Frank Boyden

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Frank Learoyd Boyden (1879-1972) was headmaster of Deerfield Academy from 1902 to 1968.

[edit] Early life

He was born in Foxboro, Massachusetts.

[edit] Personal life

He married Helen Childs Boyden in 1907. She was a 1904 graduate of Smith College, which awarded her a Doctorate of Humane Letters in 1934.

Boyden enjoyed driving through the Deerfield Valley in a horse-drawn buggy, of which he owned several.

He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention from Massachusetts in 1960.

[edit] Career

Boyden kept his desk in the hallway of the Main Building so as to keep the pulse of the school. As headmaster, he became known for taking in students who had been expelled from other schools. Boyden was replaced after his retirement in 1968 by David M. Pynchon.

[edit] Legacy

A chair, the Frank L. Boyden Professor of Political Economy, exists at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

Boyden was profiled by John McPhee in The New Yorker in an article later expanded into a book, The Headmaster: Frank L. Boyden of Deerfield.