“The most important challenge in the next four years for you is to find a path that is seductive — in the purest sense of the word — [that] draws out your talents and your passions, and becomes a good fit for a good portion of life,” Commencement Speaker and former faculty member Mr. Fred Seebeck said.

Mr. Seebeck was a famed Loomis Chaffee educator from 1983-2020. He was most notably head coach for the Swimming/Diving and Water Polo teams, and later on in his Loomis career, a distance runner coach for Girls Track & Field.
Alongside athletics, he was an English faculty and eventually served as the department head. Mr. Seebeck was also a dorm head for Taylor Batchelder Halls, a Dean of Students, and a faculty advisor to the Student Council.

“I got a call from the Admissions Director at Saint George’s with whom I’d worked,” recalled Mr. Seebeck. “He said, ‘hey, Fred, there’s a job at Loomis Chaffee if you want to work part-time admissions and part-time English.’ … Who knew I would stay for thirty-seven years?”

And as the LC tour guides love to advertise, the spirit of Loomis Chaffee is deeply ingrained in the community.

“The character of the students and the investment of the students in their own experience is something that kept me there. That is what I love. And then the collaboration with my friends, for example, doing little joint classes with Dr. Mills my last few years when we were both teaching freshman English … I loved what I did, every bit of it,” Mr. Seebeck said.

The educator and swim coach expands his role beyond instruction of how to write essays better essays or stride in the pool more quickly. During his time at Loomis, Mr. Seebeck was invested in pursuing the school’s mission of inspiring within his students a commitment to the best self and the common good.

“Education by nature is serving the common good,” Mr. Seebeck said. “And particularly with the younger generation, we need it more than ever.”

His commitment to the common good evolved into a common Loomis weekend activity: Seebeck Service.

“About seven or eight years ago, Ms. Hutchinson came to the Student Council when I was the advisor and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got all this leftover food. What the heck! Can’t we give this to a food pantry?’” Mr. Seebeck recalled. “I kind of got the motivation to go make some phone calls and found a couple of places in Hartford that would be really happy to have that food. From that we just started with just the [athletics] boxed lunches that I would throw into the back of my car. I would grab one of the swimmers and go down to the homeless shelter in Hartford, … [and the swimmers got to] see that they are people [who] are grateful for the help that we gave.” Mr. Seebeck said.

During Mr. Seebeck’s speech, he spoke to how graduates should be moving forward after Commencement. Yet in the upcoming fall, new Pelicans will be commencing their journeys on campus, in classrooms, on the stage, or on athletic teams. Now, he gives advice to these future Loomis graduates, both current and future Pelicans, for many years to come.

“There are all these opportunities to do new things as you, yourself, are discovering. And I would say go out there and throw yourself into it all. [There are people who] throw themselves into a club, or an activity, or onto a team, or into a course that they’d never dream of doing, and then they love it, and excel at it, and make it a life passion. So I’d say yeah, grab it by the horns. Grab it all by the horns and go for it,” Mr. Seebeck said.