Richard ‘Dick’ K. Loveland

Published 4:00 am Thursday, January 17, 2013

January 10, 1930 – December 8, 2012

It is with sadness that we announce that Dick Loveland passed away from cancer on December 8, 2012.

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Dick was born on January 10, 1930 in Scranton, Pennsylvania to Ernest and Ethel Loveland. He spent most of his childhood in Cranford, New Jersey, where his father was a beloved long-time Latin teacher at Cranford High School. Dick enjoyed the outdoors, and he spent many days in the woods of New Jersey and hitchhiking with his friends throughout New England on various camping excursions.

At age 17, Dick and a friend set out in his 1939 Mercury convertible on a cross-country adventure with $100 borrowed from his father. The Mercury got as far as Colorado, where they spent a few weeks working on ranches to earn enough money for the trip home. Dick was always proud that he walked in the door of his home with $101 and paid his father back on the spot.

That same year Dick matriculated at Princeton University, graduating in 1951. He held a lifelong love for Princeton, and he made every major reunion until he was too ill to attend his 60th. The last check he wrote was to Princeton’s Annual Giving fund.

Dick was called to duty and served as an Army First Lieutenant artillery officer in Korea. Before leaving for Korea, he married his high school sweetheart and love of his life, a beautiful blonde named Margot Gilbert. Dick said that he was lucky to have had 60 years of the best marriage ever. One of the last things Margot said to Dick was “oh, Dick, we had the happiest lives anyone could have.”

Dick’s entire career was dedicated to education. He earned his Master’s Degree from Trinity College and his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. He began his career at Avon Old Farms in Connecticut, where his son, Ward, was born, becoming Chair of the History Department. The family then moved to Buffalo Seminary in New York, where Dick served as Assistant Headmaster. He then became Dean of Students at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. He initially rejected, and then mid-year accepted, a job as Headmaster at The Kimberley School in Montclair, New Jersey. In 1973, he was hired as Headmaster at Crystal Springs School for Girls, where he remained through 1989. Dick and Margot retired to Oregon in 1991 after Dick’s interim headmastership at Colorado Academy in Denver.

He dearly loved his time at Crystal. Dick took a good but faltering school and guided it to become a preeminent private school. He raised the money to build the school’s first gym and dance studio, and he was thrilled by the construction of the Bovet Theater. Dick also created the school’s first true endowment. He took the school to coeducation, bringing to life Crystal Springs and Uplands Schools. Subsequently, he discretely dropped the “and” and the “s,” giving the school its current name, Crystal Springs Uplands School. But what he loved most in his career were the wonderful students in all of those schools.

Along the way through his career, Dick was blessed with the gift of many long and close friendships. The kind and touching words that his family has received from all of these dear friends bespeaks the impact that Dick had upon so many souls. To all of those friends we say thank you, for you and we are the ones who made his, and Margot’s, lives so happy. He would not have changed a thing.

Dick was survived by his wife, Margot, his son, Ward, his daughter-in-law, Patricia, and his grandson, Christopher, CSUS ’17. Pursuant to Dick’s request, there will be no memorial service. Any gifts in his memory should be made to the Richard Loveland Foundation at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough.

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