A Special Message from Brunswick's Board Chairman

Dear Members of the Brunswick Community:

In accordance with a unanimous vote by our Board of Trustees, I am pleased to announce that Brunswick’s buildings and outdoor spaces on Maher and Maple Avenues will henceforth be known as the Thomas W. Philip Campus.

We hope and expect that Tom will continue to be our Head of School for many years to come. Still, the Board feels very strongly that Tom’s 22 years of tremendous care for our school and our boys, his successive accomplishments, and his outstanding achievements deserve recognition and significant honor at this time, in their own right.

At every turn, with every step ahead, Tom has “stayed the course,” working ceaselessly and tirelessly for nearly a quarter century to ensure Brunswick always remains true to its long and strong tradition and core values of Courage, Honor, Truth, and to the excellence of our boys’ education and character development.

Entrusted in 2001 with leadership of a much smaller institution with high hopes and great promise, he has far exceeded all expectations. Perhaps most significantly, he created and has continued to expand The Brunswick Trust, the school’s signature character-development program.

Moreover, as life’s social and emotional considerations have become increasingly demanding and complex, Tom has responded by pursuing and implementing a host of wonderful and innovative programmatic enhancements. Those include the acquisition of our vast Vermont wilderness campus in 2018 and establishment of our “away/unplugged” program for Upper Schoolers. Facilities there were expanded in 2022 with a “village” of cottage bunkhouses, now allowing for welcome of entire Middle and Lower School grades as well. Closer to home, Tom’s creation of the new ’WICK Center in 2022 is geared to providing our community of boys and their parents with a growing host of leading-edge health-and-wellness resources.

Tom has also presided over an extraordinary array of improvements to our facilities. Beginning with the opening of our Macfarlane Lower School in 2004, enhancements completed under his watch include fundamental work to link and unify classroom buildings on our Maher Avenue campus; construction of the Mehra Natatorium — Brunswick’s largest-ever building project; completion of the Falco Rowing Center on the Mianus River; the opening of our O’Malley Middle School; and the linking of our two King Street campuses by tunnel, followed by creation of a state-of-the-art track-and-field complex. And most recently, Brunswick acquired 270 Lake Avenue and plans significant enhancement to its program and facilities once again.

Without question, the breadth and scope of Tom’s attentiveness and achievements to date are as remarkable as they are distinguished: Any Head of School could justifiably take pride in a fraction of these accomplishments. But, as we have come to know so well during these past 22 years, Tom does not rest, and the great work continues apace.

As it does, and as we continue to work together for the brightest of futures, our Board has unanimously decreed it appropriate to mark this milestone moment with an official, significant, permanent, and well-deserved honor. When comprehensive renovations of our Upper School, now under way, are complete, we will certainly “set it in stone.”

For the present, however, when you visit or pass the Philip Campus, I hope you will join me and our entire Board in profound gratitude and quiet recognition of Tom and his myriad accomplishments that have thus far come so positively to bear on all our boys and our school.

Thank you so much.

Sincerely,

W. Robert Berkley, Jr. ’91 (P ’21, ’23)
Chairman, Board of Trustees