Honoring Frances Martindale

above: Frances Martindale on her last first day at Gordon, September 2025

 

Dear Gordon Community,

After thirty-one years of dedicated service, Frances Martindale, Director of Gordon’s Joukowsky Family Library, has let me know that this school year will be her last at Gordon School. In June, Frances will retire from Gordon, and for the first time since 1995, she will not be a daily presence on Gordon's campus. Frances’s hopes for retirement include devoting substantial time to caring for the Maryanne Pieri Pollinator Garden on Gordon's Early Childhood playground and advocating for the importance of libraries on the national level, and we could not imagine a more perfect way for her to continue fueling her passions and making the world a better place in her next chapter. 

The timing of Frances’s decision gives us a generous amount of time to plan her farewell and to shape the legacy that she leaves behind at Gordon. Over the next eight months, there will be many opportunities to honor her outstanding work, to raise endowed funds in her honor, and to give her the sendoff that she deserves. Alexandra O’Connor will be coordinating these efforts, and anyone interested in helping to plan ways to celebrate Frances should get in touch with Alexandra at aoconnor@gordonschool.org in the days and weeks ahead.

Frances Martindale came to Gordon in 1995, working alongside Kathy Foulke at the start of a time of great transition for Gordon’s library program. She cultivated a partnership with Karla Harry, then a Lower School parent, and the two of them were the team in place as the Joukowsky Family Library was designed and built. This project not only put the library at the geographic center of the school but also, through the leadership of Frances and Karla, at the emotional heart of the school. The collection they cultivated became one of the purest reflections of the school’s desire to include a broad spectrum of identities and to teach young people the truth about the world that surrounds them.

Under Frances’s leadership, the library became a place where Battle of the Books cheers are chanted, where puppet shows are created, where rare flowers bloom, where ancient fossils can be displayed, and where the line at the checkout desk is always lively. Ms. Martindale was also always willing to take her collection on the road, in the corner of Book Fair, in a rack inside an Early Childhood classroom, or in a carefully curated display at an Open House or a parent education event.

Frances came to Gordon with deep experience in theater, and she made all of Gordon her stage. She was instrumental in the creation of Gordon’s after school theater program, back when it consisted of one annual musical production with a cast of literally hundreds of performers drawn from Kindergarten to eighth grade. Students from the past thirty-one years will also remember the work she did to help individual classrooms, grades, and after school programs make stories come alive through puppetry and pantomime, skits and revues, Javanese shadow puppets and animation, and student-led adaptations of favorite stories.

One pillar of Frances’s practice is her commitment to the enduring relevance of the picture book. Young readers first encounter picture books as readalouds, and then as their first independent reading. At Gordon, these same books are the basis of students’ first critical reading work as they choose the annual Gordon Multicultural Picture Book in second grade, and they form the backbone of their first historical research projects during the third grade Courtyard of Changemakers project. In Middle School, students have mastered the form, and they have further opportunities to critique and deconstruct picture books in the collection. Always thinking of the community as a whole, Frances has been able to select stories for the parent population that illustrate and amplify conversations ranging from neurodiversity and diverse family structures to the school’s work on gender inclusivity.

Gordon’s mission demands that the curriculum remain connected to the world beyond Maxfield Avenue, and Frances has taken that project very seriously. Over the years, Frances has brought scores of artists, illustrators, authors, poets, and publishers to campus. These visits were valuable experiences for students and for the school at a time when Gordon was gaining a national reputation for excellence. Frances strived to make a personal connection with each of these visiting professionals and made sure they each got a chance to be dazzled by the wit and curiosity of our students. Frances attended the American Library Association’s summer conventions, she volunteered for the Coretta Scott King award committees and helped present the Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award, and she followed the careers of young authors that she and her students had discovered together, keeping Gordon on the national radar and making sure we had a presence in the national children’s literature scene.

I know that Frances’s decision is driven by exciting news in her family, including the birth of her second grandchild. But I also know that her choice is due in part to the incredible strength of the library program at Gordon. Frances takes her stewardship of the Joukowsky Family Library very seriously. The fact that she is willing to step away from fulltime service at the library is a testament to the work she has done over thirty-one years, as well as the work of the dozens of staff, faculty, and volunteers who have worked alongside her to help create a thriving community at the center of Gordon’s campus.

Frances Martindale has touched the life of every Gordon student who passed through this building in the past thirty-one years. That's hundreds of hands she has held, and thousands of stories she has shared from her seat in the story grove in the corner of the library. As difficult as it is to imagine Gordon without her daily presence, she has set us up well to continue her foundational work. 

In the months ahead, there will be multiple opportunities to celebrate Frances's impact on Gordon. Until then, please join me in congratulating Frances on this beautiful milestone. We are all so grateful for her work on behalf of Gordon and its students.