Describes Donald H. Eichorn's leadership, commitment, and scholarship, highlighting his role in establishing the nation's first (nongraded) middle school, in the early 1960s. He founded middle school practices and programs on learner characteristics, developmentally appropriate tasks, and advisory groups at a time when little information about young adolescents existed. Eichorn's psychosocial model exchanged "senior-high" activities for age-appropriate ones. (MLH)