The Jeff Keffer Service Award: Sam Mason, Director of Sustainability

We announce the ninth recipient of the Jeff Keffer Service Award, which includes a $5,000 stipend supported by the Jeffrey M. Keffer Endowment. My preceding remarks have emphasized Jeff’s exquisite sense of community and his deep commitment to St. Patrick’s. He was also deeply interested in environmental sustainability, organic farming, and farm-to-table foods. Elizabeth told me that he even made all of the baby food for the young May, Abby, and Griffin, sustenance that no doubt explains the great start they had in life.

Recognizing that this award is nested in the concept of community—really not just a single community but the larger concept of community—and service to community, it certainly embraces our ability to recognize our thoughtful place in the wider world, the impact we have on that world, and the kind of world we are passing on to those who will follow us. There are some obvious examples of this individual’s work . . . an individual committed to those ideas of community and service to community . . . including the Garden & Outdoor Learning Space itself and the Eco-Schools Silver Award achieved by St. Patrick’s (only the fifth school in Washington, D.C. to reach that level). There are our partnerships with D.C. Greens, which has sharpened our sense of the food inequities in this area, with U.S. Food Rescue & Campus Kitchen, which reduce food waste here and put good food into the hands and mouths of those who need it. There is the recognition that environmental sustainability is fundamentally a social justice issue, given the disproportionate impact environmental degradation and food inequities have on the neediest individuals with whom we share this planet Earth.

Of course, this work is not the responsibility of a single individual, nor are the results the achievements of a single individual. Nonetheless, one important participant in this work observed recently that she is “humbled by the power of one person to affect change without drawing attention to himself.” She continued, “He has ignited this work in ways that you couldn’t plan for.” It is also the work of faculty and staff colleagues, students, and parents—of the Environmental Action Team, of the Sustainability Task Force, and of the Equity Committee—of individuals who have long been involved in this work as well as those who are only now learning of its joys and possible impacts.

Where does our food come from? What does that taste like? What do plants look like as they grow and change? How does food get to our tables? How does food get to others’ tables? Why doesn’t food, especially healthy food, get to all of our tables in equal measure? Do we really waste that much food? How can we change that reality? How can recycling and composting help? How can we reduce our impact on the planet we all share?

During the pandemic, public health officials advised schools to get students outside . . . to get classes outside. After all, it would be safer there. For this year’s recipient of the Jeff Keffer Service Award, the “outside” is his classroom . . . it was before the pandemic took hold, before the Garden & Outdoor Learning Space took shape, under his guiding hand. It is now. And what a powerful sense of community this teacher brings to his work . . . of the St. Patrick’s community . . . of the Washington metropolitan area . . . of the planet we share . . . and this is true even before we turn to his deep involvement in the Haiti Partnership Program.

This morning, we honor Jeff Keffer by honoring a man who, in addition to being a phenomenal and infinitely generous teacher of young children, has drawn together so many members of the St. Patrick’s community—students, parents, and faculty and staff—to become involved in the work of environmental sustainability and of combating climate change and food injustice and, in the process, helped us serve the wider communities of which we are a part. This morning, we bestow the Jeff Keffer Service Award on early childhood science teacher and Director of Sustainability Sam Mason, with gratitude, admiration, and respect.

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 About the Award

There are many factors that make schools—especially great schools like St. Patrick’s—seem like complex organizations and, in many ways, they are. But they are also rather simple organizations, thriving on face-to-face interaction and shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration, with the efforts of individuals—students, faculty and staff, parents—directly influencing the health and vitality of the whole.

Today, we remember—and honor—a man who appreciated those many complexities at the same time that he recognized and acted upon the otherwise simple understandings that shape this place. Jeff Keffer was an individual who clearly understood that each of us must work to make human institutions, relationships, and situations better than they were when we arrived, a theme that I articulated earlier for this very chapel.  He had a keen sense of the roles each one of us can, and should, play in this effort, as faculty and staff, students, and parents. Rather than expecting those roles to constrain us, though, Jeff seemed to think that a clear, textured understanding of our various roles actually frees us to be our best selves.

As a nursery, elementary, and middle school, we recognize that the parents of the young people we teach will be close behind . . . nearby . . . here, and we benefit in so many ways from their presence. How fortunate we were to have Jeff Keffer be one of those parents, an individual for whom service to the ever-widening communities of which he was a part—and to this St. Patrick’s community that he loved so much—was essential! Service is an expression of gratitude, optimism, devotion, and determination; it is, in fact, a way of life. Jeff Keffer lived his life in that way, without ever seeking any personal recognition.

Jeff and Elizabeth Keffer arrived at St. Patrick’s in the fall of 1998, nearing a quarter of a century now, when they enrolled their oldest child, May, in the Nursery School. Daughter Abby and son Griffin would follow and, in time, all three would graduate from St. Patrick’s. Along the way, Jeff was a constant, vital presence. First and foremost in this place a superb father to his three children, Jeff was also a gifted, selfless volunteer, before, during, and well beyond his years as a Trustee. He brought thoughtfulness and care to his efforts to make St. Patrick’s an ever better place.

Beginning nine years ago, we have endeavored to remember here, and honor here, a man, a father, a husband, a volunteer, and a friend who revealed his sense of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School through a depth of involvement, commitment, energy, and achievement—a life of service to this institution—that will be difficult to equal. We remember, and honor, this man by acknowledging a member of the St. Patrick’s faculty and staff for that individual’s commitment to the Day School, demonstrated understanding of the community that comprises St. Patrick’s, and service to the health and vitality of the institution. Specifically, we honor, in Jeff Keffer’s name, a member of the faculty and staff who has demonstrated, over time, that understanding of and commitment to this place, that dedication to the quality of the experience of the young people who animate this place, and that yearning for excellence that shaped Jeff’s life in service to St. Patrick’s.

On our Foxhall Campus, for which Jeff was a tireless advocate, there is the Jeffrey M. Keffer Memorial Dell. Sitting on the bench in that tranquil place, you can turn and look over your left shoulder to see the new Garden & Outdoor Learning Space that, until recently, was never part of the Foxhall Campus plans. Intersecting on the Garden & Outdoor Learning Space are a number of forces that have gathered strength and meaning in recent years, guided by the energy, commitment, creativity, and determination of this year’s recipient of the Jeff Keffer Service Award.