Nutter ’75 Honors Beloved Mentor Jerry Taylor

For decades, history teacher Jerry Taylor had a small office off of the second floor gallery, overlooking the theatre. It was a place of comfort, a place of warmth, a place to talk. It was a place that Michael Nutter ’75 felt at home during his days at the Prep and beyond.

“That little office that Jerry had on the second floor, I remember it well,” says Nutter. “Even today, when I go to Board meetings, I look for it when I walk by.”

There was no agenda there, says Nutter, just a place where he felt comfortable sharing himself.

“He was someone I could talk to,” says Nutter. “He tried to help me understand, as a teenager, what was going on.”

Those meetings with Mr. Taylor didn’t just occur when Nutter was a student. Anytime he had a big decision or needed counsel, Taylor was there. “I kept coming back: in my 20s, 30s,” he says. “When I ran for City Council, I went and talked to him. When I was deciding on whether to run for mayor, I went and talked to him. Whatever different challenges that came into my life, I went and talked to him.”

Though Taylor exuded much wisdom, he also gave something that everyone needs. “It was the calm,” Nutter says. “You could sort things out with him. He always left you with something to think about in a different way. All of the madness, whatever was going on in your head, it just kind of stopped. You could just talk. He was never judgmental. He just listened. When you got done, he would hit you with that calm and that voice. It was like Ah, ok, I can do this. You felt like Superman when you walked out of there.”

Nutter has never been quiet about the impact that the Prep made on his life. Today, he serves on the Board of Trustees and continues to help however he can. Recently, he agreed to fund a scholarship in the name of his mentor, Mr. Jerry Taylor, in gratitude for all that Taylor, and the Prep, has done for him in his life. He hopes that it inspires others to do the same.

“I think of the impact that so many people at the Prep made on me,” he says. “So many of them shaped and molded us. They had an amazing impact on hundreds and hundreds of us at a time. They were shaping young men to go out and do good. You didn’t know it was happening at the moment. It took me a few years to reflect back on the fact that they made us good people.”

Nutter knows that his scholarship helps just one student, which can make it easy to think that it doesn’t make a large impact. However, when multiplied with many other like-minded donors, these scholarships can make a serious impact on the lives of students and the school. 

“If we can help one student, and if 10 or 20 or more people do the same thing, it can have a real impact,” he says. “For me, I got the help I needed to go to the Prep and it made the whole difference in the world. I’m not trying to be an angel or a saint, but it is a different way of giving something back.”