50th Timeline: 1990 – The Board Reorganizes and a New Tradition Begins

In our last entry, we noted an important transition in the history of the School with Dorothy Kramme stepping down as clerk.  Dorothy made so many contributions to the School over the years that the Board created an award in her name for acts of service on behalf of the School. One of those great contributions was undoubtedly finding and cultivating her successor, Marcie Waddington.  Marcie’s impact on the Board has endured for thirty years.  She made fundamental changes to the Board’s organization, including the creation of a Committee on Trusteeship that focused on recruiting and orienting new members as well as making sure that the Board stayed true to its role as ensuring the future of the School.  She also found remarkable clerks for two committees that would do vital work in the years ahead. First, Ameline Pappas became the clerk of Development, and the 1990s would prove to be the most successful fundraising decade in the School’s history under her leadership.  Second, Mike Ayars became the Clerk of the Finance Committee, an always vital committee but one that faced great challenges right from the start of Mike’s clerkship. Marcie herself attended almost all of the committees to make sure that there was proper communication and coordination between them. She also insisted that the Board set itself yearly goals and keep to them.  One of the first Board goals was to partner with the School’s leadership to create an annual fundraising auction. Her mother-in-law, Alice Waddington, remembered that “Marcie had friends who were involved with Woodland School and they had an auction as a fundraiser so she saw no reason why Mullica School couldn’t do that. The first auction was while she was on the Board and her husband Jim, my son was the auctioneer. And one thing I remember from the auction was that I gave Jim’s cradle to the auction and he couldn’t believe I would give his cradle to the auction.”  Due in large part to the consistent support by the Waddingtons, the Friends School Mullica Hill auction became a dynamic annual event and a model for other Friends Schools in the region. Without the Auction and without Marcie’s reorganization and energetic leadership, it is no exaggeration to say that the School would not have been able to do all that it did in the 1990s.