Remembering Joan Oates

It was a magnificent honor, of course, and one for which Joan was eminently qualified.

 

The news thrilled the Collegiate community. In fact, when she paid a visit to campus several days after the announcement, you would have thought a rock star had stepped into our midst by the reception she received.

 

A former Lower School music teacher, mother of four Collegiate graduates, and a Life Trustee, Joan Oates was a steadfast supporter of the arts not just on North Mooreland Road but in Central Virginia and, indeed, beyond.

 

“There is no question that we wouldn’t be where we are in the arts today if it wasn’t for Joan,” said Alex Smith, a 1965 graduate and, until his 2016 retirement, his alma mater’s long-time vice-president for development.

 

“She was a champion for the arts. She was a picture of resolve in her efforts to get the arts in the forefront at Collegiate. She wanted the arts to be embraced. She became an advocate for our teachers. I’m sure they felt that Joan was an ally and a friend. Joan herself was elegant, regal, classy. She was supremely talented. She was a dancer, a singer, and a musician. Her husband Jim was a sculptor. They embodied the arts.”

 

Joan Olmsted Oates, truly a Collegiate icon, passed away April 3 after a period of declining health. Though the moment brings profound sadness, it also elicits fond memories of a wise and caring friend and abiding advocate for Collegiate School.

 

“Joan was loyal and totally committed to Collegiate,” said Wallace Stettinius, a Life Trustee who served alongside her for many years. She was the ideal Trustee. She had great interpersonal skills. She was very down to earth and really didn’t have an ego.

 

“Joan cared about the things that Collegiate represents. The real key to Collegiate has been an emphasis on academics but tied very closely to the non-academics, the values, and the principles. Joan was very committed to developing the whole child. She was very smart and had a great social conscience. She was a lovely person.”

 

Joan and her husband, Dr. James F Oates III, created the Oates Endowment for the Arts at Collegiate and assisted in the planning of the Hershey Center for the Arts, the centerpiece of which, Oates Theater, is named in their honor.

 

“What’s always stuck with me about Joan is how passionate she was about how the arts could help all areas of curriculum,” said Jenny Hundley, who since 1992 has headed Collegiate’s Middle School drama program. “I remember the takeaway conversation with her about encouraging me to look at the curriculum across the board and really recognizing that the arts could support other areas of learning.

 

“Dance and drama and storytelling was something she really left me with. That helped me embrace how to make the theater program recognize what other areas the children were learning and how to partner those things. Both she and Jim dedicated not just funds but their support to building a theater where we could perform. Build it, and they will come. The arts program just took off.”

 

Joan’s impact extended well beyond Collegiate.

 

She had the vision for and served as founding chairman of Partners in the Arts, a program of the Arts Council of Richmond that’s a consortium of educators, artists, and arts and culture organizations whose mission is to assist teachers as they integrate visual and performing arts into the core curriculum.

 

Founded in 1994, the program now bears the name, the Joan Oates Institute, or, appropriately enough, JOI, perhaps a coincidence or perhaps a testament to the spirit of joy with which Joan advocated for the arts.

 

“The plan that they (the founders) developed is probably more relevant now than in ’94,” said Robert McAdams, director of Partners in the Arts. “They were talking about experiential learning and creativity and connecting community to students’ learning in K-12. When Joan worked with our teachers, she always empowered and engaged them and brought the best out in everybody.

 

“Joan told the story about how integrating the arts into teaching came about. She was teaching a music class at Collegiate in 1968. It was snowing outside, and, of course, the students were all going crazy. I remember her saying, ‘Any good teacher has a lesson plan in hand. Then you see what’s going on, and you throw it out the window.’

 

“She said that was the spark. She had her students create a dance about the snow. They wrote poems about the snowflakes. She realized they were actually doing science content. That little nugget turned into her works with the Arts Council that’s continuing today.

 

“All research shows that how we learn is through observation and experience and making and creating things and solving problems in a lot of different ways.”

 

A native of Brookline, MA, Joan was an alumna of Bennington College in Vermont, an institution where the arts were emphasized and celebrated, and Harvard, where she earned a graduate degree in education.

 

Gracious, eloquent, modest, and truly indefatigable, she was a world traveler, adventurer, and lifelong learner.

 

Her presence on the Collegiate campus was always a gift.

 

“Mrs. Oates was a remarkable educator both in and out of the classroom,” said Debbie Miller, head of Collegiate’s Lower School. “Her family’s devotion to the furtherance of the arts is second to none. This devotion and commitment has led to multiple students pursuing careers in the arts and many others having a richer, fuller life because of their contributions to Collegiate and the broader community. She was a dear, dear lady.”

  ~ Weldon Bradshaw