Ward and Shelley Cammack

Parents of Wardie '20, Alice ’11, Martha ’09, and Julia ’06

WHERE DID YOU ATTEND HIGH SCHOOL? HOW DOES EHS COMPARE TO THE HIGH SCHOOL YOU ATTENDED?

Ward went to Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tenn., where he boarded. Shelley attended Harpeth Hall School for girls in Nashville, Tenn., a private girls day school.

WHY DID YOU CONSIDER A BOARDING SCHOOL FOR YOUR DAUGHTERS?

Actually, we didn’t. Our oldest daughter, Julia, upon reaching high school in Nashville, realized she could not get the traction she needed. She researched the boarding proposition on her own. She was looking for 100% boarding located near a major city and coeducational. EHS was the only possibility that fit. Once she was at EHS we continually brought all of our daughters with us to Family Weekends; they came to see the school through their own eyes and as each reached eighth grade, decided to apply. As a result, each owned her personal decision to attend EHS. Some looked at other schools but Episcopal has consistently exceeded any alternatives. We never put any pressure on them one way or the other.

HOW HAS EHS IMPACTED YOUR CHILDREN'S LIVES?

EHS has given our adult children the courage to fail, impacting the trajectory of each in ways we not have known at the time. Julia was so well prepared for college that she was bored at the first one she attended and transferred to a much harder university her second year. Upon graduation from college, she spent a year in Spain teaching high school shop classes and then another year in AmeriCorps before taking on law school. She is now a practicing attorney in St. Louis, Mo. Martha went on to college where she was magnificently successful in her major of environmental studies and was poised to take on the world when her life was suddenly cut short. Alice spent her senior year of high school in Italy with SYA and then returned to Europe to graduate from college in Switzerland and on to graduate school in London. She now writes for Vogue in New York.

HOW DID THE DECISION TO SEND YOUR DAUGHTERS TO BOARDING SCHOOL AFFECT THEIR RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOU?

Boarding school, particularly EHS, helps the parental relationship become one of consultation and listening as student-children own their responsibilities and interact within this extraordinary environment.
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