Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Henry SCATTERGOOD
Henry Scattergood, 84, former headmaster of Germantown Friends School and an outdoorsman who dearly loved climbing mountains in New Hampshire with his family and his dogs, died Thursday at the Crosslands, a retirement community in Kennett Square.
Mr. Scattergood, a birthright Quaker who lived in Germantown nearly all of his life, implemented community outreach and scholarship programs at the school during his tenure as headmaster, from 1954 to 1970.
An athletic, heavyset 6-footer, Mr. Scattergood was known for his sensitivity to both students and faculty, said Spencer Coxe, who for decades lived next door to Mr. Scattergood at Awbury Arboretum.
He always was concerned about his students' peace of mind. Once, Coxe said, Mr. Scattergood inexplicably called one of his students into his office. Not knowing what he had done, the student was apprehensive - needlessly. He hadn't done anything, except that he wasn't growing as fast as his classmates.
Mr. Scattergood "had been short as a child, and he wanted to make sure that being short didn't bother this person," Coxe said, repeating a story that was told to him by the student's father.
At the school, Mr. Scattergood increased minority enrollment and encouraged independent thinking. During the 1960s, strange clothing or long hair didn't upset him. "He was concerned about what was in the student's head, not about what was on top," Coxe said.
Born in Germantown, Mr. Scattergood was a lifelong member of the Germantown Friends Meeting and was educated at Germantown Friends, Haverford College and Harvard University, where he earned a master's degree in history.
He taught at schools in Washington and Cambridge, Mass., before settling in Philadelphia. After retiring as headmaster in 1970, he taught history for a time at William Penn Charter School.
During World War II, Mr. Scattergood was a conscientious objector, working with the American Friends Service Committee's refuge program in Lisbon and Casablanca. He continued to be active in the AFSC in later years.
He also served on the Mayor's Scholarship Committee and the Committee on Minority Affairs of the National Association of Independent Schools, and was a member of the boards of the AFSC, Friends Hospital and Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges. He was the first president of the Awbury Arboretum Association.
He delighted in outdoor activity, whether chopping wood, canoeing lakes in the Adirondacks or climbing mountains in New Hampshire.
Always taking part in those activities was a dog or two. "He was devoted to the dogs, and they were very spoiled and very bad, and we loved them dearly," his wife, Sara Park Scattergood, said.
The dogs were of various varieties: bassets, a dachshund and an Australian silky terrier, for instance. Most were "all-American sidewalk setters," or mutts, she said.
Occasionally, one of the dogs was not up to the Scattergood challenge. The legs of the long-haired dachshund were too short to get it up the steep side of Maine's Mount Katadin, she recalled, and it finished the trip in her husband's backpack.
"It was the funniest thing you ever saw, his little paws sticking out of the backpack," she said.
It was on those climbs that Mr. Scattergood earned his reputation as a chocolate lover. "He always had a little bar of dark chocolate in his pocket and when he got to the top, we would sit down and eat oranges, and he would hand out the chocolate," she said.
Besides his wife, he is survived by daughters, Anne Fogg, Sarah Ashe, Eleanor Lash and Mary Scattergood; a son, Thomas; a brother; a sister; nine grandchildren, and one great grandchild.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 15, at Germantown Friends Meeting, 31 West Coulter St.
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