2004 Founder's Day Award Recipient
Citation for Charles Goldberg
'67
Awarded at assembly on May 21, 2004
Charles Goldberg —You have given hundreds of
hours to the Academy through a long and varied career
as an Exeter volunteer. While you cherish your student
years here, you have also taken an active interest
in today’s Exeter and been a thoughtful contributor
to conversations about the Academy’s future.
Above all, you are a great connector of Exonians—to
each other and to the school—through your singular
combination of grace, humor, sincerity and insight.
You came to Exeter from Haverhill, Massachusetts,
in 1963. More than most, and sooner than most, you
realized what Exeter had given you. You once said,
“Sacrifices, struggles and imperfections dispose
us well for life thereafter.” Whatever the struggles
or sacrifices you faced at Exeter, they did not keep
you from developing your gifts. You lent talent to
club soccer and spirit to the home teams, but your
people skills stood out most of all. A natural entertainer,
you sang tenor in the glee club and with the PEADQUACS,
whom you led as a senior; later, at Princeton, you
joined—and apparently never left—the a
cappella group The Nassoons; and upon moving to New
York to pursue your career, you became a loyal member
of the Blue Hill Troupe, an amateur light opera company
that donates all its proceeds to charity.
Your classmates remember you as a genuine, welcoming
soul who had friends of all ages, a boy who knew how
things worked, had a good rapport with adults on campus
and a knack for both having fun and staying out of
trouble. Your sophisticated and often self-deprecating
humor could diffuse tensions and unite people: you
entertained dorm mates with spot-on imitations of
teachers that were funny but never mean spirited,
and you were quick to see humor when new roommates
from Arlington, Massachusetts, and Fort Hill, South
Carolina, couldn’t understand a word they said
to each other. In recent years, you have maintained
that one of Exeter’s most important challenges
is ensuring that all students truly feel welcome.
Chuck, all of us at Exeter benefit from your loyalty
and attentions. Not only are you fun to be around,
you are also an effective leader among Exeter’s
alumni/ae, whose support is so vital to the Academy’s
continuing excellence. You once wrote: “Even,
and perhaps especially, in good times, we must expect
change, anticipate it, plan for it, embrace it, or
be swept aside.” Open-minded and sensitive,
you have been an articulate advocate of many changes
at Exeter while also being a careful listener to all
points of view. Since the 1980s you have served on
many fundraising and reunion committees, as a director
of the General Alumni/ae Association, vice president
and secretary of the Greater New York Alumni/ae Association
and national chair of the Annual Giving Fund. You
have also worked almost every New York phonathon in
the last ten years.
The energy, commitment and innovation you bring to
your volunteer roles have earned you the respect and
affection of other volunteers who graduated from Exeter
long before you did. You are a quick study of character
and comfortable with all kinds of people. You make
others feel that their conversation with you is the
most important part of your day, and you leave them
feeling uplifted. At phonathons, you make a point
of warmly welcoming the newest volunteers and personally
soliciting the oldest alumni. One volunteer who always
sits next to you on these occasions says, “It’s
hard work and Chuck’s happy to do it; I could
listen to him all night.” You are a champion
of unsung heroes and those who work behind the scenes.
You never fail to ask about the welfare of staff members
and their families when you are on campus. At the
end of your tenure as national chair of the Annual
Giving Fund, you presented the annual giving office
with a framed certificate honoring every member of
the department, a typically Goldbergian beau geste.
You once wrote that Exeter is distinguished by “a
consistently high level of moral, ethical and spiritual
energy, and by its seriousness of purpose in the joyful
pursuit of excellence.” Chuck, these are just
the qualities we celebrate in you. No alumnus has
been a more faithful believer in or effective communicator
about the unique opportunities Exeter provides for
its students. You have been called the very definition
of friend: deeply understanding, richly encouraging,
noble of character, unfailingly courteous and kind.
That you have exercised these qualities on Exeter’s
behalf so well and for so long is our great good fortune.
In honor of the ways in which you embody and practice
the principle of non sibi, and in recognition of your
outstanding service to the Academy, we present you
with the 2004 Founder’s Day Award.
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