Hafrey's Life a Twisting Path To and From Harvard--and Back

It's a long walk between Pforzheimer and Mather Houses, but that was just part of the winding road that took Leigh G. Hafrey '73 from undergraduate at Wesleyan to co-master of Mather House, where he serves with wife and college sweetheart Sandra A. Naddaff '75.

Hafrey arrived in the United States from Austria in 1967, finishing his final two years of high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. When it came time to think about college, he was lost.

"I applied to four different schools without having visited any of them," he says. "I didn't have a clue."

Hafrey eventually settled on Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. After two years, Hafrey realized Wesleyan was not for him, and he transferred to Harvard for the last two years of college.

At Harvard, Hafrey lived in Pforzheimer (then North) House, where he met Naddaff, a first-year. He says living in North--then affiliated with Radcliffe College--reflected social currents of the time.

"There was a kind of social fervor about integrating the Houses," he says, although House life was not very dynamic.

Instead Hafrey, an English concentrator interested in the social sciences, made academic work a priority in his life.

"I didn't participate in many activities, and I regret that," he says. "It's clear now that at least half of what you come to Harvard for is the other people."

Nevertheless, the budding romance that began in 1971 with Naddaff would grow strong across the distance between Cambridge and New Haven, where Hafrey attended Yale University and earned a Ph.D. in 1978.

At Yale, Hafrey served as a non-resident tutor of comparative literature. Filling this role, he says, heightened his interest in Harvard's House system.

"By then, I realized the Houses [at Harvard] and the Colleges [at Yale] were a very important part of the universities," Hafrey says.

Meanwhile, Leigh and Hafrey maintained their long-distance relationship, which, after 13 years, culminated in their 1984 marriage.

But with Naddaff working as an assistant professor at Harvard and Hafrey recently hired at The New York Times as a staff editor for the book review section, the couple were forced to endure a long-distance separation for three more years.

At The Times, Hafrey edited book reviews and essays, a post that fit well with his goal of becoming a writer.

"I thought it was very interesting," Hafrey recalls. "You got this broad gauge of what people were thinking at the time."

But in 1987, a year after the birth of his first son, Nathaniel, and three years of weekend flights to Boston, Hafrey quit his job and moved back to Cambridge to be with his family.

"Sandra was here and thoroughly anchored," he says.

Returning to Cambridge brought a round of changes to Hafrey's life, beginning with his appointment to the position of lecturer at Harvard Business School. From there, Hafrey moved to MIT's Sloan School of Management, where he is now a senior lecturer in management communications and ethics.

In 1990, when first son Nathaniel turned four, Hafrey and Naddaff had their second son, Benjamin.

Two years later, in the fall of 1992, Hafrey and Naddaff were asked to serve as acting-masters of Cabot House while the masters took a semester-long sabbatical. The experience, Hafrey says, was tremendously positive and a harbinger of things to come.

"It was a wonderful semester," Hafrey says. "We thought, 'Geez--this would be a great job.'"

When officials offered Naddaff and Hafrey the positions of Mather House master and co-master, respectively, they excitedly accepted.

"This job is a job we can do as a family," Hafrey says.

Hafrey says he especially enjoys the fact that his sons can observe how adults and students interact.

Having recently begun their second five-year term as masters, Hafrey says the couple's future will be determined by both their careers and their children.

He says keeping up with Nathaniel's traveling soccer team and Benjamin's participation in both baseball and soccer consumes much of the time that remains after job and House duties.

To Hafrey, raising a family within one of Harvard's Houses is a tremendous experience. It is a stop in a winding path that was long in the making--but worth every step.

"You couldn't ask for a richer environment," he says.