Michael Shafer ’71 Receives John Phillips Award Visitations

“If you don't do something, who will?” Michael Shafer ‘71 asked, leaning over the assembly stage podium.

Shafer has embodied a lifetime of service in the five decades since he received his Exeter diploma, whether by teaching at Rutgers University in Political Science or founding Warm Heart, an organization based in Phrao, Thailand offering health care, education, microenterprise and environmental sustainability initiatives for an underserved local community.

For these contributions and his dedication to the non sibi mission, President of the General Alumni Association (GAA) Ciatta Bayash ‘97 presented Shafer with the John and Elizabeth Phillips Award at last Friday’s assembly. Previously titled the John Phillips Award, this honorable distinction annually recognizes one PEA alumnus or alumna “whose life demonstrates founder John Phillips' ideal of goodness and knowledge united in noble character and usefulness to mankind,” according to the PEA Alumni website.

For Principal William Rawson, the award serves as a pertinent reminder of the great potential all Exonians have to make a concrete difference. “Shafer once sat in this room [as a student] with no certainty about his future, no sense of the impact he might have in the world,” Rawson said. “Now, 51 years later, he is here and just received the Academy's highest honor.”

In his acceptance speech, Shafer articulated both tremendous gratitude and slight embarrassment at “being recognized for leading my life, a life that I think should not be exemplary but normal.”

Shafer also voiced his appreciation for the award’s new title, expanded to recognize Elizabeth Phillips’ legacy in founding the Academy in addition to her husband’s. “I was deeply touched by being the first to be awarded the ‘John and Elizabeth Phillips Award’ because I have done nothing my wife has not been part of,” Shafer said, “and I was proud to follow Ciatta at the podium to address an audience that looks much more like the America I am proud to belong to, recognizing [its] warts and all.”

Many of Shafer’s friends from the Class of 1971 returned to celebrate his accomplishments. “Mike gave a rip-roaring speech that made a big hit with the students, and certainly did with us old guys, sitting in the front row,” Ted Gilchrist ’71 said. “Very inspiring, with just the right seasoning of salty language to spice it up. What an inspiration [he is] for all of us.”

Shafer truly lives by Exeter values, Doug White ’71 expressed. “Mike’s presentation was wonderful. It was heartfelt and resonated well with the students. It is an honor to know him––and now his family as well––as he embodies non sibi every day in the Exeter community.”

White continued, “It was surreal to not only have Mike, a member of a class with a uniquely dismal start to alumnihood, be granted this most prestigious award, but to see another ’71, Bill Rawson, on the stage as Exeter’s principal. Looking around at the accomplishments of other classmates, I can see that so many have made good use of the past 50 years.”

Shafer found his way to Exeter as a new lower and baseball recruit quite accidentally in the summer of 1968, when his father took a detour to look around campus while he was in the area. After connecting with then-admissions officer Rick Mahoney over his experience as a member of the Dartmouth baseball team, Shafer became interested in the Academy. “I'm wearing a Dartmouth baseball t-shirt—then [Mahoney] says, ‘I used to play for the team in that t-shirt’,” he recalled.

Upon his arrival on campus, however, Shafer immediately suffered a knee injury and was forced to quit athletics, leading him to become involved in other areas of campus, such as Dramat—Exeter’s student-run theater production. “Those days, Dramat was really a student operation and we operated out of what had been a large rectangular house. The second floor had been cut out to make a big shell, the stage at one end and the lighting booth at the other. It was a fire trap, it was cold, but it was just incredible,” he recalled.

Later in his life, Shafer sought opportunities to reform American higher education because of his firm belief in prioritizing student experiences. “It was about teaching, intervening, engaging with people directly and talking to them about the world,” he said. “I would say to them: ‘You can do this, you can do that,’ and then they would just look at me like: ‘I can't do any of those things.’ In five years, they would come back to me and say, ‘How did you see that in me?’ I would say, ‘Of course I could see that in you—you were the only one that couldn’t see.’”

Students found Schafer’s remarks to be very engaging. “He talked to us like we were one of his friends,” lower Sophie Fernandez said.

Students also explained how they particularly enjoyed Shafer. “I thought that he was great.” upper James Keeling said, “He’s a character and one that people like.”

Upper Phil Horrigan agreed with him, adding how his charity work added to his likable personality. “He’s a really nice guy. And it’s great how he wasn’t trying to make us do charity but just explained what he did and why he did it.”

Others disagreed, taking issue with Shafer’s explanation of his role while a student at the Academy. “When Shafer said, ‘I was coming in as a jock so I didn’t have to be smart but now that I wasn’t playing anymore, I had to be smart.’ I found it a bit concerning,” lower Chieko Imamura said.

In the last few decades, Shafer’s perception of, and appreciation for, Exeter has evolved significantly, “partly because it was so transformative, but also because [Exeter] itself has grown so much since I was here.”

To conclude, Shafer voiced immense gratitude to the Academy for instilling in him fundamental values of service and self-confidence. “[Exeter] was hugely empowering and influential in my life. I came here as a newbie lower, and I left as a fundamentally different person,” he said. “As I think back on my life, my life started at Exeter. This is where I became an independent person.”