I was saddened last week to hear of the death of Walter Griffin, the foodservice director at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire for nearly 20 years until his retirement in 2004, at the age of 64.
I knew Walter through my association with NACUFS. Two things about him stick in my memory, one a trait and the other an achievement.
He was a very outgoing man, a joy to carry on a conversation with. Walter was one of those people in NACUFS who, if I knew he was in the room, I would seek out to make sure I’d at least said hello. But in my experience, hello was seldom the only words we’d exchange.
The accomplishment I recall occurred in November 1997. The New Hampshire Lodging and Restaurant Association honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award. The award was notable in that it was the first time in the association’s history that it had honored someone working in “institutional” foodservice.
I was working at Nation’s Restaurant News at the time, and wrote an article about Walter and the award. At that time, he noted that the recognition went “a long way toward acknowledging that we do not run just a hot lunch program.” He was enormously proud of the school’s catering operation, which he said he would stack against virtually any commercial caterer.
Walter was a man of two worlds, professionally. He was active in the American School Food Service Association—now the School Nutrition Association—serving as president of the organization’s New Hampshire chapter in 1998. But he also was a member of NACUFS, noting that as a prep school Phillips Exeter has as much, if not more, in common with college dining programs as it did with school foodservice operations.
He was respected in both organizations, and I know he will be missed.