What makes Holderness, Holderness? A Search for the School’s Secret Sauce

Folks of a certain age need only to hear these words, "two all-beef patties", to immediately finish the statement "special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.” When a little-known McDonald’s franchise owner in Pittsburgh came up with the idea of the Big Mac™ in 1968, little did he know he was launching a worldwide phenomenon.

Part of the intrigue was the burger's "secret sauce", which is exactly the term McDonald’s used until it was changed to “special sauce” in 1974 with the introduction of the above-mentioned jingle.

People speculated about the secret sauce of the Big Mac™ for decades. Such has been the case here too at Holderness, but not with our burgers (by the way, the OB Big Mac is still served every year for lunch on the day OB returns to campus). The ingredients of the Holderness School “secret sauce”–that combination of things that gives Holderness its unique flavor and characteristics–have been hotly debated. It is both definitional and elusive, or so I found when I set out to list the ingredients.

The Quest Begins: What is the “secret sauce”?

The idea was hatched thanks to Sally Shipton, former Director of Counseling Services here at Holderness in the early 1990s and wife of former Dean of Faculty Jim Nourse. Sally is mom to three Holderness alums, Sarah Sheppe ’96, Andrew Sheppe ’00 (currently on the faculty as History Department Chair), and Katherine Nourse ’04. Sally caught up with me in August of 2023 while visiting Andrew, his wife Kristin, and her two grandchildren, Oliver and Parker, both of whom are fixtures on this campus before even attending. 

Sally shared with me that while visiting the previous year with Pat Henderson, Holderness icon herself and wife of Don Henderson, the topic of ‘what makes Holderness so special, so enduring, so beloved by so many’ came up among a group of Holderness friends who get together yearly and date back to the 1950s at Holderness School. The topic engendered numerous suggestions and some debate, Sally reported, but no consensus. 

“What is the 'secret sauce' of Holderness?” Sally looked at me and then offered, “Maybe you should look into that because we couldn’t really pin it down.” 

And so it began, a search for the subtle, the mysterious, the undefinable–after all, isn’t a secret sauce, by definition, supposed to be kept a secret? I also had to consider this: “Is the 'secret sauce' of Holderness School a myth, some kind of self-definitional Bigfoot, something talked about but ultimately not real?” How to begin this quest?

Stories from the Source

My AP Composition classes would always start the year reading about the making of The Oxford English Dictionary as told by Simon Winchester in his book The Professor and the Madman. The ambition–to define every word in the English language–was, to put it mildly, ambitious. Interestingly, this 70-year-plus production was one of the early examples of crowdsourcing as the architect of the project, Sir James Murray, decided to put out a letter to all readers in England asking them to send him words and definitions they found as they read. What followed was a blizzard of paper slips–literally millions of them–coming into his Scriptorium in Oxford. I took Murray’s lead and began asking around. The responses were, not surprisingly, varied and compelling.

Former Head of School (1977-2001) Pete Woodward offered some pearls: “Holderness embraces happiness and is committed to the right priorities. Holderness embraces simplicity and finds in ‘doing for others’ a life-long guiding principle of how best to live.”

Phil Peck, our recently retired Head of School (2001-2022), tossed these nuggets my way: “Look no further than the mission (Pro Deo et Genere Humano), vision (people the world needs most), and core values (character, curiosity, and community). Over and over, we see these things playing out in the lives of our faculty and alumni. That’s what makes Holderness so special.”  He then quickly added, “There is no ‘in-crowd’ or ‘cool kids’ at Holderness, and this allows young people to be their authentic selves and become learners and risk takers.”

Alumnus and former faculty member Jim Connor ’74 added: “It’s a combination of the size, the location, the commitment to the outdoors, the Job Program, the way we elect leaders, and so on. But make no mistake, at its core, the secret sauce’s binding agent is relationships–and these relationships involve everyone–students, faculty, and their families, and staff. We are all there together, working hard and having fun whenever we can.”

Students play a real-life game of Battleship in the on-campus pond.

People, Purpose, and a Pinch of Pluck

Those views cemented some common ingredients–people, philosophy, spirit, and mission. It also brought to mind a recent event I witnessed at our local McDonald’s on an otherwise typical Friday night. For whatever reason, on this night in April of 2024, it felt like all of central New Hampshire had descended on our local golden arches. The parking lot was so full I had to park in an adjoining lot. When another Holderness minibus was blocked in by the log jam at the drive-thru, the girls of Connell dormitory got out of the bus and started an impromptu dance party with their portable speaker. Total strangers got out of their cars and joined them. For 10 minutes, this party rolled, and I concluded, ‘how typically Holderness–take a bad situation and make it good.’ It was a secret sauce moment for sure.

But there were more voices to consult in the quest to define the undefinable. Alumna and current colleague in the Advancement Office Kathleen Kime ’99 offered this: 

“Holderness meets you where you are as an adolescent, and supports you in becoming more. For example, I loved musical theater as a young person, and considered it beyond me, but at Holderness, I was encouraged to do it, and adored it.”  

One recently started Holderness tradition is Tenneyball–a combination of tennis and baseball played on our turf field with a healthy dose of competition and team pride.

She added one last thing, “Holderness allows you to take chances and grow in many different ways. I took Propaganda and Persuasion during Senior Colloquium from Norm Walker, the legendary teacher and football coach, and that course changed how I thought about and saw the world–I majored in communications in college as a result.

Pete Barnum, long-time Director of Admissions and father of three alums (Seth ’05, Sam ’07, and Faith '09) was quick to offer: “I was always proud that Holderness took in a range of students (and adults for that matter), and we made it all fit and work. I think the fact that we can laugh at ourselves and not take any of it too seriously is also important.” Pete’s wife, Joan, herself a long-time and distinguished employee of Holderness School, offered a longer historical perspective to the question: “The fact that Holderness was founded by the Episcopal Church for boys of ‘modest means’ sets it apart from those independent schools founded by elites for the families of elites.” 

In other words, students from day one at Holderness had a hunger and drive that was different and distinctive and informed how they approached their daily lives. Former Director of Communications and author Rick Carey (and parent of two alums Ryan ’00 and Kyle ’03) was right there with Joan: “For me, Holderness has always had a ‘gotta punch above its weight’ attitude, and when you add to that a leadership system that rewards strength of character and pluckiness, then you have key ingredients to its sauce.” 

Our current Head of School, John McVeigh (and parent of current student Kelly ’26), certainly has a view on this question of secret sauce. He cites the “exceptional spirit of the faculty and students,” the “soul of this institution, which includes seeing others before self,” and finally a “deep abiding institutional belief that Holderness best serves those within its walls by preparing them for the road and not the road for them.” 

Gathering around a fire pit is a regular occurrence at Holderness–whether on campus or on an off-campus adventure.

And finally, I got this gem from Shelli Perkins, former Admissions Officer at Holderness, mother of three Holderness alumni (Jesse ’92, Nina ’94 and Juley ’97 and Christian, whom we regrettably lost to our alumni ranks to the Forman School after her husband Mark left to become Forman’s Head of School), in an April 2024 visit offered this gem: “I always thought Holderness did an exceptional job of looking at the person first. So, in hiring, asking if they were qualified included just as much consideration of who they were as people as it did of what their teaching credentials were. When reviewing students for admission in our office, we were more interested, I thought, in who the student was as a person. Only after that did we look at numbers like grades and SSAT scores second. As a result, we got great people, students, and adults here, over all those years.”

What We See in the Mirror

Shelli’s perspective got me thinking about the remarkable and true story of two Holderness climbers on Everest back in 2009. Jake Norton ’92 and Linden Mallory ’03 found themselves in the lobby of the Yak and Yeti hotel in Kathmandu. Both were deep in preparations for a summit attempt when one turned to the other and asked: ‘Did you go to Holderness School?’ (Truly, this happened.) And, it is about the secret sauce. By the way, both Jake and Linden have reached the summit of the highest peak in the world.  

So, on to some final observations as I try to reach the summit of my quest:

At Holderness, you matter.

“Mattering” has become a buzzword in describing positive cultures in the last few years, but Holderness has cared about it for a long, long time. Both students and adults are made to feel like their best qualities are seen, appreciated, and even championed.

Through both systems and structures, Holderness gives you a chance to see yourself.

Our leadership voting process–the result of a student initiative in the late 1940s and implemented for the first time in 1950–can be wonderful for some, but also a sobering moment for others. Getting evaluated by your peers on a scale of 1-5 in the areas of Initiative, Fairness, Dependability, and Empathy is a moment our students experience yearly that essentially offers this: ‘Here is a mirror, what do you see?’  

So too for the Out Back experience.

Among its many great qualities, Out Back helps a person to see how they do at a novel experience that has real grit and challenge. I might add that our philosophy of requiring students to play multiple sports does this, too. It is a hugely helpful experience in terms of self-definition to see yourself out of your area of athletic expertise and perhaps even struggling just like everybody else. I mean this in a positive way: Holderness can humble you–fast.

The school’s commitment to a mission of mind, body, and spirit has to be an ingredient in its secret sauce.

It is an ambitious goal to influence three areas of a young person’s life–most schools stop at the first two. But weekly chapel gatherings ground all of us in critical ways that build community. As the great religious thinker Huston Smith once wrote, “We all have wants in this life. [Chapel] at its best, helps us to understand what is worth wanting.”

The school’s spiritual component is firmly undergirded by our commitment to the outdoors. 

How can one not come away from OB or the Orientation Hike or a weekend event sponsored by the Outing Club without a better understanding of the awesome beauty of the world in which we live, and by extension, one’s own utter smallness in the big picture of things? Both of these understandings inform a meaningful life.

Here is a corollary to the preceding anecdote—eating and sleeping outside with others in close proximity is as powerful a human bonding agent as there is.

This simple thing brings people together like nothing else. I remember all my O-Hike group members so well. And as for OB, my partner, Kevin Ohmland, remains in my personal pantheon for dragging me through the experience with grace and kindness. I know many students and faculty who would share a similar sentiment. You tend to think differently about your neighbor when you are with them in these small, hyper-intimate, and challenging settings.

Finally, I have always felt that Holderness naturally defaulted to the positive. It is a “yes you can” school and not a “yeah, but” school.

I think this is probably true over its long history, and it starts with its leaders. When Bishop Niles first proposed the idea of Holderness, some doubt was expressed. When Knowleton Hall burned to the ground in 1931 and the school literally stood in ruins, Edric Weld said, “let’s get to work and build anew.” When people balked at co-education, Pete Woodward did not flinch: “We can and should do this.” I’ve watched Holderness athletic teams playing against schools with 5 times the population come out on top. I’ve seen students encourage other students to do and try things. Holderness people will take a situation or circumstance and make the most of it. 

Perhaps the OB motto of “Enjoy when you can, endure when you must” captures that idea most succinctly. But, there can be no doubt that in big moments and in small ones, Holderness has always nurtured the speck of hope and positivity that is in all of us.

Keep the Conversation Going

To bring this to a close for now, I would like to adopt the James Murray approach to the Oxford English Dictionary and invite those from the Holderness community, both far and near, to join in this conversation–“what is the secret sauce of Holderness School”? This article should not be the end of the conversation. 

Please feel free to email me directly with your thoughts (bbarton@holderness.org).

About the Author

Bruce Barton
Alumni Relations and Advancement

Since joining the faculty at Holderness School in 1988, Bruce Barton has been in many different roles: teacher, dorm parent, coach, Director of College Counseling, Admissions Officer, Assistant to the Chaplain, Director of Counseling, Director of Diversity and currently in the Alumni Relations and Advancement Offices.

Prior to Holderness, Mr. Barton worked at St. James School in Maryland. He holds an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an A.B. from Hamilton College. He has also completed coursework at Wesleyan University and Oxford University.