Citation for the Millbrook Medal, Awarded to Dan Lindley '51
DANIEL A. LINDLEY, Jr., Ph.D ’51
There are few, if any, Millbrook graduates who are more loyal or more caring than Dan. Longtime class agent for the Class of 1951, Dan is a non-trustee member of the School Life Committee. He is a true mentor and supporter of our faculty and our school community.
There are few, if any, Millbrook graduates who are more loyal or more caring than Dan. Longtime class agent for the Class of 1951, Dan is a non-trustee member of the School Life Committee. He is a true mentor and supporter of our faculty and our school community.
After his student days here, Dan went on to Yale University, where he received a B.A. in English, and then to Harvard, where he earned his Master’s in Education. Those degrees did not fully satisfy him, so later on he also picked up a Ph.D from Florida State University and a Master’s in Social Work at Loyola University in Chicago. He stopped along the way to teach at Natick High School, Groton, The University of Illinois (Urbana), the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, the University of Chicago Laboratory School, Florida State University’s College of Education, Yale, and Dartmouth, before settling in at the University of Illinois at Chicago for two decades as an associate professor of English.
In 1987 he opened a private practice in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Evanston, IL. Dan has also authored numerous articles on teaching, rhetoric, photography, and Jungian approaches to fairy tales. He has written several books including This Rough Magic: The Life of Teaching and On Life’s Journey: Always Becoming.
Dan has freely shared his expertise on teaching with our faculty, in workshops on campus, observing young teachers in our classrooms, and as a teacher trainer to our faculty. His gentle and wise advice provides our young teachers early on with the tools and the self-confidence to become proficient at their challenging jobs. Dan and his wife, Lucia Woods Lindley, have generously endowed a teaching chair in English at Millbrook for the chairperson of the department. They are truly focused on the magic that frequently occurs in the classroom between a teacher and a student when the stage has been properly set.
One of Dan’s teachers at Millbrook was Rene Clark for whom the West Dorm was renamed. Mr. Clark taught Dan photography, and Dan is still an avid and excellent photographer to this day. Dan has kept a little picture of Mr. Clark in his darkroom. These words appear below the photo: “Take time to do it right.” Dan—you have certainly done it right, and we honor you today by presenting you with a Millbrook Medal for your distinguished service to your school. Congratulations and thank you.
