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Congratulations to Retirees Ragan and Tharp

Faculty Retirement Party 2019

Faculty, staff, family, and friends gathered in the Cafritz Refectory to celebrate the retirement of Deborah Tharp, who began teaching at St. Albans in 1994 and is now Visual Arts Department chair and Lower School art teacher, and Wally Ragan, who came to St. Albans in 1983 and is now Foreign Languages Department chair and teacher of Latin and Greek, and Vergil and Dante.

In a tribute to Wally Ragan, English Department Chair Donna Denizé noted: “As a person of deep conviction, he cares about the atmosphere of the community, the way we nurture students’ development, and ... he has inspired this love in generations of students. The classics are a mirror of our deepest humanity—a way to understand and develop our strengths and learn from weaknesses. He understands that the study of classical history and language is often unappreciated in a world that has, more or less, abandoned the greatest classical outlook.”

Honoring Deborah Tharp, art teacher Kevin Mullin said: "From the warm and welcoming treehouse of the True Lucas building, Deborah Tharp has guided and inspired generations of young men during their first crucial years at St. Albans. It is the place where they take off their blue blazers and put on the artist cloak, where they trade a pencil for a paint brush, where questions are often more important than answers, where they do not just memorize facts but learn to interpret the abstract. Ms. Tharp leads them to recognize the beauty of this.”

It was wonderful to have so many former faculty and staff on campus to say thank you to Mr. Ragan and Ms. Tharp. Enjoy the photos!
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Located in Washington D.C.,  St. Albans School is a private, all boys day and boarding school. For more than a century, St. Albans has offered a distinctive educational experience for young men in grades 4 through 12. While our students reach exceptional academic goals and exhibit first-rate athletic and artistic achievements, as an Episcopal school we place equal emphasis upon moral and spiritual education.