His record of annual giving and alumni involvement shows that Dana Barrows ’69 deeply values the privilege of his Northfield Mount Hermon education. But just under that grateful surface is a teenage boy who once defiantly told his father that, no, he would not be following family tradition to attend Mount Hermon. “Dad, sir, I have no interest. I’ve got my friends here. I have a wonderful life,” Barrows recalls telling his father, Richard Barrows ’42. “Leave me alone.”

Not to be deterred, the elder Barrows won that argument, and Dana entered Mount Hermon as a sophomore. All these years later, Dana says of his father’s insistence, “That was the finest thing he could have done for me.”

Barrows, now 74 with a successful 51-year career at Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., credits NMH with preparing him academically but also preparing him for life. “It has molded me into a human who’s community-, civic-, and charitably inclined,” he said.

Now he’d like to make sure that other young people, in particular those with family ties to NMH, can reap the same valuable lessons.

Working with NMH, Barrows — a scholarship student himself — has established the Barrows-Greenwood Family Scholarship Fund, which will benefit future generations while also honoring his own family connections to the school. Barrows can name at least 11 family members who are NMH alumni, including both parents, paternal and maternal uncles, an aunt, one of his four daughters, and most recently his wife, Holly Babbitt ’70, with whom he fell in love as a student and reconnected 47 years later.

The Barrows’ NMH tradition is rooted in his grandparents’ home, a green and white house overlooking the Northfield campus. That’s where his father grew up and where Dana would bring his school friends for an occasional home-cooked meal. For 39 years, grandfather Roy Barrows worked the third shift, shoveling coal at the Northfield Power Plant and instilling in his grandson a solid work ethic.

Academically, Barrows excelled, graduating near the top of his class and going on to Wesleyan College and Western New England Law School. To this day, he credits his win in an NMH declamation contest, at which he delivered a rousing recitation of the Gettysburg Address, with giving him the confidence in his professional life to communicate effectively and persuasively with clients.

In recent years, Barrows took a graduate-level course in philanthropy and tax laws and figured out he could craft a blended investment strategy to create a scholarship fund. He would designate his IRA’s Required Minimum Distributions to pay into the fund as Qualified Charitable Distributions. When his fund reaches $125,000, it will be matched dollar-for-dollar with funds from the Our Moment Match, made possible by the $50 million bequest of John Mitchell ’56, to create the $250,000 Barrows-Greenwood Family Scholarship Fund. In addition, Barrows has named the fund as a beneficiary of the IRA upon his death.

Barrows stipulates two requirements for recipients of his NMH scholarship: financial need and a family connection. “As smart as I was, at 15 or 16, I wasn’t poised to make a good decision,” he says. “My dad made me go because he knew what a positive thing it would be for me. I’d like to honor that legacy.”

If you would like to learn more about the way Barrows structured his gift, please contact Casey Vollinger ’01, director of legacy giving, at cvollinger@nmhschool.og or 413-498-3102.