By Laurie O’Neill — Laurie@concordbridge.org
“Elaine was Concord.”
That’s what a friend of Elaine DiCicco, principal of Concord-Carlisle High School for 22 years, told DiCicco’s niece, Stacey Macmillan, after DiCicco’s passing in June at age 83.
“I could not agree more,” says Macmillan.
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Macmillan says her Aunt Elaine “taught me by example that community is built through the simple act of taking a few extra minutes to connect with the people around you.”
She greeted everyone by name, from the waitstaff at her favorite restaurant and local store owners to her CCHS colleagues and students.
DiCicco was admired, loved, and respected by her family, colleagues, and even students she had to discipline.
From teacher to leader
DiCicco started at CCHS as a French teacher in 1967. Seven years later, then-Superintendent Ralph Sloan asked her if she would be willing to step away from the classroom to help implement Chapter 766, the state’s landmark special education legislation.
In 1978, Sloan asked DiCicco to serve as principal. She would miss the classroom but was happy that she could occasionally teach a French class.
DiCicco “was a terrific teacher,” says Kate Lee-DuBon, one of her students. “I will never forget her gigantic smile and hearty laugh.”
When DiCicco retired in 2000, Lee-DuBon served with her on the board of the Scholarship Fund of Concord and Carlisle (which awards a scholarship in DiCicco’s name). The former principal “showed the same great sense of humor and calm demeanor, as well as a big-heartedness towards our applicants that was typical of the way she felt about students and teachers throughout her career,” she says.
Dr. Robert A. Fuery Jr. was a teacher when DiCicco became principal. The school, he recalls, was in turmoil — “a reflection of local and national issues” including the Vietnam War, a turnover of administrators, school overcrowding, and the dawn of the Open School movement, when attendance wasn’t taken and discipline problems spiked.
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DiCicco’s arrival marked “the end of the turmoil,” Fuery says.
“She understood the faculty ethos, and because she grew up in Concord, she understood the community,” he adds. “More than anything else, she created an atmosphere of caring and tolerance that became the hallmark of CCHS. It was the era of Pax Elaina.”
Her artistic side
An ardent DiCicco fan, Renee Covalucci began teaching in the Arts department at CCHS in 1985. “Immediately and luckily, I learned how flexible, generous, and open Elaine was as the school’s leader,” she says.
DiCicco didn’t blink when Covalucci asked whether she could build a smoldering pit outside her classroom for firing pots. The principal simply asked her to make sure the lawn was “back to normal before graduation,” Covalucci says.
“She not only elevated our department, supporting the addition of kilns, darkroom enlargers, pottery wheels, and you name it, she also attended every art, music, and drama event.”
Nancy Kerr, a parent of two graduates, remembers attending a CCHS production of “Into the Woods” during which the voice of the Giant boomed from offstage.
“It was Elaine!” Kerr says.
‘Grounded in hope’
Mary O’Connor, who taught social studies from 1972 to 2008, says DiCicco’s varied roles “informed her perspective that there were no perfect solutions to create ideal learning conditions for all students.”
But DiCicco’s “realism,” O’Connor notes, “was grounded in hope.”
Former teacher Jeremiah Mead says DiCicco “led a faculty that contained a number of idiosyncratic personalities who might have been inclined to do their own thing during an onslaught of state-mandated curriculum and testing. But we knew Elaine’s decisions would be based on doing the right thing.”
He says DiCicco “approached every issue with absolutely no ego, no ulterior ambition, and no purpose except the good of the school and all its people.”
She was fun, too. When DiCicco taught French, she would host the department’s holiday party, serving up “a family recipe” for Artillery Punch, according to Mead. The concoction, he adds, “was famous for its lasting effects!”
Her niece and her nephew, Ryan DiCicco, remembered their aunt walking them downtown to visit the Concord Toy Shop and treat them to candy at Priscilla’s.
“I don’t have one specific memory,” he says, “but rather a lifetime of Aunt Elaine being there. She never missed a birthday, holiday, or anniversary.” Her “support of us,” he adds, “was possibly only rivaled by her love of the Red Sox.”
With her “upbeat attitude and positivity,” his aunt was “an amazing person who made everyone around her better,” he declares.
“She will always be in our hearts.”
