NCS Bestows Angus Dun Chair on Molly Hemphill

Lower School teacher Molly Hemphill is National Cathedral School's new Angus Dun Chair in English, Head of School Kathleen O'Neill Jamieson announced this week.

 

Next week Ms. Hemphill will begin her 38th year teaching 4th-grade English at NCS. Ms. Hemphill introduced the class animal to the Lower School, which is now a much-beloved annual tradition, and she is the driving force behind the 4th grade's production of Shakespeare, always a highlight of the spring.

 

Last May, Ms. Hemphill reflected on her deep connections to NCS, its students, and her fellow faculty in a homily to the Lower School. "What you are appreciating and absorbing now," she told the girls, "contributes to the formation of the people you are becoming. And what you are sharing now with the people around you is part of a connection you will have with no one else, a connection—love, if you will—that you will hold dear."

 

Ms. Hemphill succeeds Jane Simchak, who retired in June, as the holder of the Dun Chair. It was endowed in 1983 to honor the fourth bishop of Washington, and its previous holders also include Janet Griffith and Kay Dunkley.