Alumni Award: John Michael McGean
How does one put a world-champion skater, a world-champion administrator, a world-champion innovator, and a world-class human being onto one page? There really are "no words to bear the burden of our praise."
After a scintillating BMOC undergraduate career, Mike went on to graduate work, served as a youngest-ever high school principal, and put in two years in the army But Mike has been public in his deeds ever since.
With his 39 years of incredible service to Dartmouth, he has out-hopped Hoppy (29 years) and out-distanced Dickey (25 years) by wide margins. He has been secretary of the College for just a skate-blade short of four decades, and secretary of the Alumni Council for 20 years. He founded Alumni College and has been responsible for a broad range of alumni activities including club, class, and alumni continuing-education programs. Indeed, he has been described as the "architect and custodian" of the unique relationship between Dartmouth and her alumni, an example to campuses nationwide.
We know him, too, as the eloquent and witty emcee at Dartmouth Nights, and he has been a keeper of the flame for both his fraternity and honorary society.
He is well into a second McGean-patented career: directing the Alumni in the Schools program, which gets to kids early, and which encourages alumni to assist teachers and younger students.
His other careers? Ice skating, of course: U.S. and world champion, with wife Lois '84; and leading the Skating Club at Dartmouth, again with Lois until her untimely death. He has been a United Way chairman and a trustee at Cardigan Mountain School and the Evergreen Foundation.
Daughter Loren started at Princeton but graduated from Dartmouth with the class of 1992. And how we cheered, and wept, as Lois and son Geoffrey both received their B.A. degrees together in June 1984!
Mike picks up awards the way most of us pick up the mail: U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame, Shaker Heights High School Hall of Fame, CASE 25-Year Award, CASE Eleanor Collier Award, Alumni Council Special Recognition Award, Class of 1949 Gold Pick Axe Award, Dartmouth Fellowship Award, etc., etc.
Throughout the years Mike McGean has been a mentor and teacher par excellence, by deed and inspiration. He has confounded other mortals with his litany of talent, touch, grace, humanity, and modesty. No one ever earned or more deserved this Dartmouth Alumni Award.
