Former Lynn man heads Obama daughters’ school

LYNN – As a boy, Bruce B. Stewart delivered newspapers on Bassett Street; now he runs the private Washington school that Sasha and Malia Obama will attend.President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, chose Sidwell Friends School for their daughters in November, opting for a private institution that another White House child, Chelsea Clinton, attended a decade ago.”We are very delighted they were drawn to the values of Sidwell,” Stewart said Thursday. “To actually see a black American take the chair of president of the U.S. is absolutely incredible.”Stewart is in his 11th and final year as Sidwell’s head of school. The English High Class of 1957 member counts fellow EHS graduates David Smith and Joel Sherman as lifelong friends.”I can recall going with him along Bassett Street to collect money on his delivery route,” Smith said. “Bruce was one of the six or seven officers for the 1957 class. His popularity and leadership were then readily evident.”Smith said Stewart grew up on Lovett Place off Lewis Street and attended Brickett and, later, the former Eastern Junior High before going to English.He was accepted to Bowdoin College but could not afford to attend. Long talks about sports with boyhood mentor J. Floyd “Pete” Moore prompted him to apply to Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C. where he was exposed to the Civil Rights movement and later involved in it.He did graduate work before starting his academic career at Guilford and moved onto a school in Pennsylvania before taking the reins at Sidwell.Sidwell is a private Quaker school with a campus in northwest Washington for grades 5-12 and another in suburban Bethesda, Md., for kindergarten through fourth grade. Malia is in fifth grade and Sasha is in second grade, suggesting the girls would attend schools at different locations.Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a spokeswoman for Michelle Obama, said Sidwell can provide the security and privacy that Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, will need as part of the new first family and Sidwell can help with that.”A number of great schools were considered,” said. “In the end, the Obamas selected the school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now,” Lelyveld said.She also said that Sasha and Malia had become good friends with Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s grandchildren, who go to the school.Sidwell Friends has already proven protective of the Obamas’ privacy, refusing earlier this week to say whether the girls had visited the school after a motorcade was seen outside.Al Gore III, the son of former Vice President Al Gore, also attended Sidwell, where tuition is $28,442 at the lower school and $29,442 at the middle and upper schools.The quality of the school and its extra security make Sidwell Friends a good choice, said Letitia Baldrige, who was Jackie Kennedy’s social secretary and chief of staff during the Kennedy administration. Caroline Kennedy attended first grade in a makeshift third-floor classroom inside the White House.Stewart’s legacy will live on when a new building under construction on campus is named after him.