I doubt anyone reading this has ever heard of Mary Crist Fleming. She was 98 years old and died peacefully at her home.
I am going on the stories I have heard. Some details might be lacking.
Back in the early 50’s, as a single mom, Mary took her son and daughter and another family friend’s child on a tour through Europe in a VW bus. She stopped in Lugano, Switzerland and started to teach the kids, finding a few other kids in the area to teach as well.
She loved Switzerland and thought the environment was perfect for education, so she bought a house near Lugano and started teaching more kids.
Eventually, she bought a neighboring home, and another and another. Along the way, she hired another teacher, and another. Eventually, she created TASIS (The American School In Switzerland) and it has become one of the premier American college prep boarding schools in Europe. She then opened another TASIS campus in England. Since then, they have also added grammar school and middle school students.
I taught at the Swiss campus in the 80’s and by then, it already had a strong tradition of excellence; students went from TASIS to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge – pretty much all of the best universities in the world. Granted, TASIS was not cheap and students came from privileged families from all over the world, but the school was, and is, excellent – there is a dress code; boys have to wear dress shirts and ties to all classes, girls are required to wear dresses; academics are stringent, but classes are relatively small, so students having problems will immediately be assigned tutors. All the money in the world couldn’t buy you a grade in that school unless you earned it.
As she got older, Mary kept tabs on all the schools, and would visit regularly. Cocktails at Casa Fleming were legendary…Mary made it a point to get to know and speak with everyone. She was a combination of elegance and class, but at the same time, she could have people rolling on the floor with stories of what she had seen and heard and experienced in her decades of teaching and running the schools. Mary also listened. Whether you were a new teacher, a new student, or a long time member of the faculty or a member of the alumni, Mary listened to your comments and took them to heart. She remembered what you said and would take it to heart - and more often than not, take action.
Mary Crist Fleming was a class act; she had a vision of providing the best education possible, in the best environment she could find - and her schools are her legacy.