By Michael J. McKenna, Headmaster
The more things change, do they really stay the same?
I was looking at pictures of my children the other day, all of them taken when they were very young. In one, Tonia, the eldest, had fallen asleep on the floor with her younger brother Seamus (just a toddler at the time) sleeping on top of her. In another photo, James, the youngest was standing next to me as I stood outside of school greeting parents and students first thing in the morning. In a third photo, Molly was covered in dirt as she’d been playing in the sandbox all morning, flinging the sand in the air, letting it descend all over her. (I feel like taking a shower just thinking about it.) And finally, my daughter Colleen sitting on her grandmother’s back porch, eating a strawberry, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a sweater that my mom had made for her.
If I showed you pictures of them today, you’d see Tonia as a 43-year-old woman with four children of her own, the eldest in her senior year of high school. Colleen is a wife and mother of three, expecting her third next month. Seamus is 33, lives with us and is studying ASL. Molly’s a nurse, living in Reno, Nevada, and just celebrated her first wedding anniversary. And James is a captain in the United States Marines, and a husband and father of 18-month-old twins, Callan and Maeve.
Why am I telling you all of this, when you thought I was going to write about Mars Hill Academy’s 30th anniversary.
I am.
Let me ask you a question: When I look at a picture of Molly playing in the dirt in our homemade sandbox, and then look at a picture of Molly on her wedding day, am I looking at the same person? Yes and no. It depends. She’s still Molly Rose McKenna, daughter of Mike and Chris McKenna. But she’s no longer that little pre-school-aged girl who loved getting filthy playing in the yard.
Is Mars Hill the same school it was 30 years ago? Yes and no. It depends.
Mars Hill is still committed to the same vision and foundations to which it has always been committed. We still place Christ at the center of our thinking and being and doing. We still recite the same mission at the opening of each board meeting. We still believe that the classical method—Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric—is the best model for educating young minds that man has yet conceived. We still aim to graduate young men and women who “think clearly and listen carefully with discernment and understanding, who reason persuasively and speak precisely, who are capable of evaluating all human knowledge and experience in the light of the Scriptures, and who do so with eagerness in joyful submission to God.”
None of these things has changed, and none of them will as long as I have anything to say about it.
But ask Joel Musser, MHA’s first graduate, about his experience at Mars Hill 22 years ago. What he’ll describe is quite a different picture than what you see today. Just like my children, Mars Hill has grown up—or is growing up—and 30 years has had an impact. None of those first pioneering teachers is still here, with the possible exception of Ruth Hopson, who still loves teaching her students about biology and wonder of God’s design for living things. Most of the board members have moved on or retired, with the exception of Tom Thistleton, who’s still here and leaving a positive impact at every board meeting.
Our first graduate is still here, but Joel Musser is a little older, a little wiser, and he now drives a huge van to get all those second-generation Highlanders back and forth from school each day.
I for one am grateful for all the “new” happening at Mars Hill. It’s exciting to see new faces, new electives, new field trips, new growth.
But I’m just as grateful for the “old”; for the original foundation, the original vision and mission, the original commitment to Christ and His word.
Maybe another way to say, the more things change, the more they stay the same, would be, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” Eccl. 1:9.