Tunbridge
Sure, he was a skilled mathematician with an uncanny ability to reach teenage students, teaching one of high school’s more rigorous subjects. And yes, he did instruct more than a generation of Hartford High students during a unique era of transition before, during and after the use of calculators and computers became standard practice.
But deep down, McPhetres was a farmer with a passionate love for his rural Tunbridge roots. It’s a mix that made him remarkable: the mind of an intellectual scholar and the workmanlike attitude of an agriculturalist. It also allowed him to serve his community in many different ways.
McPhetres — the scholar, farmer, antique tractor collector and loyal public servant — died at 90 of natural causes on Jan. 31 at his home. Those who knew him described a passionate man with a keen mind and a special talent for teaching. They also said he was one of the kindest people they had ever met.
“He was a super person,” said Don Colby, who worked at Hartford Middle School for 39 years. “He was very serious about what he taught, and he made sure that the kids understood. He just had that personality. … People looked up to Floyd. They listened to him. He had a lot of talent.”
“I think generally, if more people were treated the way (McPhetres) treated people — students, peers, neighbors — I think we would be very well served,” said Nelson Fogg, a Hartford High graduate, former student of McPhetres, and current principal at Hartford High. “I just have the utmost respect for him as a human being. A lot of that comes from what I’ve observed, wanting to be a teacher myself.”
“He liked everything done well; he insisted on it,” said Euclid Farnham, Tunbridge’s town moderator, who worked closely with McPhetres on the town’s cemetery commission for 13 years. “I think we need more people in the world like that.”
McPhetres was born in Tunbridge on Feb. 22, 1927, the son of longtime resident Archie G. McPhetres and Flora E. McPhetres. He attended a one-room school near his home and graduated from South Royalton High in 1944.
He picked up baseball at an early age, and played pitcher for the high school’s baseball team. His love for the sport followed him into adulthood, where a penchant for math emerged as he followed the statistics of Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox.
McPhetres graduated from the University of Vermont with a bachelor’s degree in physics and a minor in mathematics in 1950; he graduated from the University of Illinois with a master’s degree in 1959. He married Eloise Helen Reynolds in 1950 and was married for 67 years.
“He was always busy,” said McPhetres’ son, Mike, who works at the tractor repair company Farm-All-Fix in Randolph and serves as vice chairman of the Tunbridge Selectboard. “If he wasn’t doing teaching stuff, he’d find something to do. He had O.C.D. Everything had to be perfect. The lawn had to be mowed perfectly. All the time, he was taking care of stuff. We didn’t have much money when I was a little kid. He took care of whatever we had.”
McPhetres’ farming background gave him a range of technical and practical skills. It also imparted a do-it-yourself attitude that served McPhetres throughout his life.
“No matter what you did, he’d figure it out,” Mike McPhetres said. “He’d figure out angles, circumferences. I don’t know what he liked about (math), but boy, he was good at it. … Everything he did, he’d figure it out.”
McPhetres joined the faculty at Hartford High in Sept. 1954, teaching algebra, geometry and driver’s education before traveling to Illinois in 1958-59 to pursue his masters. He returned to Hartford that September.
Over the next 31 years, McPhetres served as a math teacher at Hartford High. During some of that time, he also was Hartford’s coordinator of mathematics — responsible for all math instruction for grades 1 to 12 — and chairman of the mathematics department. He eventually helped establish the Vermont Council of Teachers of Math and its predecessor, the Vermont Math and Science Teachers Association, and helped create an arithmetic proficiency test in 1972 and the mathematics competency test in 1977. He also assisted in creating the Twin State Mathematics League, of which Hartford still has a team, and served as its coach for several years.
“He had this ability to help you understand things, complex and difficult things,” said Fogg, who graduated from Hartford in 1979. “He was able to put it at a level that everyone could understand. When I look back at it, I realized I had a good math teacher. … Now, as a school leader, I realize just how rare that combination was. He commanded attention, made students accountable.”
In October 1982, McPhetres was granted the Outstanding Vermont Teacher Award from UVM. In 1984, he was given the Outstanding Vermont Mathematics Teacher Award from Sigma Xi, the research honor society of science and engineering founded in 1886. He later taught at Vermont Technical College, in Randolph, for eight years.
For Fogg, McPhetres’ teaching ability — his talent to connect with young people in trying to solve complex mathematical problems — is even more impressive given the era in which he was working.
“He was determined to find the right way to teach, the way that would allow a student to learn,” he said. “That’s why I think he would be successful teaching in any generation, any era. … Part of his brilliance was understanding that all learners are different. We know that today, that’s part of the culture in schools today. But back then, it wasn’t necessarily recognized.
“He had a deep and abiding sense that his job was not just to teach, but to support students’ learning,” Fogg added. “Those are two different things. … He wanted students to learn.”
Priscilla Farnham, Euclid’s wife, who worked for McPhetres as his assistant between 1979 and 1981, described an instructor fully committed to his work.
“He was an excellent teacher, very ‘old school’,” Priscilla said. “He was a sweet man with a lovely smile. … At Hartford, he was highly respected, a mathematician to the core. He was a brilliant mathematician.”
Each year, Hartford High has handed out the Floyd McPhetres Math Award to the student who exemplifies the idea of “a student of math, which can be defined in a number of different ways,” said Fogg. The award, he added, has been handed out for decades.
Away from the classroom, McPhetres had many hobbies. He was a founding member, president and secretary of the Central Vermont Tractor Club –— born of both his love for tinkering and his love for tractors. The club’s antique tractors are part of the town’s annual parade on Memorial Day. He also raised Hereford cattle for a time and assisted with Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts in Wilder.
But McPhetres’ connection to Tunbridge was exemplified during his 13-year stint working with the town’s cemetery commission — a three-person group responsible for maintaining the town’s 22 cemeteries. He was instrumental in the obtaining the necessary permits and in acquiring land for the South Tunbridge Cemetery, and took a specific interest in Kelsey Mountain Cemetery — near his home — that got him involved in the first place.
“He put his whole heart into these cemeteries,” said Baxter Doty, who worked with McPhetres on the commission. “He’d done quite a bit, while I was in with him. … Just an absolutely nice guy. Everybody got along with him, every time.
“He was involved with the town and never missed Town Meetings,” said Farnham. “This year, there was a face that was missing. He and his wife always sat in the same seats every year. They weren’t reserved, but nevertheless that’s where they always seemed to end up.
“No question. Tunbridge is a better place because Floyd was in it.”
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.