Newton and Hope Dillaway Memorial Scholarship Fund

After an 11-year courtship, Newton Dillaway from Reading and Hope McCloskey of Wakefield were married in 1942, each bringing a rich prior professional career to the marriage. They settled on Montrose Avenue next to Hope’s parents, and jointly founded the Montrose Project to carry on their work.

Newton had published a series of books on Ralph Waldo Emerson and other topics (including Will the Flowers Jilt Us? In 1927, Prophet of America in 1936 and The Gospel of Emerson in 1939). He subsequently wrote the book Consent, published in 1947, describing their intended work in the Montrose Project. Under the name of Montrose Press, he also served as publisher for a series of books by other authors with similar interests, and went on several national lecture tours.

Hope moved to Wakefield from Somerville in 1923 as a 13 year old, and remembered attending her first year of school in the Lafayette Building (Wakefield’s current town hall). At the end of that first year, there was a student procession down Main Street to the just newly completed high school (the Atwell Building, next to the Armory, since burned down). As a child she was always artistic and studied dance for many years. After graduating as Valedictorian of her class, and with the encouragement of her high school art teacher, she enrolled in the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, spending five years mastering oil portraiture and other graphic arts skills. In 1934 her parents, partly to discourage her from accepting an offered scholarship to continue her studies in Paris, built for her an art studio next door to their home (a building that came to be well known to the residents of Wakefield, with The Studio sign on the front). With a north-facing skylight for painting, and a large room suitable for ballet and modern dance, she offered classes and private instruction in the arts.

When Hope and Newton married, The Studio was converted to become their residence, and the Montrose Project was expanded to include a full-fledged kindergarten and pre-school program taught by Hope, with a focus on the graphic and performing arts. Initially launched using the living and dining rooms of her parents’ house next door, enrollment grew and the school was subsequently moved to the basement of what was at that time known as the Italian Baptist Church on Water Street, running from 1942 to 1969. After closing the school, Hope returned to painting, including a stylized portrait of the 17 historical individuals and four buildings that have encompassed library services in Wakefield. This painting now hangs in the Beebe Library1, and a similarly historical portrait is on display in the Prince Library in Cumberland Center, Maine (Hope’s sometime summer residence and her mother’s ancestral home). Hope also wrote and illustrated a children’s book about Pleasure Island during the local amusement park’s heyday, and in her retirement wrote a book entitled Wake Up, Parents! (1974), based on her many years of experiences working with younger children. Rheumatic fever at age eight caused all of her hair to fall out, and she never cut her hair again; her knee-length braids were part of her persona as a dancer, and as “Miss Hope” in leading the school.

Copies of Newton’s and Hope’s books are part of the “local authors” collection at the Beebe Library. After their passing, the property on Montrose Avenue was sold and is now a housing development known as Grace Court. This scholarship by their sons Walden and Wilson Dillaway, in recognition of their parents’ involvement in the early education of so many of Wakefield’s current citizens, is funded in part by the proceeds of this sale, as well as the generosity of the community (in lieu of flowers) on the occasion of Hope’s funeral. Wilson himself was a recipient of a Wakefield Scholarship Foundation award in 1963, and is glad to be able to offer support for the Foundation in return.