Northfield Mount Hermon has received a $50 million bequest from the late John Mitchell ’56 – the largest gift in the school’s history and one of the largest ever made to an independent school. Mitchell’s bequest will allow NMH to expand its financial aid program and support for faculty, two top priorities of the ongoing This Place, This Moment: The Campaign for Northfield Mount Hermon.

The gift also opens the doors for others to join Mitchell in embracing the school’s priorities, by funding matching gifts for the NMH Fund, scholarship support, and special initiatives, through the Our Moment Match. The momentum created by Mitchell's donation and those from many other alums, families, and friends has inspired the NMH Board of Trustees to raise This Place, This Moment’s goal, from $225 million to $275 million.

“[This gift is] an act of generosity from an exceptionally accomplished alumnus who was modest in his profile but profound in his gratitude for the education he received,” Head of School Brian Hargrove and NMH Board Chair Monie Thomas Hardwick ’74 said in announcing Mitchell’s donation. 

Mitchell, who passed away in 2022, came from a modest background but was able to attend NMH thanks to scholarship support. After thriving in both academics (he was the Class of ’56’s valedictorian) and athletics at NMH, he earned degrees from Yale and NYU, then went on to a long and distinguished career as president of global manufacturing at Pfizer.    

“John credited his time at NMH as a turning point in his life and held tight to the habits and values nurtured at NMH – hard work, critical thinking, integrity, and service,” Hargrove and Hardwick noted. 

That included service to the school that meant so much to him: Mitchell served on the NMH Board of Trustees from 2006 to 2016, chairing the Buildings and Grounds Committee and guiding numerous campus planning projects. At his request, no NMH building bears his name, but the stamp of his wisdom and self-effacing generosity can be seen in the form of gifts for faculty housing, the rowing program at Draper Riverhouse, the Bolger Early Childhood Education Center, and numerous infrastructure and improvement projects. In 2012, in response to increasingly volatile storms and electrical power outages in the region, he quietly stepped in to fund the purchase of a long-needed generator capable of sustaining power for the entire NMH campus. He named it, fittingly, the Lamplighter.

Mitchell’s bequest will allow NMH to reinforce its commitment to offering a transformative educational experience to students from all backgrounds. From its earliest days, the school has enrolled students from all races and ethnicities. This commitment to diversity continues today: 37% of the school’s domestic students are people of color, and 23% of students are from countries outside the U.S. NMH’s financial aid budget of more than $13 million allows the school to grant aid to about 40% of its student body. 

Mitchell’s gift, Hargrove and Hardwick said, represents “a transformational moment in the trajectory of NMH and an opportunity to redouble our efforts toward opening the NMH experience to every qualified student who seeks it, regardless of circumstances.”