 9, 2010.
The family has asked that donations be made to The Joyce G. McCray Fund, which is used for tuition aid and faculty grants to further professional development at Friends. Give online or by mail: The Joyce G. McCray Fund, c/o Patty Ziplow, Development Office, Friends Seminary, 222 East 16th Street, NY, NY 10016. The family will be promptly notified of your generosity. Please make checks payable to Friends Seminary.
Joyce McCray’s Years at Friends
The following is an excerpt from the essay, The Darling Principal, by Nancy Gibbs '78.
Seventy-five years or so from now, at the Seminary’s Tercentennial, the School’s latest historian will be forgiven for concluding that Joyce McCray saved Friends Seminary. Others have saved it before her, the bold and reverent leaders who floated the School through hazardous years of wars and crashes and internal feuds. But few moments along the way provided as much theatre as the year preceding Joyce’s arrival. When she came to the Seminary from the Professional Children’s School, the task before her was so daunting that those who greeted her wondered whether she were very brave, or just very optimistic. It turned out that she was both. “Don’t be alarmed if she calls you darling” advised one very wise friend of the Seminary. “All that warmth is real.” And so it was that the Seminary, in September 1977, welcomed its Darling Principal.
Not many of her predecessors, for all their various gifts and whimsies, could warm the School as Joyce did. Her style made its impression immediately, lifting spirits, healing wounds, calming nerves, brightening prospects, raising standards and reaching out. Whatever the Seminary community had expected, she exceeded, whether in insight, energy or nimble imagination. In those years she was unavoidable, omnipresent. There she was leading morning worship, chairing faculty meetings, sampling the bake sale, cheering the basketball team, chaperoning the Middle School Dance, rappelling down the side of the building with wilderness program students, standing with Barclay Palmer at the piano on Valentine’s day, singing “As Time Goes By.” She seemed at times to defy physical laws, like the fact that human beings cannot go for a week without sleeping. She kept the Old Forge in the black. She opened the School many mornings and closed it down at night. It was as though the strength of the School depended on her very presence, for when she was there, confidence swelled.
When she was not at the Seminary she was sitting on Boards of other schools, such as Collegiate and the Good Hope School in St. Croix, or educational committees. She helped to shepherd, among other organizations the Friends Council on Education’s Long Range Planning Committee; The New York State Association of Independent Schools; The Independent School Orchestra; A Better Chance, and the Educational Records Bureau.
As the Seminary grew sturdier over the years, her hopes for it ripened. The School was never fat and smug, for she always had ideas in mind. Once enrollment was backed up and the faculty first-rate, Joyce set to renovating buildings, raising scholarship funds, encouraging innovation, ultimately realizing a long desired but always delayed dream: the establishment of an endowment for the School. The School not only grew strong, it grew, with a larger student body, better equipment, a richer curriculum, a more ambitious extra-curricular life.
Her efforts made possible a level of diversity among students and faculty that distinguished the School from all others in the city. She has an acute sense of tolerance, not only for diversity but for genuine oddness: for students who gathered after Meeting outside her window for a shattering Primal Scream: for seniors who endearingly viewed every day as Cut Day; for children whose high spirits might have meant expulsion from a less elastic disciplinary system; for faculty members whose ebullient teaching styles bore no resemblance to anything ever presented on Public Television.
Most interesting, and perhaps ironic, is that Joyce, known as an exquisite talker, knew so well when to be quiet. She knew when and how to listen, and how to keep the silence of faith. Though not herself a Friend, Joyce had been a more vigilant custodian of the Quaker faith than the great majority of her predecessors. Under her leadership the Meeting for Worship and the particular values that uphold it came to uphold the entire school. In silence there was exploration; in worship there was revelation; in community there was joy. And so she left to her successor a stronger school with a richer mission than has existed in Manhattan for many, many years.
