David Mallery, advocate of teaching reform

David Mallery, 86, of Chestnut Hill, an English teacher at Germantown Friends School from 1946 to 1959 who, for more than 40 years, hosted a June teaching seminar at Westtown School in Chester County, died of a staph infection Saturday at Chestnut Hill Hospital.

It was as a national advocate of teaching reform that he made his mark.

In a 1963 article on his work, Time magazine stated that Mr. Mallery "has become the nation's most skilled conveyor of one teacher's technique to another."

For the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), Time reported, Mr. Mallery wrote reports of his visits to schools across the nation that "inspire" others "with the wide range of classroom experimentation, comfort them by showing the similarity of their problems, and warn them away from false goals."

The magazine noted that Mr. Mallery had spent six months visiting eight schools in the Northeast and Midwest to produce his 1962 book, High School Students Speak Out.

By the early 1990s, Mr. Mallery was NAIS director of professional development.

"David Mallery was a powerful lion in the independent education community, who had the gentle touch of a lamb," NAIS president Patrick F. Bassett wrote in an e-mail from the association's Washington headquarters.

"He had an amazing connection to people, and he guided many through their toughest challenges. He was so positive in the recommendations he made, people felt energized and motivated just being near him.

"He was a mentor to thousands and an inspiration to all."

Myra A. McGovern, NAIS director of public information, said that, over the decades, "a huge portion of the books in our archives were written by him."

McGovern counted 18 titles published between 1961 and 1975 alone.

Richard Wade, head of school at Germantown Friends, wrote in a news release that Mr. Mallery "will be remembered for his effervescence, his eternal optimism, and his ability to be truly present for each person he encountered."

For almost 50 years, Mr. Mallery ran an educational consulting firm, David Mallery Seminars, from his home.

"He started traveling and visiting schools," said his wife, Judith, "and just began to have some seminars here," often six a year, first at the Sugar Loaf Conference Center in Chestnut Hill and then at the Ace Conference Center in Whitemarsh Township.

On the Web site for his firm, Mr. Mallery wrote that "since the early 1960s, I have spent most of my time organizing seminars for teachers, school heads, and school administrators. . . . These gatherings have happened around the United States, in Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East."

The site shows that last year, five of the six planned events were in Whitemarsh.

The sixth, as usual, was at Westtown School, where the final evening each year was marked by a concert by Singing City.

"It's fair to say, for a lot of us in some ways, it was a favorite concert of the year," said Lauren Hallquist Anderson, executive director of that Philadelphia choir.

"Because they had spent a week with David," Anderson said, they were "one of the most appreciative audiences you can imagine.

"But David, you could feel David's enthusiasm and support and excitement about the music and about us."

In 1959-60, his wife said, Mr. Mallery "was the educational adviser to Tracy Voorhees, President Eisenhower's representative in the Cuban refugee crisis."

Through the 1970s, she said, he taught at the Institute for Humanistic Studies for Executives, run by Bell Telephone at the University of Pennsylvania.

He had a less-academic side, as well.

For three years in the 1970s, he hosted The Movie Buff, a Sunday afternoon movie-appreciation show on what is now CBS3. In 1970, the Philadelphia Daily News reported that the show ranged from a half-hour about filmmaking to a full two-hour presentation of movies, often from the 1930s and 1940s, with commentary.

Mr. Mallery, born in Sugar Hill, N.H., was the valedictorian of his 1941 class at Germantown Friends, where he won the Roberta Jarden Award in English, the Davis H. Forsythe Alumni Award, and the tennis champion cup.

He earned a bachelor's degree in French at Haverford College in 1945 and a master's degree at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English in 1950.

He served as a Navy officer in the Pacific.

He began his teaching career in 1946 as an intern at Germantown Friends, where, in that first academic year, he soon began teaching 10th-grade English full time.

In 1996, Teachers College at Columbia University presented him with its Klingenstein Leadership Award - the same award given last year to Oprah Winfrey.

In June 1997, he hosted the opening of the Second International Congress on Quaker Education.

Besides his wife, Mr. Mallery is survived by a son, Roger; a daughter, Diane Cusick; and two granddaughters.

A memorial is set for 3 p.m. Feb. 7 at the Germantown Monthly Meeting, 47 W. Coulter St.

His wife said that in June, "when he would have had the Westtown seminar, we will have a larger [memorial] there with Singing City."