Starting in the early 1980s, Proctor gained a strong, positive reputation with educational consultants across the country--due in large part to the school's delivery on academic structures and support systems. This phenomenon was particularly apparent in major urban areas like Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco, where families did not necessarily want the formalities and traditional trappings of preppy boarding schools. Consultants like the formidable Alice Jackson in San Francisco were so successful at placing students at Proctor that the school today enjoys sizeable populations of alumni, parents and past parents in these distant locales. On Thursday evening, current parents Bruce and Elizabeth Hart P'05 and Doug and Lorna Smith P'05 hosted a reception for thirty-six friends of Proctor at the home of Edward and Cameron Lanphier P'06 in Ross, California. In his introduction of Steve Wilkins, Bruce quoted Steve from the new decade report entitled Belief and Outcome: "...never confuse a person's possibilities with their current level of achievement."

Steve reflected on "...the importance of this little school to the planet..." and emphasized the importance of ongoing philanthropic support of the school...

...and then invited guests to speak to the qualities that justified sending children three thousand miles to a residential high school in central New Hampshire. Below, John Randazzo (whose daughter, Sarah, found Proctor through Alice Jackson) offers a spontaneous testimonial:

Those in attendance included east coast transplants, recent graduates and John Wheat, Class of 1950, here with Edward Lanphier and Sarah Wilkins: