May 20, 2022
Richard Irvine, the headmaster of the Tehran Community School and the founder of its crosstown rival, the Iranzamin International School, died April 16, one day after his 99th birthday.
Irvine was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina, in 1923. At the age of nine, at the bottom of the Great Depression, his parents separated and Richard and his brother were placed in an orphanage in Trenton, New Jersey.
But the orphanage closed in 1935 and he was placed in a foster home with a new set of parents, Edward and Dolores Fogg, who had a farm in Lower Alloways, New Jersey.
In high school, he met and fell in love with Mary Ann Cornwall. The two of them went together to Trenton State Teachers College in 1940, although the war interrupted their education and courtship. Richard joined the Army’s 86th Infantry Division as a private, eventually rising to captain and marrying Mary Ann on a brief leave in 1945.
above at their wedding just after World War II
The couple taught in schools for a while, but in 1951 joined the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, which dispatched them to teach at the Community School in the midst of the Mossadegh era, with Richard immediately becoming headmaster on his arrival and Mary Ann teaching music and leading the choir.
In the 1960s, he and others at English language schools around the world initiated what is now known globally as the International Baccalaureate. The Presbyterian Mission did not allow the Community School to adopt the IB program, so Irvine and his wife left the school in 1967 and founded the Iranzamin Tehran International School, one of seven schools to launch the IB program, which qualifies successful graduates for admission to colleges and universities all over the world.
In 1979, as the revolution rolled over Iran, it also rolled over both the Community School and Iranzamin. Irvine said the revolutionary Education Ministry urged him and his wife to stay, but he said the rules laid down by the ministry prevented them from teaching to international standards. In particular, music was banned from the curriculum and new standards for teaching biology and art presented problems.
The two schools graduated their last classes in June 1980 and closed their doors.
With that, the Irvines left Iran after almost three decades. Irvine spent the 1980-81 school term working at the Amman International School in Jordan, the 1981-84 school years as headmaster at international School Moshi in Tanzania, the 1984-86 school years as headmaster of the Alan and Stevenson School in New York City, the 1987-88 school year as headmaster of the American School in Athens. They then retired to Arizona, where Mary Ann passed away in 2016.
He is survived by four children, 16 grandchildren, and 22 great grandchildren.