The Master of the Fabric

By Eliott Grover '06

In January 1973, the Eldfell volcano erupted on the Icelandic island of Heimaey. When the news reached Marion, 2,400 miles away, a student in Tabor’s advanced geology class joked that they should take a field trip to study the eruption. His peers laughed. Their instructor, a resolute young man who defied the old adage “those who can’t do, teach,” thought it was an intriguing idea. From the moment Don Wing joined Tabor’s faculty in 1967 as a math and science teacher, he sought learning opportunities that brought his students into contact with the concepts they were studying. This was particularly true in his geology class where he led many memorable excursions.

Less than two months after Eldfell erupted, Tabor’s geology students landed in Iceland. Over the next week they toured the hot springs that powered the country’s geothermal heating system and immersed themselves in local culture. The trip culminated with an unforgettable flight over the eruption, still spewing lava, and the underlying town of Heimaey, which was buried under 15 feet of volcanic ash. “The experience of seeing an active volcano is something few people can boast of,” a writer for The Log observed. Thanks to their teacher’s status as a man of action, this group of Tabor students could.

Nobody ever described Don’s penchant for productivity better than he once did. The dedication page of the 1973 Fore ‘n’ Aft included this colorful summation of his worldview: “My philosophy is to get the most amount of work done, in the least amount of time, in the most perfect manner possible, with the least amount of bull****.”

It was right around this time that Tabor’s trustees asked Don to take on a new role. He had studied mechanical engineering in college and possessed a sharp, analytical mind. Perceiving this, the trustees asked him to oversee the construction of the new Academic Center. The success of that project led to Don taking on more responsibilities during the 1973 Centennial Building Campaign. Impressed by Don’s suggestions for eliminating waste and improving efficiencies across campus, the trustees asked him to become the school’s permanent director of plant operations.

As much as this was a loss for the students who would no longer benefit from Don’s presence in the classroom, it was a victory for the school. A good plant director is hard to find. It’s a demanding role that requires a diverse set of skills to oversee a broad scope of responsibilities. The plant director supervises routine maintenance, coordinates logistics for special events like commencement, and often serves as the foreman for long-term construction projects. And then there are the unforeseen hurdles, like flooding from a hurricane or an extended power outage, that require nimble and competent action. Like an emergency room doctor who is always on call, the plant director is among the first responders for campus crises. In short, the individual a school entrusts with this vital role is essential for the day-to-day and long-term health of the institution. In identifying Don Wing as the right man for the job, Tabor’s trustees struck gold.

Under Don’s leadership, the maintenance program developed in earnest. Prior to 1973, Tabor had a skeleton crew of six grounds workers. The school relied on outside contractors to handle mechanical work and larger projects. Don had the vision to build a comprehensive team, hiring expert craftsmen such as carpenters, plumbers, and electricians. Growing to over 20 highly skilled professionals, the plant operations unit quickly streamlined campus maintenance and armed the school with the manpower and technical knowledge to handle big (and often costly) jobs in-house.

Having a larger maintenance team in place also enhanced the school’s ability to swiftly confront emergencies. When a storm surge flooded campus in February 1976, all of the furnaces in waterfront buildings were damaged and disabled. The potential for calamity was real as the school faced the prospect of not having heat during a cruel stretch of winter weather. Don quickly mobilized his team. They ripped out the furnaces and turned the maintenance building into an ad hoc boiler factory. With all hands on deck, they cleaned and repaired the furnaces and successfully remounted them by the end of the day. Nobody went to bed cold that night.

From the moment he assumed the role of plant director until his retirement in 2015, Don oversaw a prolific volume of construction projects. His tenure overlapped with the headships of Peter Webster and Jay Stroud, a 36-year stretch that brought immense growth and change to the physical plant. During this period, the school built or significantly remodeled more than fifty faculty apartments and seven new dormitories. Nearly every core facility on campus today was erected or renovated under Don’s watch. This includes the Fireman Center for Performing Arts, the Fish Center for Health & Athletics, the Math & Science Wing in the Stroud Academic Center, the Braitmayer Art Center, the Marine and Nautical Science Center, the Wickenden Chapel, Lillard Hall and the Johnson Dining Room, the Sailing and Crew Centers, the Will Parker '04 Black Box Theatre, and the Duffy Fields.

In 2012, the school published a photo book entitled A Campus Transformed to document this productive chapter of school history. “On behalf of the trustees, Headmaster Jay S. Stroud and all those alumni and friends who made these extraordinary developments possible,” reads the inscription on the final page, “this book is dedicated to the one individual who, with endless dedication, oversaw it all: Mr. Don Wing. ‘Master of the Fabric.’”

For those who knew Don growing up, his success as Tabor’s plant director must have seemed preordained. He hailed from a long line of craftsmen and tinkerers. His father was an engineer who could build a watch from scratch, and his great grandfather was an inventor who started a company that manufactured labeling machines. As a boy, Don found a set of antique tools in his parents’ attic. He approached them with the same reverence other boys might show a box of Legos. Before long, he developed a precocious aptitude for using the tools as well as a deep respect for their beauty and history. His appreciation for such artifacts would become one of the defining elements of his life.

At Deerfield Academy, where Don graduated in 1962, he was known as an intellectually curious student who shared his vast technical knowledge with eager generosity. “Cameras, radios, tape recorders—these were commonplace items in Don’s life,” reads the caption on his senior yearbook page. “When the physics lab needed an oscillograph, he provided the instrument along with some expert instruction on its functions. Although primarily concerned with such matters as physics and geology, Don was never one to pass up the opportunity to execute a well-intentioned practical joke.”

Don remained true to these traits throughout his life. He was an ingenious craftsman with a sharp sense of humor. Like all great engineers, he understood the world as a series of problems that could be solved with rational thought and the right tools. One winter in the late 1970s, Tabor needed a new snowplow. It would have been a costly purchase for the budget to absorb. Not to be deterred, Don took a trip to the local junk yard where he salvaged an old water tank. Back in the maintenance building, he sawed it in half lengthwise and then sculpted the front into the blades of a plow.

After Don passed away in 2015, David Stanley, a British auctioneer who befriended the Wings decades earlier, wrote one of the obituaries that honored Don’s life. In remembering his friend, Stanley enumerated all of the ways Tabor’s campus had grown and improved since the trustees asked him to “take permanent charge of the fabric of the academy.”

“Today the greatly expanded Tabor Academy campus reflects Don’s vision and determination,” Stanley wrote. “[It] is a great credit to him.”

The tenure of the average boarding school student passes without much interaction with the school’s plant director. From the student perspective, it’s a largely invisible role. At least that’s the case if everything runs smoothly. When alumni reflect on the individuals who shaped their time at Tabor, the first people they’ll think of are their friends, teachers, coaches, and advisors. And for good reason. Those are the ones with whom they shared so many impactful moments.

But they’ll also think of the physical setting where these memories were made. For anyone who has spent part of their life at Tabor over the last fifty years, no one has done more to care for the space than Don Wing.

Remembering Don Wing - 1943-2015

Like his forefathers, Don was a gifted mechanic. He loved taking things apart and putting them back together. When he was 12 years old, he assembled a vintage Indian Bicycle from parts he had scraped together and won the “Best Restored” award at the Antique Motorcycle Club’s annual symposium. As he grew older, Don channeled this passion into restoring classic sports cars. He was particularly fond of early Jaguars.

The same interests and skills that made Don such an indispensable plant director propelled his pursuits outside of Tabor. In his wife Anne, Don found a life partner who shared his passion for antique tools and early technology. She was a historian and a writer, and together they co-authored several books, including the meticulously researched Early Planemakers of London.

In addition to operating the label-making machine company that Don’s great-grandfather had started in the 1880s, the couple also launched their own business buying and selling antique tools. This work, a true labor of love, often brought them to England where they would attend tool auctions and comb through the archives at the British Library to add to their impressive body of knowledge. In the tight-knit world of antique tool purveyors, Don and Anne were respected experts who made many close friends over the years.