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Photos by Jim Graham
Tatnall School’s longtime coach and educator Bruce Chipman retires after more than 50 years.
Ernest Hemingway once said that retirement is the “filthiest word in the language.” So what does a Faulkner and Hemingway devotee do after 51 years of teaching generations of students about Benjy Compson and Lady Brett Ashley?
Bruce Chipman might have an idea or two when it comes to that subject. Stepping down after more than five decades of teaching at Greenville’s Tatnall School, he came to the revered institution after completing undergraduate work at the University of Virginia and doctoral studies at Boston’s Tufts University in 1973. He was offered a position to teach English, coach football and baseball, and direct plays.
Chipman thoroughly immersed himself in the school. During his half century there, he taught literature and film, headed the English department, directed theater, coached football and baseball, and served as dean of students. He’s said that his first love was always teaching language and literature.
Far from your typical teacher, Chipman would do more than pass out a reading list to students and ask them to regurgitate the assigned prose at a later date. He’d challenge them to question what they’d read, think it through and go beyond the obvious—as he said, “to understand that the questions were often more important than the answers.”
“I know what I’ll miss most is being with my kids and seeing that I may be making a difference as they create their authentic selves.”
—Bruce Chipman
Chipman directed over a thousand students through his 47 years with Showcase, the school’s major theatrical production company, always teaching, cajoling, encouraging and creating a wonderful place for his students to excel. “I know what I’ll miss most is being with my kids and seeing that I may be making a difference as they create their authentic selves,” he says.
Not merely a teacher at the school, Chipman was part of the Tatnall family. Son Zachary, daughter Hannah and grandchildren Devon and Beckett attended the school. His wife, Robin, was the longtime Showcase designer for hair and makeup and a former teacher in Tatnall’s early childhood center. Casey, his daughter-in-law, is the school’s head of learning services.
To steal a line from Faulkner that Chipman used in a letter to Showcase alumni: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
For Chipman, Tatnall will never be “back then.” It will remain forever a part of his present.
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