Sometime during the evening of Monday, January 19, Sam Brown breathed his last breath and joined his beloved wife Nathalie, who passed away just over two years before. With the passing of the school’s founders, Sam and Nathalie Brown, an era in the life of the school has also passed.

It was just 50 years ago that Sam and Nathalie breathed life into the dream of founding an independent day school in the Tacoma area. In the words that we have commemorated on a plaque just inside the entrance to the Upper School, Charles Wright Academy was to be a school that provided an education “…equal to that of the best schools in the country.”

Those words bespoke both high aspirations and great humility. CWA was to work to achieve at the level of schools in other parts of the country whose founding predated ours by decades, and in a few cases, by more than a century. At the same time, a deep sense of humility required that we not seek to be “better than…”  but to be “equal to…”

In everything Sam did, he was guided by a deep and abiding religious faith. He drew his strength, his resolve, and his unshakable sense that things would turn out right in the end from his conviction that we are guided in what we do by a higher power.

Sam’s unbridled optimism was joined by an irrepressible sense of humor; Sam always had a twinkle in his eye! The gentle sense of humor that pervades the school campus came from Sam. In our mission statement we say that we foster self-reliance, integrity, social responsibility, and humor.  We’re really saying that we want our students to grow up to be like Sam Brown!

There comes a time in the life of every human being when our parents are no longer with us, and we recognize that it is up to us to carry forward the legacy they have bequeathed to us through their tender nurturing and loving guidance. We have reached that time in the life of our school. We will carry forward to future generations of Tarriers a legacy of high aspirations, great humility, unbridled optimism, irrepressible humor, and an unshakable sense that things will turn out right in the end.