Tertius Van Dyke

1938-1942

The Rev. Tertius van Dyke was called by The Gunnery to temporarily replace his brother-in-law, third headmaster W. Hamilton Gibson, in 1936.

• A graduate of The Lawrenceville School and Princeton (1908, Phi Beta Kappa), van Dyke received a master's degree from Magdalen College at Oxford and was a graduate of Union Theological Seminary.
• In 1916, he took a leave of absence from his church work to serve as personal secretary to his father, who had been appointed minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg. 
• One of the first changes he initiated as Headmaster was the addition of two lower “forms” (in effect, 7th and 8th grade) and the division of the school into three lower forms and three upper forms with separate student governments. The plan was to increase the enrollment to 90 students. The schoolhouse was then enlarged to accommodate the plan. 
• He also introduced unsupervised study halls on an Honor System, which proved to work well in the morning but not the afternoon. Another innovation was the reinstitution of dancing classes such as those held by Mr. Gunn. Three schools, Wykeham Rise, Romford, and The Gunnery, took part in the classes which were held at Wykeham.
• He and his wife, Betty, raised their daughter, Dorothy, and two sons at the school. Henry van Dyke IV ’44 later graduated from Yale and studied law at Columbia; Paul van Dyke ’45 graduated from Hamilton College.
• Van Dyke resigned as Headmaster in 1941 and went on to become the Dean of Hartford Theological Seminary. In the 1950s, he came to live out his life in Washington.