Pomfret School receives A Better Chance's Legacy Award

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Pomfret Head of School Tim Richards and Director of Diversity and Community Relations Steve Davis, now entering his second year on the Hilltop, with the ABC Legacy Award

POMFRET, CT (07/19/2013)(readMedia)-- Pomfret School Head Tim Richards and his wife and Anne travelled to New York City in early June to attend the fiftieth anniversary of A Better Chance, where Pomfret was one of sixteen independent schools receiving ABC's Legacy Award. In its transformational first half-century the New York City-based ABC has touched the lives of more than 13,000 students in fulfilling its mission "to increase substantially the number of well-educated young people of color who are capable of assuming positions of responsibility and leadership."

A story last month on NPR called ABC "a bold educational experiment in the early 1960s . . . at the height of the civil rights movement." The year was 1963; the Headmaster of Pomfret at the time was Jay Milnor, who brought his trademark progressive approach to the Hilltop. At the time Milnor was introduced to the concept and mission of ABC, and the rest, as they say, is history. Prominent ABC alums include Massachusetts Governor Devol Patrick, singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman and the current Ford Foundation president.

The sixteen original participating schools were all honored in New York with the Legacy Award, one of which now sits in Tim Richards' office, and which reads in part, "for exhibiting leadership by opening doors . . . [and] blazing a path for others to follow."