Prep Schools: Tackling Man

Rugged and dogged are the words for Richard Ward Day, 47, selected last week to succeed William Saltonstall as headmaster of Exeter. After attending Massachusetts' Shady Hill and Belmont Hill schools, the Boston-born Day went on to Yale ('38) where he stuck out three bruising years on the junior varsity football squad, was awarded the silver football reserved for the J.V. member making the most sacrifice. Rues Day: "I was tackling dummy."

Ever since, Day has been doing the tackling. He enlisted in World War II as an infantry private, came out as a company commander of paratroops. After getting a doctorate in American history at Harvard and teaching stints at Choate and St. Paul's, Day uncoiled his wiry 6-ft. frame and probing mind for headmasterships of Germantown Academy in Philadelphia and the Hawken School, his present post, near Cleveland. When he takes over at Exeter in the summer of '64, Day will pursue his guiding belief that a private school should have a vision that transcends being a farm club for the Ivy League. "I want Exeter to be a national school, not simply because it has students from every state, but in the sense that its graduates contribute to the national good," he says.