Retiree Tributes

Bill Seal – a local boy, a school person.

A local boy

Billy Seal, as he was known in those days, grew up on his father’s horse farm in Owings Mills with five siblings and sixty horses.  An extraordinary stall mucker was he – four stalls for a buck.  He hunted, trapped, and fished on land that is now nothing but housing developments.  He went to Owings Mills Elementary, Franklin Junior, and Franklin Senior High Schools when Franklin was filled with farm boys with their hot rods or hay trucks and leather jackets with turned up collars. Billy won second place in the Franklin science fair, and then it was on to the University of Baltimore, where he graduated with honors, and later to Loyola for a master’s degree in counseling.

A school person

When asked what he wanted included in this presentation, Bill Seal, as he is now known, he said that he always thought of himself as a school person.  And a school person he has been.  His first attachment to McDonogh came when, while still in college, he married Cheryl Working, the secretary to the head of the Lower School and the daughter of the football coach and Middle School math teacher.  After graduation from college he taught special education in the Carroll County public schools for three years.  

Then, in 1972, he came to McDonogh as more than an in-law.  He was hired to teach Lower School science and shop and to start a Lower School PE program.  

In the mid-1980’s he moved to the Upper School as Associate Dean of Students, and when the Upper School went to class deans he became the dean for the senior class.  And he moved into the classroom, taking over the Psychology classes, which quickly became the most popular classes by signup in the history department.  By so doing he gave countless seniors the opportunity to bark, clap their flippers, beep small horns, and balance balls upon their noses.  When he stepped down as dean he took on two sections of the ninth grade World History course.  

He coached: twenty years as the head soccer coach, 18 years as assistant wrestling coach, and various brief stints of coaching frosh-soph and jv boys lacrosse, girls winter soccer, and even jv softball. He and Cheryl have been dorm parents in the girls’ dorm for two periods of 13 and 18 years.  In between they and son Jon lived over on Chapel Hill Drive – never far away.  As a dean, a teacher, a coach, and a dorm parent – as a school person – he has touched the lives of too many to count.

We will miss his sense of humor and his laugh, his sweater vests, the occasional bow tie, and even the needlepoint glasses case, but most of all we will miss the school person he has always been.  We wish him well has he and Cheryl move up the road to Reisterstown – always the local boy – for winters and to Ocean City for summers.  Thank you for 39 years of service to McDonogh and her students.  You have meant much to many.

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