CHEBEAGUE ISLAND – Educator and Islander Philip Jordan, national leader in education, perpetual student, teacher, college president and school head, died on July 22, 2022, with his wife and two sons at his side. He was 91. A year-round resident of Chebeague Island, off the coast of Maine, Philip Harding Jordan Jr., was born on June 2, 1931, in New York City, where he spent his earliest years, the son of Philip H. Jordan and Nancy Dennett Jordan.

“There was never an assignment I didn’t like,” Jordan often said, graduating from the Lawrenceville School first in the class of 1950, summa from Princeton in philosophy in 1954, and with a Ph.D. in American History from Yale in 1962. Initially at Yale, as a graduate instructor, he taught in his field of Early American History, continuing as a professor at Connecticut College, where he expanded to other areas. Winner of a teaching prize, this was his gift; yet administration tapped him. “Not to look for the job is the best way to get it,” was the way he spoke of his life direction. At Connecticut College, Jordan served as Associate Dean, and then Dean of Faculty from 1969-75, all the while remaining in the classroom. He continued to teach after he was chosen President of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio in 1975. Kenyon was love at first sight, and he held the college in trust until 1995.

Best remembered for his resounding laugh, Jordan flourished as a small college community member and within all academic environs. Over a lengthy tenure, his accomplishments included reviving the Kenyon Review, enabling women to thrive on a once all-male campus, and nationally he headed the American Council of Education, as well as the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. Heralding his conclusion at Kenyon, a chair in Environmental Studies was named in his honor and that of his wife. They also received honorary degrees.

Immediately, upon retirement, Jordan was called to serve from 1995-96 as Headmaster of the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. There, he performed the key roles of helping to choose a permanent successor and established the Merrill Memorial Poetry Seminar. Beloved for his leadership, Jordan quoted and followed the Taoist maxim: “And the people said, we did it ourselves.”

Time for a breather, his wife, Sheila thought. But Jordan did not slacken his momentum. Returning to private life in Ohio, he chaired a bank board and firmly established Kenyon’s Brown Family Environmental Center. A bit later, after the pair had designed a house on their Chebeague island, he was once again tapped as a transitional leader. At Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire, 2005-06, he served as president. Still full of vigor in his mid-seventies, he ascended a mountain on the school’s Mountain Day. Upon his departure Jordan received an honorary degree.

Settled at last into island rhythms, Jordan continued, helping to found the Chebeague Island Historical Society Museum, while in Portland chairing the board of the Maine Historical Society during its library expansion. In these last years, Jordan had time to embrace the dearest purpose of his being, his family: Philip and John, his sons and their wives, Jing and Catarina; Adrian, John, David, Catarina, Lucia, and Ana, his grandchildren. He also leaves his sister-in-law Paula Jordan, his brother-in-law Garland Gray and his wife Briana. Summing up a complete life, as he would have closed a meeting, Jordan pronounced it: “So very fortunate.”

You may leave your condolences and memories at http://www.lindquistfuneralhome.com.

Gifts may be given in his memory to the Lawrenceville School, Kenyon College, and the Chebeague Island Historical Society. Gatherings are planned on the island and at the Lawrenceville School.



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