1 50 64 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/e2a51334bbaf87879d4defe44e634d12.tif?Expires=1777507200&Signature=XNQHtWCxZTFMM3ODborZHAVBdRv9eJRlxxkJECSMG5SeOEF76HDFsyLEKwnUudWWtqpbjCr-jstZmCb-atYvsrxcIbW34I7zLYjwOw38WROomR7V2h496B1q8ZnUeNYyBe3yNy-qYVnTc4L5JPkSisRU8HzAoY12sUJIv-3t0EL-27ajLf%7EaW1xXC4ZCiHXpdGIErGMWO1HYZ3xiWaZRbjupIToki4tYvGD%7EVZnd5Biy1RLU6Iqx2R-MmwP5wQyO0p9GbQwG41J7KZ3YU7x413E%7EPyMedKUN1VGKE58SBYPaYXiY1EBfYy3S19cQuxDMj-5muu9hA1yaIo4295FZZw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 224bba8875fd3cee41c0ee70bf0d9568 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white illustration of the Todd School for Boys campus which appeared in the 1872 Combination Atlas Map of McHenry County. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1872 Illustration of the Todd Campus Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Combination Atlas Map of McHenry County, Illinois. / Combined, Drawn and Published from Personal Examinations and Surveys, by Everts, Baskin and Stewart. Chicago, IL 1872 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> Description An account of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. 1800s Buildings Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/15a786debe57eefb803d4b197cced2a6.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=Js8bJE2oHqCAKFfyx7iJw3HexMgtoNeG7yvF2lPS0uax-ePIwNFIFLl1x5KquWdbLTFNMXC4thHiN6B71rDz9NipiemMWf3kk6x4ysc32icEFET5kNwZ5WKS90yvS%7EgzxVzClHw23yDxeRpDEk15o8P2ygMJFbw4oi35oykGHPsqd81PlwnMuSQJOy5etP-vaFAX67o9CY0jK8L74H-cg84pq3z1JgP3yU6DmE0bY3uXvfwa6x9mBL864nbjttzM%7ENNv-U7jeiTQ1FTi6oSsdMZTdCtQGZL8bqzP2K9xqshkhVyV2ORCjej63%7EQRGI-m6SoJnY0nwN9QhIIUl25b6w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ea7aa9f9162baf1e572355c20b724935 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1930 black and white panoramic photograph of Todd School for Boys students, teachers and administrators. Orson Welles is seen in the back row in front of a tree. https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/a4650e64e7da44d34acb63979a8a72da.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=bdcoaamfNTxmXPp5oQoyOb3FgMPj1OkGJlr5IHoSKahuqlZ1inmUQONwx96ufwVVCf%7ECKTnF9DRHoVd23X2RpJCreE6ap2PjzgwerJNFjeLpcxWygsqmeHc-7PfcnKFjwzyG1jvqsxWgXGd44xCIzFdRo0vjLUa8ZlVZvi2--dpLBF3F%7EBnsbSxkteG9qN7HC9PdXyDdGDt1uCWDOMoRDV6AoqDtqD73ikMLpMnLeBsfyV8w94TgxPbGFRMar2KurDuGHOjb756BApiBsxitWYwfrYk005xF22Z7zIYCx7iAXEZDONT5Q2pdc9UWlJjVe2nWFo5Ymvbxxk3u63AIOw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e6ce449f6456430506d8e5a2e49822d9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1930 black and white photograph of Todd School for Boys students, teachers and administrators. Orson Welles is seen in the back row in front of a tree. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1930 Todd School Class Photo (Includes Orson Welles) Description An account of the resource 1930 Todd School class photo with Grace Hall in the background. A young Orson Welles (age 14 or 15) is in the middle of the back row (standing in front of the tree). Roger "Skipper" Hill, headmaster, is fifth from the right in the back row. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students, including Orson Welles, with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 and Rt. 120 junction. The famous actor and director, Orson Welles, is the best-known Todd School graduate. He started at Todd School in 1926 and graduated in 1931 at age 15. In the summer of 1934, he returned to produce the Todd Theatre Festival of Shakespearean plays at the Opera House. Welles’ first known film, Hearts of Age, was filmed in Woodstock. The building seen in the film is Wallingford Hall on the school campus. The Todd School bell used in the film now resides in front of the Woodstock Presbyterian Church, and the gravestone is in the Calvary Cemetery on Jackson Street. Welles is perhaps best known for directing and starring in Citizen Kane. In another of his movies, The Stranger, set in a boys’ boarding school, Welles paid homage by including subtle references to Todd School. Welles was a frequent visitor to the school after graduating, and would eventually serve on the Todd School board and his daughter, Christopher, attended the school. Welles remained friends with Roger Hill, Todd School Headmaster, and the two men collaborated on the Everybody’s Shakespeare. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived From the Caryl Roskie Lemanski Collection 1900s Buildings Orson Welles Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/d3e87dcc605a40b883ffb41e67556c84.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=voN9d8MVP0cnn7K46hqvaQInngPQXt66jgZjEdUNymF597UQGcJ9004XP-xr4IsyzS9w2stLYsZRHuZHGpqdQv8KHb4a4edi0PZqtkO11v%7E456fj4FRma59qXKZFnoNC9jMQAGSz3KU36ceYCMYZgYLUffDNvP-yYsiUY1UG0H5MVNCvOyJ2LkGTycPQC4QNl881bOSLQD4777NkqRQgu1%7E8j1XGvDLqji2Q5s6gdLf7xAfcRc0o4Wj2BEpOzQmPzy%7EOj-JA%7EMBu2WFYTpBR-cjNJwY-HdF0GlziGw3jqL-okiOwqB4Xa8%7Et3dn0gG6gjMcN2cSZCCLJ9zBCj8eS6Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 9381b638307c3e43485bbfd6295ab61b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photorgraph of an employee and student on the campus of the Todd School for Boys located i woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Annetta Collins and Student - Todd School Description An account of the resource An integral part of the campus, Annetta Collins was in charge of Kitchen Services and was house mother to the younger students. Many of the photographs in the Woodstock Public Library's Todd School archives are from her personal collection. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. 1900s Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/27e100ee7e836fca0b79d212769ce557.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=CbnJBT5bqO94s%7E2gCgL0N%7EJG1fihUK8Exj%7ET-r6%7EbAkVviy-mSLZHv1nSilcd9WkwqYu0Dn4639iBBFd4aKmiZCjle5r0KCd92mjxQ-DS8MXBZEaVeJWfNOTSlLxBlQHYz80uHavRgA3f2uV5a2leWqMceQZ7GHNCy7DW4NaEduKJ-OzojK0DIl4fQW7LxfwAF99zOtwslFKhQ3ru2%7Eajic6EQiE0CPTULJZwvlTDzBJ5NDSFvRkU1BqPVvzplOCoITqkpPSQwB3wZevI8NgbxgJAZh5FjOH%7E3T-Pq2UmOx7wq2ujOv5Y1arT-sAtXRHmMK00u9qIB0xFKqlXX8lwA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 84656a8362f057132486091525043a4a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of a two story wooden building known as Clover Hall that was on the campus of the Tood School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Clover Hall - Todd School Description An account of the resource One of the original Todd School buildings, Clover Hall was built in the 1860s. Clover Hall was named after Martha Clover, first wife of the Todd School founder, Richard Kimball Todd. Originally, the building was used for the school's administrative offices and classrooms. In 1910 it was converted into a dormitory that housed up to thirty-two students. When Todd School closed in 1954, the building was purchased by the Woodstock Residence nursing home and was torn down to make room for a new building. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tripp Photography - Woodstock, IL Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Buildings Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/0ebdbd83b4efbf1235a5ec27d766a5aa.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=lvmzMkhaUfepuxdiigSk8XdZKuOvaM%7E3u0DeRb6Ebp6T1cTlmpby%7EMF0wxst38WLJCCTN2g23GfKNToEUlRRsQ43Avwo-XiEPPl6FU7nKQMNf84zo87IRDxUIC6tTmZftwvx37Vi0zkNgUhJ4BfHzmrIEiI4DMVvsPjjwcJT6c4xcaMRomYcWjsmz5BSSUZesAgoSLENLMNSNk5Wxj-Sk6HRAPdoCiEKo8gwGnRe3Ao15SEGOdhSuMmCpUaPV86YpcHSMtPpTYbLZcLJNiyOwzq94scKjZh1i3TYYJNf731kJsWVeWchprbeeSz-NWdlY1wgrxFJZp-St5xH3SBZmg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f2aa1d8446e6b0e9efb4eada1cace16c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of a two story wooden building known as Clover Hall that was on the campus of the Tood School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Clover Hall - Todd School Description An account of the resource One of the original Todd School buildings, Clover Hall was built in the 1860s. Clover Hall was named after Martha Clover, first wife of the Todd School founder, Richard Kimball Todd. Originally, the building was used for the school's administrative offices and classrooms. In 1910 it was converted into a dormitory that housed up to thirty-two students. When Todd School closed in 1954, the building was purchased by the Woodstock Residence nursing home and was torn down to make room for a new building. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Buildings Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/2c9da7c6e3d1276ff7f53903a250650b.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=vOZcdv39RI%7E%7EP0UocRIAoDQiM4z5fipCKcYRDGMcRwcx7VpjQbztaV%7EwY6kRTCm0hYBooPclIDqX-t0rbyokTc5rwDoidXO50pQkd9iZ0v7OZ7dj%7Eo6ZGfl7hY1Wqqo6LDXAUPHZnw6PUPs5yY3bBw%7E4sQfZdueIjdSwzfLbXv2V8R2ijogpJ9KiLq2ATdD0UunM0fJ9IVy3yrYgRqQ0I0rI%7E4PFMhmbN3htyYorMl3qCM9ACSFy1ZlnizHDMV9JsYglCykeOSOSQkisBG5WG1fmV7dZ7tSWw2-vJ705UUaOqY2mji4Hg%7Ej4-6n7YhAuzB75TeYZ7VcXyX2G%7EUpF5Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 79c4b2d458a8ba7a9cfc23a6d63ad6eb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1940 black and white photograph of a Todd School for Boys football coach and two students in football uniforms analyzing a play on a chalkboard. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Coach Roskie and Football Players Analyzing Football Play, circa 1940s Description An account of the resource Anthony C. Roskie grew up in Rockford, Illinois and attended Rockford High School. After graduating from Lake Forest College outside of Chicago in 1929, he took a position as a coach and teacher at Todd School for Boys, eventually serving as its athletic director. Following his years at Todd and Woodstock Community High School, Roskie became a founder of McHenry County College. Roskie was voted Woodstock Citizen of the Year in 1971. Eleven years later, a pavilion at Woodstock City Park was named in his honor. He died in 1995 at the age of 89. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940~ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Sports Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/aa281d80335c9d922544d3f99514bd62.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=Bcua6KHK0DAKmSaJMOD9925NxLmuisENCi5uaYrEUlMxvzUh6eVSUucQnOTYSc1i5Yt9slcvnyqEk0bBVBpPBvAONPMi7vsLZyo1YgIUNFKITj82FiUUWC7KlhJvk6WswkWY0h6ebrIbQw7cAZzJ3hYyNebqUxzcgZ3bKCdMoPdDfdZPmbVC9P0QsSJAjQKaIdA9N1MIASP1R43zd66Mv5pDB0D5DuX8NjW3uDSSqwtZBn95smAxm6lI1Elnv1NrZB5pusI9i8gxvUVt3omRGb3XVoRTJHzx7JVb29m5XixsBVzckPzmuFcluUU%7Eapel%7ErK5QGemmNjVm7%7ETU7xUTg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 86f1d74e3bc86dd81e0d0a5b0187a98d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1940 black and white photograph of a Todd School for Boys coach talking with two students in football uniforms. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Coach Roskie and Todd School Football Players, circa 1940s Description An account of the resource Anthony C. Roskie grew up in Rockford, Illinois and attended Rockford High School. After graduating from Lake Forest College outside of Chicago in 1929, he took a position as a coach and teacher at Todd School for Boys, eventually serving as its athletic director. Following his years at Todd and Woodstock Community High School, Roskie became a founder of McHenry County College. Roskie was voted Woodstock Citizen of the Year in 1971. Eleven years later, a pavilion at Woodstock City Park was named in his honor. He died in 1995 at the age of 89. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940~ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Sports Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/ba2e5551601ae36613f803338fcf96ff.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=pqEOchbySKxoNZIh6HYmiMpyz%7EzUk7ARH4VO4RgJ4yCtva5kuHryPHx3T91-u8gECZ4kf-sC-N1LhTx-g8SF%7E-B7qVLHtyd8-APySgwQvMwFhclJCfK6IUl%7EfftTR-BPQMT4AH%7Ee4VKtWBTyWtiOjuE93P8ipCCaPEm08PtbvymjnTVWLAtmgUZkWfhBJXt-7Geuqya8RBwRqjhYIY-3C5E3hBXKzoBe2hlAvn9Uq0OirnfcaHaXROgQ9K7Qo3Nu3J9l0or9bkpD0z3oDA66eR9i2jbxN89h9j7kDqjfiC4O9zRIE0vPubfG4phUz1kEH%7E43Adq%7EwGBfGu-az0UKlA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 13f2de958435214f3d39f32014de9e47 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1930 black and white photograph of Todd School for Boys faculty standing in the doorway of a building on the school's campus. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faculty - Todd School for Boys, 1930 Description An account of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Buildings Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/97022e1961203eb394ce2783d45e3eff.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=FvLbDq5nUZIdJKz3ZtELNpDuhaPrAvIo4lkWt-kJlr0%7EiS7ZURLiBAgU9cy1CGBFuyrm1xJwWPshndAKkquPgmgTlx6LcXxAnZcXkmknLcxaqD8kycfWVWEW5Rp%7EW93oMfXRlsYxrgU9XAoPPRbJVSD5Z%7ELf1pcCWZ0Bv%7EYji1lIC6MgDeLtel4YPC0Yc-r0cCXXXc8pqxJ0rAqXs8OAuIBmInxL9sSXv6boqAkRUIrPGfPr-VJGhnrvAl6BGGn%7EeQ71oyxKh7k-mg93iB19ShEdQUJOLO%7EmmtH13TAiCpWvLxXDZg8Wh9DG6toIZZecDLf9BS1Byr%7EOT9AQ2WQU4A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 52c012ba3c4c53d30c82de6fe7424daf Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1940 black and white photograph of a football game on the campus of the Todd Schoo. for Boys. In the background are spectators and two two-story brick buildings. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Football Game at Todd School, circa 1940s Description An account of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940~ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Buildings Sports Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/df2675ec54c59e58ca9e0c7095ce6cc3.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=Cqgb4nff1E90h%7ErwzxwgSbfr%7ES-TVwerdtYNyld-wHC%7E9FZ5BzuQKyte8yeDrYKQnvV8vPcaFccpufHm8tDq13veGrM7S1SMK0O-sbR34xEkQ4M5F4aDXNIuV8F-NNW-mXXXEtZkdGsozHqylydYRUpPJea4Vuy%7EGcG1sYPEko391rOsObzOxh4bfC3fZdJbBsgtS7OjFxvqQhu1sT6gE3Cenp2iOQ4dTTE5KhkNnwQH2q5%7E9%7EwOEMOabksdmzB5M6aNjM475moA5UERiwqczDLqpw4OHPo3tIn7jkTlLydmSguz7Bv6MoFF69875kz-NZsFj7eILaj%7EH4HXjDhKQw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 1c1dd19e6fa8fd5e679c6efbbef67ecb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of a two story building known as Grace Hall which was located on the Todd School for Boys campus in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Grace Hall - Todd School, circa 1921 Description An account of the resource Built in 1920-1921, the brick building provided accommodations for twenty-four students and six faculty members. It also housed the school's sound studio, laboratory, and photography dark room. Grace Hall was named in memory of Noble Hill's first wife, Grace Rogers Hill, who died in 1914. After Todd School closed in 1954, the building was purchased by the Woodstock Children's Home, later the Woodstock Christian Life Services. The building was torn down in 2010 to allow for the expansion of the WCLS campus. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1921~ 1900s Buildings Todd School Woodstock Children's Home https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/3b797147a210ff47feaac32853a988fd.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=RQdZfWUmIvLyZ1-diqjkLndGcnnkhxQTNS9vI-QMn-lkgI7eUtzsyg-h8EludKPGM1%7Eb9x%7ERRGycZDhcms09tpXKI2hrwknsuu98UExF9n3OX9uXlshAn7SSZdoLzMWKxj8ohi-OIV3lkSiQ%7E9DzwZxE7eP9I4jt1Y66Gl01YKfoFcA9num5gGuoK711Fi%7E9JRS1vgch8Dd%7ESyhrYlMgvOThxuaN-YhdOjr9dD0Py0axbK-hYBpb1Xj3ONZ57caiVBLNRKhfd5z3m0DiBxE7JH-Hds67Kn4HA6Mf6K7jHrrIcfTRAbsdo3jSWjyZ9HlyB3BVPGZcO2u26ttSKx2aEA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 14233bd15d7498ed0f679f6daa6053b8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of an outdoor graduation in front of a two story brick building known as Grace Hall located on the campus of the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. Many people are sitting in chairs on the lawn in front of the building as a person speaks from the front porch of the building. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Graduation in Front of Grace Hall - Todd School Description An account of the resource Graduation ceremonies in front of Todd School's Grace Hall. Grace Hall Built in 1920-1921, the brick building provided accommodations for twenty-four students and six faculty members. It also housed the school's sound studio, laboratory, and photography dark room. Grace Hall was named in memory of Noble Hill's first wife, Grace Rogers Hill, who died in 1914. After Todd School closed in 1954, the building was purchased by the Woodstock Children's Home, later the Woodstock Christian Life Services. The building was torn down in 2010 to allow for the expansion of the WCLS campus. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Buildings Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/bec4faf1e7192e4a716c8f0cc8c055ab.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=k25E%7EBAVDCPPR6UFRn8sX72HA0wPAECbhXl9G4IUAeHv00x26mXHHpQmHZ%7ES2TlUuEIWJ1zElt%7ENQbXJthTueP08RtqsH4SX1dN6eYwnJxA59Kooonnb5RaA2GyxHH1Nw14MZODc3SzGWpqXNA1BBWSNwWcwuxTryjkKm5ddf4NuD6XF7t2q62unV1L79tQ9xdG3Vg5%7Ei6knRwOuUQdX0baLrhoYFGDVd6f717L8cifBSXrf5xcWw-tSSec5BwV1rZEb6iIw5b5NRAMivNRFY7UdE49XpUKKHAsQnddDotUUg7r5TrDVynU7E95YxPVka43hVdQNpdXkAJcP5zfjow__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2e32ef969402f1352465413cc8ec8a41 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of a two story wood building kown as the The Todd School Gymnasium which was located on the campus of the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gymnasium - Todd School Description An account of the resource The Todd School Gymnasium building was built in 1894 and originally was used as a barn. Once renovated, the gymnasium included a 70-foot basketball court, bowling alley, gymnastics equipment and balcony seating. In addition to the indoor facilities, the Todd School campus had a football field, baseball diamond, a running track, three tennis courts, skating pond, and playground equipment for the younger students. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Buildings Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/19c24592031a1a0d7a016f50f7c46ba1.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=MW-2a69PFlwHwnYp8Jo9hH2Xh6OFVMI7uYfqEaRqB0gMdK5WT0FQGgVKx6XEuUPC2En2%7EAnkdXQ4XM81aDMcOeATMa1XwH%7E4vHVMPAuhbeQJd7l36SPCCiwuQNa5BXaaT3mfWiFJdjJ-FAwBXDkFJF6dHTM%7EGcnMlCVxJevY3JXlBfVOKI%7E%7E7u99EWPpYWHw700vGIqG9zk%7Esg7J9quOZ8skjT-Yg0wH-d9V5rSK-tmcyTAopFIa0JXvD0lfvWGM6Ey6UUDwCX2-j0C%7Ex6vMBuLGDLebfTHH7U5Pf72iuPeuFjr6tu%7En6S%7EEf6E%7ENlGFHTHsBGO1l8rUXXDrHCbWDw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 04a379b62501d0af892d493dc9ee63df Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of a Todd School for Boys student standing in front of the school's wooden two story gymnasium building. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gymnasium - Todd School Description An account of the resource The Todd School Gymnasium building was built in 1894 and originally was used as a barn. Once renovated, the gymnasium included a 70-foot basketball court, bowling alley, gymnastics equipment and balcony seating. In addition to the indoor facilities, the Todd School campus had a football field, baseball diamond, a running track, three tennis courts, skating pond, and playground equipment for the younger students. 1900s Buildings Sports Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/4ba0d96cb6100be6b37e0f0ec11616db.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=ZDXvJ1TmD7bCzm8tvV-Lz140whYg7wLUdKbCFnCFcS3nDBqh9cwGsATNpHq8REBJABF3C7D1UorNyods5rXejr6TOhXIq-U2SjXRAyMlFhs13FTWTTYmDOQscpJEFgKkqrE%7ETWNkyXTrfoVav-032Jyst7a41AE5rE5piQOGe25bROCT087sR6SpMYd62QZeoA7KKGMBVoqvCKhiQsmmDLj4kJqZsxi3Rlw4g--rtRNX0YkMw42%7Esxmkay8uZt7yYx02C42b%7ETi3A35hWEhCUDR85wA3GLHTN814dOwWPIElBwV-TSFTh3WgD2gHztBz6M5C0Fx7Ts5HfOQH-QcH7A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM acc210672be19c6667f8c6c8375a78d7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1940 black and white photograph of a Todd School for Boys music teacher playing a violin. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mr. Carl Hendrickson, Todd School for Boys Music Teacher, circa 1940s Description An account of the resource Music Director Carl Hendrickson joined the Todd School faculty in 1926 after an early career as a violin prodigy and vaudeville performer. A composer as well as violinist, Hendrickson was responsible for many of the arrangements performed by Todd School choral and instrumental groups. The school had a sound studio in the basement of Grace Hall where Todd students recorded their own albums. The school’s Bach to Boogie jazz band performed nationally on stage and on radio. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940~ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Music Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/c233f9e363e8c7011598a30fe446103a.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=tj8g37HsEe%7EO%7EquSukO1GRe1DYKIy18L4u22q8jqjV9HsEfCWnUje--jY2xGps1zjswUQ0SjLqwF9qnAnUGm9SKe6IH-8Sn6wJD9fvRxdLaNc%7ElzBlrl9cW1efsoxNCNKEB3N-Roagb2Tb-ZGIVoj8FSiUFIm7%7E5nKu%7EsQF15IUKjQ1Uaf-VViJyVbBVctTjU40LoIKfT1aOixkGysNHG0E8X2Qn6pgbVMLvQxra4UJzeB1j232qfLOJpC3N2OIo3VRofWYWBiUJueUOpw9zR6wRfBVrRUzlxbnhLoZWGKpSeGAdpCQfijvgWlm44w3oz3atJZ4d7eVOm91l1MIBEQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 320f2793c780dc36e2727ba421e07d84 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of a small two story house known as the Music Cottage on the campus of the Todd School for Boys located in Woodstok, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Music Cottage at Todd School for Boys Description An account of the resource This building served as the home and classroom for Todd School’s Music Director Carl Hendrickson and his wife Helen ‘Nenette’. This building is one of the few Todd School buildings still standing, it is situated on Seminary Avenue, just past the Rogers Hall Apartments. It was sold in 1954 after the school was closed; at that time there were five pianos still on the second floor of the building that could not be removed. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Buildings Music Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/1b57472c0a26d25dda02a812c4d0d695.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=iSLDy2L2xG-FQqTSBfg9l7GMXt0qH131On6Pwr0a-7cMJnIpOIPu0M0n8vEiiMlI0w9sVtfpP8HyGNr7Ks7O6EABdW5s9r0HY8AyfdClgbuFdWApttXmupziuNGC38UZHC338Ij5-Rvbet0n88q6FPZanWpqeN40QspBM4wOWml1M1Ro0lKOiSJRdZQQ-ULAXez38-5UqfHQCU-gywVfX2ciiCmxBnu5ltGqC3AOe8zpa8WpFRUsypz-cGrp6FFjQOIGWnodEilYFuaPdQQrfq7%7Es6QH-BOldMyEV-PpXVfdD98Z1WCOQryJc1WkOUeAE7etMa77lCrzYuWpEjvh2g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 69d186876ae3c88bfda7df8c24d88f28 PDF Text Text [ [ [ c �- with thanks for building beautifully on the traditions o f Lura Wan drack and her old Op era House Library that was so loved in the early c en tury by a bookish boy, I / ,~ .-<A ( �r I For our Grandchildren: Christopher Welles Feder Melinda Tarbox Reitman Priscilla Smith Pamela Smith McGarry Todd Tarbox Roderick Smith Roger Eugene Smith Wendy Hill Roger Gettys Hill II PRESERVATION That copyright is not for protection; it's for preservation. No one will want to steal these paragraphs but some family member in the distant future may want to consult them. A modest fee puts two books into "permanent" government storage. More readily available ones will be in the Rogers Collection of the Hutchins Library in Berea alongside those priceless diaries of my grandfather, co-founder of the great school. DISTRIBUTION Our press run was only two hundred which will barely take care of our huge family. Should a second edition ever be wanted, our publisher-grandson, Todd Tarbox, will have the plates and an assignment of the copyright. Copyright 1977 by Roger Hill Printed privately in the United States of America T �CONTENTS These rambling recollections follow little sequence and double back on themselves continually. You will need the index at the end if you use the album for reference. In general, the material covered is: Childhood and the John Rogers ancestry College and married life in Chicago . Early pedagogy and the Todd School . Children and their marriages . . . . Grandchildren and great-grandchildren A distinguished cousin, Robert Wilson A foster son, Orson Welles . Sea Fever, a family under sail Postscript and Index 1- 24 25- 68 69- 95 96 - 102 103 - 116 107 - 109 110 - 130 130 - 150 151 .... r T �I • T' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ r~ rrr_ r r r- r ·- r - 'Time ~ Chance c.A Family CA.lbum with paragraphs of remembrance prepared for grandchildren by Roger Hill This five-generation story was started well before Alex Haley and his Roots nudged our nation into searching for ancestors. It is addressed to our grandchildren and copies are being distributed to the huge family that is ours through genes and through adoption and through intimate living in a long-ago, hard-to-believe community known as Todd. This writer is old but our nation is still young. A measure of its youth is the fact that my story, starting no farther back than my own grandfather, spans most of that nation's history. As a child, I didn't read that history; I heard it. Straight from the mouths of the history makers including tales of the active Abolitionist, John Rogers. This father of my mother also told his little namesake how, when raising funds for Berea College, he had conferred with ex-president Andrew Jackson, hero of New Orleans in the war of 1812. And "Old Hickory," our seventh president, had marched in our Revolution! So now, dear readers, shake the hand that shook a hand that reached clear back to Washington. It's a hand that has dawdled over these paragraphs for half a decade. But when the years dwindle down, life must still be tasted, not just remembered. And as Time runs out, it speeds up its petty pace to end at a gallop. This is a paradox which you, too, will discover soon. It's like a maddening metronome of erratic speed and childhood memory. Back then a musician mother had hopes her son would follow in a family tradition of excellence on some instrument. The tick-tock mechanism stood on the piano facing this prisoner on his stool. Its too-loose weight had a habit of slipping gradually lower and lower and thus turning the poor kid's stumbling minuet into a galloping gazotski. What follows is a pale parody of the important history I had hoped to bring you. There were giants in the earth (and in the family) in the early days. First there were the Rogers boldly marching with America's Abolitionists. Then there were the Embrees carrying on the epic struggle for Negro rights. I've brought you but an outline of what I had in mind. Still, brevity may spare you boredom and induce you to write sequels. The book comes to you in loose-leaf form because soon after it was started I faced serious surgery with survival in doubt. Wishing to leave behind something more tangible than a manuscript and a folder full of photos, I sent the first fifty pages off to the printer. Through a piece of luck, recounted on page 55, death was postponed but a publishing format had been set. It's one that even has some advantages. It's flexible and it's inexpensive because 81hxll offset printing is available today from your friendly neighborhood stationer. So carry on, kids. Save up your pictures; save up your letters. You will have great tales to tell. How I wish I could read them. Makes me almost hope my grandparents were right and that I'll be looking down on you from some cloud. It might even compensate for those awful wings and that silly harp. �TIM ANO CHAN CE Rogior Hill l �ON THE OTHER SIDE of this page we show a part of the family posed on beautiful "Brooklined Farm" near Leaf River, IDinois. In the center is our firstborn (1918) Joanne, holding her newest grandchild while surrounded by five of her others. Back of this Teacher-<lf-the-Year sits her firstborn (1941) Melinda, Mother-<lf-the-Year by popular acclaim. This gorqeous gal has been aided and abetted in her adoptive compulsion by an amazing husband, the Rockford pharmacist, Al Reitman. The grandfather over there on the left is an artist-extraordinary with the hard-to-believe name of Hascy Tarbox. He is backed by his son, Todd, with wife, Shirley. The bearded, prolific writer (and photographer) has just received a Harvard scholarship for graduate study. If you missed his picture-essay on Love in a Classroom, you're the loser. Go to your library; ask for the April 24, 1970, issue of Life. Now the names of all those grandchildren: Left to right, Tania Reitman, Jonathan Reitman, Scott Reitman, Hascy Tarbox II, Lisa Reitman holding Zachary Reitman. ~ ASI~E TO THESE REITMAN CHILDREN: Some day, dear kids, yo~ 11 ~e ?Id ~nough to r~d this book which is a paean of praise to a ~ading 1nshtution, the family. Never, never believe that any one of Y?U is less~ a blood member of our family. Two of you, Jonny and Lisa, are WJ~h us_by the accident of birth; others by deliberate choice. Such a relat1onship can mean stronger, not weaker ties. Ask your grandfa.the~. No blood relation, he came to us as a little boy. Today, no one :'fv_e is. closer ~10 the ~eart of this writer. No one, that is, except your Miamigranny . And ts she a blood relation? OUR SECOND DAUGHTER, Bette, is shown here with her second husband, Bill Raymond, and her two boys, Roderick (Rick) and Roger Smith. Bette was born in 1921 and, like her sister, married a brilliant Todd boy, Sandy Smith, He was long a Chicago newspaper celebrity but now lives irl Washington, a staffer for Time Maga· zine. The marriage, in 1938, produced four children: Priscilla, 1942, Pamela, 1943, Rick, 1947 and Roger, 1956. Bette had gone to Barnard, become a Powers model, transferred to Wisconsin and then dropped out to get married. Later she earned a Master's. The Raymonds live in Woodstock but Bette teaches in Rockford and plans to sell her unique home built on part of the old Todd campus. Rick, shown here with blinders, and backed by a grandmother and a step-father, finished Columbia and started Law at Chicago U. but is taking time out just now for some non-academic experience. Roger, like his brother a super athlete and like all his siblings, a super student, finished high school this year and, as this goes to press, is trying to decide which scholarship to accept. PAMELA SMITH married an Irish-Aussie sailor boy, Gordon McGarry, and they have produced an incomparable red head, Tim. This family's story to date is worth a bo~k. Hopefully, t?ey'll continue in their unorthodox travel orbit and write one. Pam, a Pht Beta ~app~ brain was teaching in St. Thomas when Gordy, a school drop-out at fourteen, ~ed ~ on ~ yach~ ~rom Fran~. Soon they .were married and seeing America (he f<?r the f~st time) ma muubus. Wanting to show his new wife to Australian parents, he sh1pped WJth her on a yacht to Hawaii. Pregnancy changed their plans of sailing on ~d they t<?ok the plane t? Melbourne. With Timmy born, they got another van and ~d Australia ~fore retur~g to ?ur house ~her~ Gordy finished two years of college .. in one. ~ow i!1 Kan~s City, he is completing his Baccalaureate in a year and a half. And getting paid for it. The trick was to join the teacher's Corps. PRISCILLA SMITH Someway we missed Pris in the group shots taken last fall whe.n visiting up North. Here she is, a distin· quished Chicago teacher. This year she's doing some work for the Evanston schools in her specialty, race relations. THE ROGER GETTYS HILL FAMILY irl Racine. With visiting grandparents. The center figure is our third and final child, born in 1926 and married to Emily Jonas in '48. Then they sailed away for a year and a day (plus) with a crew of Todd classmates on a schooner voyage around the world. But the Korean War broke out and aborted their trip irlto the Caribbean. Wanderlust was appeased, however, and the couple re· turned to try out educational work. But like Hascy, Rog decided his talents lay along other lines. And how! His engineering genius and managerial skill has produced the burqeoning Gettys Mfg. Co. Their collegiate daughter, Wendy, a talented singer.actress, was born in '54. Roger Ill came along in 1962. Mechanically precocious, his old man has used him in trade shows to prove even an eleven-year-old can opera_te the Gettys mechanical marvels that control huge machine tools. THE AUTHORS OF THIS MEMOIR, (I use the plural term only in hope. A never-to-be-pushed wife still stalls on her promise to add chapters of rebuttal to mine of remembrance. ) Our years are now irl the yellow leaf and our abode is in the Florida sun. There the aptly named Hortense has filled her latter years with such happy husbandry as to turn our pond-filled jungle into a tropical show-plaoe. 2 A NOTE TO OUR SURVIVORS: Don't toss away this pearl of great price, our Florida Shangrila. If you must sell, wait a while. Rent it for a year or two. Reserve the guest wing for family fun and family memory. You have an irreplaceable oasis in a Miami desert. Its monetary value is huge; its esthetic value incalculable; its duplication impossible. I I I I I I I I I I I I I 1 I �- - - nf ttn1• who lM-d 11ot ly ltul • we-II. You ill he r rnul'h mon• oout lul'lt Ouan pluck, t'nn JUt:b pallid tuff pro inter, •n ? It hC'f'm unh dy. hut I tak(• h n·nt<'10 •nn Thr Edticullor <Jf l/t.'HI)' ~t dtmu l'h t cy l.Jch ull t1lUn11 Qt w 11 • I u t hail~ a Arut'n • fin Autob <>J?mphy, AmJ tht.t livl' of 11 'IU}' and ko ti.a ..·e sima.lruiU Y 'l, rt• ho) 'ill t1 il tJ.t)' SWU'tl ''' um1>tunu,_ to l"o011 :u • 1-hU to Ad 1m . hut wh • d · 'lllJrnlnae p n~pUun" .For unc thin~ ·h bo)' ~ w up unrlPT Ul+' !(h!Kfn of inipon nl nn~· l 1nb t 0 k y. ~lroy . ttun · w« 1iot till un· Port~ n• Nu ~ t•·nr "' co mny loom lri m • background. uul h~I! was al teast 11 pru:idenl o( a llCRl' and a fumous uncf •, pr 1dtnl of Ch• Anwrk:us • vc 1·ty or Ent:tt\C" •rt1. Wh t count& ta 1111,t hoth of th bo [i!lt "°di orn. ) 1\gain. h of ua wu diApfjo ril !d nnd d.aillUEoned with college. \~ lunll)". Ro •..,. ,.n •r.."d ho J ·rly .mUt'i~tA-d ovea o( A<.'11.d me •1th Uer liienry lhM\ H nry Just h \\, aL '" o~\!D. l bn.p~l.-d lo po~ ' ~W'JI 1'1~ m.ckttr0und m h11 k •. I h•• Btblt·, llnd Engl poctty 6 a story to be d tnil later. ~ow I Wt11 summ.JViz.e n!'ld y lhat the yoooc Ro r • buro Lb u1a minor Lal ·n~ 'ftll It trll!k ar you wUl, •• m4" ~id ·ould w "gl th it Thu kJd 'Ould l'OOlttllber words.. 1'ben God hecamt> 1 'n •rou :.and U1rew in an ear Cor ~~ mu I • ru~ul rly wht'11 c.txpl't'llM"d h1 rhym nr an rhythm nr - m the wondff'ful rotting rep I nd ot lle-l~ portry. ·l'hu fortuM.t~ fur lb~ lid'' i"RO whids hlKl b n crut'll}' J'\.f ll iun.'(J c-artirr wh~• h'• d .. 00 Cl't!iJ b lack o( 8 fflUQCU/ car. llts loom Wtl!I th~ rallection of a molt.er' d. pomtment. Au · ornpllshed m ~tan W. Ir rutd •W.r to r1\' mulll!al brulh lht- had . rum petenc:e iand even dn!a.med or lus Th fl chlld w du l)' ¢arted on th vaoHn. H h Id th me h Jluw«t. \1ndt Ult1 u1.11rum nt lhat had launt"'llf'd hil uncle Joe's succeu. lJ,Uor truth, on hlld tc bi! r :t"d Th boy ju t dittn 't h V1! U1e r\'(t 1L 1tt• nr for &h • unf u d f ng rhow <1C th· !tddl •.\ shlli was made tu I ' d••m ndin C'Q\li;in. thei mandolin~ where those Lortuo VM· Hun ~tw • ·n B llmJ B·&t I ~nw lmp(t lhw ".\nyw ·:· aid my molhrr, d fMldtn , as Wll.! h om, Ch often father-deprecated du.Id, ••Rogtr I vury ood of ryhtllm, fnJc-. I r molhcr, nd dry tho , "" H llM) hod 80mt1thtna; tar mo~ Cortutlot.r5 and ti u lo bnng him d~light throuith- out h111 tir~ 1'hi& w an ev ror ul1lul t ~ \dt.l lo lhb Ou· turtlwr o<>d rortun1• rh L h became 11nmoBed m bB1Un!uJ languagt:! nl • A ~bout, t.rau~ l of itturu.stan• l~ndl'I' broatrht th Th n n '•r dupllukd nd I wiui~ t.o rover lht!m laltt. F'or nuw. I'll tn('ft'ly k 'h thPm tn: My father owned and mn with an iron htrnt.l) a hoard n h<1<>l In tht · he eltoel.t<t lo l ~rh but on bj ·t, Ell">Culion. aei: nninR in eptt.ml>K. t"Ver)l I d wnilt.< haek that lhe cucum.slancC?A under wtnrb I learned my cl. l•'I w \ e uniq 1 tu d f \I • to duphcal d On :(Inc.I thoui:ht. I bttd r. l'h unique fsct.oY' hn Wl:L! fmply ll''tl. my ,..~, ure Wtli 31.\ditoey l dldn' I rcud Ou w uruu! ·Luff. 'ot lilt fat t. I h crtl II. I• thla th ,, :ai.on th.at I •'An no • worts.for· ·vrd·wilh~ul, oouk. rt•J)(!al •t i Prob;,bly. 3 �AUDITORY LEARN ING And it has been a life-long joy to lie abed in the stilly night and mentally pu ll down off a shelf the author of my choice and bid him speak to me. Come to think of it this total recall, for any auditory learner, is far from unusual . Look back yourself on that time you rehearsed a play diligently for two weeks. When the curtain went up, you knew more than your own lines; you krn~w every line. Yes, you soon forgot these, but only because your follow-up was different than mine, for I have never ceased rehearsing and re-reading my lines. I recall from the dim past a high school daughter's moan, "Oh Dad, you're in such a rut." She had discovered a picnic jacket carrying a pocket Bible and a Hamlet. And she was right. I've been in that deep (but so enjoyable) rut all my life. Do I regret it? Yes, partially. At best, I'm only a two-bit scholar in my beloved field, and this minor status was purchased at the price of a woeful illiteracy in other lines, particularly modern novels. Parenthetically, let me throw in here a sad fact and a warning. My nemesis has not been, like my uncles, booze. It has been news. Hooked on current events (daily papers, weekly news magazines, radio, and TV), I have wasted enough time to have produced a rounded erudition. I rationalized this addiction by the fact that we lived in perpetually perilous times. Wars and rumors of wars have blanketed our life. Humanity with all its fears and all its hopes for future years seemed ever to be hanging breathless over some cliff. Could a Concerned Citizen, then, do less than turn nightly to hear the bombs bursting in air above Ed Murrow's London roof top? Hardly. And from the time of Wilson's League of Nations struggle to Hoover's stock market disaster to Roosevelt's world war to Johnson's Vietnam madn ess to Nixon's Watergate debacle, it has constantly seemed to this writer, lacking ithe wisdom of the long view, that today's vote or yesterday's battle or tomorrow's pronouncement might prove crucial. Some way, it seemed to him that if he held his breath and if he did his home work, it might help. Silly. I've gotten off my subject of auditory l~~arning. Let me conclude: Today, with LP records and tapes, we have the capability to return to the Noble Hill technique. Years ago I thought I was g;oing to accomplish just such an educational break-through. It was in 1936, and I had persuaded Columbia Masterworks to let us record four of the Mercury Shakespeare plays. These albums were to accompany our texts. Unfortunately LP was still in the future, and a 78 rpm disc runs only three and a half minutes. This means twenty to thirty breaks during a play. Too disconcerting. Our books continued their phenomenal run, but our record sale was disappointing. Even so, I was offered the job of 4 educational director at Columbia. An exciting prospect, but how could I wire Woodstock that I was staying on in New York? LP was just over the horizon then. The fu ll use of this new learning tool is just over the horizon now. Any good library can, today, offer you and your youngsters listening delight. Rhythm and rhyme are as inherent as breathing and pulse. We are all one with a universe rhythmically rolling through season and tide. Let your children thrill to the lilt and the beguiling imagery of Lear now- They sailed away for a year and a day /'l'o the land where the bong-tree grows. Do this so they may later thrill to that pentameter, heart-beat cadence of Shakespeare. Or, to prove to yourself how listening can heighten the sensual joy of poetry, buy or borrow the Columbia album John Brown's Body. You have read Stephen Binet's book. You have marveled at the man's virtuosity and at the variations in his ringing verse. Now hear it. You will feel a soul-stirring new dimension. Another example of how listening can heighten the appreciation of beautiful language: You all know Tom Standish. Your lives have been enriched by that sometime roommate of Hascy Tarbox who, shortly ·after Todd graduation, became crippled, bedridden, and blind. On his bed of pain and in his world of darkness, Tom became superbly educated. This through Books-for-the-Blind. His delight in, and his appreciation of, musical nuances in prose and poetry brought him a joyous life. The books (printed ones) this sensitive soul would send to us, because he feared we might miss some fine felicity which he had found , are among the most delightful on our shelves. ~I ~I I J I YOUR ANCESTORS Let's get on with that research into your roots. Be advised that progenitors far antedating this grey-beard have left you their stories. You might well read the chapters done by them before wading into this. I'll outline what is available: Your great-great-grandfather's books are out of print, but we have a copy of his Birth of Berea College, published in 1903 by Henry Coates Company of Philadelphia. This is largely an autobiography of John Almanza Rowley Rogers, my mother's father and the co-founder, with that other Abolitionist, John G. Fee, of the great Kentucky institution. It tells the tales I have so often heard my grandmother repeat, thrilling stories of how the fearless " Almanza" would step from his cabin door to face down the white-robed Klan or, before the war, their pro-slavery counterparts called the Night Riders. Trembling behind this 30-year-old rock of courage was the 18-year-old Lizzie, holding her infant Raphael, named for the great archangel in the hope- nay, in the faith- that this mighty guardian -' 11 11 ~1 1 I I �WRITINGS LEFT YOU BY OLDER ANCESTORS of heaven's gate would spread his protection down even to a cabin door. Faith and Courage triumphed, too. But only up to the time of John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry. When this news clattered over the telegraph, paranoia spread throughout the South. Slave insurrections were imagined on every plantation. Those bearded northerners, openly friendly to blacks and preaching God's coming judgment, were obviously in the pattern of Brown and his Kennedy-Farm plotters. Even the Berea location- next to the strategic Boone's Gap through the mountains- was ominous and reminiscent of Brown's strategy. They must be driven out of the state and into Ohio. They were. he was a divinity student in Oberlin. Here is wonderful stuff, my beloveds, for your doctoral dissertation in History or Sociology. Borrow these precious originals from our present-generation librarian, Joanne. Take them to your graduate advisor. Watch his eyes pop. At long last, he sees some fresh source material. You will be the envy of your whole department. More about these soon. Almanza's son-in-law, my father, also speaks to us from the grave. In 1948 The Todd School held its Centennial Celebration. Noble Hill, that stern man of God, came from his California retirement to record a spoken message in our sound studio and to bring his story of the early days in that school he had purchased in 1890 from its Princeton foundei:, Ri<.:hard Kimbal Todd. Others of your an<;estors JOHN ALMANZA ROWLEY ROGERS From an Oberl in, graduate student, daguerreotype, 1850 ·- Almanza crept back through the Confederate lines once during the war to see if his beloved school still stood. In part, it did. But death stalked the campus and the county. He tells of close escapes and then says, on page 102, in his thirdperson style, "After six weeks of this life Mr. Rogers, feeling that for the present the door was closed in Berea, in view of his wife's inability to hear from him or to join him, felt he must, at all hazards, return to his family, still in Ohio. Mounting his invaluable horse, Rosa, by circuitous routes through the mountains, he reached the Ohio River and swan his horse across it and, late at night to the joy of all, reached his family who feared his principles had cost him his life." Even more personal (and richly rewarding from a research standpoint) are four volumes of hand-written journals' that this pioneer preacher has handed down to us. These cover fifteen years starting in 1850 when. have left behind personal histories. Before I enumerate, let me state a sad fact that now giyes me pause. My predecessors have, in some ways, failed. We search in vain through their stories for many of the things we are most anxious to know. At least half of their writings are monuments to obscurantism. We may, along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, by indirection find direction out. But it isn't easy. I knew most of these people. I can state that their stories paint incomplete and, at times, distorted pictures. Consider first the one Noble (my father) has left us..He was, admittedly, a man that few loved and many feared. Still most, even if grudgingly, admired. And above all- and beyond all gainsaying- he was strong. Yet he writes himself down a petulant scold. Worse, his story of Richard Todd's senile failures and his own youthful triumphs write him down something pretty close to a conceited ass. Pity. So far, far from the fact. In a later chapter I shall try to correct the record. If all the above is true, an obvious question comes to mind: Can this writer hope to do better? Well, he can try. In his favor is the fact that these are days of candor while those were days of cant. FULL FORTY YEARS Almanza's private journals are particularly baffling- I'll turn to these heirlooms later but first his wife's story which she called Full Forty Years. It was written for an anniversary in 1896 and her supplement, The Aftermath, continues the account ten more years to a golden wedding in 1906. Almanza died right after this celebration but the author lived on. And on. She even survived her daughter, Grace, my mother. All of these years, up to the time when a great-grandchild (Joanf\e) came to her arms, she lived (nay, reigned) in a Todd School apartment attended constantly by a faithful slavey, Miss Eshbach. Here she held court daily from four to five. Faculty attendance was an obligation as well as a delight. Keen and colorful to 5 �I --...... ELIZABETH EMBRY ROGERS the end, she was avidly interested in current events. She would expound the day's news ala Walter Cronkite and analyze it ala Eric Severeid. Each of the (then eight) Chicago morning papers reached our breakfast tables but these she ignored. Their opinions were worthless; their sources of news suspect. We got yesterday's news and opinions which had been gleaned from her true gospel, the Philadelphia Inquirer on which her boy, Joe, was then chief editorial writer. In earlier (and less inebriated) days he had been editor-in-chief. Here was TRUTH straight from on high and uncontaminated (to use Mary Baker Eddy's phrase) by human hypothesis. Pretty-Grandma was now blind .. I -~ ~ ,..~. 'Jo. ,. .. ~ • five gifted, star-crossed boys (my mother was the only girl) in pale pinks. They were, in fact, hell raisers and history makers worthy of a bold mural. Instead we see cherubim floating on a domed ceiling, ribbons streaming across their genitals. Of course she was not writing for us. She wrote for her living family then assembled. This family knew only too well their weaknesses- Joe's alcoholism, Allan's drug addiction, the other traits faulting their near-genius. An aging mother's beautifully accomplished task was to sing an old sweet song of happy days almost beyond recall. Listen as she closes her story. The Golden Jubilee is ended. Two hundred guests have departed. She writes: fl was fitting that the feast should begin and end witl1 just the family. We should have sung He leadelh me but we were beyond singing. Till we ge l our new bodies, there must be a limit to our joy. How liltle the wealth of a Russell Sage could add lo ours. How rich we were in our children. We prized the gifts that had been poured inlo our laps bul we knew, as in the old days, there was just one central gift above all others- God's love and his own great gift to us, our children, oh, the children. - Thank you, dear grandmother, for your haunting poetry. Over the yawning chasm of the years, Hortense and I salute you. We too, deep in our eighth decade, know life's greatest wealth. Daily we echo your exultant phrase: Our children, oh, the children! ... PRETTY GRANDMA under the protection of her faithful Miss Eshbach but her lady-in-waiting had spent the morning (after the ritual of the bath and t he so-important choice of hair ribbon) reading from her gospel according to Saint Joseph. Ask Hortense some time to tell you of other Philadelphia phobias of this dear lady. For instance, every single thing she wore or used must come from Wanamakers. Her scorn· for an upstart imitation, Marshall Fields, was monumental. But I wander as usual. Our subject was the ancestral story she left us. Let's get back to it. I have indicated disappointment but only as a family historian now hungry for more facts about her unique brood. As a larger history her work is impressive. The flowing prose is delightful. The picture of pioneer life on the Middle Border is fascinating. Her tale of terror as an abolitionist's wife and trial as an early educator is vivid. A recently published history of Berea quotes her extensively. Her manuscript is a prized possession of the college's great new Hutchins library. It is disappointing or1ly from a family angle. Here she ·becomes mo.notonously eulogistic. She paints her 6 L GOLDEN WEDDING, 1906 Ow· own Golden Wedding is now, like yours, far astern. Our gathering was also planned by a daughter. It took place on the Tarbox farm. Digging in some old files recently, I found a letter written to Joanne when she was planning that event. It recalls memories of the earlier affair so I 'll copy it here. She had written saying the whole family planned to fly to Florida. My reply: .... .. �- - .. - GOLDEN WEDDINGS. Yes, that June dale has been on my mind. Let's admit that the old man's enthusiasm for celebrating any anniversary is notoriously controllable. Let's admit also that this one is pretty damn special. And that Horty 's disappointment, should we ignore the day, would be monumental. So some thoughts- ~ GOLDEN WEDDING, 1966 As the Lord spoke unto Moses, the Jubilee must be observed. Time out while I turn to Leviticus. Here it is. Chapter 25. '~And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years rm to thee, seven times seven years and the space of seven sabbaths of years shall be forty and r.rine years. And on the fiftieth thou shalt cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound th roughout all your land." Yes, the trumpet must sound. But your plan of bringing the family south is mountain-to-Mahomet madness. Besides, Harty may very well collapse after such a weekend. Only now is she recovering from a recent houseful of guests. It seems to me a Saturday at the farm could wrqp the whole thing up in a manageable package. · One cause for my concern is a childhood memory. John Almanza Rowley Rogers is, alas, unknown to any of you today. Pity. A character that out-Nobled Noble. Some familyforegathered evening, my tongue appropriately loosened with wine, I must tell you of that great and mad golden wedding day in J 906, the day of the ringing oration by Almanza, the day of the proud and preening Lizzie, th.e day of the joyously drunken son, Joe, and his insistance on sharing the rostum with the great man of the cloth, an audience-hungry soul too long deprived of his own special intoxicant, a platform. It was the day of a hovering Grace and her rapidly growing up little-boy Roger. Even now I feel the glow of pride that flushed my /ace when she used a plural pronoun whispering in my ear, "If only we can keep Uncle Joe sober enough not to ruin. Grandfather's day." Ah yes, Memories. But I tell you of that day now mainly to point out its anticlimax. In short weeks, Almanza was dead. Giving Hamlet's line a twist, the wedding baked meats did coldly furnish forth the funeral tables. Moral: Let's not overdo this thing, kids. THE ROGERS BOYS Before leaving Pretty-Grandma's memoir (the hyphenated term was mandatory in our family) I'll add a paragraph on those Rogers boys. I was privileged to know only three. Two had been drowned in a youthful sailing accident. Will was then a medical student, Lewis a beginning reporter. The divergent oldest and youngest were the ones I knew best. Raphael was rich, sanctimonius and hypocritical. Censorious in life of his brother's drinking, his death brought to light a brownstone Brooklyn basement crammed with his own dead bourbon bottles. But he was, like all his tribe, colorful. Also he was a genius inventor, sometime president of the American Society of Engineers and developer, with Mergenthaler, of the Linotype. I used the word genius. You question it? Perpend : I was 13 and taking him for a prideful ride in our just-acquired Mitchell "touring car." Critical of my poor coordination between hand and foot, he first showed me how one should always doubleclutch. Then he went on to say that gear grinding would soon be a thing of the past. Indeed there would be no clutch. He had just invented and built and installed on his Winton a special gear-shift that was automatic. He told a disbelieving child that at the advance of the throttle his own car would start moving in low and then, as speed was gained, it would shift itself into second and third. Skeptical, I asked, "How about when it comes to a hill?" THE FAMILY GENIUS Raphael Rich Self-righteous "Then it shifts itself down. Look, it's simple. Like the drive on the motorboat you run in Michigan. Does that have a clutch? No. But it can stop, ~l}en tied to a dock, even if the propeller is 7 �UNCLES AND PARENTS turning over slowly. My gear-shift is also a liquid drive. It works in oil and in a closed container." You are startled, dear readers? Of course. That was fifty years before the world (or the boy) ever heard of such a device again. What if Raphael had lived? Would we all be rich? Fat chance. He was terribly tight. But Berea might have more than its present one building with his name on it. Now let me turn to his brother Allen, the black sheep of the family. And the charmer. Bubbling with wit and prolific with graceful prose, this one-time editor of the Atlanta Constitution (a job lost through a drug addiction later conquered) was my boyhood idol and my young wife's sole solace (from my side of the family) while struggling to accommodate herself to the icy coldness of a new father-in-law. (Hortense would have loved her mother-in-law, t.hat. blood sister of the Rogers boys. Alas, however, they were destined never to meet.) During my prep-school and college days this blythe spirit, Allen, wrote me many letters, mostly by way of encouragement on my presumed literary future. He signed off, more than once, "May your sins be many." When I sat down to start this message to you, my children, I toyed with the idea of using Allen's gay admonition as my title. I didn't of course. I settled for the Ecclesiastes truism about Time and Chance. This because the word "sin" connotes something different to yo\! than it did to us. At least, I hope it does. For you it means bombs over Vietnam; it means white threats and curses over a little black girl being entered in a new school. But in those bygone times, it was summed up neatly in the phrase: Wine, Women, and Song. These are the delights my uncle wished for me. Such "sins" I commend to you. - My newlywed parents posed in a Chicago (McVicker's Theatre Building) studio. I recognize the girl-mother dimly as a childhood memory but the man stares out as a total stranger unrelated to the awesome, mature father of my early recall. GRACE ROGERS - NOBLE HILL Last summer, my sister, Carol, died unexpectedly in California. Equally unexpected was the finding in her effects of new treasures in family history. I don't mean the Rogers diaries covering the Civil War. These we had known of for years. I mean new, intimate insights into our parents' youth, into the lives of a Nova Scotia boy and a Philadelphia girl who fell in love in college. To be accurate, they met in college but fell in love by correspondence. This correspondence (nearly one hundred letters) had been saved by Noble into his second marriage. Carol cared for her father in his old age, and the letters came into her possession. She never told of them. Why? In addition, she had secreted (or at least never mentioned) another document of great tenderness, her mother's diary started at the tjme of her birth and revealing a husband with affectionate nature undreamed of by her son. Again the question comes: Why had this 8 woman (my only sibling and two years my senior) never mentioned this? We can only guess at an answe:i:. I'll leave that guessing to those multitudinous amateur (but boldly practicing) psychologists in our family. Thumb through your Freud, kids. Bring on your theory. The facts are these: Carol was married twice, first to Ross �L COUSIN NELLIE ...... Taylor's father, a World War I flier, and then to an ex-Todd teacher named Fawcett. This worthy was a Spiritualist and a cultist whose weird California temples his new wife did eagerly frequent. This husband soon died. Carol lived on, the sweetest and most forgiving of mortals, never to my knowledge having utt.ered one syllable of unkindness regarding a human being. The family accept.ed and loved Carol for her beauty of character and they avoided (as did she) the subject of religion. Only in letters would her 1experiences in Spiritualism be mentioned. She would casually refer to a visit with her father last night "on the other side." She was "happy to fiJnd him at peace and content." No, his first wife (our mother) was not around. She was "in another sphere but happily so." Carol's life-long love affair with a father is history. She spent her childhood, nay , all the days of her years, trying, to please him. P'arenthetically, I'll put in here that her brother spent his childhood trying to dodge him. This was as much in sport as in fear. He bestrode our narrow world like a colossus all right and I, petty person, peeped about under his huge legs all right. But for an artful dodger, this became sorta fun. That Jovean dominance up there was too huge to be nimble. (Can the mastiff control the squirrel?) The lad discovered that he could actually outwit the colossus. Whee! COUSIN NELLIE ,_ Yes, Carol spent her widowhood living with and caring for an aging father. He died in 1955, full of years at 94. She stayed on with his second wife (cousin to the first) of whom she was very fond, as well she might have been. Weren't we all? Even you remember her, dear grandchildren- at least you older ones do. How rich a heritage! Because "Cousin Nell:ie" was a fabulous remnant of your nation's youth, an authentic, lingering bit of pioneer life fron;i emerging America's wild, Wyoming west. It is a hard-to-believe commentary on the newness of .our land that this woman of your acquaintance actually operated °(together with her sheep-ranching first husband) a station on America's cross-co1ntinent stagecoach line. ("Meals and Overnight Accommodations for Man and Beast.") Nellie would never tell her age, but she would tell innumerable tales, thrilling, historic, humorous, of her early life out there where the prairie meets the mountains. Why, oh why did I not have my tape recorder? Consider only those tales of Jeff, a particularly dumb ranch hand that held her affection. In fact, for now, consider only one: Jeff was always petitioning leave to frequent distant. bright lights. He would return, like Joad in Oklahoma, singing the up-to-dateness of the City. In his case, this would be Salt Lake, not Kansas. One time, accoutered for his trip, he came to the Big House jingling his s ilve r-sp urre~ boots, lugging his hand-tooled saddle and spreading his gold-capped grin. "Mrs. Rathbun," he asked pridefully, "whadda ya calculate I'm worth as I stand?" Nellie hesitated as she made her appraisal. Jeff prodded, "/ mean teeth an' all. " COUSIN NELLIE Newly married to Noble. At Camp abou: 1924 Now a little more about those lovers' lett.ers and that young mother's diary. (Yes, I'll get to the Rogers Journals some time.) The letters cover years (and also a continent) of separation. The girl is in school, or she is at home nursing invalid parents. The suitor is everywhere. Now he writes as a summer resort bellhop in Massachusetts; now as a book salesman in Denver; now a seriously sick son in a father's California home. But the father, you thought, was a Nova Scotia ship-builder. Now he's in California? Yes, because the entire family had left their too stern and rockbound coast years before, Noble to work his way through college, the rest to follow Greeley's advice. Being sailors, they scorned the new-functioning Union Pacific Railroad. Two brothers rounded the Hom. The father, · mother, and -sister shipped to Panama, crossed on the rail line, and sailed up to San Francisco. (So1Ty about that new diversion. Back again now to the Noble-Grace letters): He is writing at first not as a suitor, just a friend. Then the penmanship becomes courtship. Finally it brings betrothal. This is entirely a literary affair. Lochinvar doesn't ride out of the west, he writes out of the west. He writes with many a literary allusion and it's all very much in character as a son remembers a father. The surprise comes after the marriage. Letters continue, for there are still periods of separation. Now there emerges an ardent lover never suspected by ~ son. We find sensitivity never revealed to a daughter9 �A MOTHER'S DIARY in-law. Surprises continue up to the time when a son is in Berea and a wife is visiting there. She has phoned home, upset over some new scrape Roger was in with the authorities. Noble's answer: "I don't think you should worry. I have great faith in the boy." Good God! This is my father? Certainly not the one of my boyhood memory which off-hand recalls not a single verbal statement indicating pride in a son. This memory is probably wrong. The Berea letter is strong evidence in the man's defense but consider this for the prosecution: I was a senior in Illinois. Hortense and I had decided on a June wedding. To save money for a ring, I had, for the last semester, moved out of the ATO house and was earning my room over there back of the football field by tending a furnace and doing other chores. This meant rise at five every morning and return several t imes a day to shovel coal. Part of the bargain was also to wax three halls weekly in this student warren. Nothing was said in advance about Spring Housecleaning; but when this was demanded, I suffered all the rug beating, comforting my aching muscles with the thought that the furnace could soon be forgotten. Trouble was the harriden for whom I labored had the same thought. My usefulness was ended. "Interscholastic Weekend" was coming up. For those three days any room in Champaign commanded hotel prices. I was dropped. Sure, I had a verbal agreement covering "the semester"; but, like Kipling, I learned about women from her. I'm coming to the point. I had screwed up my courage and told a father I was getting married. He was certain I had the girl pregnant. Otherwise his normal action would have been attack. Defeated, however, he merely said to Hortense, "I hope you know what you're getting into. This boy has never earned any money in his life. On the first job he ever took, he failed and got fired." I rest my case. A MOTHER'S DIARY summer, eager relatives and friends from both coasts, twenty strong at one time, piled in on the young couple who were in the boarding school business and therefore equipped with many heds. Also, it would seem, with great hearts. Now I'll reproduce here a few sentences from the diary's opening. (The "dark room" mentioned is the big bedroom at the top of the Wallingford stairs. You grandchildren remember it as Miss Collins' headquarters. I too,. was born there. Hospitals were unnecessary in that early day. Doctors practiced out of a buggy. Nurses and servants abounded.) Grace writes: "At last the hour came. l remember a dark room with a trained nurse stepping around and a doctor coming in and oul but most ol all I remember the strong loving arm of Papa. He seemed to lake away all fear and make pain an easy thing to bear. While his arms were around me, there fell on our ears the sweetest sound we ever heard- the cry of our little songbird. Our eyes filled with tears, and I think we were the happiest parents that ever lived . ... You were born at 7 A.M., March 3rd, 1893. Papa went down to the dining room where the boys were eating breakfast and told them he had a little girl and that, as he gave them a half holiday for Washington's birthday, he would give them a whole holiday on this, to him, far more important birthday. Then the boys cheered and the saying goes down among them that that was the best day's skating of the whole winter. That night you attended your first reception. The boys were all seated in the sitting room and your nurse and Papa took you down . . . . " ll Yes, it's trite stuff telling of just another baby but Grace goes on to give the best of those family pen pictures left us from the past. She tells the n ew baby much about her parents, her grandparents, her uncles, her cousins and her aunts. Telling these pertinent facts to her baby, she tells them again to us. Joanne has (or soon will have) the original. And .. Before I take up those Civil war· Journals (at long last) one notation here about the Carolhoarded diary of Grace Rogers. This was written for her daughter to read when grown. It was started at Carol's birth and ended shortly after mine. It is an illuminating document, much more so than her mother's Full Forty Years or her husband's stilted history of his school. It tells much of her five brothers and her inordinate love for them. It tells of the great· Chicago Fair of 1893, where the baby was carried through those neo-Greek buildings in Jackson Park, then the wonder of the world. (One building has been rebuilt and permanized and stands today as Chicago 's Museum of Science and" Industry.) The mother was too weak to ma.Ke it · JACKSON 'PARK,. in. 1893. Present Museum of Science building on the even in a wheelchair, but a proud grandmother Hill . left . The statue with it_s gold leaf now ·stands ir:r·a traffic.circle near the from California did the honors. It tellS how, that yacht club. 10 , PHOTO COURTESY OF CHI. HIST. - soc. �A COLLEGE FOUNDER'S DIARY we'vt:' Xerox-copied each of the one hundred and twenty pages. The penmanship is qu ite legible as you can see by this reduced reproduction of the opening paragraph. 4 """"- fro m prying eyes'? I must geL me Lo a scholar and find out. Too few of these pages give us facts. MosL are penned prayers to his Savior, pleac; to sustain him in his ministry and protect him from his temptations which come in two forms- a petulant nature which leads him into quarrels and a sexual nature which scares him pink. He doesn't tell us this; we learn it by inference. His quarrelsomeness shows up largely in his later life. His sexuality dominates his early entries, when a torn creature must preach a student sermon on Sunday after d~ting a girl Saturday night. Now his bible brings hun small comfort. Worse, it brings him great torment for he has read the Epistle to the Romans. With Job he cries out in fading ink, " I made a covenant with my God. Why then should I look upon a maid." With Paul he bemoans the "sin which is in my members" and asks, "Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" t,J~. ~ 4- ~ ~w -(~ h-4~ r~ ~~ ~- , .·, ::;;. ""' .-.- .-ri-f - '"""~ r- ..z-u. _-.::-., a_ • nPt. ~- /~ ~ .. _:c:-. ~ k ~ ~~ d'L, k.i- .,~ ~__:..,,.~ .~ ...-..... £..~ ~ ~ ~ .... ).~ _,,...., I/ J • ..-.,,.._ ,,. · ~~~ ,J,-~ ~ ~ ;....~,:$ ~~..... 01'.£:-u. ~ ~;.,"6 ~ I . . J ] J J J ] J THE J.A .R. ROGERS JOURNALS Now to the Rogers Journals. I told you I'd get to them . And they prove, on further study, even more baffling than at first. This man was infinitely complicated. The self portrait he leaves us is puzzlingly contradictory. Courage and Fear. Each quality, incarnate, stares out from this fading ink. The courage is documented by deeds. We know how he faced physical harm boldly and met threats of death undaunted. If, standing by the side of his Lord, he was to be numbered with the martyrs, so be it. Wasn't his name John Rogers and wasn't he directly descended (as he so often told us) from the man who perished for his faith on Bloody Mary's pyre? Yes, his courage is documented but it is his fear that appears dominant in the secret places of his heart and on the secretive pages of his diary . He trembles before a stem God. He fears for his inadequacy in general and his carnality in particular. He makes many entries in Hebrew; some in Greek. Do these put down things he wished to hide But this is too much talk about these journals. "Text first, then commentary" is the advice of the wise essayist. So now some excerpts from the text: His first entry is dated 4/30/1850. He is 22 years old, a graduate student at Oberlin, America's first co-educational college. It reads: Arose at 7 o'clock and dedicated myself anew to the service of God. Resolued that through the grace of Christ I would euer haue but one end in uiew, uis, the good of the uniuerse. Commenced reading the bible in course. Was deeply impressed with the truth that no one need to be anxious and troubled. An ambitious and a hopeful opening. Alas, the entries that follow reveal a soul constantly anxiom and troubled. He doesn't write daily. He will skip weeks, even months. Hopefully, those blanks cover /.,.,/./~ >/;; /'/ / , J / )'/.;?) /,,_./~ - J/• /,f'~-{:-::,,y , .I ·//.,-.. . 1 .. ,. • "\ .. / J-o ~o> .. ....... ~ ,·· ~ / ..} / /. ~ / Io'/.·' ~· r' / / ,..i./r / · ,--~,,,,' ,.,,,,.; /~ ///1' ///,I~--:. . / / / / ,{/ · ."4 ·- ' '1(.. ,' './r" ,,-, · /~· · · "'; r",,,,,,.,.,,.,,.;:· · ~· ///r/ r y,,.,,,/,,,-..,..,,<,,. . ./ ' ,;::::-· · ....... "' / r/// ,,1 / ~/ .. / "'' ,/,'",,- /'(" / , _;:;rY ,-/ ··- ,, //, ,,-/ /' ~•/"r/ ,, / / 1 . /,;; / ,,-,/~///h.~//,-;/,;f;/ .· :/~<4/ ~/4. , /;- /' ,., .,. .· A;/ ./. · ' / / ·r /~;~/.A/P//,?/?/ .,,., .//,Q/ / ~,.~~t:- ., ?Y,·£,,/f , / .,-,, . ,,,,...,,,("" /~ . /vt~~ ,/,;-;~,,,,,,,. ~ ,.,- ~/.. -/ ,.-/ . , ~ / /,,,.:: I / / / •/ ,.r /,.,. /.-/ /" ,,,./ .-. -. !".-~//::. / /.·,,·,· .·,.,,.,/ : ,-,-,,~" / ,-0 /,, /..J; . . ,., ,.,., , ,,..,.,//./-:- » /.;,. / .,,~ ;.,;: /, //-/,<"~/;..,./ / / / ; / / /(, ·/ .,-,,/:/" / k / // r ,.,-/,'r /".~~(d- / c ,.,,..,,· /// /~,,-~ / ,,,;; ,.- .,. ,/. ,;--:.,,,. ,-::_,. Notice the eighteenth-century usage : The first "s" in a double·s resembles an f. He was deeply "imprefsed." Later he hopes his illnefs will prove a blefsing. 11 �ANCESTRA L HANG·UPS cru·efree times. The reader someway doubts this. Let's take a sampling of entries that tell us nothing but reveal much. Each quote is a total notation for a particular day: .. Yielded to I he deuil" . .. ·'How is it lam so easily led astray?" . .. "A day of gmal mental conflict" ... "Last 11ighl was a lime of agony neuer lo be f orgollen. God purify me" . .. "Oh Lord help me or I perish·· . .. Here's one with more words but with no more information: "I here /eaoe a large blank space because the incidents o;f last night are so stamped upon memory's page that they can neuer be effaced and because I cannot write upon paper my life during this period. At the end of one year, should my 1ife be spared, I will {ill up this space with reflections on the euents connected with this gap." But he never g:ives us those reflections. And he doesn't wait the stated year. In a month he is back penning those in explicable lamentations. Let's take one final example before turning to non-sexual facets of our ancestor. How's this for a real poser? matter-of-fact notation regarding such a traumatic (to Almanza) experience is unthinkable. I give up. THE PREACHER TAKES A WIFE Also J go back. Back to Oberlin where he leaves with a doctorate, a wife and a joh. A "call" had come from a church in Roseville, Jllinois, thirty miles from Burlington, Iowa. For a helpmeet out there on the middle border he has chosen, after all his sampling, a sixteen year old Philadelphia Quaker girl. Her name is Elizabeth Embree. Now his diary becomes more factual. Well it might. He soon becomes involved in enterprises of great pith and moment. Read your history books (as well as these journals) to learn of his subsequent call to Kentucky by that Abolitionist, John Fee, who needed a scholar to head the integrated school, in slave territory, that he and Cassius Clay had conceived. FOUNDERS OF THE COLLEGE "Am I in the condition that Dauid was the year subsequent 1~0 the affair with Bathsheba?" Chew on that awhile, you amateur analysts. Trouble is you're not equipped, my pets, to even start. You may know your Freud but benighted products of a deprived ge1neration, you know so little of your Bible. Bathsheba, Tamar, Amnon, Uriah (no, not Heap, you ignoramus, the Hittite husband that David cuckolded) all are vague or even meaningless names. Shame! You shouldn't be allowed to vote, much less to raise children. Now in my day such stories represented our basic pornography. Sure, every boarding school dorm had .a well thumbed copy of Droll S:tOries plus some French post cards but, when horny, we were often reduced to the basics of the B:ible. Ask me about Leviticus sometime. Without your asking, I'll tell you now about David's condition "the year subsequent to the affair with Bathsheba." Actually we know little. Nine months after he espied Uriah's wife skinny-bathing on a neighbor's rooftop and had her brought to him, she produced a child which died. Sometime later (and before Absolom and Solomon) she produced that boy and girl so famous for their incestuous pranks. Almanza's puzzling journal entry was made in J'anuary 1858. His first son was a healthy yearling. No other child was on the way. The David allu.sion simpiy makes no sense. Even assuming he was coveting a Kentucky neighbor's wife, the analog;y is not apt. And that unemotional, 12 PICTURES FROM BEREA CATALOGUE Below Almanza (pictured in his maturity) is shown the young abolitionist preacher, John G. Fee and an unlikely backer of these moralists, the wealthy, duel-fighting, sexually promiscuous, Yale-educated, William Lloyd Garrisoninspired advocate of before·the·war Emancipation, Cassius M. Clay. See page 23 for this colorful man's mansion near Berea. The Kentucky Historical Society now mainta ins it as a shrine. �INSTITUTIONAL CH I LD I will turn now, dear grandchildren, from these tales of my own grandfather, but not until I've inserted here a tale 1've often heard from my grandmother. She writes it down this way in Full Forty Years: Your father prepared for me a novel wedding trip. I had, like many another high-born maiden, a chartered car but not alone. In his years of teaching in New York, he had become identified with the Home of the Friendless. We were going west to Illinois and it seemed lo him a natural thing lo make the long journey helpful to someone. He proposed lo take a car-load of children then waiting for an opportunity to go west and find homes among the farmers of Illinois. Image if you can what it would be to travel a distance of a thousand miles on a slow train, in the plainest of coaches, for that was before luxury had come to railroad travel, with sixty children out of the slums of New York. Alas, how little they knew of what they ought and how old some of them were in sin! The songs of the children often brought in visitors from the other coaches and we received, all along our route, quite distinguished attention. We traveled day and night, resting as well as we could in the hard seats. One night I began to arrange myself for the inevitable and, putting on my head what I lmew to be a very becoming rigolette and throwing a piece of wedding finery about me gracefully, I was, with your father's assistance, made very comfortable for my entrance into dreamland. Curled up in the seat, I suppose I looked even younger than my years. I was interested in an elderly gentleman who wallled slowly by, watching me. Sealing himself, he began to question me closely, to talk of his Beautiful wife and his lovely home. It flashed upon me that I was being taken for one of the "Home children. "In a spirit of mischief, I led the dear old man to tell me more of his home life till at last when he asked if I should like to come and be his little girl, I replied shyly "If Mr. Rogers is willing. " As I saw him start when he. found he had been made the victim of a practical joke he left me with a mild and a well deserved rebuke. hood reca ll, hack to and including the prenatal. Of course with Welles we must apply a certain hclievability factor. Say ten percent. Five percent? Oh well, pick your own figure. Me, I hring you duller tales but ones reasonably factual. My earliest memory (nearly) is the advent of our century. I was a mature four and a half. I should remember the great event well. I remember it dimly. I remember intermidable talk of the approaching miracle. It came from behind those tweedy vests crossed hy those giant watch chains. (Fathers and uncles wore scratchy clothes and smelled of soap. Mothers and grandmothers wore noisy silk and smelled of lavender.) Something tremendous was in the air. 1t was bigger than Christmas. One repetitious word was on every lip. Century! The word was also on nearly every new product. There was Century fountain pen which the boy coveted and the Century luxury train on which his uncle rode and rhapsodized. At last the great night came. The boy was awakened. And disappointed. Oh sure, there were church bells and factory whistles. There were drunks down there on McHenry avenue and there was even a rocket in the sky. But it wasn't bigger than Christmas. It wasn't even bigger than Fourth of J uly . TODD SEMINARY Let's move on to clearer recollections. The boy was an institutional child. Was this the dominant factor in his personality development? Maybe. After a few chapters, you be the judge. His marsupial pouch, Todd, was more than an institution. It was much more than a school. It was a Kingdom. The father-king was absolute monarch whose terrible swift sword was as frightening to the boy as to any common subject. Still there was a difference. The boy was the only begotten son and he knew it. Young Hamlet must have had the same security feeling before Wittenberg and before his CHILD OF THE CENTURY I have lingered long in the dim, dim past. And covered so little of your forefathers' story. But for now let's advance these ruminations two generations and consider a turn-of-the-century childhood. Even these closer times must seem to you like the misty mid-regions of Wier. They do to me. My recall is regrettably spotty. This is disconcerting when I read Freud to learn the vividness of one's childhood recollection is an indication of his brightness. This theory is given credence and I am given pause when I consider that the only true genius of my acquaintance, Orson, has total child- We called this THE SCHOOL BUILDING although even then its official name was Clover Hall. Later Hortense took off the porch and added the colonial entrance of your memory. 13 �- I TODD SEMINARY UPPER SCHOOL ASSEMBLY First Former, Hill, R. (first names were never used) in front desk, far row mother's sorry slip. Our Todd kingdom was divided into two parts- the Little School, the glorious Upper School. THE LITTLE SCHOOL The Little School was Biddy McWilliams' oneroom, four-grade Primary Department where an impatient Child-Roger had but one motive- to that contented miller gripped my youthful soul. This was when Thoreau, Carlyle, Dekker, Hubbard and such off-beat writers claimed my adoration. Still, the seed of a happy Contentment may have been first sown in childhood and in that proud miller's haunting refrain, "/ enUY nobody, no not I, and nobody envys me." THE UPPER SCHOOL graduate and reach the envious rank of Big Boy. Those regimented desks, and regimented boys, Miss McWilliams, a much maligned spinster, was really a dear. She was addicted to capital punishment, at least the only version of it I ever felt. Mild this was, to the point of farce. " Hold out your hand, Roger." With a ruler she made a noisy kerslap. With a grimace I made a piteous moan. The ritual was over. We knew our parts. Other disciplinary trivia is remembered: to pound erasers or to mop a blackboard was a punishment. To sharpen all the pencils (with a jack-knife) was someway an assignment of honor. Text books are best remembered for their illustrations, those steel engravings of the Miller of the Dee or that uppity squirrel which, in Emerson's doggerel, had his strange quarrel with the mountain. You don't recall that poem? Good. It's been mercifully forgotten. It went: The mountain and the squirrel had a quarrel/ And the former called the latter "Little Prig"/ Bun replied "You are doubtless very big/ But all sorts of winds and weather/ Must be taken in together/ To make up a year and a sphere./ If I am not so big as you/ You are not so small as II And not half so spry." Enough. I forebear. And I won't give you the Miller on the Dee. Or will I? Actually, it was much later- Berea days in fact- when the philosophy of pictured above formed the 1904 Todd Seminary "Assembly. " The young Roger, a first-former iri the Upper School, sits pensively there next to the front in the right hand row. He and those Jong-departed companions are facing an unseen stage, raised four feet and complete with a roll curtain plus the conventional two sets of wings, "wood" and "interior." The latter were painted to represent drapes over Grecian columns and matched the scene on the canvas curtain. In front of this was an "apron" deep enough to hold a semi-circle of faculty chairs, a pulpit and a piano for use in our hymn-singing, Bible-reading morning Chapel. The room you see (and its equally large unseen portion) was in Clover Hall, the same building of your memory. But'in my day it was a school on the first and third floors and a dormitory only on the second. 14 EDUCATOR EXTRAORDINARY Morning devotions being over, C. Z. Aughenbaugh, our Headmaster (Noble Hill used the title, Principal) would descend to his desk at floor level and declaim, "First period classes Attention! ... Position! . . . Rise! . . . "Pass! . . . " At the first command we folded our arms and lifted our chins. At the second we turned right, facing the aisle. At �THE AMAZING C.Z.A. - the third we stood up and faced the stage. At the fourth we filed out to one of the five or six classrooms on the third floor. Or, if you were a senior taking Latin or Algebra or Geometry or Science, you merely moved to the front o f the room for a period under the great man himself, C.Z.A. or Seezy for short. Here was the finest teacher I ever knew. Early alumni all echo my superlatives. This is passing strange because he was, in many ways, a phoney. Item: Among his enthusiasms was ornithology. His collection of eggs, handsomely encased under glass, filled the attic of his abode, known to you as Johnson Cottage. He was, of course, a Bird Watcher par excellence. Most Spring mornings would bring us some tale of how he rose early, hiked four miles and was rewarded with a record-breaking ornithological view-halloo. His captive audience (waiting in Wallingford for the "Little Bell" to ring and open the breakfast door) would learn how he had that very dawn, mirabile dictu, spied out the unbelievable. He had sneaked up on (let us say) the rare Green breasted, Grossbeaked Guatamala Tanager, a species never known to range north of the thirty-second parallel. Were we doubters? He was one himself until he looked in his trusty Pocket Guide to compare color and conformation. As proof, he let us look at it now. Sure enough. There on page 106 were the very colors he had described. Q.E.D. One day the Chicago Tribune ran a story on the Audubon Society's announcement of their own prize-winning Bird Watcher for the area, a Joe Zilch or somesuch from Oak Park who had seen and authenticated X number of feathered varieties. A group at our breakfast table (I was older by then and a cynic) put ten cents each into a pool speculating on the exact time Seezy would announce his besting of this suburban champion. Ken Watrous won the fifty cents. He chose what he thought was the earliest opportunity for our braggart to have a satisfyingly large audience- the period right after CI:iapel. I picked a later time because there was no newspaper at Seezy's table and only twenty minutes between breakfast and the Bell. Actually he made his announcement to a limited audience before Chapel. To tell you where this group convened will necessitate a diversion in these maunderings. Oh well, it won't be the first. Or the last. This genius, Aughenbaugh, deserves a full chapter but I doubt I'll ever get to it. Bear with me now for a paragraph describing an informal assembly he daily conducted. With Rabelaisean and Pythagorean overtones. As follows: Todd had a mammouth, communal outdoor john, an eight-holer to be exact. No not the Chick Sale type. That was before my day. We had a building east of Clover (you knew it as a bicycle shed and later a dog kennel) which hoa<;ted a multiplicity of plumbing. A fin e row of urinals, graduated in height, faced eight lattice-door stalls for serious elimination . After breakfast the use of this facility, for boys and male faculty alike, was a queue-up affair. One patron alone, the great Seezy him self, knew no waiting and heard no imprecations to Hurry!! lt was his privilege and his pleasure to spend the entire period between breakfast and Chapel (or so it seems in retrospect) informing, prophesying, pontificating on his Delphic t hrone in that reserved No. 1 stall. I learned of Queen Victoria's demise while sitting three doors north of our mentor. Tolstoy's too. Ask me about the Boxer Rebellion. Or the Russo-Japanese War. My knowledge is considerable and all flavored with the pungent aroma of that strange seminar. But it was "T.R." or, more affectionately, "Teddy" who dominated his disertations. Along with Jack London, another of his heroes. These characters he consciously aped. Indeed he shared some of their strengths. And their weaknesses. To finish the ornithology matter, Seezy announced the total number of his current bird sightings- a fat figure above the Audubon record- from his defecatory throne. The ."KING" and the "NOB LEST ROMAN" Noble Hill, C.Z. Aughenbaugh (Seezy) on Clover Hall steps 1908 How, you may ask, could this faulted man be an inspiring teacher? A novel written around him might bring the answer. A sentence or two here can only state that he was bursting with a top teacher's prime requirement, contagious enthusiasm. And he was colorful. Vivid. Glowing. In a too-often colorless profession this man stood out like Mars at Perihelion. I was highly privileged to sit under him 15 �BIBLICAL BOYHOOD and this privilege came long before I was old enough to enter his advanced classes. In fifth grade I bootlegged his wisdom. Stole it. What fun! It was like this: Seezy's classes recited to him from the front desks in the assembly room. We small fry, if we had a vacant period, would move back a few seats and study for our next class. Any studying, with me, was pretense. Behind that Geography book, ears were flipped forward avidly, ravenously drinking in the exciting things those lucky Big Boys were learning. Wonderful, wonderful talk of equations and of turning dull numbers into fascinating symbols of x and y. Exciting,rolling phrases like bisecting the angle and squaring the hypotenuse. Fascinating tales of an old guy named Archemedes with his fulcrums and his levers and his happy habit of figuring things out in a bath tub. Did my peers share this avidity for unlawful eavesdropping? I think so. But I can only speak for one. Your grandmother will tell you (too often) that she married a congenital law breaker who, for instance, would rather park in a forbidden zone than in a designated area. Not so. At least let's say she exaggerates. Yes, I grew up a Happy Rebel. (Could this fact also be associated with Seezy? I remember his organizing, while I was still in those front seats, a Big-Boy hunt through the dictionary for the longest word in the English language. The distinction went to one whose definition I eagerly learned- an tiestablishmen tarianism.) Food for thought there. But isn't every healthy boy-animal against the establishment and born a rebel? Forbidden fruit is so sweet. The grass beyond that fence is so green. One year, when crippled by a badly torn-out elbow, I was compensated by being allowed to raise a hog. It's really true what they say about steering this obstinate creature to his abattoir: Tie a string to his hind leg and pull it the opposite way you want him to go. On this subject, consider another example of my early learning through law breaking. It accounts, at least in part, for my treasured knowledge of Judea-Christian scriptures: PRESBYTERIANISM In addition to our daily Chapel, we of course attended Sunday church. We marched to that same Presbyterian structure you know today. Then it was pulpited by the successor to its founder (and the Seminary founder) R. K. Todd. Our antiquated reverend, a Samuel Hay, preached "doctrinal" sermons. You're not sure what that means? Lucky! It means a solid forty minutes of ridiculous trivia annent Transubstantiation or the Apostles' Creed or doctrinal differences between those three Protestant John-Johns: Wesley for the misguided Methodists, Knox for his (and our) Kirk of the True 16 Believers and Calvin for his mistakes at the Diet of Worms. Such stuff was indeed a dreary diet of worms for the young prisoners. A few of us sneaked in dime novels (which cost a nickel} hut here faculty retribution was swift and sure. Then this pew-sitter found that he could, with comparative safety, sneak looks into that library of books waiting in the: racks ahead. There was a choice of the New Tes.tement, the Hymnal or the Psalter. Even this was forbidden fruit. Therefore the boy gorged. And t!herefore he can today spout many of the Psalms and all of the Sermon on the Mount. Those poems of David (psalm means song) were used as Responsive Readings. I early wondered why we used the arbitrarily numbered "verses" for our alternate reading instead of dividing that beautiful Hebrew poet1:y into its flowing rhythm of repentend. But I'm bragging. Maybe lying. Wasn't it a wise father who first gave the son this idea? Probably. Sur•ely Noble was a better Bible scholar than Roger can ever hope to be and surely he expounded often on the peculiar structure of Hebrew poetry, how it used neither meter nor rhyme but gained its beauty from a rhythmical repetition of thought. Consider the Nineteenth Psalm, that favorite of sailors, navigators and Protestant responsive readers. Instead of the alternate readin;g of long "verses" how much better if our Reverend Hay had accented the poetical repetend by reading to us: The heavens declare the glory of God while we rolled back the echo: And the firmament sheweth his handiwork: if the minister had then intoned Day unto day uttereth speech while we responded And night unto night sheweth knowledge. One morn biblical bit: I am also a minor scholar, courtE~sy of a father, on the Proverbs. These too are Hebrcew poetry, bringing beauty through repetend and balance. Noble Hill was an addict on Solomon 's saws and they spouted as regularly as Old Faithful's steam. Example: We were throwing sticks into trE?es to knock down apples. (The land your schoolbuilding stands on was then an orchard.) "Beating the trees" was forbidden. Only windfalls were legal. Noble emerged from West Cottage (late1r ti'~e Music Studio) where J.A.R. Rogers and Pretty-Grandma then lived. w·e miscreants scatte·red. I can still hear his quotation booming out cover our heads: Thewickedflee when no man pursu.eth. But the righteous are bold as a lion. Again the boy's verbal thrashing after some family misdemeanor would evoke the oritund tones and the sepulchral warning: A wise son maketh a glad father. B1ut a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother. I could go on. And on. Had I been fighting? His admonition would come straight from the Good Bocik: A soft answer turneth away wrath. 11 ll II 11 II II II II IJ II JI 11 II II 11 ~JI �---· - Hu I ;{rievow; words stir up anf(er. Or as an altt1rnative: Pride goeth before destruction. J\nd a haughty spirit _before a fall. Po Field, brilliant son of Eugene Field, was my constant companion in all of our years in Todd's Upper School. I'll have more to say of him later (we went to college together and shared there some editorial chores) but now, on the subject of Proverbs, I'm reminded of the one he lettered and illuminated and hung over his dormitory bed: The King's wrath is as the roaring of a lion. But his favor is as dew upon the grass. PO FIELD as a Todd athlete (hai r al ready receding) and as a CAMPUS CHARACTER Cartoon from ~ Boneya rd Babb Ii ngs" L L~ L~ L~ 'T'odd in those days was a Junior High, possibly the first in the nation. Noble Hill, ahead of his time, dropped the final preparatory years because he wanted to give boys of fifteen the leadership training inherent in being a senior. His all-male faculty was tops. His curriculum was classical. We started Latin and. Algebra in eighth grade or fourth form. I took all my prep school math, including Solid and Trig, under C.Z.A. I took Latin under A. E. Johnson, known to you children and grandchildren as .the General, an off-beat character in his own right. His counterpart in my day, Seezy (or the Noblest Roman) was even farth er out in left field, a true character. This brings up a question . Is eccentricity an asset in a teacher? I'll bow to the judgment of my young readers, most of whom have earned advanced degrees and high honors in pedagogy. Me, I lean toward the odd-balls. Our son is not an educator but he is a creative scientist and he revered his eccentric and stimulating Todd Physics teacher, Charlie Marsh. Both Charlie and Seezy were a little mad . And each was very wonderful. Hoping you are the same, my loves, I'll close this account of Todd (temporarily) and move on to my next stern and rock bound educational shore, Berea. BEREA r'UL LEuE Three days after the t:ocky young eleventh grader stepped off, at the 1:3erea flag-stop, from the L& N /\ tlanta Flyer, he was a college freshman. Big Stuff! The trustees had started a program, later used at Chicago U. under Robert Hutch ins (whose father and brother both had presidential terms in Berea) wherein advanced highschool Juniors could leap-frog to Freshman status. So Kid Hill (the new appellation came early and lasted through the year) was now a coll egian. He had shaken the Puny label pinned on him at Todd and later revived in Champaign by Po Field. The new diminutive was attachE~d by his cousin , Lester Hill. It was appropriate. Lester was years my senior as were all the gaunt mountaineers who shared our ancient wooden dormitory. My father had lived in this warren. It looked it. And smelled it. My mother came for a visit and yanked me out. I moved to the just-built Boone Tavern, a hostelry of rare charm. It still stands. In beauty. Go there on your next vacation. (Get room 217 if you can. It was mine for the yeal', minus its present bath and air conditioning.) You will luxuriate as you breathe the ambient air of a unique school but you will not be able to enter your o,ffspring. Not, that is, unless you can prove financial need and unless the applicant has something special to offer Appalachia. Even my generation was accepted grudgingly and only because of the family connection. A dour President Frost felt obliged to have each current Rogers grandchild attend his ceremonial Sunday breakfasts. These were .for department deans and visiting VIPs. Offsetting this amenity was a put-down that the vinegar-faced doctor delivered in Chapel the week of ~ MY BOONE TAVERN ROOM . Rendezvous for the school 's gayer blades (northerners). Lester Hill and Kid Hill on the mandolins. It was a year later that ukuleles took over the college scene. (Such flash light pictures were taken with magnes:ium powder f lashed in an open pan.) 17 �YANKEE GO HOME THE BEREA CHAPEL Building and occupants little changed since my day. A product of student labor, even to the makin•g of the bricks. registration and repeated the next seme-;ter. Hymns and prayers were over. Nine hundred of us were reaching for our books. Then Prexy thus: "I want every student that comes from north of the Mason-Dixon line to stand up. " Back in the balcony, a half dozen of us rise. "Now I want all who live east of Boone Gap to stand up." Fifteen or twenty from the Bluegrass counties respond. A dramatic silence while the Great Man peers ... And paces ... And lets his message sink in. The message is obvious but he must verbalize it: "So! How many are standing? A dozen? Twenty? No matter. You are an insignificant minority. Never forget it. Now to my vast majority of seated mountaineers I say : This is your school. So was it in the beginning. So is it today. So will it ever remain. Chapel dismissed." It was divisive stuff. The young city slicker (I considered myself a Chicagoan) was too immature to recognize the true nobility within so many of these ill clad characters. At least until 18 later wheni horseback trips to some of their homes (almost no roads, we followed the creek beds) opened my eyes. Campus rules, for such grown men, were amazingly strict. No smoking. The pipe they had puffed (along with their mothers) since childhood was taboo but a "chaw" in the cheek was routine. Dancing? No. At least not the ballroom, arm-around-the-girl type. But weekend trips to the "painted ladies" in Richmond were condoned. Yes, there wem co-eds and these could be dated in Ladies' Hall or at lectures or on hay rides up to East Pinnacle. I never heard of one being laid. If it had happened, I'm sure the girl would have been fired, the boy rEiprimanded. This was indeed the routine procedure back at Todd in those double-standard days. After a discovered roll-in-the-hay (our small horse barn had an adequate mow) the boy involved vvas scolded, the housemaid banished, ala Isabelle in East Lynn. �DEWEY DECIMAL DAYS LABOR ANO LEARNING This was, and is, a great school. lt was, and is, a school for underprivileged, for Blacks, for Appalachians. The legend on the Kentucky Historical Marker near the campus credits the start of the school to an abolitionist preacher, John Fee, and his political backer, the liberal Cassius Clay. Reading t.his plaque was my first matriculation shock. On a grandfather's knee I had learned that he started Berea. Founded was the word our family used. Weill, yes. ln a way, true. Fee begged the money, putrchased the land, built a classroom shack and then llooked around for a scholar to develope this into a college. Rogers, who had done work for the American Missionary Society (an original backer of Fee's project) was chosen for the seemingly hopeless task. A college? Where Blacks would be admi tted? In Kentucky? Madn ess! But inspired madness. Or, as Almanza subtitles his book , a S'tory of Providence. Thirty years later Noble Hill went t here because he heard that a poor sailor boy could work his way through. Grace Rogers wa.s there because her retired father had been President. I went there because of a family tradition that all of the grandchildren must have a baptism in this fount. My sister, Carol, preceded me by two years; my cousin, Jack, by one. The memory of his escapades (and his expulsion) was, on my arrival, still green. Later, I followed this brilliant and alcoholic eccentric again. This was to the advertising offices of Montgomery Ward's. His memory there was still vivid purple. The story is worth telling and I'll get to it in time. I hope. . \ I f~· l' 1· f ~r..;;:-~~~ . ..,..., ·I '~~,. ~~,' > n This is the Fee schoolhouse. He asked Almanza to turn it into a college. Berea was, and is, a work school. The only tuition is aL compulsory fifteen hours a week o f labor. An early interview and an apptitude test sends the student to the carpentry shop, the laundry, the bakery, whatever. Maybe the President's office. Maybe t he campus latrines. Personal preference, in my dayt was disregarded. I asked for the Power Plant where a great steam engine hummed a great generator to light our streets and buildings. My request was the result of a budding electrical engineering interest. In Todd I had strung wires from my room in West C0Ltag1· to th<! Watrous room in Clover Hall tl"or elc>c:Lronic t;Ommunication while solving Algebra rrohlcms. ~' irst this talk was the dickety-dack of a Lclegraph but later the dit-dah of Marconi's spark-gap produced "wireless." lt was all elemental stuff compared to our son 's electronic competence at a like age wh en he was designing new hetrodyne circu iL.c; for radio. The point of my story is, once, again, Lu ck. Time and Chance happeneth to all. To Hill, it happeneth happily. Habitually. God always loads the dice in his favor. This time by sending him to a Library instead of to a Power Plant. And to a semester of infinite delight and superlative education. Our Library·- A typical "Carnegie" structure. He had long loved libraries for their reading joys. Now he was to learn the cexcitement of their research possibilities. Our Carnegie-built edifice housed a reference department th.at was surprisingly good. We even had a New Yor k Times Index of sorts, a one-volume listing for t he War Years. No actual file of papers, of course, and microfilming was a dozen years away. But the references in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature were mostly available there on our shelves. Marvelous! Marvelous too were the uses of a newly discovered Shakespeare Concordance, even more fun than my grandfather's Bible Concordancce. Marvelous again were the delights of the Poetry Index. But why bore you with details? Scholarship had been glimpsed. If- not pursued . It was years later when, devoid of any doctorate, I talkHd myself into the bowels of the Washington Folger, the California Huntington and the Chicago Nevvbuty (to work on our Shakespeare texts) that I had such literary fun. Some of my assigned Carnegie duties were dull Dewey Decimal cataloguing of books from rich, or dead, donors. Most of what I remember was thrilling and some was ego building. Like sitting at the Reference Desk and acting the Big Shot. We boasted 30,000 volumes, not much by today's standards but then the largest college library in Kentucky. (Berea's new and impressive Hutchins' still holds this distinction.) Our diminutive, dy- 19 �JAMES WATT RAINE namic director, Euphemia Corwin, had taken her training at Columbia under the great Melvin Dewey himself. She ran a tight ship with her inadequate crew of only a dozen or fifteen students, part of whom had to spend their time driving a horsedrawn Bookmobile into the hills. l flattered myself 1 was this Dutch gal's favorite. At least she made a pret ense of bemoaning my passing as I left. This came the second semester when Kid Hill was transferred to the registration desk at Boone Tavern. Actually, a glorified bell-hop job. Sign the drummer in. Check him out. And answer his hung-over, morning buzzer to illustrate Eugene Field's song of the inebriate whose Sweetest Sound on Earth was "The clink of the ice in the pitcher I The boy brings up the hall. " BOONE TAVERN as it was in my bellhop days. A new wing has now been added on the left. DEBT TO DOCTOR RAINE · ·es, I am in debt to Berea's Library but even deeper in debt to Berea 's English department and its brilliant Chairman, J ames Watt Raine. He taught two courses; Basic Composition and Advanced Composition. (Creative Writing, schools call it today.) A placement exam put me in his advanced section, a fact that may tell more about my competition tl)an my . skill. My literary conceit, which was monumental, may have helped. Since childhood I held the egotistic assumption I would have a career in Letters. Roger Walter Mitty had a recurrent fantasy of accepting Pulitzer prizes in Literature and graciously giving all the credit to his uncles. Don't laugh . Too loud. You had your day dreams too . This lad's were partially explainable. He had written a piece, in third grade, that was published in St. Nicholas Magazine. (On their Children's Page.) In highschool he had a contribution accepted in the prestigeous B.L.T. Line -a-Type column in the Tribune. (It was a Jabberwocky parody.) Now back to Doctor Raine : He had been a preacher. There were whispers, probably apocryphal, he had been defrocked. His son was being tried in a parentage case. Such talk only humanized the , man. I adored him. Partly because he said I had talent but mainly because he brought the precious gift of inspiration. This is the measure 20 of greatness in any English teacher. A pox on your petty-thinking pedant, the insecure man with the blue pencil. Fences are made for those who cannot fly . Hold it, Hill! That quote just slipped off my fingers and onto the typewriter. Proving I'm mentally back in Raine's classroom. l 'll ex plain : The good doctor not only taught us how to write, he taught us how to read. As to the former, I can hear him expounding now : "Write with fury, Roger. Correct with phlegm." Or again, "Your sentences are belabored, Roger. They try too hard . Whittle them. Sandpaper them down until they sound as easy as Shakespeare." Great phrase. Great truth. And about his reading program: The fences quotation above is from Elbert Hubbard. My heart leaped up when first I read that provocative line. Here was a guy talking about me. I hated fences. Ergo, I was destined to fly. (Hollow laughter here from the still Earthbound oldster.) Then there was Thoreau. Sure, I had read his Walden. But now his Civil Disobedience doctrine! Wow! Right up my . alley. This was the drummer I could hear. Let's march! Most memorable of all was my discovery of Tom Dekker. How come those Elizabethans all spoke with the tongues of angels? This lover of life, and scorner of things, wrote the most profound quatrain ever set into English type. I state my judgment, of course, not God's. Maybe not yours. Tastes differ. When Keats first looked into Chapman's Homer he flipped. And wrote his extravagant poem of praise. When Roger looked into Chapman's Homer he yawned. And considered Pope's Translation superior. Now the boy had his turn at playing stout Cortez. He had looked into Dekker's quatrain . Here it is: "Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? 0 sweet content! I Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed? 0 punishment! I I needs must laugh to see how fools are vexed I To add to numbers still more foolish numbers." It was the Miller of the Dee text again, this time in Elizabethan words, in prescient, timeless words. I'm tempted to elaborate but I'll resist. At least for now. ..... - - - J l - .. • THE FATHER OF THE COLLEGE I can't end this Berea chapter until your ancestor-founder is given an evaluation more serious (and more just) than intimated earlier when dealing with his Journals. I've just re-read those pages with some chagrin because they are sketchy, even flippant. Here in his beloved school there is no flippancy about this man. He is revered. More than Fee it seems. His Birth of Berea College is back in print and displayed on every counter. I thought I'd .send one to each of you grandchildren but the $8.50 price gave me pause. (It's the Nova Scotia ancestry, ye ken.) Read Joanne's copy. Or the one • ... �L_ L: L The new HUTCHINS LIBRARY. Here your great, great grandfather's Journals are stored and available for your study. Also Pretty Grandma's "Full Forty Years," her books of mountain stories and much other family material including a copy of this volume. Emily Hill has. Read, most of all, those priceless Journals. Then do that dissertation. You'll find these heirlooms in the Hutchins Library, not in our family archives as I told you earlier. It's like this: Hortense and I have just spent two delightful days in Berea receiving VIP treatment from a new president and a long-time librarian, Elizabeth Gilbert, soon to retire. She, too, worked under my mentor, Miss Corwin. She, too, remembers Pretty Grandma who came, in 1920, to dedicate a new dormitory, Elizabeth Rogers Hall. It's heartening to find this school much the same as I knew it. Even in looks. Those majestic campus oaks look actually smaller than the ones of my memory. We promised that the Rogers Journals would return to Kentucky. This makes sense. No family storage is so safe. And they belong down there in the Hutchins Library where the Weatherford-Hammond Appalachian Collection is the finest extant and the Berea Archives form an important part thereof. You will always have access here for research. A letter placed in the fly leaf of Journal No. 1 officially promises this to any Rogers descendent. Your study of these diaries can be well started from the Xerox duplicates Joanne has of each page. But the ink, on one section of about thirty pages, has paled and is legible only on the original. You will want to consult the other wealth of material waiting for you there. For instance over a hundred Almanza letters to and from presidents that succeeded him. He left his post in 1878 but was a trustee until his death. Eulogious statements about the man abound. Discount, as I do, the routine praise of obituaries and the retirement plaudits but note the many statements of love and appreciation, to him and about him from students and co-workers. Hortense and I spent only three hours here. We hastily skimmed the contents of just a few of the Rogers folders. I copied one paragraph typical of what I mean. It is from Burritt Fee (son of John G.) to his father. Burritt is a graduate student at Oberlin along with Raphael ("Rafy") Almanza's son. Is Almanza threatening to leave for a Sabbatical at a higher salary. We don't know. We only know Burritt writes in part: Oberlin, June 20, 1874. Rafy tells me that his mother's health is so uncertain and his papa is so tired and so pressed with debt that the family will need to make a change {or three or six months. I know it would be hard to get along next term without his ready cheery help in Church and College yet Berea would better lose all the Faculty below him than to wear out the most helpful enthusiastic worker she ever had. Such a man is seldom found. Our Dr. Barrows with all his learning does not bring out the idioms and beauties of the Hebrew as well as dear Dr. Rogers when we were studying Greek Testement. Then there is much here about Pretty Grandma. I asked Miss Gilbert to xerox the title page on a compilation of her stories. That "J. M. Rogers" publisher is probably her son Joe because the Market street address is that of the Philadelphia Inquirer where Joe then sat in the seat of the mighty. We know that some of her many mountain stories were printed in National magazines, the Independent for one, and were used by the American Missionary Society in their fund raising campaigns. Some individual booklets were printed by The Berea Press. There is one on file printed by The Todd Press. 21 �HISTORY'S JUDGEMENTS This Berea chapter is being written in the Midwest. Your geriatric, sun-soaked, Floridian g:randpru:ents are on their annual October trek north for family felicity and fall foliage. I punch this out in the Racine Library where I've just decided to give up (at least for now) the Almanza evaluation. I turn instead to those valuable volumes, the Dictionary of American Biography. Here are the enduring epitaphs of our county's early great. My once wounded pride was mildly assuaged to note that here Rogers rates more space than Fee. Thus: ROGERS, JOHN ALMANZA ROWLEY ( Nnv. 12 , 1828-July 22, 190(>), Congregational clerg-yman, c<l11rator, was horn in Cromwell, Conn., the son of John C. and E li7.aheth (Hamlin) l~og-crs. I le alfc111kc1 Williams Academy, Storkhriclg-c, Mass., until his parrnts moved to Ohio, ancl then entered Oherlin College. After receiving the degree of A.n. in r85r, he prepared for the ministry in Oberlin Theological Seminary, supporting himself by teaching in Oberlin Academy and, during the long vacations, in New York City. He graduated in 1855 and the following year married Elizabeth Lewis Embree of Philadelphia, a Quaker girl. Ou his weclcling trip he was ai;kcd to take a group of orphans to Roseville, Ill. After preaching in the Congregational church of that town, he was invited to hecome its pastor and was there ordained. He remained in Roseville for about two years, and then, hearing that a friend had given up missionary work in Kentucky because of hardship and clanger, he felt impelled to go there himself. The spirit and ideals of antislavery Oberlin had made a deep impression upon him, and he felt that nothing coul<l hdp Kentucky so much as a similar Christian college. A few years hcfore, John Gregg- Fee [q.v.] hacl cstahlishcd an anti-slavery church in what came to he known ai; Berea, Mad ison County, Ky., and in 1855 hacl opened a school. Rogers chose this place for his lahors and in April 1858 moved to Berea with the indorsement and financial support of the American Missionary Association. Herc he ancl his wife hegan teaching fifteen pupils in a room the sides and roof of which were of split claphoarcls. Rogers made desks, maps, and charts, and introduced such startling innovations as music, pictures, and lectures. The school proved popular, and before the close of the term its enrollment had greatly _increased. The following term two additional. teachers were employed. Rogers was one of the little g roup which drew up a constitution for a college, completed and signed in July 1859, a stipulation of which was that the college should be "under an influence strictly Christian, and, as such, opposed to sectarianism, slaveholcling, caste, and t.:vcry other wrong institution or practice." John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry inlla111<·cl the whole South a11d in l.kccmhcr 1859 Hog-l·rs aud t<·n others Wl:n: onkn·d hy an arn1ed 111oh to kavc the state. They appealed to Governor M ag-oflin, who answered that he coulcl not protect them. They then left the state, hut con- 22 tinued to 111ake payn1t·nh on land they had bo11g-ht for the site of the collq~e. Aflt:r serving- for a ti111e as traveling- secretary of the American Missionary Association, in New York and New Eng-land, Hogns hecame pastor of the l'reshyterian church in f>t'r atur, Ohio, with the understanding that he 111ight leave at a month's notice and return to Kentucky. In 1865 the exiles went hack to Berea and reopened the school. Rogers conducted it ancl wa~ also associated with Fee in the pastorate of the church. A college charter was obtained and the institution grew rapidly. Rogers was instrumental, in 1868, in having the trustees call Edward H. Fairchild, then head of the preparatory department at Oberlin, to the presidency, but remained as professor of Greek until 1878, and served as trustee up to the time of his death. After resigning his professorship, he was pastor of a church in Shawano, Wis., for five years. He then retired to Hartford, Conn. His death occurred at the home of a daughter-in-law in Woodstock, Ill. John Raphael Rogers [q.v.] was his son. this as a memorial to his artistic and musical father but died before its completion in 1935. Edwin Embree sent us a program, now in the files, giving the dedication speech by his older brother, Will Embree and the acceptance speech by President Hutchins. While I was at these tomes, I looked into the niche History has reserved for Uncle Raphael. As with Almanza, a child's fierce pride in this man's greatness was later deflated. The boy grew up hearing that his uncle had invented the Lineotype. He was to learn that the world gave this credit to a kraut by the name of Mergenthaler. Where lies the truth? Like the Rogers-Fee dispute, in ambivalence. Raphael's machine, the Typeograph, (old printers call it the "Rogers Wirebaby") preceded Mergenthaler's Lineotype. It worked. And it "justified" (filled out both edges) on the slug-cast lines. Mergenthaler's machine could not duplicate this trick because of Rogers' patent, a parallel wedge to separate the words and even out the lines. But the German had a system, better than Rogers' wires, for distributing each matrix back into its proper slot in a magazine after the slug had been cast. Conf~ing? Well, read what has gone into history. - - �LAST OF THE PIONEERS Here it was my intention to reproduce another xerox. But the dime-in-the-slot machine in the Racine library turned out too pale a copy. The printer says it won't do. Oh well. Maybe the biography was overlong anyway and the Lineotype is no longer a thing of awe. The world turns to computerized typesetting. Sic Gloria. Anyway, you can read about this uncle in almost any library. Ask the Reference desk for the American Dictionary of Biography. Pull down volume 16. Turn to page 105. While in these tomes, you might also want to learn more of John G. Fee and Cassius M. Clay. THE CLAY MANSION. "White Hall" is near Berea and is a must on your trip there. Colorful is the name for Cassius. Fee would lay a bible on the pulpit when lectur· ing for Emancipation. His partner would top it with a brace of pistols. Later Lincoln made him an ambassador. He took a mistress to the Russian embassy and returned with a boy of disputed parentage to fight with several ' presidents, back Greeley, marry a young girl, be judged insane and die in White Hall at ninety three. from Uw VC'ry llr!-!t (Lh<'ir W1!cl1lin1~ journ1•y w:ui in condurt of a compnny of orph:11H1 from T'hilatlclphin to th1~ Wc11t!) Hl'tLling with him in the bentJ· tiful villn~e of Rnsr.mont, Ill., nnd leaving this for the work of Her<'n. She clied at the home of her sonin-law, Principal Noble Hill, at Woodi;tock, Ill. There were pr!H1<.'nt her three son11, Rnphnel, the invcntC'r, Trui;tee of Re· rl'n College; Joseph, the journalist, of f'hilndelphin; Allen, also a journalist, of Cincinnati; and her daught.:r"R rlnughter, Mrs. Carol Hill Taylor, som('whnt nwrntly n Rluilcnt in ll<'rr.n. Mrs. Tnylor's mother, Grnce Rogers Hill, died in l!H4, and two other Rogers, sons in young manhoo1l, ono of them n tcnchcr in Berea, were drowned in Wisconsin in 1882. Also Mr. Edwin Fee, Mr. nnd Mrs. Howard F.mbree, of Richmond, and Miss Eschbnch, the nurse and companion of her latl'r years. Tho funernl waf! conducted by President IIutchinR, who read nppro· p1·inle Rcriptures, and Prof. Raine l<'d in prayer. Profcs!lor L. V. Dodge gnve 11lri'<· ing personal rcminisenrr.s of his ncqunintnnce with Mr11. Rogers, wh li:h begnn nmon~ tho 11omcwhnt primiti\'c 11urroundings of 187:l. Preaidcnt Fro11t, br.,·auRc of hi11 prccariou11 hcnlth, hnd written out hiH n<l1lrc1111, whirh we print in full. Now a 1921 Obituary in the Berea paper: Mrs. Elizabeth E1nbree l{ogers Tiii' hom('· j!Oing or M rH. HnJ:l'l"'i wns :111 <•v1·nt nf lllll\'ill1~ ~i1~nifka 111·1• ton very wide c-ird1•, holh on nc-count of l11•r prrsonal c-hnrnctf't" nnd rhnrm, nnd hrC'nW«' of lwr poi-tit.ion n~ nlmn!:t tlw lnxL !-l\11·vivnr of the hrroic group or B!'r('a'H Fnunclcrii. She WllH born nt F.mhrccville, on the hnttl<·ficlcl of the Ilrnnclywinc, n<'nr l'hilnclelphin, in F<!brunry, 18'.l!l, nlt.rnd<'<l Oberlin Collcgo with nn nlclc•r brother nn<l RiRt<.'r, where iihc mr.t nnd mnrricd Rev. J. A. R Rogcr11, cngn.cdng with him in r<•ligiou11 work THE BER EA GRAVEYARD. "Lots" of your ancestors are here. Not only th is one full of Rogers but another one fu ll of Embrees and even one with Hill monuments. This because Jenny Lester, a Berea teacher, was called to Pomona College in California to start America's first "Domestic Science" department. There she met and married Noble's brother, Joe, who sired my cousin, Lester, shown with the mandolin back on page 17. I've just turned to that picture. Good Lord! Pipe that "stock" the Edward ian dude has around his neck. No wonder he was on ly tolerated by the mountaineers. Lucky he wasn't ridden out of town on a rail. 23 �L _J BEREA DEPARTURE One final footnote on Berea for future family researchers! Before you go to those archives in the Hutchins you can start your study in any good library. Read Berea's First Century by Elizabeth S. Peck. Also Edwin R. Embree's Brown Americans, particularly the chapter headed A Kentucky Crusader. Edwin, a cousin and a Yale brain was long with the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1932 he was picked by Julius Rosenwald (the Sears Roebuck millions) to head his new Foundation with its money earmarked for Negro education in the South. The Embrees moved to Chicago. Lucky for us. They loved to entertain. With unlimited Rosenwald funds for fabulous parties. Woodstock cousins were always included and now mingled with the great and the near great. College presidents predominated. (Edwin was responsible for getting the Yale wonder-boy, Robert Hutchins, called to Chicago) but any current celebrity was grist for this social mill. From Bess Myerson (just chosen Miss America or Joe Louis (just dethroned by Ezzard Charles) to Eleanor Roosevelt (just emerging from her husband's shadow) or Lillian Smith (just making the best seller list) we spent night after night in stimulating company. The Chicago opening of any theatrkal hit (from Porgy and Bess to Life with Father) brought its midnight celebration in the Pump Room or the Tavern Club. Jane Addams was promised to us but never produced. Edwin arranged an evening in Hull House with that pioneer of social justice "as soon as Miss Addams gets back from California." Alas, her return that Spring of 1935 brought immediate hospitalization and death. Joanne shared in the Embree bonanza. She moved to the Ambassador East to room with their daughter, Katherine. T he girls went to Frances Parker School and spent their weekends at Todd . Now back to Brown Americans: The Kentucl<y Crusader Edwin writes about is John G. Fee. This was his grandfather in whose Berea home he grew up. I am related to Edwin (t hat middle initial stands for Rogers) because his mother, Laura Fee, married Will Embree, Lizzie's brother. So Pretty Grandma was Edwin's aunt. Also our Cousin Nellie, Noble's second wife, was his sister. My sister, Carol, typed out, before she died, some genealogies of the Fee, Rogers and Hill families. These will be found in my files. BACK TO PREP SCHOOL If Kentucky was such a rich experience, why did the boy leave and take his final preparatory year in Wisconsin? The answer isn't simple. For one thing, his worry-prone mother feared her darling son was following the wayward footsteps of her youngest brother and her oldest nephew. Berea was so undisciplined. My companions were so adult. She 24 I/ ·, • I Fairchild Hall built way back in '72 and Jong the wonder of the Cumberlands. Called LADIES' HALL in my day when it was a girls' dormitory. Still is. But there's a second one now named for Pretty Grandma. In 1910-1 1 all students ate here in the basement. Two dini ng rooms. Two prices. Both hard to believe: .75 or $1. 50 ~week. The lesser charge brought little or no fresh meat and no short sweetnin' mean ing sugar. Instead, long sweetnin' or "lasses." Actually the writer, spoiled brat that he was, ate his meals, after that first mo nth, in Boone Tavern's gourmet splendor. was sure I was "going the pace," to use her phrase, sewing wild oats along a primrose path. A cousin, years my senior and Berea-expelled had fanned these fears. Jack was working at Wards and weekending in Woodstock . Here he regaled his Aunt Grace with tales of all those Berea boys working their wicked wills upon the native girls down in the Glades. Up at Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, there was a stern school where Todd boys had done well. "What do you think, Noble? Wouldn't Wayland be better for Roger next year?" Noble preferred a second year in Kentucky. Hand-to-the-plow , you know, but he acquiesced. I wish I could say that Roger was wise enough to agree with his father. Not so. Oh, he had begun to appreciate some rugged virtues in the rustic life. Horse rental at a dollar a weekend was great. Fording those Spring freshets was fun but dreams of bright lights persisted. The immature lad still contrasted his foam-flecked ·beast with that brass-bound automobile waiting back home. Camping under a moon on a mountain, he would quote Noyes to himself till he fell asleep and then dream of a roaring Mitchell with an open throttle weaving through traffic on the Boul Mich. (Traffic was so delightfully weavable then.) Bright lights, here we come! .. �PREP SCHOOL SENIOR WAYLAND ACADEMY Wayland was one of several high-standard preparatory schools then associated with Chicago U. Emily Hill went to another, Francis Shimer at Mt. Carrol, Illinois. Exams were graded on the Midway. Severely. Sixty was a passing grade. Seventy Five, a cause for rejoicing. The school was narrowly Baptist as befitted its John D. ancestry. Our dour Principal, E. P. Brown, was a friend of Noble Hill, a fellow officer in the Private School Association. E. P. was a Baptist minister, newly turned schoolmaster and newly turning his school {the year I arrived) paramilitary. Did he sense the coming war? Maybe. No one else did. Sarejevo's bullet was two years away. We wore no uniforms but shouldered wooden rifles and did squads east and west. Then there was the bull-ring. With this new punishment tool, E. P.'s faculty became drunk with power. A minor infraction would bring a Housemaster's shout: "That'll be five hours for you, Hill." Do I exaggerate'? I don't think so ... I'm certain, at least, of one figure. It's burned into my memory. Fifteen. I was walking the ring, actually a semi-circle of sidewalk in front of our dormitory. Non-offenders also used part of this walk but communication between the just and the unjust was verboten. A fellow student came up the hill from town with a sack of candy. Out of the comer of my mouth I asked for some and he held it out. My hand was still in that bag when the officer of the day shouted from his overlooking window, "That'll be fifteen more hours for you, Hill." Fifteen! As God is my judge. More than a week of silly circulating each afternoon from 3:30 to 6:00 for a gum drop. Spring brought more durance vile. A "life sentence" in fact. Yes, such tales indict me. Sure, the boy was a smartass but the administration was a dumbhead and that bull-ring excess was self-defeating. Anyway, one last hard-to-believe example: Ice in Beaver Dam Lake broke up early that year. Sailor-Roger, poor on skates but confident on water, looked for a sloop to rent. A rowboat with a mast was the best available. This craft ferried him with two compatriots and two girls and two six-packs of beer to an island rendezvous. Arcady? Well, at least a pleasant gambol on the green. An innocent picnic, really. The girls were rowed, not ravished. The beer was consumed by those who liked it, not Hill. But Affie Dierson and Bono Goodman were fired. (A girl's mother had stormed in with a wild story to E. P. and my friends were second offenders on "alcohol.") Ho ·<>tu ff Hill (the name referred to his mandolin rendition of the just-out Alexander's Ragtime Band) was sent to that bull-ring for the rest of the year. I never told my parents and E. P. joined me in this secrecy. When my mother would visit., I would gel a reprieve. A pai·don c.:ame some weeks before graduation. WAYLAND HALL. Once this lovely old building housed an entire academy. In my day it was a boy's dormitory on the ten-acre campus of a co-ed school. The semi·circular sidewalk in front was our bull ring. This snapshot was made in 1973. So much for dull tales of dubious discipline. They dominate my memory of the place but dwelling on them gives you an incomplete and unfair picture of a good school with a fine faculty and exciting laboratories that I loved. Maybe a mother was right. Maybe a s~)n needed this nose-to-the-grindstone regime. He even had an athletic career here. Of sorts. That torn-out elbow was almost well. Seventy percent motion now. He had reaped, the summer before, a long-promised fifty dollar reward when he could touch his nose. (Appropriately enough, this was accomp lished with his thumb.) Now he made the basketball team. No star but he wore his "W" and knew transient glory when he sank a winning basket against St. John's. Something of a dead-eye, really. This because he had started shooting baskets at six, unique for those days. Which reminds me I was even conceited enough to try out, the next yeai-, for the Freshman squad in college. Folly. Which also reminds me to stop maudering on and move to my final fountain of formalized learning, Illinois. UNIVERSITY OF ILL/NOIS This will be a defensive chapter. Of necessity. My readers, replete with advanced degrees and academic honors, were all weaned on tales of a grandfather's collegiate high jinks. They probably echo Pamela's long-ago statement to her grandmother, "I don't think I would have liked Skipper when he was in college." Mayhap you're right, Pam. I hope you 're wrong. I know I would have adored you in those days, Phi Beta Kappa and all; probably tried to wean you away from Academia and take you to sea as did your Aussie boy friend later. �_J .. I COLLEGE FRESHMAN (Thank God he brought you back, with your liitle Tim, to delight us in Florida.) Our son also expressed undergraduate displeasure concerning a father's college immaturity. A mother's too. Roger Getty's gripe was different than Pam's. We wasted our ti1rie with Greek Letter foolishness. No denial from me, Rog. Just pride in your own more adult approach. In Providence, you were a founder of Brown's influential anti-fraternity pro-civil rights Lincoln Society. Marvelous! Your mother reached college a full year behind me. Her story (and defense) should wait. But her name has come up so I'll talk now about our Hellenic boarding houses. Mine was just another dormitory, the last of a long sequence starting in childhood. Hortense, in contrast, found new horizons and a blessed escape from life in lonely apartments that bulged with bickering. Now at last she tasted freedom. Delicious. More, she tasted adulation. Corn-fed girls from small-town highschools envied and emulated the city sophisticate (almost) from Hyde Park High. And then the boys. Wow! Four of them for every girl in that school. How they hovered. Here was something different. A delightful pixie oozing sex from every pore. The mystery is how I got the gal in the end, not how she lost her head over sorority life. All of which is two years ahead of my story. Let's go back. Freshman Pixie - Sophomore Pursuer Illinois is a Land-Grant college. This means that it was started shortly after the Civil War, along with twenty-six other such state universities, operating originally on federal funds derived from lands set aside for educational purposes under the terms of the old Morrill Act. In 1912, when your narrator made the prairie scene at Urbana-Champaign, the school was operating under funds from the amended Morrill Act of 1890. This reads in part: "The leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific or classical studies, and including Military Tactics, to teach such brands of learning as are related to Agriculture and Mech anic Arts. (Emphasis mine.. ) The university operates under this same charter today albeit with a preponderance now of state rather than federal funds. And boasts a 26 fine Liberal Arts department. Not so in 1912. At least a cocky freshman then made that judgment. He had looked forward all his life to college' Hallowed word in his fami ly; summum honum of intellectual delights. Yes, he had worn that college label briefly in Berea but this was suspect. Now he would find the real thing. Whose fault, the disappointment'? Maybe his. This much is certain: Compulsory English classes were taught, my freshman year, by bored graduate students dishing up dull fare (eighth grade grammar) to ill-prepared products of hick highschools. Hill, for the first time, found an English class a bore. But Lady Luck, as always, waited in the wings. Time and Chance had brought a new fad to American college curricula -- the "Elective System." No need now for a student to restrict his diet to any one discipline. Unless he worried about some distant degree. Not me. A great Engineering School beckoned. Wait up, you rambling wrecks, for an eager sophomore. Now that Berea frustration (the missed powerplant job) was sublimated. Hill became immersed in whirling wheels. First a two-semester course in Forge and Foundry. Iron rods pounded into links and then into chain with satisfying village-smithy pyrotechnics. Such hand hammering was preliminary to the supreme thrill (0 Vulcan virility, 0 Jovean joy) of operating that steam hammer! As so often in these rememberings, I now digress: This boy was called, along with other diminutives, Puny . Which may explain an early and an abiding passion for powerful machines. Item - Todd School maintained a winter home in t he Florida Keys where Kid Hill, grown old, bribed a drag-line operator to teach him the mysteries of his gargantuan earth mover. Thrilling. Item - Our Woodstock farm had its big tractor. Small, though, beside Wally Shuett's neighboring behemoth which pulled a seven-gang sod-buster and was available at times to this amateur plowman. Fantastic! Roughriding its iron seat, the view astern was awesome. Like a following sea in an ocean blow. Back there seven great waves of weeds were rolling and breaking to bury themselves beneath rich loam. I called Wally's wonder "The Angel of God." You remember those lilting lines in the Burial of Moses: For the angel of God I Upturned the sod/And laid the dead man there. Back now to the U. of I. Yes, I was a dabbler in college and earned no degree. Had your grandmother not bewitched me (and strengthened my spine) I might well have allowed a parent to push me back into a fifth year to work out that needed "major." Terrifying thought. Where, then, would you be, my loves? Where would I be? Yes, kids, there is a destiny that shapes our ends. Let us now bow our heads and join in the Doxology. IU �ENG INEER ING SCHOOL Sµeaking of dabbling, a course in Surveying was pure dcli!.!hL. Playing with those super toys, transit and theodolite. Now the young sailor for the first time had the fun of fixing his latitude by solar observation. He was fasc inated, too, by our first president's major piece of legislation, a subd ivision plan for his new nation. This plan was a product of George's surveying youth and gives us today our mile-square "sections" and six-mile-square "tow nships." Next time you jet across our land on a cl ear day notice those so-evident section-line roads on the checkerboard below you. Pull out your watch and compute your speed as you zip across these accurate mile-markers. Even in the desert where roads dwindle and fences fade, the surveyor's property lines and his hundred-and-sixty-acre quarter-sections are often evident. And in our cities (at least the ones laid out after colonial times) those mile square section lines show up as prominent through streets. I signed up , too, for something called Descriptive Geometry. Never heard of it? ~either had I but it came in a convenient time slot and they said it was mostly mechanical drawing. This had been fun in Todd. Still had t he instruments used back there under Seezy who, true to his imaginative nature, had early changed his assignments from dull projections of studbolts to a class project of mapping a campus. Great. Not so t his new drawing course although it proved highly useful later. Strange, because the mathematics involved in Descriptive Geometry relates to nothing in normal li fe. An architect with this skill properly plots a chimney's shadow on a roof having, say, thirty degrees of pitch and located in, say, forty degrees of latitude. Useless? Sure, for the average Joe. But Hill's reward was practical. Now a sloppy, childish handwriting was converted to a neat lettering ability soon marketable by a young husband laying out catalogue pages for Monkey Wards. Yes, the dabbler enjoyed Engineering but his heart was still linked to Letters. Back in the "L and A" School reigned a distinguished Shakespeare scholar, Stuart Pratt Sherman. T he boy must sit at his feet. Disappointment. Oh , the greal man wrote beautifully. Read his then best-selling My Dear Cordelia. But he spoke with an impediment consisting of a definite hesitation and an indefinite lisp. Even so he spent most of each hour verbalizing (and thus ruining) the Bard's poetry. A lad, brought up on the smooth rolling pentameter of Forbes-Robertson, Ben Greet or Noble Hill, found this hard to take. We studied Two Gentlemen of Verona. I remember little of that semester bev ond one witticism of the wise man as he announced the text we should purchase: "You can get your copy at the Co-op. Twenty-five cents. Reasonable, you'll agree, at only twelve and a half cents a gentleman. " Duti- fu l laughter from lhe class. 1've taught a lol of Shakespeare myself since then (and forced a lot or such duti ful laughter) but l never wished that particular play on a class. l've seen but one stage production, In Stratford, England. Ten years ago 1lortense and I drove across lhe Avon for a one-day stop and found Proteus and Valentine on the evening bill. Quickly 1 bought a copy of the Bard's minor work to brush up on. This so I could properly pontificate and protect my shaky status as Shakespearan scholar. If Sherman was a disappointment, two of his faculty fellows were delights: Chauncey Baldwin, an elderly savant who taught Bible Literature and Lew Sarett, a youthful law-student and poet who taught English . You will find books by each on our shelves: Baldwin's Our Modern Debl lo Israel and Sarett's Slow Smoke. I spent evenings in Baldwin's home. The great Hebraic scholar was related, by marriage, to Uncle Raphael and had known Almanza. Sarett, on the other hand, had little use for Hill but was greatly enamored of my girl. I don't mean that way; he was newly married and convinced Hortense was throwing herself away on an unworthy playboy . His solution: promote an alliance with an obnoxious, sanctimonious giant who captained our footba ll team and headed our YMCA. The plot failed, of course, and your ever-noble grandfather forgave him later when he was called to Northwestern and we became co-equal educators and almost neighbors. LEW SARETT OUTDOOR POET Darl ing of the Ladies' Lecture Circuit - 27 �ACCIDENTAL HEADMAST ER So mud1 for the short and simple an nals of the poor student. Should I brighten these rememberings wit.h accounts of colorful extra-curri cular capers? l think not.. You've all heard them on your grandmother's knee . Such Tales o( Hortense should be hers alone to be passed on, mayhap, to one more generation of her offspring. Starting out with that one of how I went to sleep on her porch the evening of our first date . This was in Chicago and was because I'd spent the previous night riding a freight train up from Champaign . Come to think of it, most such tales of feckless folly involve unorthodox travel- railroa d bumming, motorcycle slumming, roadside vagabonding. A yen to get someplace else. This persists. Right now, typing bores me. Think I'll drive to the yacht club and row out to Truant. My mania for movement may by hereditary. Uncles were constantly crossing the continent. A mot her found excuses to return to the East Coast at least twice a year, rationalizing that her small son's hernia could be treated only by some super medico there in Philadelphia. Thus t he boy became familiar with New York and Washington before Chicago. She was also addicted to local travel, summer picnics to Pistakee Bay, fourteen miles away, by team and surrey. When half of this team died and she was reduced to one-horse ignominy and to a one-township radius, we bought our automobile. Her brother Allan changed his career from writing to railroadin g (publicity) in order, he told me, to rate an unlimited pass. Her nephew Jack let a travel compulsion develop into a mania that lead to his death. But his story must wait. ONE HORSE IGNOMINY This could be tolerated if the single nag pulled an acceptable "stanhope." But for the beast to labor with no team-mate, pulling a two-seat "surrey" wa ~ to admit penury. Evaluation of my off-beat college career is difficult; defense is 'foolish. I am put to shame by the advanced degrees of a father and a grandfather; also those of children and of grandchildren. When, by 28 the accident or birth, I bc<'ame Headmaster or a great school, I attempted to cover my shame through some graduate Edueation courses at Ch icago U. How else could I face my peers in meetings of the Private Schools Association. But once I learned to talk their jargon, l round 1 didn't want to. The cocky kid again? Yes, but let me explain : If Nob le Hill 's school had been in the East things might have been different. Inferiority feelings might have lingered. But our Midwestern Association of Private Schools had, predominately, a military membership. Many of these institutions were mere reform schools for the rich. Even Todd's non-military competitors were, I felt, an obvious cut below us in educational honesty . In fact only our Camp Directors Association seemed genuinely interested in education and in children. The boarding school meetings con centrated on business and on parents; ways to tie t hem up in binding contracts. Inferiority fears now dissolved but greater ones emerged . Could I spend years in t his job without becoming equally bumptious, overweaning? Headmasters are big frogs in small puddles . They constandly speak down not only to boys but to faculty. Ex cathedra. Such fears were heightened by a grevious mistake made early in my administration. Meeting out punishment for a rule infraction, now forgotten, by a never-to-beforgotten lad named Tan Little, I was harsh , too harsh. This attractive, tight lipped moppet from Kentucky had the full name of Powhatan and a full belief in an Indian ancestry. Could be. The little brave never forgot and never forgave. I was devastated . I had but one qualification for my job. Kids liked me. Or once did. The mistake was carved into my mind . A warning was also carved into my desk. Not on the mahogany top; on the pull-out board to the right . There it served as a constant reminder that I should be myself and not a bad imitation of a stern father. The carving: GOD'S BODYKINS MAN! It confronted me thousands of times over the years and became (with its implications) my educational philosophy. Do you recall Hamlet's archaic expletive? And the words of wisdom which fo llowed? Probably not. Your grandfather, overly prone to spout his Shakespeare, must fill you in. The speech comes near the end of the Players' Scene. The Prince, in his scheme to "catch the conscience of the King" has arranged for that traveling troupe to play, the next evening, the Murder of Gonzago with the insertion of his "dozen or sixteen" si:iecial lines. He turns the troupe over to, Polonius saying: "See the players well bestowed. Let them be well used." Polonius answers: "My Lord, I will use the m according to their deserts." Then Hamlet 's great rejoinder : "God's Bodykins man, much better! Use every man according to his desert and who shall escape whipping? Use them alter your own honor and dignity." -- - - �Back again to Champaign: Ye;, the colle~e boy's academic career was questionable and his offcampus high jinks disgraceful but he managed a campus literary career of minor distinction , to wit: Wrote a book of questionable verse which had an exceptional sale. Wrote lyrics and book for a Student Opera. Edited the Siren, our humorous monthly ala Harvard 's Lampoon. Wrote the "Roast Section" of the Illio, our college annual, for two years, jobs bringing in what passed for wealth in those distant days. These fat volumes were produced each year by the Junior class under a loose faculty supervision. Two jobs, Editor-in-Chief and Business Manager, carried monetary rewards some of which were even legitimate. Competition for these jobs started with Freshmen. Two years of slavery winnowed out winners who were rewarded with minor honor and major pelf. Roger Bronson, serious brother in our ATO bond, a lad who deplored my unorthodoxy then and a tycoon who deplores it now, won the young rope slinger and gum chewing monologist named Will Rogers. Main memory or his act: the twirling of a rope circle that constantly widened until it whistled and sang and dipped and threatened out over the heads of cowering patrons in the first dozen rows. Above the sizzle of this circle the cowboy was heard, head down in simulated bashfulness, chompping his gum and mumbling his monotone: "Never had but one- chomp, chomp- ax-cee-dent with this here- chomp, chomp, - whir-lee-gigchomp- and that was in a - chomp, chomp, college tauwn! Then too, the Auditorium on the campus brought entertainment and education of cherished memory. A winter "Star Course" gave subsctibers a dozen plays, concerts and lectures and brought two highlights to my young life. These were evenings spent with long worshipped heroes, John Masefield and Vachel Linsey. Not just sitting in a numbered seat and listening to a stage performance. Far more. ,, "lR..~ KIRKPAT and BRONSON ILLIO', Eager Beavers in Student Activities Eager Beavers in Later Life The lazy Hill profited in their wake KIRKPATRICK L L L LJJ .BRONSON Business Manager prize. Sid Kirkpatrick, an equally A person to person , in-front-of-a-fire talk. This bedilligent lad, won out as Editor. Kirkpat later cause many of the stars were interested in youth and headed McGraw Publishing and once again had your in the college scene and available for dinner in a grandfather writing under him, this time doing some fraternity house or with some other student organiShakespeare books in collaboration with Orson zation. In Vachel Lindsey's case our house even Welles. I said these fllios were always produced by rated his overnight stay. The trick for such treats Juniors. How come I also did the Roast Section as a was to get your bid in early with the entertainment Senior? Because the appointed writer became sercommittee and offer prominent faculty members as iously sick and I was hired. Big dough, by 1916 well as students as hosts. ATO had, as a faculty standards, was involved; a hundred and fifty bucks. · member, Illinois' famed Dean of Men, Thomas Arkle The year before I had been paid mostly in "kind" Clark as well as a galaxy of others. For instance (as a meaning merchandise paid Bronson for ad space. Vachel Lindsey magnet) Frank Scott, a left-leaning Item, a new typewriter. Item, a year's supply of English professor, a Socialist whose magazine tickets to the Orpheum, Champaign's split-week articles were then widely read. Lindsey, you may vaudeville house. Actually, my vaudeville education remember, was (or had been) a vagabond. Francois started a year earlier when I heard such singers as Villon reincarnate. He had tramped midwestern Van and Schenk, such comedians as Webber and roads for years, minstrel-like, trading poems for Fields or Gallagher and Sheen while looking straight lodging. Poems such as: "Factory windows are aldown at the tops of their heads. This was from the ways broken,/Somebody 's always throwing bricks./ fly gallery, peering through a maze of scenery lines Factory windows are always broken,/Somebody where I worked as a stage hand. (A fraternity brothplaying Yahoo tricks./ Chapel windows are never er's father owned the theatre and the local Union was broken./How do you s'pose they're built so weak.) One vivid memory of those backstage nights strong?/ Factory windows are always broken./ End was the sharing of a beer and some bull .wjth a rising of the broken window song." Of course he repeated 29 �JOHN MASEFIELD for us around the fire lhe other numbers I.hat ha<l brought him fame: t he bvom/ay, lwomlay, boomlay, BOOM! of The Congo and t he roaring cadence (balanced by the charming chirping of lhe roadside wren) in The Santa Fe Trail. I was a callow undergradual.e un the side lines but able to rate some attention from the radical poet because I had once known (at least sat at the feet of) t he greal Socialist, Eugene Debs . This was as a boy and in the public square in Woodstock. Debs was a prisoner in our County Jail next to the old Court House. Co nvicted and sentenced to a year in Cook County (for alleged complicity in the Pullman riots) he had been "boarded out" to Woodstock because of crowded conditions in Chicago. Beloved of all including our Sheriff, in whose home Clarence Darrow was a frequent visitor, Debs was permitted to serve out his time (and entertain the citizenry) underneath the late-lamented elms in t hat sti ll lovely, public-square park. With Masefield I fo und no dinner intimacy and in his stage delivery I found initial disappointment. T knew by heart every word he was to read except his book-length narrative verse, Dauber. I had spouted his poems to the heavens. I had spouted them to the seas. But the author's own spouting, nay his droning, was so different, so very, very different. Ask me to do his spoken Roadways for yo u sometime. I can closely duplicate him but explaining his style on paper is something else. It's a flat , uninflected, slow, metronomic chant that's rlisconcerting at first but grows on you till you finally feel the monotonous surge of the open sea. Try it yourself. No inflection , remember . The dots indicate pauses. Here goes: One road leads lo London,/ . .. One road leads to Wales./ . . . . My road leads me seaward/ .... By the white flapping . . . sails./ My road leads me, lures me/ . . .. West, East, South and North/ . ... Most roads lead men homeward/ . . . My road leads me forth/ To add more miles to the tally/ or grey miles left behind/ . .. In search of that one 6eauty/ . .. God put me here . .. to find. Getting back to the lesser literary output of this writer, I find no issues of the Siren magazine in the files. Pity, because pieces were in there much better than my own. Pieces by Po Field for one. By Samson Raphaelson for another. Sam was soon to become famous for such plays as The Jazz Singer. "Po" was lmown to the end of a distinguished advertising career by this contraction or a pet name given by his famous father. When Eugene Field died , his Poesy came to Todd at the age of eight. He was a year older and a lot brighter than Roger but a boon companion. After Todd 's graduation (tenth grade) he went direct to Champaign where the University then had a Preparatory Department. So when I re· joined this longtime partner in crime, he was three 30 years a head or me in campus wisdom and in campus guile. Item: We founded the Lambkins Society for stu dent playwrights, composers and Thespians, mainly lo design our own show-off insignia, a golden key engraved with the classic drama masks. Six feel away, however, a dead ringer for thal proud pendant o f Phi Beta Kappa. The Hill book of verse ment ioned earlier WdS called Boneyard Babblings. The "boneyard" was an open stream (some said sewer creek) flowing through town. Losers in the perpetual night wars between freshmen and sophomores were tossed into these waters. Fraternities forced their pledges to compete in tugs of war across the stream and lo hang on for a wet ride if defeated. For the fiftieth reunion of our class- t hat was back in June of '66- l was asked to compose an ode. The resul tant Runic rhy me was put on t he souvenir program reproduced here. It was disconcerting to find a greybeard's style identical to a schoolboy's. Yes, Wordsworth, the child is father of the man. And the Apostle Paul was probably bragging when he said he put away ch ildish things. (Few of us do.) We know for sure he retained those childish ideas on sex but that's for another chapter. As for Hill 's own Babblings in that early day , one lone copy remains. At least that's all I - - - -.. .. - -- �CAMPUS CHARACT ER know or. Others may t urn up in some alti(' after the fune ral baked me<1 Ls. Only Joanne and I lascy have loyally kept their copy, like Li ttle Boy Blue's toy, sturd y and staunch on its shelf. From this I took Ed Morrisey's illustrations used in the dinner program . Ed , too, made big dough in advertising. Ed, too , has joined William Cullen's innumerable caravan. All, all (nearly all) are s le1~ pi n g on Edgar Lee's hill. I won't reprod uce here any of the book's verse. The reunion piece gives you it.s flavor. But I'll show excerpts fr om two prose pieces, o ne a Bible parody and the other a King Arth ur takeoff. Such styles were obsessive with Puny and Po in childhood; Round -Table talk with many a pardee, a quolha and a Gadzooks. We outgrew it but Po backslid for a piece in the Siren and Puny reverted for the prose bits in his Babblings. Minor successes in student authorship were probably predictable from a boy born bookish and long fascinated with words, their sounds, their nuances, their potentiality for whittling into the felicitous phrase. Wha t was unpredictable, nay, surprising, was t he fact t hat this shy and reclusive kid turned into a Campus Character. At least by reputation and in the pu blic prints. A distinctive ni ckname was a factor. A proclivity for getti ng into scrapes, with the Law and with the Dean , was another. The biggest factor was that over the years his pals wrote the Campus Scou l gossip column in the Daily Illini and hot copy was hard to come by. Puny's vissisitudes, in jail o r simply in jeopardy, in fact or in fic tion, became a repeat gag, like the sup posed stinginess of Jack Benny today. Such undeserved notoriety started early with an incident in the FreshmanSophomore Fall Fight, a mad bit o f mayhem staged annually on t he !football field some Saturday when the varsity game was out of town. For each of the four-hundred-man teams, the objective was simple: move a nine-foot push-ball into opponent's territory and keep it ther1e till the end of a single forty -five THEACTUALBONE YA RO As it ends up, a lake, in an Urbana park. mi nute peri od. An y method was legal., short or using " wea p ons." Seniors were o ffic ia ls. Med-school J uniors manned a First Aid tent. I got a bandaged head , sui tably gory, and a picture in the paper captioned: BLOODY CASUALT Y. They call him Puny al lhe A 1'0 house bul in Salurday s melee he proved a mighty man of valor; a {aclor, lhou,gh wounded, in the Freshman victory. This fi ct ion was straight out of Stephen Crane. My Red Badge of Courage was received as I {orsook the fight. The nose had been bloodied; the wind kn ocked out. Thie poltroon was staggering to the rear when a fe ll ow freshman , head down and helmeted , charged in to slight ly split a coward 's scalp . And so to t he First Aid. And thence to t he First Page. Not e: The head line above is quoted fro m memory; possibly faulty. It was my first t ime in t he college public prints .. My last came to light just the other day. I was going through musty memorabilia ; a Campus Scout colum n turned up. It was dated May, 1916, and written in mock Society Page style. As fo llows: The universi ty communi ty was astounded Thursday when the engagement of M iss Hortense Gettys, ex-'17 to Roger Hill, ex-editor of th€! Roast Section was announced at a Lea given at t he Kappa Alpha Theta house. This came as a compl et,e surprise as no one dreamed the man in the case w•oul d ever settle down and no one suspected the girl or being so blind. Miss Gettys has always been cine of the most popular girls on t he campus and when she left school at. the end of last semester no one, even in his wildest moments would have thought she was going into retirement preceding her marr iage. Mr. Hill's popularity look i ts own vacati on last year [a reference lo violent enmity engendered by certain copy in my Roast Section/ but he is now once aHain the inimica· ble jester of the A lpha Tau Omega court.. He is now in the L and A school after hav·ing gained the bread t h of knowledge offered by ever y other department except domestic science. He has taken them all. He is sai d Lo have the habi t of taking anything that. lies around loose. The Daily Illiini congratulates the happy groom and takes the opportunity of t hanking him now for his many involuntary contri butions to our Campus Scout. Too much of college capers; let's move on. First a paragraph of summation: My main regret is that I goofed off in so many co'urses. Passing was the desideratum and passing was too easy. Exams then were all essay type. Here a lazy kid could substitute verbal proficiency for subject knowledge. The trick was to write volumniously. The overworked faculty reader was hum an ; he would merely skim your tome. Except for the opening page!s. These he would read and t hese must contain the meat of your meager knowledge. Trouble was t his sort of selfcheating worked. So I missed out on a scholar's real need and real reward, mental d iscipline. Pamela, you 're right. You wouldn't have liked me then. 31 �CLASS REUN ION I I I I I I I I T he Shade of our !feared and revered De on Thomas Arkle Clark sends down, we trust, benedict ion on T HE G OLDEN J UB I LEE D I NNER CLASS OF 1916 [ ILLINI UNI O N B LDG ., JUNE 18 , 1 966 I I SO UVENIR PROGRAM for that CLASS REUNION DINNER in which a compulsive rhymster reverted to a youthful habit and a youthful st yle. 32 II �COMPULSIVE RHYM ESTE R To t/H' "'"·'·~ of '16 from Uo~<'f (Puny l Hi// : learned ol late that R oqer Bronson and others wer" laying plans to endanger these festi vitie s by inllicllng o rendtlton ol certorn moronic mumblings of my misspe nt youth. They hove resurrected a th111 volume of th inner verse which 1 hove long been at pain s to lorget. 1 would dismiss such modne:>s a s on idle threat hod 1 not heard Bronson, his tongue loosened wtlh wine, do exactly t his at more than one Lake Forest dinner party. Rhyming con become a real addiction and I was long o de bauchee. By gradual withdrawal through the year:., I kicked the habit. The Brons on threat caused an immediate relapse. The monkey wa s again on the back. The mind once more began to reel, the rhyme s to dance. Paper and pencil (the flask of th is vice) s lip s urreptitiously from pocket. l' 11 have just one innocent jing le. Like: A pox on Bronson and his breed For re surrecting ancient screed And likewise Krug and S i d Kirkpat And others who have grown s o fat. J s peak of lot in term s of dough. The y'v e ra k ed il in, they planned it so Wh ile Pu ny ' s s tayed his s k i nny se lf But long on I un ii sh ort on p e ll . "Come to bed" soys a wife (Hortense Gettys, Theta '1 7) who ho s been through thi s before. "You'll fee l better in the morning . • Oh yeah? An inebriate con quit right ofter o fir st sweet taste? By morning, I hod appointed myself th e Oliver Wendell H olme s of '16. You remember his piece written for o reunion of the famou s Harvard class of '29 which includ ed Emerson et. al. It stori ed: We're twenty, we're twenty, Who soys we are mor e ? He' s tipsy. Young 1ae kanapes Show him the door. None of us t onight, Doctor Holmes, will persuade ourselves, drunk or sober, that we're still twenty. But it's salut ary and it's plea s ant for greybeards to remember that they once were. So : BUNCH UP SIXTEEN (50 years after) My heart leapt up wh en Sid Kirkpot Sent me his note announcing that This wa s the Spring to stage our spre e, This was t he June of Jub ilee. Come fill the cup and drink un ti l The stag at eve s hall have his fill And toa s t i n fine nostalg i c praise Those vani sh ed Tommy Arkle day s. Dig d.;ep in memory. Yes, delve Back to the fall of nineteen twe lve. Remember, if you con , that ze a l We used to make o class congea l , When through the night in beanies green We gave our call, "Bunch up S ixteen!" The Sophs were ganging for a fray. We'd s how those punks they'd had their da)'.. "Hey ! Up there Frosh - Come join the s cene! The night is young! B unch up S ixteen! Ah ye s, the night was young - and bold And we were young - but now we're old And Memory is the only lane To lead us back to youth again. Come take that lane along with me Back to your frivolity. Stroll with me beneath these trees And dream of old carnalities When blood was hot and h ear ts were gay And each one h eld a world at bay. Remember how you filled t hose nights With all th e primitive delights And took your I un for good or ill Sans the con tra ce pt iv e p i ll For didn't Robe:t Herrick s ay Cother ros ebuds while ye may? YC! s , 1n thi s reunion time Each returns him to som e crime For each of us hos quilt in truth If nothing more than wasting youth. Another guilt we s hare today I s deeming college youth a stray And thinking they are all a mess Whe n they're just twenty one or les s . 0 wondrous age. 0 time for st r ife And yearning toward o better life. Whittier s aid "I give you joy, I was onc e o barefoot boy." College kids, I dig you well, I was once for rais ing hell. And l ike you, this twig was bent Anti the Establishment. E v en now the tree inclines Toward your pi cket s and your sign s. N ot, however, mo s t of u s Who just wish you'd s top your fuss And I S peak in rhyme tonight Mainly for the righteous Right. If the truth may now be had Rea lly we were not so bad. Since we left these i vy doors We beat depression, fought two wars; Didn't cure the common co ld But some honors r eached our fold; Didn 't land upon the moon, Didn't give Mankind the boon Of Peace on Earth. Ah no, forsooth That day must wait on final Truth And half a century is for Too short a tim e to catch a star. So veni, vidi without vink Will sum up most of us, I think . We leave behind the office now; We leave behind the store . The Chairman of the Boord can have Tho se wo rrie s evermore. But as we pack our brief case Comes one last questionnaire: We took the office hot s eat ; Con we take the rocking choir? The Hour' s late - Please Muse, desis t! Try to f i nd an end to this. Tha t' s easy, friend. Surround ing u s Eve ryth i ng is terminus Final this and final that I t wa s lovely. Here's your hat! L'ENVOI 'Two s long ago as s enior s cool We ported from a well loved school. - Now after fifty years we stand Seniors in a w e ll loved l a nd At thi s final prom so gay Pre our lost Commencement Day. Now let's st and with glasses up Draining down th e stirrup cup. It' s "For the Roadn and with this sign We part tonight a final time. Sti ll - If there i s an ofter life Compensating for the strife Man knows on Earth - then who can te ll? Once more Sid Ki rk may ring the bell And coll u s to matriculate Anew b ehind s ome pearly gate Out there beyond the Moon and Mar s On gold paved st reets among the star s We ' 11 hear again in astral s cene Our cry of old - BUNCH UP SIXTEEN! 33 �BONEYARO BABBLING$ N -~~~ ~ ;f.':1 c:::t-R ~~ lY~\ ~')Q~ @y >,f ~+,r /~~ )l_B'/ ~~t/ ~ ~ ~ THE CONQUERING OF THE SONS OF (.,f{f ROCKEFELLER "~))}, CHAPTER I. ,liJf Now it came to pass in the ninth year of ~ ~ James, the high priest that the annual V/ feast of the H omecoming drew nigh. ~rf/. 2. ·A nd all the congregation of the <~ children of the Illini gathered together IJ ' from the four corners of the earth, on the plains of Champaign. ~~~ t~3. And there was feasting and revelry '' by day, and by night the fruit of the vine ~' did Aow even like unto water. 4. And it came to pass that the child.lames, 111.- lli9h Pri,·.~1 ren of the Illini and the children of John •V D. were at enmity one with another. 5. And the children of John D. gathered together their armies and pitched their tents at Chicago and got them ready to do battle with the Illinites. 6. And there went out a champion from the camp of John D . called Shorty, surnamed DesJardens whose height was six cubits and a span. 7. And he had an helmet of brass upon his head and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was an · hundred sheckels of silver. 8. And he stood and cried unto the · armies of the Illini saymg. 0 l - '·<: - (l A sample of BONEYA RD BA BB LING prose. Illustration from one of the book's jingles: "When Pogue returns a punt." 34 - T his one a fab le writt en in biblical hyperbole and celebrati ng the Il linois w in of a Big-Ten title by a victory over Stagg's Chicago University champions. The game climaxed the first, triumphant coaching year of Bob Zuppke and established my roommate, Hal Pogue, as a national folk hero. His amazing record was to return a punt all the way to a touch· down in every game he ever played. Red Grange moved into his celebrity spot a few years later. - - -... .... ·- - ........... - �- BONEVARD BABBLINGS 0 THE QUEST OF THE HOLY CREDITS Now it so befel that during the . f K. J h ,[$ tllJI ~ ~~~~~ knigh~~n ~h:sr~al: ;:i:p~ /1~ i.; . Sir Stude, very indolent in daily affairs yet withall a mighty and /J stalwart man in battle, so that in '!J-. all the minor adventures which he ~ had undertaken with Sir Test and ~~~ Sir Quiz he had gat unto him~ self passing few wounds. Now you must know, however, that Sir ~ Stude was right sore in love with '· r. ~. La lJanws.-1 lJ.- P/o 111<1 the fair damosel De Ploma and ~ would have made haste to let t"'"f. ordain for the marriage in the most splendid wise that could be ~~~ devised but to this the fair damosel made answer, nay. "Sir", A said she, "Wot you not that you must first undertake some right perilous adventure that I may be assured of your valor in conflict? 6P.~i Make you all haste therefore to the castle of Sir Phinal and if per adventure you are able to slay him in the jousts bring back to me o/ as a gift the bag of sacred credits which he guards in his castle with his life. And if so be it that you bring with you at your returning 1 1· that rich treasure, then may we be married anon." At this Sir Stude was much elated and made reply in this wise, saying, ··· Lady, those are to me the best tidings that I have ever ~ heard", for he was withal very young and valiant and put great~ faith in his bright and gleaming armour made of a most beautiful ' and shining metal called bluff. ~ J{t i - \oy 23 Another PROSE SAMPLE from the BABBLINGS This one written in the phraseo logy of the A rthurian legend. Such round-table verbosity was obsessive with the Po Field-Puny Hill word-monger team in their Todd Seminary childhood. This, then, is a sample of the Thomas Malory, Morte d'Arthur, Excaliburflourishing jargon endemic with us. If, by chance, such foolishness intrigues you, read the rest of the fab le in Joanne's book or some other surviving family volume. 35 �lil l /\NL ll I HOM I\ MOLDl:HING Ml:MOHY BOOK .... - ..... Melinda, on a Florida visit, once asked her grandmother for a dis· covered album of campus foolishness. The Rockford compulsive mother and compulsiV(? collector of Early Americana (or what seems "early" to her generation) used the contents to decorate her home with paste-up wastebaskets and room-dividing screens. So quaint! Costume foibles of a yesteryear! Here is additional collegiate kid stuff, Melinda, that you overlooked. Pictured above is a freshman act I remember well. The photographer missed the third member of our skit, a policeman. We staged loud and bawdy fights of a marita l nature in successive sections of the bleachers. Each would be ended by an arrest for dis· orderly conduct. CLOWN STUNTS. In the Spring, "Interscholastic Weekend" brings, from every high school in the state, a delegation of athletes and seniors. After a Friday track meet, the visitors are Saturday enter· tained by a stadium "circus" featuring stunt competition between campus organizations and collegiate individuals. Above is an ATO entry built around a chariot race of forgotten relevancy. The date on the postcard (hawked to visitors) reads 1914. This means your grandfather, posing there cross-gartered, was a sophomore. Below are THE JUDGES of the competing stunts. Note an arrow pointing to Ring Lardner. I may have won as a freshma n "clown" because I shamelessly introduced myself to the great man as a contri· tor to his column in the Chicago Tribune. Besides being sports editor, he conducted a boxed-off section of readers' persiflage called "In the Wake of the News." ..... - -... THE OLD STADIUM with the wooden bleachers. Our marching band (pride of the school) blares out a Sousa tune while our student regiment (bane of the college) passes in review. Beh ind the crowd, toward the left, is gl impsed t he rooming house I cleaned and t he chimney I stoked my f inal semester. 36 -- - �MEMORY BOOK GLI AN INGS OUR HE LLENIC BOARDING HO USES: ALPHA TAU OMEGA and KAPPA ALPHA THETA This house··my f inal school dormitory··still stands at 405 East John Street but now shelters a different group. Lucky kids! Their building is more beautiful, inside and out, than the great new ATO mansion so far from the campus. This one was but three blocks from the library and the old University (Uni) Hall. Most of the student body walked by every day. The porch was our girl -watcher's parad ise. Read the pome on that subject in the Babb lings called The John Street Passing Show. This house··Collegiate home of your grandmother··is long gone; torn down to make room for a new mansion on the same ideal sight, clo se to the ca mpus . Your A unt Joanne spent a semes· ter in t he luxury t hat replaced th is but found none of your grandnother's rapture and transferred to Wisconsin. This is your grand mother's pledge class in Theta. Her lifelong friend, Esther Lynch Jungkuntz, mother of Jane Shedlin, is on the left. ATO CHAPTER IN 1916 ·· SENIORS IN FRONT ROW The three on the front, left: Krug, Pogue, Bronson, were the tri· umvirate of our wedding party and the boon companions of my youth. Bronson was the last to die; just a few days ago , in fact. Gap Squire and Tom Browning, on the other side of your grand· father, are long gone. Puny alone remains. Dubious distinction. ARROW CO LLAR M.AN Men's clothing ads during my childhood and youth were dominated by the male counter· part of t he Gibson Girl, a ubiquitous Adonis, chisel-chinned, pompadour-waved, known as the Arrow Col lar Man. This paragon was al· ways painted or sketched, never photograph· ed. Over the years his only sartorial change was t he front o pening of his detachable, starched collar. Such minutiae was followed slavishly by a male world. The high school lad pictured would have been red-faced with shame in 1910 had he been forced to wear the curved number seen on the 191 5 colle· giate. A year later that obligatory curve on a tortutous choker had been decreed passe. An inverted V was now a necessity. Witness every one of the free spirits in the group pie· ture above. 0 tempore, 0 mores! Or, as Puck put it: What fools these morta ls be. 37 �r~ SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN TH E HUMAN MA LE BOY MEETS GIRL - COLLEGE CONNUBIAL "'J'hrcc lhings lh<.'rc he loo wo11clcr(1li lor the way of an eagle in !he air; lhe way of a ship in the sea; lhP way of a man with u maid." Proverbs 111< 1 : with his ga ll wasps! Hul I.he fat was in I.he fire and sex was in every dinner conversation. A puhlisher's gold rush began . "Press on, professor," they said, "and study your gi rls." Now , a generati on later, all of us must study our gonads. Is your antiquated historian-grandfather against sex? Ila! Is he against pornography? He has pursued it since childhood and rejoices that sexual stimulation can come from words and pictures. He only wants some choi ce in new readi ng matter; a chance to once again browse a book stall or face a magazine rack and find something beyond that one-note theme for horny boys and disappointed chicks. Sure, hooks should bring stimulation. They should also bring other delights: contemplation, inspirati on, exaltation. Man cannot live by bread alone. Come off it , publishers, you cannot live by sex alone. - - -- -- -.... - Kinsey started it all. Including a thousand cartoons 38 Havin g thu s s erm onize d , I sha ll rec k-not-my-own-rede and take off on t his very s ubject. Unavoidably. For I tell now of a boy and a girl in the compulsive surge of yo ung love and its consumation in a college marriage. I tell of a primrose path of joyous dalliance but I shall omit anatomical and acrobatic specifi cs. Manuals on s uch are now available to you in repetitive profusion so a compulsive teacher is spared this educative chore. Anyway, learn ing is largely self-learning; education , self-education with ingredients such as exploration and experimentation. The sexually self-educated couple of this story, now grown old, have perused all the manuals in this decade's proliferating pile to find little or nothing new. Our affair was rather late blooming, really. In her first Theta-house year the off-beat charmer from Chi cago was overwhelmed by all those Greek God types in hot pursuit. They fai led, someway , to ignite the flame sparked later by a scrawny kid called Puny. Why, he'll never know . He can only report that in a never-to-be-forgotten Christmas vacation, in his Junior year, in a second floor apartment, on that same porch where they had met (and where he had fallen asleep dating her girl ...... ... �GRANO BOULEVARD BALCONY friend) it happened!! No slumber now. Awakening! A new, mysterious, fri~htening, delightful trip into the clouds for a girl. An equally new thrill for a boy who had considered himself experienced. Hadn't he known passion-in-the-sand during long Michigan summers. No, not really. This was a woman aroused, not merely a girl complacent. He rode the milk train to Woodstock that morning in a daze. Songs of literature's lovely ladies were lilting in his head; from Kipling's neater, sweeter maiden to Shakespeare's lustful lady of infinite variety. .. THAT FATEFUL BALCONY TODAY. At 4238 Grand Boulevard. Sorry. I mean Martin Luther King Drive. A ghetto now; slum surrounded, bul ldozer doomed. Ghosts linger up there in the dark recess; young, life-intoxicated ghosts visible only to a cameraclicking ancient mariner. a greybeard-loon who, a moment later, is lurched back to reality by a stumbling drunk. Six long decades, my pets, have pas.sed since first that fire was kindled on Grand Boulevard. To any readers with intimations of their own aging, I send now (from just this side Jordan's wave) the heartening news that the fire still flames in Florida. Such information would have indeed heartened my youth when I was told the opposite. This by a literary mentor of mine at the time, Arnold Bennett, whose British novels bored me but whose es.says had me hooked. His thin volumes were big sellers and carried titles such as. How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day and A Plain Man and His Wife. One statement in the latter scared me pink: "No man can know passion (his italics) for a wife beyond five years." Sure, the young husband was dumb to believe such tripe from a possible pansy. And dumb to attempt improvement of each shining hour in those allotted years by rushing home for lunch. Still, there was verisimilitude in the Britisher's dictum. Such pyrotechnic splendors must be fleeting, such ecstasies transitory. Dumbest part of all: how come I missed old Ben Franklin on geriatric sex? Or was his Autob£ography expurgated back then? These questions lead me off on another tangent: a book I've long planned to write if hard t imes should ever threaten our lotus-eating life. It would bring a fortune, a rich legacy unto my issue, royalties rolling in to you, my loves, through the years. A recent letter to Todd Tarbox outlined this. I was answering a request from a writer-grandson that I let him peddle, to publisher::;, this present opus. After an opening paragraph, the letter goes: You suggest looking for commercial rather than private publication of my family tale. Why? Even on the off chance that I could make some dough, I've gol some dough. Not much bul all I want. Which reminds me of a Noble Hill favorite story, oft repealed: A householder was chopping firewood. He wearied and offered a passing "Rastus" a quarter to complete the chore. "Nawsir, boss," came the answer. "l'se got a quarter." Hearty chuckle from Noble. The Rastus-Thoreau concept was unthinkable to this Scots entrepreneur, this preacherbusinessman accomplishing the impossible, accumulating a modest fortune in the school business. Commercial publication would also require a change of emphasis and at best could result in nothing more than a small printing, soon remaindered and quickly forgotten. My hope is for something more than this, not less. Fond and foolish as it may be, I hope to tie another generation or two of the family together, to start other family members writing sequels, a unique record of and for a unique family. Sure, I'm nuts. I should have learned, when Todd School closed, not to look for any permanence on this Earth. But let me dream. You are the fami ly member who writes for publishers. Wanna make a real fortune out of a book? Ask me. I've been hoarding the great answer, hugging it to my bosom against the time of a long expected Hill financial debacle. This hasn't come and now I am a mellow fellow, a philanthropist in fact, ready to pass out largess. Here it comes: The book on which I could have made my fortune is entitled Sex for lhe Sep tuagenarian. Do I jest? Not really. Here is the only section still unexploited in the one sure-fire book market left. And such a project would be in character for this author whose books have always been financially motivated and market contrived. Consider the basketball bit. Seeing a demand, I filled it. High school teachers, academic ones, all over the land were being assigned to coach this new sport and desperately needed help. So ... No other book on the subject has ever approached the hundred and twenty thousand sale of my contrived pamphlet. Then the Shakespeare series: When it recently went out of print, McGraw-Hill wrote saying no other such texts had ever sold so long or so well. Of course I knew more about the Bard than I did about Basketball but I was no authority, just a guy who could sense a market. On the sexual subject I am an authority but that's not the point. The point is the potentiality of a market that exceeds all dreams of avarice, a book to be snatched off the counters by every searching soul, male or female, in their fearful forties starting to question virility. In short, half the world. Sorry I haven't something equally sure-fire to suggest in your new line. But like Brutus, I'm not gamesome. (That sign-of{ refers to Todd's job at the time. He was devising educational games for Milton Bradley.) 39 �STARVED ROCK IGNORED THE MARRIAGE Graduation had been Wednesday. The wedding was Saturday. Fittingly, this sexual rite took place in the fateful flat on Grand Boulevard. Fittingly, the wedding party was largely collegiate. The groom had no job. So what? He would go out Monday and accept o n e. In Advertising. There his minor talents in word mongering and his major talents in dissembling would find fruition. That Great American Novel, he had learned, wasn't in him. In fact, no real well of creativity was in him. Contributing occasional pieces YOUR GRANDMOTHER June 10, 1916 There was a sexual radiance about this gal when young. Pity, you kids couldn't have known her. Providential your grandfathe~ did; knew her in the Bible's fine old meaning of the word. 40 to periodicals had been run. Responsibility for literary production on a regular basis (monthly for the Siren, daily for the Campus Seoul) had proved burdensome if not beyond him. He got by with the help of talented friends including Po Field, Ed Morrisey and Samson Raphaelson. Sam once made his own evaluation of Puny as an artist. It came a year or two later but bears on this subject of your grandfather's limited talent. I was applying for a job that would better my salary at Wards. An ancient Hebrew on South Michigan avenue's Automobile Row was a Big Man in Parts who planned expansion into mail order. Answering his ad for a "top catalogue man" he found out my college and asked if I knew Sam Raphaelson, his neighbor's son . Before choosing me to do his flamboyant monthly flyer, he wrote to Sam. The answer got me the job but contained a put-down: "Hill is not overly fertile but only because he has never been screwed by the prick of necessity." It was the poor boy speaking. About the boy he considered stinky rich. Right, Sam. Infinitely rich. Not in dough and not in talent but rich, then and now, in every other measurable wealth. The honeymoon was a thirty-six hour, hotel room revel in LaSalle, Illinois. Scenic Starved Rock, our announced destination, became unimportant. A lifetime passed before we took the boat tide under that promontory of tribal sacrifices. Then we were in retirement and in a floating home enroute to Florida via New Orleans. The girl in that hick hotel was a virgin, a fact that would have surprised the wedding guests who knew of the couple's candescent courtship and opportunities for early intimacy . Hadn't they spent nights in that friend's home in Urbana? Hadn't they slept together in a father 's boat crossing Lake Michigan? Wasn't the girl impulsive and sensuous and notoriously weak in appetite control? What then, was the answer? Surprisingly, me.Nobility wasn't involved. Such wasn't in that lad . His lust continued but it was for the healthy, happy pixie of his first bewitchment; It was for the joyous sprite that he must have and that he must hold until death do them part. Trouble was that carefree girl had almost vanished. Carnal knowledge had brought her not only thrills of pleasure but chills of fear; devastating waves of guilt. Nice girls didn't do such things. A year after that awakening on Grand Boulevard, a near breakdown of nerves sent her home for a prenuptual semester of safety and sewing while the boy saved and slaved for a deemed-necessary solitaire. I said the girl was a virgin. I would back this with Patrick Henry's totality: life, for tune, sacred honor. But I can't back it with anatomical proof. Our consumate joy was unconfined, unrestrained by hymenal hindrance. Suspicion? No. A Joseph-like adoration. If God could pass a miracle on Mary to make a messiah he could pass a lesser one on my lass he made for love. - 1 -- -- - -- - .... �J BRIDEGROOM JOBS MONTGOMERY WARD'S Yes, I married without a job. But with confidence one waited at Ward's if I deigned to take it. Ed Morrissey had been in their advertising department a year and told me as much. "Just say you're related to Jack Rogers," he advised."The whole shop still tells tales of that eccentric genius who tripled fashion sales with his invention of the female advisor, Elizabeth Harlan Young." Ed was partly right. The June bridegroom was offered a job if he'd return in September when work would start on the new catalogue. "In the meantime," said Henry Schott, the Big Boss (soon to be caught stealing a million dollars in paper contracts) "go see the Merchandising boys. Better still, see the folks in Operating. They have a training program down there for college graduates. Ask for Mr. Saunders. Tell him I sent you." The cloud-percher came down to earth. He started in overalls for fifteen weekly dollars. Trainees changed jobs fortnightly. I began as a stock boy working on roller skates. Obligatory. Farmer's list in hand, we zipped past miles of bins snatching items on the run. Speed was paramount. The number of orders one filled each day was tallied to his credit or to his shame. Next into Correspondence. Here I learned that a customer can be as venal as a corporation. One remembered complaint from Iowa: "Fifteen years ago I bought a set of dishes from you. Now they're all chipped and cracked. Send me a new set or return my money." I turn to my Dictaphone to compose an answer. Also to a printed Policy Paper to clew me in. These directions boil down to one word: Stall! It's a real chore for farm folk to write letters. Tire them out. Their follow-up is weak. One thing I learned for sure. It might prove useful if you ever have petty larceny in your heart. The fact: Anyone can, with persistence, get money returned in full on any item bought from a mailed catalogue. The trick is simply to hang in there. Eventually the company will weaken. Mail fraud laws are strict. Corporations fear them. Ward's and Sears each promise, "Satisfaction Guaranteed or Your Money Back!" Then there was the Grocery department. Main memory here: shoveling fresh fish from hogsheads into wooden pails. Finally, the unendurable. In the heat of that record-breaking sultry summer of 1916 I was sent to the shipping room. There bathtubs and furnaces were tossed around by hairy behemoths and loaded onto freight cars. A staggering Puny cried Hold, enough! In our miniscule Ravenswood flat (4344 1h Winchester Avenue) I composed, and Morrissey illustrated, a saga of a bridegroom's sacroiliac sadness to be sent to the Great Man, Schott. Hopefully this would amuse and/or move him to compassion and to a new look at his job openings. It worked. Some days later a fearful fore man whispered that I was wanted up in the executive offices. Henry Schott was a sadist. Working near him later, I watched him torture subordinates. Ushered into his office now, I was left standing as he spread my packet (I had included photoslats of some published pieces) over the mammoth table behind his desk. Silence. Finally, a pushing of the material toward me and a contemptuous commentary: "What did Voltaire say about the adjective?" Lady Luck had smiled again. This was down my alley. I knew I was prone to over-modifying my nouns. Fowler's handbook on English Usage warned against this and Fowler was my bible. So "Voltaire said the adjective was the enemy of the noun." Then I continued: "Do you remember what Poe said about the adjective?" As far as I knew Poe never said anything about the adjective but Fowler said something about Poe, that he used adjectives as a "pigment of speech." I turned this into a Poe quote and Schott turned to his secretary : "Put Mr. Hill on our payroll at twenty-five dollars a week. ELIZABETH HARLAN YOUNG So I moved upstairs; still impoverished but now wearing a white collar; eligible to eat in the Managers' Dining Room and there to bask in reflected glory of a famous (and infamous) cousin. Anecdotes of Jack Rogers were endless; evaluation dichotomous. There was praise for the mint of money he and his phantom lady brought to the company. There was blame for the immense expense and em· barrassment his female finally caused. Let's turn to the record: Ward's Historical Library is atop the same old buildings that stretch along the river. The xerox on the next page is from a 1912 catalogue. The bound copy wouldn't open flat enough to fully show you both columns of t he box in the center. Still, the meat of its message stands out in Jack's bold capitals: ELIZABETH HARLAN YOUNG IS HERE TO HELP YOU. The conceit worked financial wonders for a year. Then, alas, things got out of hand. Farm folk began coming in person to talk to this profered city friend. Worse, truck loads of mail tended more and more to seek sexual counsel rather than ward_robe wisdom. The visiting problem was solved, more or less, by turning Jack's secretary into Mrs. Young. The advice-to-the-lovelorn problem was never really solved despite a roomful of writers assigned to it. The detractors of Jack argued he brought the trouble on himself with the overblown gooey copy- he put iri the mouth of his fictitious' female. One remembered example: "Only we women can know the seductive delight to be found in a silky kimona after a bath." No wonder the country girls figured they had found a friend who was both hip and hep. Newspaper column confidants like Dear Ab by were a generation away but this gal was here and now and as near as the mail 41 �- ELIZABETH HARLAN YOUNG -1 _, ., ....... j ,,..__ .. •./ __,_.;/,,_• + ....,....~ ,\dvlsory Shopi;er Elizabeth luarlao Young l\lay Be Con' suited on Correct Slyles -·.I trtful to choose that be.st .r ~ -Med to their particular type. 11 Vi.¥ is not always an easy .; ' ~ ·.! : rhu ~alter, and thousands of women •4., . : .1 \ ·oidery r \. ·. fUllNOOll 111811010· • .,"'· The tt,. ''" •lth .... '"~ "~ foe<. nit J.n Ollll&tlnC the ... &H '"''""'-J ,,f". ' h 1l1f'IP'ot .. ~1 t'1'Mllnf lO to ....... •a1•t· fM Mff th• 114111 " " ' ' ftfl th••• • ,.., fl&ltow &h•ft -1,- •Uh the •.....,.... atfton•I 'f/I htJ' •·IH"°f I U.-.. i ... ..•n•t d .. wn =- :...~~~.~ a. A h111lar 42 1 'li ~ · -~~ '. . ~ ~ Live been most grateful for the ~ . ........_ __:, ·... _ ·. : ~Ip Elizabeth Harlan Young ~t . --. . ~ ~ No. 4X41SS " gioen them. From our excellent lines of ~-11 ' · · · :rchandise she will help you '~l \Vbat Elizabeth llarlan Younr.'.vose ( o~ choose for you), the I I Shopping Strvke Cao ·ht art1cl~ to fit your e\lery Do For Yoo 1.:~d. Wtih her knowledge of pe remark.able values we hal>e HERE are a feDJ of the cou.1• et1e'3.1 iine, your money, when less T»ays in T»hich our ExpJ."'.lrusted to her, will be spent Shopper can OS$ist _you. :.Jsl judiciously. 1 CChere is net. er a request r When you U:ish dainty, pracgteat, or u!ant too small, to rece:'ical clothes for the baby you her invaluable help. .. ·!I find an untiring friend in How often D>e have heaJii::abeth Harlan Young, u·ho D>omen say, "/ 11>ish I could a.ff... :/l select for you the sweetest New York styles". Now tUMments you could want. wishes can be gratified. C For the bride, whose trousbuy~s are continually in the Ar.1:-au is a problem, Elizabeth rican Fashion_ Cent;r. and in sd !_arlan Young's service will be close connection with alt the gr~~/ greatest help. Women's Exqulslle \Vbite Lace Trimmed Crepe Voile Dress $5.98 II OZ. :: / . ,~ -· ..J..;. . . ~- , . . .i Dress of one . :I .n \ . TYLESmustarealwa:ys so varied that be most S Importers and Manufacturer~I. · • we hal>e all their newest and t · _i~e also e~te?d to.:you. the models to offer you ~ni;1lege of brmgrng an)] misun. • 1:rstanding, or error, to her . From this splendid assorlm·~·:<!nlion. The:y will be given 11 "!aJJ be h_ard to make .Y~mmediate and satufadory choice. In this case, you need o: .!justmenl remember that ELIZABE I HA R LA N y O UNG And so, in el1ery instance, HERE TO HELP YOU. er services will help _you. Just think of being able fo depend hey are yours for the m/eing. some one to seled a suit, dress, or <oat Address ,.,,ur letters. to her you. If it Is Elizabeth Harlan Young •t .,ask to undertah this tad, you mar nsl fCrsonallg. sured, that you will be well pleased. I' I t fo her giving some descriplion of youo:~RS ELIZABETH HARLAN YOUNG, the amount of money you wish to sp1· · and wilh no worry lo you, your wardr;I CaH llfo•lfo•crr War4 t, Co., will k bought with the descrimlnalion J.I Chicago A.-enue Bridge, Chicago Important matters demand. · XEROX from a JACK ROGERS 1912 CATALOGUE ~J ~ -- - - --- -- - �UNCLE JOE. JOURNALIST, AUTHOR, MUSICIAN box. Ward's was inundated. Main trouble was its catalogue contained another female section far removed from fashion; a nether world of nostrums, douches and intimate bedroom appliances. There was small profit in a bottle of Lysol and no profit in advice on birth control but the market for this advice was huge. The company called the whole thing off. Mrs. Young's departure was announced. In small type. JACK ROGERS TRAGEDY Jack, by this time, had also departed. His end came not with a whimper, like his phantom lady, but with a bang. Literally. Fighting the Hun in Flanders ' F ields. Inadvertently. He woke up one Tuesday in 1914 to find himself on a troop ship bound for England. They told him he was a Cana· dian soldier. They proved it by showing him his signed enlistment papers. This was the final and tragic (he was soon to be gassed) Lost Weekend for Ward's resident genius. His eccentricities had long been given latitude. Often a thousand miles of latitude. Literally . Addicted not only to alcohol but to his family's mania for movement, a wild compulsion pushed him , Saturday after Saturday, into a Pullman berth bound somewhere over the rainbow. He never knew why or when he bought that ticket to New Orleans, Washington or wherever. On arrival he would phone his office to say he would be back soon. Not this time. He was a semi-invalid for his remaining days. Back in Philadelphia, he d id a syndicated Astrology column for a few years and there were other opportunistic copyrights in character. We lost touch and I learned of his death from his younger brother. I was an athletic director when Joe phoned from Chicago to ask if I wanted to see a world series game that afternoon; White Sox versus I-forget-who. If so come to the Wrigley Field press room and ask for Rogers. There, high above the boxes behind ho.me plate, I found my one-time roommate. (That was in fourth grade I think.) He was manning three separate typewriters as he ghost wrote three separate stories for three separate athletes. One, I remember was first baseman Foxx. With that double x. Joe had his family's facility with words and his brother's fine contempt for fact. A truly professional hack. I was impressed. I was also frozen. Notwithstanding nips from Joe's flask. A Nor'easter was howling in off the lake. This discomfort he covered by punching out three separate descriptions for his clients and labeling each "Use in California only." I never heard from my cousin again. I never saw his name on a by-line. Did he too succumb to the "Roger's Curse?" I've told earlier of Jack's, and Joe's, talented uncles: Raphael, Allan. Their father, Philadelphia newspaperman, Joe Senior, has been mentioned but once , a sentence on his inebriation at that 1906 Golden Wedding. He deserves his chapter; surely this paragraph. Second of my mother's five brothers, he was the most mercurial; talented in music and painting as well as letters. One lack was modesty. I remember touring the Library of Congress with him as a child. He had us pause respectfully at a nation's literary shrines: the glass-encased Constitution, Declaration, and Lincoln's personal penmanship for the Gettysburg speech. But most of his time that day was spent in the catalogue file impressing my mother with the quantity of cards bearing his name ROGERS, Joseph l\Iorgan, eclitor; b. Dcca· tur, 0., Apr. 9, 18C1; s. Rev. John A. and Elhabet b Lewis (Embree) U.; broth<'r of .1 ohn Haphael U. (q.t.•.); A.Il., Hcrea Coll., 181!), A.~I.. 1897; m . .Annah Tcl'~rn Sides, of .Phila., Apr. 25. 1S89. In Indian sen-ice, lSS0-1; civ. engr. and editor Shawa no (\\"is.) Jouru~I. lSSl-·t: financial editor Pllilad clphia Tiru<>s, H>~·li; city editor Wilmington '(Del.) :\cws, lSSG-i' ; finaoclal euitor PlllladclP.hin ~orth American. 1887·8; news editor l'blladelpbia Times, 1 8~3-!I; mng. editor PIJiladelphia lnl')uircr, 1889·90; Sunday editor n ew York Herald, anc1 pan of tbe time mng. edilor Telegram, 18:;J-1900; on staff ~lcClure•s Mngazine, 1900-1; on Pbilad<:>lpllia Jnq nlrer since 1901. E'piscopallan. Hl'puulican. Clubs: Union Leagu e. Aronimlnk <:<>lf, Franklin Inn. Attthor: History of the l:nit<>d Stat.<:s, 1899; The 'l'rue Hcnt'y Clay, mot; Life of Thomas II. Benton, 1905; Developmf'nt of the :'.'\ort h since the Civll War, 1906; A History of Grand Opera fn Philadelphia; A History of the CIYll War; Hh:itor:v of the Battl<~ of G1_.lt ,.shurg. Contbr. to mags.; lecturer on grand 01>eru. Home: The Delma r-)Iorl'is, Germantown. Office: 110!) ) l arket St.. Pbilndelpbia. UNCLE JOE as l isted in WHO'S WHO as author. Once in 1914, enroute to Springfield on a Munsey Magazine assignment, he stayed overnight with me in Champaign. Boneyard Babblings had just come out and its author had dreams of his own literary greatness. Also dreams of distant adventure. If sailor Slocum could circumnavigate the world at sixty, sailor Hill could do it at sixteen. Even at six he dreamed dreams while mouthing Lear's lilting line: They sailed away for a year and a day/ To the land where the bong tree grows. Bong trees? ? The boy knew all about them. Every month the National Geographic showed dozens. On south sea island beaches. Growing practically horizontal. A kid could walk up them; maybe meet the naked native girls sitting there dangling their legs; more important, their luscious upper appendages. Bong trees, indeed. The old black-and-white Geographic had a mammary obsession. Playboy carries it on today for our immature male. What I started to say was that I sounded out my important uncle on the possibility of financing my own dream ship; on my own world cruise; by writing my own book. Mad fantasy. The mellow man didn't even smile. Just ordered up another beer, laced it with a shot from his pocket 43 �.... I CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL EDUCATOR flask and belched up a Why not. Only finance it with magazine articles instead of a book. He'd arrange it with his good friend, Sam McClure. And use 1, a motorcycle instead of a boat. (He had his sister's thing against sailing.) I should start from Philadelphia. He would get me a job on a cattle boat to France. Then I could bike through Europe and Asia, ferry with fishermen across the Bering strait, roll down Alaska and across the States to a banquet climax (shades of Phileas Fogg) in Philadelphia. End of his fantasy. I knew what had loosened the avuncular tongue but I wanted to believe so I did. All this, of course, was pre-Hortense. Soon the lad would turn to other fantasies, feminine based. Let's go back to the boy and his little job in advertising (catalogue work is the lowest form of that pernicious art) and to the girl in her little flat in Ravenswood. Only curtains between rooms because that warren lacked space to swing doors. But space enough for large gaiety as well as small tragedy. Ask Horty about her kitchen tears the time she discovered Raphaelson and his girl friend staring into their uneaten pork. Read Vincent Sheean'sPersonal History to learn more of Sam's amazing girl friend and short-time wife, Rayna Simon. This brilliant beauty, early-day Zionist and later China revolutionary met her demise while working with Sun Yat-sen. When the bride told Ed Morrissey of her dietary blunder with Jewish friends, that Irisher yawned it off with, "Hell, I never get a full meal at your house. It's always Friday and you ply me with meat." Will-'o-the-wisp weeks, brimming with wonder for carelessly carefree kids whose hearts were young and gay. Later we called that period B.C. Before Children. . 4344% Winchester Avenue. Our Raveswood flat in the recess of the "Royal Arcade" is unchanged today. Ditto for other of our early apartments in Woodlawn and Roger's Park. Chicago's "Building Miracle" has all been along the Lake. Then Spring came on with rustling shade and walls of Ward's became confining. It was time to take that delayed honeymoon; time to actuate our original plan which was to learn the catalogue trade in the great corporation and then sell the skill for 44 larger reward outside. (Raises along that river were notoriously s;low.) There was security, to be sure, within the co1rporate womb; safety for the unhurried and eventual advancement for the faithful. Youths who started with me filling orders on roller skates ended up (a dreary life later) management tycoons. Not for an impatient Puny. The unforgiving minute needed sixty seconds worth of distance run. The Winchester avenue apartment became as confining as the Ward's job. Let's start all over. Right after the honeymoon. The old M&NE R.R. could carry kids and canoes up to Traverse City and the big Manistee could carry them down to Louis Sands' Lumber Mill. His winter crop of logs would be harvested by now, corralled there next to the whining, screaming saws. The logs would be down river. All, that is, except some hundreds stuck in banks after the dynamiting of jams. (See picture of the bride and her canoe.) Thrilling weeks in the woods; followed by discouraging weeks in the Loop. Back the~re it seemed no one wanted a slightly experienced catalogue man, at least not i1r1 the summer time. Needing to eat, we moved to Woodstock and put our last savings into a commuter's monthly ticket. Its rims were nearly conductor-punched away when Fortune wiped her frown. She looked down, saw it was her favorite, little Roger, and broke into a smile. The boy was in the school business. Prophetic, eh? Except this was a correspondence school. On dreary South Dearborn street, well b1elow the Loop, a man and two girls (to read exam papers) operated, out of three small offices, the American Correspondence School of Law. The man was branching out and I became, on the basis of my submitted copy for a page ad and its follow-up lite·r ature, the entire staff of the American Correspondence School of AVIATION! Let me tell you about this Learn-by-Mail racket. (Not the legitimate few, the phony fringe.) All you need is some cash in your bank and some larceny in your heart. First, find (or write) a How-to-do-it --- -- - -- - - �DIVISION ADVERTISING MANAGER book on a glamorous skill. You market that book for a hundred times its value by turning it into lessons and hiring a hack io grade exams. You can 'i tell in advance what instruction is marketable in this way but you can test out a hunch for about two grand. Proceed as follows: Place a fl aimboyant ad, at least a half page, in Popular Mechanics. The space costs you, say, six hundred dollars. It brings in, say, nine hundred replies. You have determined now that inquiries will cost seventy five cents each, a figure that will remain almost constant as you put more money into more media. The next, the crucial, question is what proportion of your inquiries can be turned into contracts. You give your suckers the big pitch and hope for the best. Your brochure has offered a ticket to affluence. Your •~asy, enjoyable study course leading to this fantastic future is priced regularly at, let us say, five hundred fifty-five dollars. But for a limited time, a special introductory price of three, ninety-five, with only forty-five down, is available. Now you wait; you bite your nails; you hope. The postman brin;gs your answer and it comes within two weeks. After that, returns will dwindle to near zero. Your nut (advertising and office costs) must now have been returned from your down payments. A woefully small number will ever make a second one on their contracts. The bright contagion of their enthusiasm, caught from your overblown copy, is a fever that quickly burns itself out. If a sucker does send in a second payment (with his first test paper) he's probably hooked. He will finish the course and finish the payments and he is the cherished minority that may make you rich. How about those that default on tlheir whole contract? Can't you use strong-arm m•~thods and collect? Technically, yes. In practice, no. Half are minors; the rest near indigent. You threaten a lot; you collect a little; you never sue. Our idea was a winner. Okay, it ·was the boss's idea but it was the boy's copy. Anyway, we raked in the dough. It was Christmas in July. Right up to the time of that visit from the postal inspector. I won't bore you with the details. Under a court order our copy that third month was changed from LEARN TO FLY BY MAIL to a puerile Learn the Groundwork of Aviation by Mail. The bloom was off the rose. The boy was back on the streets. But summer was past and catalogue work was plentiful. BACK TO WARD'S Friends back at Ward's had kept me in contact. This because my real goal was to return. No, not as a copy writer again but as a department Advertising Manager. Sounds big but even such salaries were moderate and pay was largely in phony prestige: an office with a name on the door, a secretary and an assistant or two. The come-on was a bonus contract. AL the end of a year this could amount to nothing or it could amount to much. It was based on a formula relating your expenditures (art work, cuts printing) to your sales. I finally rated a return to the river with such a contract but only after two more disgraceful jobs on the outside. Someday, my tongue loosened with wine, I might describe these to any of you morbidly curious. But not here in print. This mustn't turn into a compendium for crooks. Roy Brady was my chief spy back in the great corporation. Ed Morrissey was now in agency work but we Loop-lunched with Roy often. An older pal, he was in a unique position at Ward's to know all. As Merchandise Clearance Manager his job was to sell off, to Maxwell-street-types all goods discontinued. Not a big shot himself, his job took him to the weekly meetings of ihe Executive Board and gave him an inside view of management. One night he phoned me: "Get to Henry Schott's office in the morning. I've made an appointment for you at ten." Have I mentioned before the matter of Luck? Repeatedly? E'en so I must return to the subject: My name went on a corporation door solely because of a silly jingle this compulsive rhymer had written a year earlier. It was a libelous litany castigating a deeply disliked Efficiency Expert named C. Effingham Browne, a weirdo of stupendous pomposity and conceit. Each verse ended with this refrain: But Browne . . . Go-d Damn! One that I remember went: Full fifty thousand fish I've known In this great sea of life, With nuts of all descriptions I've found this world is rife. Pistachios and Filberts And Pecans by the score Parade around in human form To make our squirrels sore But Browne ... Go-d Damn! As Brady told it, the meeting was breaking up with some chat~r about Browne's departure when someone pulled a mimeographed copy of the above from his wallet and read it aloud. Asked who wrote it, the answer: "One of Schott 's boys." A day later this statement was, for the second time, true. As "Advertising Manager of Underwear and Sweaters" the salary was a mere thirty-five a week but a year brought an eighteen hundred dollar bonus. Wealth! Visions of sugar plums danced in our heads. We had long lived within our income. Now we established credit; a fur coat; new furniture. We woke up in debt; permanently. We had joined the new America. 45 �HEARTS WERE YOUNG ANO GAY CHICAGO YEARS Memory of Chicago years is mainly of joyous irresponsibility. In amazement I look back at the leniency allowed us by a great merchantile establishment. I was no Jack Rogers who could make sales miracles but I could and I did make night joint laborer with the day. This during rush periods and in Ol'der to justify all those weeks I took off between catalogues. For instance Roy Brady and I went North in June to bring a father's motor boat down to the city so Hortense and I (with a six months baby) could take it back up again. But that story must be told by your grandmother. Her fiction here is more entertaining than my fact. Which brings up a point: ~ , . ~$~ 1 ' 'i ';. This is the Camp Tosebo motorboat which a foolhardy youth took back and forth to Chicago so many times. First trip was the fall before the marriage; our crew a questionable group of col lege boy co-councilors from Tosebo and their girl friends. Where did we sleep? On the floor; on mattresses. At South Haven I µhoned Chicago and persuaded Dolly Gettys to let her daughter come over on the Goodrich steamer and join us. Consider now the amazing design of the 38-foot craft pictured. This was a river boat, built in Moline for racing. It boasted an eight cylinder, copper water-jacketed Lamb engine. That broad stern could not be lowered which meant that the narrow bow could not rise which meant that any wave over three feet, met head ·on, would deposit tons of water inboard unless stopped (partially) by a rolled up canvas curtain which you see lowered there on the deck. Oh wel I! We kept it afloat somehow through thousands of miles of Lake Michigan weather. This book must be at least half hers. My life has been meaningful only as a partnership. I've nagged her to take pen in hand. No luck. Now I've loaded a recorder and handed her a microphone. The story of a compulsive talker is pouring out. When turned into print on these pages it should make better reading than the stuff of this compulsive writer. Truth, we're told, is stranger than fiction. But not as entertaining. Harty can be hilarious on a husband's foibles. Consider last week: We were invited to dinner by Rick a'nd Donna Darlow, pals of Pam and Gordon, who have adopted us as grandparents . They 46 live on their sweet motorsailer and the dinner turned out to be a dockside cook-out, a party for and by the "live-aboards" at the marina. Donna now tells us we're the talk of the place. Of course. Horty was there; entertaining the crowd through three courses ; tales of life with a mad mate. This time her subject was flying; parachute jumpers were in the party. She gave them part of her blue-yonder repertoire, the sure-fire story of that Piper Cub trip into Mexico. The facts are tlhese: Todd School operated an airport. We were agents for Piper products. Having promised Orson and Rita (they were filming Lady from Shanghai at the time) to join them for a Mexican vacation, I conceived the idea of buying wholesale a three-place "Supercub" flying it out there and selling it, thus paying for oUJr trip. Bob Conley, who managed our field, went to Wichita, flew the new plane back and nosed it over on our heavily snowbound runway. No damage beyond a broken prop but when a replacement arrived vve were overdue to start and I took off sans an adequate checkout. Some days later, over the El Paso gap in the Rockies, the fuel gauge looked low so I decided to shift to a reserve tank Bob said was aboard. I reached down, turned a handy valve and the motor stopped! Ditto for my heart. I opened the valve and dove down ... down . . . Some seconds of acceleration and sickening silence! Then the engine pop-popped into life. End of facts. Now for Horty's fascinating fiction: I'll not attempt her elaboration, her build-up; just give you her zinger quote at the climax. It comes when we're about to entier a lava-lipped volcano mouth and I shout to her: "GET OUT THE INSTRUCTION BOOK." To pursuie this subject of your grandmother's verbal virtuosity, I'll delve now into file drawers for a piece I onci~ wrote on this. We had just run away from academic chores to bask in the southern sun and housekeElP in one of Todd's converted Greyhounds. (This was a year before we took that power yacht down.) The plan was that I would revert to my trade of writing. Just what writing, I wasn't sure. Maybe, for a starter, magazine pieces on geriatrics and retirement problems. There was material all around us; our compatriots sitting sadly in the sun awaiting the embalmer. Or there might be material in seeking some jobs; common-man experiences of the sort I missed back there in the Groves of Academe. If a healthy sixty year old couldn't find work, the fact ought to be good for pieces in the public print. If, on the other hand, an oldster could find gainful manual employment, that story should also be marketable; it would refute the folk wisdom that anyone after fifty must accept a rocking chair. Actually, I dreamt a lot, planned much and produced little. (The story of my life.) For maybe a - .. - -- ... ..- - �BAHAMA GOAT BOA TS week I did pursue this study of old age employability and learned one thing: In our society a ticket of some sort (union card, diploma, license) is all important. The only two jobs offered were due to documents I carried. With my chauffeur's license (for bus driving) the Yellow Cab man said I could start but only on a night shift. No thanks. Then the owner of three charter boats scanned my Coast Guard document and said I could begin the next day . My evasive response: "But I don't know anything about fishing." His rejoinder: "Who cares? I got Mates for that. Can ya stay sober?" I gave up my superficial study of aging and turned to a book on the Bahamas. Those Gerital jokers on the bench had been so depressing. They found r etirement painful; I found it joyous; opposite emotions stemming from the same cause : anonymity. The escaped Headmaster loved this. The laid-off lathe operator loathed it. He had once been somebody; old Joe, foreman of the n ight shift. Old Hill, on the other hand, had worn his minor distinctions of middle age with a certain discomfort. For instance, in Woodstock when he rolled through a red light a cop might pull up and both would be embarrassed: "Sorry, Skipper. Didn't notice it was you. Watch it, will ya please?" In Miami, no embarrassment. Rather, a kind of delight when I hear: "Hey Buddy, where'd you learn to drive? Lemme see your license." Anonymity! Wonderful. Enough of maundering. Back to my wife and our subject: her talent for telling a tall tale. The piece I wrote back in that first retirement year was in the planned book on the Bahamas. This was to be a yachting story focusing on the Out-Islands and their colorful natives, not the lush resorts and their tiresome tourists. In New York, McGraw-Hill talked me out of the yachting angle. "Too limited a market," the editor said. "Use transportation available to anyone." This meant the expensive, amphibious flights of the Bahama Airways or the ultra cheap Bahama Mail Boats, a subsidized fleet of small freighters radiating from Na5sau on week-long trips to each of the island groups in a far flung archepelago. These are the "Goat Boats," a pejorative term indicative of their polyglot passengers which often include livestock. My book (I only finished two chapters) was to be titled I Ride the Goatboats. The first ride and the first chapter covered a week on the Franci.s Drake threading the Exumas and servicing the settlements on Long Island and Rum Cay before turning around at San Salvador. Here, the Drake gives you two hours to visit America's number one shrine, that hallowed beach where Columbus first stepped onto his new world. Your week, including meals, has cost you twenty-five dollars and forty-three cents. (You slept on deck. An air mattress and a tropic clime made this delightful just as rich yachtsmen find delight in sleeping on a s<:hooner deck to watch Polaris sink lower eac:h night.) My second goatboat was the Slede Bonnell and my second chapter was on the Abacos, an area where we made several trips that first winter and bought several lots . These were in Hopetown and on Man-of-War Cay and have been long sold {at sweet profits) to keep meat on the table. Here's a portion of that second chapter: • - ~ tnu-~ • ... ' ~ . -""~ ~~~ The STEDE BONNETT loading in Nassau. I've just returned from my latest goatboat trip. This was to Man-of-War Cay to arrange for the planting of some coconuts on beach property we own there. The trip was cl.imaxed by an incident that has amused our friends. The area involved is the one I know best. So join me, if you will, on the Sl'ede Bonnell, largest of the mail boats, sailing each Wednesday for Green Turtle Cay and intermediate ports. Our course is north across ocean-deep water for the first fifty miles. Then we pass Hole-in-theWall, the uninhabited tip of the island of Great Abaco, referred to locally as the "mainland." This curves in a northerly crescent for another sixty miles and forms the western shore of an elongated sound. The eastern shore of this sound is a string of keys which shield the yachtsman and the goatboater from the trade-wind rollers of the open Atlantic. Within this protected area are hundreds of natural harbors and dozens of unique villages. Here is yacht cruising at its best. At least for those no longer bent on derring do. And here is goatboating with least pain. T-he sissy can always stop off at one of the numerous resorts and recoup with stone crabs and a hot bath. Thursday noon will find your ship near an area where the sound makes a dog-leg turn to the northwest. Here three settlements of great charm group themselves in a small triangle, each being equidistant from the others about six miles. On the "mainland" is Marsh Harbor and its airstrip. Across the sound, on Elbow Cay is Hopetown with its one street that parallels an ocean on one side and a tight little harbor on the other. To the north is Man-of-War Cay with its village of the same name. These towns, largely white, are pure Cape Cod. I mean, of course, the Cape Cod of an elder and a simpler day. The 47 • �ISLAND PHONE CALLS re:-emb lann• j,, natural. The builder.. ot' these white wooden honws had sailed directly from maritime Mas.'ial'husells. They were Tory loyalists during the Hevolul ion and had been offered free crown lands either in C<mada or the Bahamas. This delegation chose J\Uantic-washed J\baco. Here they built themselves a 1111 11• Ne1v England. Here their children and their l'hildren's children have stayed. Here, for one hundred and eighty years, time has stood stalk still. Here the olcl New England still exists. Here and nowhere else. HOPETOWN Harbor. Cape Cod reincarnate. While speaking of anachronism, let me leave Abaco for a paragraph and point out a similar time stoppage in the capital, Nassau. If you wish a living look at our own colonial past, a flesh and blood view of its pomp and its circumstance and its governmental minutia, you may very well skip the reconstructions at Williamsburg or the empty rooms in Independence Hall and go to their counterpart, indeed t heir living succession, the government buildings on Rawson Square just off Bay Street. Here, straight out o f the past, is the periwigged court of law. Here is the colony's House of Assembly on its benches. Here is the golden mace on its cradle, emblem of a crown's authority, the very mace brought here in 1799. But here are no tourists. I mean none inside the buildings. This is strange ~ecause all is open to the public and it beats the four dollar buggy ride by a mile. To return to Abaco, the Massachusetts delegation that chose this area were seafarers and ship builders. They still are. Their names were Roberts and Malone in the Hopetown group. They still are. Their names were Albury and Sweeting at Man-of· War. They still are. Five generations of inbreeding shows surprisingly few ill effects. It was good stock. The chief complication that you, a newcomer, will observe is in the matter of those names. Your query about a Mister Roberts in Hopetown will get you nowhere. To ask for Captain Roberts does little better because three living Roberts have captained the ancient Stede Bonne tl. Your solution: use the Christian name, But Lhese are proud and sensitive people and you must put a complimentary title in 48 front. Ask for Mi.ilcr Willie or Mi.~ ll'r John. Ask for Captain Herbert or Cap tain Frank. On Man-of-War, with the Alburys, you will encounter a double complication, a matter or multiple Willies. This dilemma has been neatly solved. It's ll11clc Willie who is the ship builder and Cousin Willie who is the school teacher. Mister Norman, the sailmaker (and my mentor and confidant and real estate agent) has seen to it that his sons Albury will at least have first names distinctive. One is Millard. He's the top sailor so sought after by yachtsmen but now, alas, moved to Canada. The other is Marcellus. He runs the ferry to the airport and has married a foreigner, i.e. a girl from another island. And so a new generation is making a break with the long, long past. Able and confident., these don't even care to be called Mister. But I am an old timer and it is the elders l have learned to love. 1'here is an elfin quality to my adopted town . Leprechauns lurk. At least a Finian's Rainbow type of unreality always permeates my visits. For instance: I had been staying with the Marcellus Alburys. l was due back in South Miami for a wife's dinner party that evening. Easy. A p lane for Nassau would leave Marsh Harbor in the afternoon and make connections for Miami. It was now Sunday noon and fifty of us had filed out of church and stood gossiping on the lawn. Here I learned that a tramp freight er was in Marsh Harbor and would leave next morning for Palm Beach via the banks of Grand Bahama Island. This was high temptation. This was a route I had never traveled. Well, why not? A mere phone call would do it. A phone call of deep regret that I had missed the plane. For tunately, the only time I could make a phone call was after the plane had left. The die would then be cast. So be it. .... .. .. - A loaded lighter is towed into harbor. About island phone calls: These, of course, are by radio. Each settlement has its shack, its tower and its operator. Each, too, has its allotted time, a fifteen minute period once or twice a day. During such periods every radio in every house in every part of the island is tuned in to this broadcast. Not only t uned in but turned up. Volume is at the blast point for few stay indoors in this clime and she who leaves will still want to listen. And how about the fisher- - - - �WE TRY THE BOARDING SCHOOL BUSIN ESS men down on the dock or the workers in Uncle Willie's shipyard? Are they not equally interested? The net result is a booming P.A. system blanketing the island. It's our old party-line liste·ning without the bother of holding a receiver to an ear. It's the Town Crier bellowing out as of old-not only births, deaths and robberies but now the most intimate news of every neighbors's private life. It's all very satisfying. Who needs TV? The ferry to the airport had gone. I was in the radio shack waiting to reach Nassau and waiting for Nassau to reach the Miami marine operator and wailing for that worthy to reach a long deserted wife. With so little on my mind, how was it possible to forget the public character of the coming conversation? A Man with a Plan would have led off with this cautionary information using it as a shield against predictable attack. Instead, with no guile and with infinite imbecility, I led off with the simpl<:! truth. I had missed the plane because I had found a new goatboat to bring me home through new waters. It was only at the first scream-a piercing shriek composed of equal parts of genuine anger and simulated anguish- that I remembered our audience. I remembered it then only because I heard that scream not through a puny ear phone but rolling in through an open door. Out there the wife of my bosom, like Shakespeare's Viola, was hallooing my name to the reverberate hills. I stepped outside· to appreciate the full grandeur of it. She has real talent for invective, for portrayal of assumed martyrdom. Here at last was scope worthy of such talent. Lost in admiration, my problem of neighbor relations was almost forgotten but I forced myself to return to it, to consider ways of conserving some vestige of erstwhile village status. I could tone down a wife's virtuosity but only by explaining about our island listeners. This I rejected as not cricket. Rebuttal was considered but the idea discarded. ThEl round was already lost. Best back-pedal cautiously until the bell. I reenter the shack and p ick up the microphone. "Sorry. T'oo late to change plans now. The plane has left. My regards to your friends." Click. I lingered there surveying my situation, planning my return to a town whose every member was now a participant in my minor family crisis. Could I convince these simple and sincere frie111ds just how minor it was? I groped for phrases to explain the peculiar kiss-me-Kate nature of a forty year union, near-indestructible, close-to-ideal. Whe:n in doubt tell the truth. But would they believe· the hardly credible truth that this wounded woman of the air waves would, in fact, be disappointed if l showed up for that party. Gone then would be the wonderful springboard for launching into her !best dinner stories, stories anent the mad eccentric she married, stories culminating in her nonpareil, the' one of the stormy Bermuda crossing, the one wi.th the wet bunks and the floating slippers. This is a sure-fire closer and has everything, wild hilarity, mock self pity, even bawdry. If I were at the other end of the table, it would be difficull to gel into this repertoire. Even if she did, that heel might point out some glaring inconsistencies such as the fact that, with a change of mood, he may be accused of creeping senility because "We never go off-shore anymore." Such thoughts brought their own answer. The truth will never do. Far better to summon what shreds of nonchalance possible, saunter into the main street (it's eight feet wide and has never known an automobile) and pass each house with a gay quip to indicate that God was still in his heaven. It was weak. Still it would have to do. Forward. I nslead of co-embarrassed friends in their homes, I found a delegation on the dock. The problem has been evaluated, committees formed, a solution reached. With coordination of effort and divine help, a man's home, now disintegrating, would be saved. Their plan included a speed boat ready to dash to Marsh Harbor and a phone call Lo a friendly Bahama Airways captain to delay departure. One committee now arrived to hand me my packed hag . .. Graciousness, thy name is acceptance, not refusal, of gifts of love. Ruefully I realize that this goatboat trip cannot be. Stop stuttering. Aboard, aboard, for shame. Three hours later, Miami. Then a call from the airport to announce a Rover Boy's miraculous return. Here in dime and dial country I expound at length on how Love's light wings o'erperched all walls of impossibility . . . "Oh Yeah?" ... As I called my cab, I realized that round two was also lost. But at the dinner party I flatter myself J rated at least a draw. Where was I before I interrupted myself? Oh yes, back in 1918 Chicago with an ebullient wife a . . ' nursing baby and a reconciled father who was becoming increasingly insistent we try the boarding school business. He had decided the girl was not a son's downfall after all ; maybe she was his salvation . A strong character, she was now admired by an ultra strong father-in-law. (These strengths were bound to clash later but that's another story.) As for the boy, the father now recalled he had been a pretty good camp councilor. A wayward one, yes. Wont to spend his nights at the Portage Point Pavilion and roll in past a wakeful mother's bedroom near dawn, yes. S~eaking in Tate to breakfast one morning, he can still hear a Shakespeare-quoting father's aside to a worried mother: See Antony that revels long o' nights is notwithstanding up. But now in Chicago the father forgave and forgot those excesses and remembered a few successes. The collegian's camp innovations had proved popular with the schoolmaster's boys and parents. Good for business this was and Noble was above all a businessman. Now, most impressive of all to a canny Scot, was the fact that, in the dog-eat-dog business world, the bairn had shown that he could make a buck. The Woodstock offer was urged again; we said yes: we would try his school business. 49 �EDWARD IAN LABOR SAVING DEVICES A college drop-out realized he would have to establish some semblance of teacher certification. He wanted to start in the departing Harry Saxton's job of Athletic Director. In spite of that niickname? Because of it? You decide. Incidentally, my good friend Harry was being fired along with an elderly School Nurse because of some unlikely, reverse-role, May-and-December hanky-pank. Anyway,][ enrolled in Bernar McFadden's American College of Physical Education to get a one-semester certific:ate then honored in the Illinois public school system. The story of that school has interest and I'll d1escribe it when I take up our lives as pedagogues. Now I want to turn backward in time to discuss a boy's education. Yes, I've outlined his schooling but. that's a different matter. CHILDHOOD I come now to my turn-of-the-century beginnings; the story of an 1895 child born into surprisingly modern amenities including electric light, central heat, modern plumbing. Surprising because this is ancient history. Victoria sat on an Empire's throne; her Jubilee (and Kipling's Recessfonal) was years in the future. Yes, Hortense, that tale of cracking ice in a pitcher for washbowl ablutions t4e morning of your first Woodstock visit is trne. Yes, a city apartment dweller felt abused to walk that long, cold hall to a distant john. Once there, however, a flick of your wrist brought water steaming and a pull of that chain sent offal streaming. Luxury indeed considering you were not in your huge city and America's frontier lay just over the horizon. To appreciate this fact, read Chet Huntley's st.ark st ory of his western boyhood twenty years after your bemoaned discomforts. Before my day each Todd boy had been endangered by a coal stove and a kerosene lamp in his room. But mine was the time of Edison and Westinghouse; of Ford and the Wright brothers; of an engineering leap-forward unmatched until our present day saga of Jules Verne science that started with the Second World War. Chief among amenities was our super abundance of labor saving devices. Human ones, of course. My mother was r ich in these. Still, she was not unique. Any middle class housewife could have her "hired girls" at minimum expense. Only necessity was some extra beds, some extra food and a few extra pennies. A phone call to any Chicago employment agency would bring, on the next train, a grateful domestic off the last European boat. Take your choice: Irish, German, Swede. We had . maybe twenty, mostly German. Night and day, one was on duty in the room above my mother and could be summoned by an old fashioned bellpull through the ceiling. One final bit of rebuttal, Hortense, before I turn to matters of education. Save your misplaced sympathy for that mother-in-law you never met. Her comfort quotient, in non-plumbing aspects, was one you might envy. Consider grocery shopping: This afternoon you stormed into your kitchen angered and exhausted after toting four bags of food, twenty pounds each, from your car. To assemble that eighty pounds you had spent an hour in the aisles jostling your neighbors and their carts. Then, weary and heavy-laden, you waited ten minutes-Patience on her monument-for the boon of paying your dough. After that you toted eighty pounds to a car and later from car to kitchen. Look now upon the counterpart presentment of your mother-in-law doing her shopping. The only physical chore required was walking downstairs from her suite to her only phone. This was placed strategically off the boys' dining room for incoming parental calls. Oh yes, a second muscular act was needed. She must hand- 1 50 Interior of my birthplace. Originally the R.K. Todd home but now its walnut paneling painted white and my mother's filagree added. I was born in a bedroom at the top of the stairs. Our three children were born in hospitals but lived their young lives at the top of the same stairs, sliding down the same banister. Note the early electric chandelier and steam radiator. Hortense tore out the fi lagree and put the fireplace of your memory across the corner where you see the bookcase. -- - - -..... .... ...... �BOARDING SCHOOL BABY crank I hat wall-phone before she coulcl read off lo Ed Kapplar, Grocer, her pencilled list. Then back to her much while the wheels of Commerce ground exceedingly fine. Kapplar tramped his store to pull the ordered victuals off his shelves. His meatman walked his icehouse to bring out the ordered cuts. His delivery boy then took over with rumbling wagon , stout arms and sure knowledge of where each item belonged on our shelves. Do l overstate my case? Hardly. Anyway, consider this zinger of a tag line: The bill for such goods and services arrived at om house (as at the house of every Victorian Solid Citizen) once a year! L L L L~ INSTITUTIONAL KID W~s the little Roger born into the best of all possible worlds? A Panglossian nature made him think so. Still does. Valid arguments can be marshaled against boarding schools; fewer against big families. This boy's beginnings combined the best features of each; parents to look up to; siblings to compete with. Yes, siblings. This was a family school. Noble and Grace were parents; parents straight out of Life with Father. If I had Clarence Day's talent, I could top his tale. Grace was less scatterbrained than Vinnie but full of her own foibles and similarly resigned to the less-than-P.riual status ordained for her sex. If she ruled her Lord and Master, it must be through guile. She did so rule and passed her devious talent on to a son. Tbe boy had three separate childhoods, really; September to June, he had an institutional life. Parts of each summer, his was a small town milieu. In mid summer he revelled in primeval forest and rolling sea. The world was indeed so full of a number of things! Like RLS, the boy exulted. His institutional life was restricted weekdays, to a nine-acre campus. Saturday meant hikes; short ones to the school's twenty-acre woods, long ones to Lake Geneva, bike trips to the Fox river valley . Once a month came an "open weekend." Boarders could go home. More often than not I went with a pal; with Po Field to his mother's home on Buena avenue next to the father-fabled Waller Lot or with Billy Dodge to his Exterior of the beautiful home the Princeton preacher, R.K. Todd, built for his bride before the Civil War. I mean, of course, the sect ion on the left. That long wing and porch on the right was a Noble Hill, boarding school addition. In your day there was a th ird f loor; i n my day just an attic where our maids lived under slanted ceilings. That port-cochere (covered driveway) seen on the right was my mother's pride, added when I was four or five. See picture on next page where a surrey waits with a driver to t ake our dressed-up fami ly as soon as the camera clicks. . ·~ grandmother's penthouse atop the old Del Prad11 hotel, a broad-veranda, resort-type sprawl smatk on the sands of Lake Michigan at the fool o l' I lyde Park boulevard. The spoiled Bill y owned a Studehaker Electric. Stored in the hotel's garage-basement, its dozen batteries under the hood were charged nightly from a wall socket and gave us a daytime range of fifty miles and a top speed of maybe thirty. They also gave me a scar on my knee that 1 still carry, the only scratch I've ever had (on skin or fender) in millions of road miles. It happened like this: Bill was at the tiller. Yes, I sa id tiller; a transverse one. Two boys were beside him, squeezed under that tiller. I was atop the batteries; on the hood. Bill made an emergency stop . Roger and his knee kept on travelling along the pavement. Speaking of automobiles, Charley Bent's father maintained , in addition to his empty Winnetka home, a Lake Geneva mansion on Williams Bay for a beautiful young "housekeeper." His Pierce Arrow limousine was an Edwardian wonder with its compartmented interior and its almost modem gear shift on the steering column instead of on the running board. The chauffeur let me drive and I was amazed and thrilled by its power; soaring over hills that would have reduced our Mitchell to a low-gear crawl. But I've jumped ahead someway to junior high school. Let's return to the child. My earliest memory is of a storm at sea; a storm and a shipwreck. I was three years o ld. The "storm" was a summer blow of maybe twenty -five knots. The "ship" was a thirty foot , double-ended Mackinaw sloop, standard working craft for commercial fishermen on Lake Michigan until the Kalemberg engine took over. Our family had left Chicago the evening before on one of the gala steamers that made thrice weekly summer sailings to Ludington, Manistee and points North. We were enroute to Portage Lake where a new cottage was waiting. It had been ordered the year before when we had visited a rich Todd patron, Gus Kitsinger, on his yacht and in his Onekama summer home. Portage Lake was not then resort-developed enough to rate a stop by t.hese ships rushing their affluent human car- �SPANISH AMERICAN WAR go up t.o the great. establishments at Charlevoix and Mackinac. The llill family debarked at Manistee to board a logging railroad to Onekama where che only "passenger station" was Sand's Lumber Mill. This June day its dock was wet with spray and the view down the lake to Red Park, three miles away, was into a whitecapped Sou'wester. "Couldn't we hire a buggy?" asked an apprehensive mother . "No livery stable in town" was the answer. "But Old Cap Kelly'll get you there easy." This ancient of days and wind-blown son of the sea was found and he opined, "There's nuthin' to it." Our children will remember this old man's son, Leo, who captained the motorized ferry of a later day. Now, however, Leo was an agile monkey of a boy high on a heeling mast, astride a swaying gaff. Or was he, as I thought, really Jim Hawkins on his crosstree? And was that Long John Silver below, hands on the wheel, beak to the wind? The child was entranced. The family was drenched . The ship was laboring. That broad bow wasn't built for windward work. Twenty tacks. Nowhere. Not even Wicka-tee-wah Point. Then the main. blew out! Seams opened from gaff to boom. (In those days, they were cut parallel to the leach.) Our captain ran for the lee behind the point. He beached the Beaver. We waded ashore. Then a wet walk to our new home in the woods, the porchencircled cottage stUl offering its view down to the lake and still hanging, for a new owner, our old shingle: The Vista. So began those wonderful watery summers in Michigan. The mother had her heart's desire, a home of her own. The boy had his heart's desire, boats to sail! It would be twelve years before a father would add the buildings and the acres necessary to start his Camp. Hard luck for the mother; gone now was her privacy. Good deal for the boy; now he commanded a fleet . But back to that first summer: Memory here f 52 is mainly or newspapers read aloud during dinner on a huge porch . The mailman's buggy would arrive about time grace had been said. Time out for the cartoons, the pictures, the dispatches from Cuba and the Philippines. How different from modern war news from the jumgle. No endless protraction of fighting. No disillusionment. Rather, an inning-byinning box score of a glorious speedy sporting event whose final result was never in doubt. Consider that box score for the year 1898: February-the MAINE! Little boys were admonished to remember and now allowed to shout happy profanity at Spain. AprilWAR! McKinley announces. Hearst rejoices. MaySUPER SEA VICTORIES! Dewey in Manila Bay. Sampson off Santiago. June- OUR BRAVE BOYS PREPARE TO LAND! In Cuba. On Luzon . JulyROUGH RIDERS TAKE SAN JUAN HILL! Bully for Teddy. He's done it again. August- PEACE IS SIGNED! Caribbean, an American lake. In the Pacific, Hawaii is annexed, Guam is captured and our string of island bases stretch to Japan. Now to build a two-ocean navy. Manifest Destiny. No, the three-year-old didn't learn all that about the "splendid little war" while it was going on but that war and its aftermath dominated his childhood. Endless political discussions by adults. The father was a creature of infinite certitude. McKinley meant well but was making so many mistakes. The Malefactors-of-Great-Wealth were taking over the country. The son thought there was an obvious solution tu the nation's manifold ills: Elect this so-sure man President; My considerable knowledge of the Battle of Manila is partly from a fantastic, Barnum-type side show that ran for years in a darkened Armory on Wabash avenue. Every hour a new crowd of standees would hear and see a gymnasium-sized, circular spectacle of mechanical gadgets, lights and sound effects that Disney's designers might envy. Hortense says she remembers the show vaguely. I remember it vividly. Join the boy now for the umpteenth time in the darkness: You are tense. The National Anthem blares in and fades out. Then rheostats bring up a faint light streaking the sky over Manila. We hear Dewey's voice as he talks to his captain, Gridley, on his flagship, Olympia. Then we see the ship's faint silhouette as it leads the squadron slowly, surreptitiously, into the mine-infested bay. "Closer, Captain! Hug the shore! Closer! If there's a safe passage, it will be in dangerously shallow water . Slower! Signal four knots." BOOM! ! Shore guns blaze behind us. It's Corregidor. We've been sighted! Look! The Baltimore is on fire! No, it's just sparks from their funnel and it's flame from their own guns, now firing on the shore battery. Soon this is aflame. Silenced. Almost daylight now and we are approaching the Spanish fleet. "You may fire, Gridley, when you are ready." Boy, oh boy! How they fire! How the phonographs boom! How - - -- �:J PREP SCHOOL CILASS EXTRAORDINARY the fireworks zoom! One by one Motojo's fleet lose l.nasts and superstruct ure. They start to smoke; then to blaze; then to settle into the mud. A satisfying and ego-building spectacle for a young child; for a young nation. A generation later, watchers of World War II found it ironic that on t his same world stage -Corregidor, Bataan, Manila Bay-was played out the drama of America's greatest defeat, the tragedy of endurance and despair led by General Wainwright. We at home read with a lump in our throat how our native insouciance carried on to the end and that fifty-mile Death March was punctured with song. This not withstanding the fact that roadside ditches were filling with the dropped-out-to-die. One song they reportedly sang: We 're bareassed bastards of Bataan,/ No father, no mother, no Un cle Sam. TODD BOY AUTHORS This diversion to the wars of a new century prompted me to spend last evening with the works of my favorit.e historian, Bob Goldston, a member of Todd's class of 1944, a galaxy which included our son, Rog, and several fos ter so11s. Bob has filled a long shelf in our library with the product of his gifted pen. The shelf includes fiction that brought him acclaim but left him impoverished. It includes fact in the shape of condensed histories that support his huge fa mily and his villa in Ibiza. (For the Macmillan series of "Battle Books" Robert uses his mother's maiden name, Conroy.) He visited us for a few days last month and I dug out the corny old boys-on-the-town photo reproduced here. Bob is on the right; Rog in the middle; Jim White on the left. Jim deserves his chapter in this memoir as surely as does Orson. He was Todd's second boy genius with equally predictable future fame. But that chapter must wait and I must stop rambling. Besides, I need time to dig out his early manuscripts. Trouble is, at the snail's pace of these paragraphs, I may never get to either Welles o.r White. How did Keats put it?When I have fears that I shall cease to• be/ Before my pen has glean 'd my teeming brain·- No, John, I don't have your teeming brain but, at eighty, I can double in spades your own intimations of mortality when you were thirty. So farewell, Jim; orphan boy so loved by all. Your passion for creative writing brought your death. Your classmates opted for delay on their war duty by entering college or officer's training. You elected the experience you deemed necessary for the books boiling within you. It was t he Battle of the Bulge that brought you, so sadly soon, that final experience awaiting us all. • • • • • • • It's morning. I read now what I wrote last night. Why must I always procrastinate? Come off it, Hill. Put something from Jim's pen in riglht here. Tomorrow may 'not come. No, you couldn't find his file last month but you saved some of your old Com- mencement talks and one turned into a memorial for Jim. You read then a poem h(? had written a year earlier. It wasn't as startlingly genius-flavored as some of the one-act plays and stories this seventeenyear-old turned out but it's subjnct - contemplated death - made it particularly poig;nant. So read now, dear children, this boy's penciling as Spring came on with rustling shade that momentous year of '44. He borrows Walt Whitman's style: If I should die tomorrow, Imperfect, As a child seeking, Creator of nothing Except in the vast emptiness of imagination; Master of nothing, Not even myself Know this: My life was enough If I should die tomorrow, Imperfect, As a half-man, Sick with an awkward ego; Ashamed of that sickness; An idly eager student seeking the strange truths; Accomplishing nothing in a sole pursuit of phrase; Seeing ambition cower behind ignorance; Fearing my fumbling when l contemplate Challenge of a world beyond boyhood Yet know this: My life was enough 53 �If I should die tomorrow OUR NECESSARY END Leaving a thousand delights untasted; My memory wanting a thousand secrets; Love but a soft whisper in the night; My mind restless and athirst; Groping the stuff of knowledge; Still know this: My life was enough. I strove with none; for none was worth my strife, Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art; I warmed both hands before the fire of life, That fire sinks; I'm ready to depart. Walter Savage Landor Mortal bliss was mine In the brief inflection of a lazy laugh, In the delicious waste of precious time, In the prideful joy of minor achievement, In a strange and a groundless confidence, In the dear love of boyhood comrades So know this: Today Because I lived a little, Tomorrow I will die content Thank you, Jim. If you, having lived so little, could write and mean that closing line, how much more should this oldster sing out your refrain. Comparison with another seventeen-year-old's poem on death is inevitable. I refer, of course, to the Bryant boy, William Cullen. You will remember how his father discovered the Thanatopsis manuscript in a drawer; sent it to the American Review and created a senation. Critics ref used to believe this threnody had been written by a boy or that any American poet of any age was capable of such inspired verse. The magazine, they claimed, had been hoaxed. This was the work of Shelly or possibly Byron. Our eighth grade English Class in Todd Seminary1had for a text a thick volume entitled American Poets. In this the lead-off literary light was Bryant. I studied him in my teacher·'s class and I spouted him on my father's platform. His metrical essay on Death (Thanatopsis is Greek for De.athview)was a favorite of Noble Hill who was prone to expound on its teaching. First that statement on inevitability: Yet a little while and thee, the all-beholding sun shall see no more. Then the closing sermon on contentment: Approach thy grave/ Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him! And lies down to pleasant dreams. * * * * * * * * * I've just decided to insert here a personal thanatopsis. It will be in dull prose. I had planned to expound my unorthodox views on death in a final chapter but like Keats I begin to fear I'll never get that far. So read now the gleanings of a not-soteeming brain on this inescapable subject. 54 Yes, Walter, of course! Every rational, rea· soning soul would like to quit while ahead, avoid a demeaning debility. The trouble is that God, who planned his beautiful sequence for all living things, humans, birds, bees, plants and trees, goofed slightly. He arranged for all to be born in wondrous beauty and for each to grow, flower, seed, reproduce, wither and die. Perfect. Except that so often he allows that penultimate period, that withering, to stretch out into ugliness. Your grandmother and I agree we want none of it. In recent years a dozen of our compatriots have died. Funeral comments on all (save one) were dominated by a recurrent and a frightening phrase: Wasn't it a blessing? I'll spare you the ugly details of these blessings; just give samples of family phrases that floated over the remains. Such as: Oh yes, it was so diffi- cult; he was completely incontinent you know. Or again: No, not for over a year except in grunts and mumblings. Cruel, hopeless, helpless bondage. Heaven forfend! The trouble is that Heaven won't but the encouraging thing is that Man can and, within a generation or two, probably will. This means that you, dear grandchildren, may be able to spare yourself such geriatric indignities. As follows: In some happy and not too distant day, Reason will ascend her throne, Truth will get a belated hearing and Man's necessary end will avoid demeaning features and be accomplished with decorum. A contented oldster like myself may then call his loved ones together for a final family feast. After the food and the drink and the reminiscence and the laughter, the evening will be climaxed by the guest of honor wrapping the drapery of his couch about him and lying down to pleasant dreams. Good-byes will have been said; a mortician-anesthetist will have entered (with priest or preacher if desired) and the greybeard (a philosopher or he wouldn't have chosen this route) will be one with Socrates. Far out, you say? Maybe. Not for everyone? Of course. Only a few will want it. But those of us who love life (and despise half-life) will have it available. Moralists, religionists will call it suicide. What's in a name? Anyway, Hamlet was wrong; the Almighty didn't set his canon 'gainst self slaughter; the clergy did. The clergy �REPRIEVE FROM SURGERY with their glorification of the cross and of suffering. Sure, most suicides are despicable. A Hemingway blowing his brains against a wife's ceiling is infinitely cruel. An exhibitionist on his lofty ledge threatening a jump is infinitely self-centered. Both are tired of life. Me, I'm in love with life; anxious only to miss its diminution. The glory of old age is in its heightened appreciation of each day. Scarcity determines value. This holds true for any commodity, be it minerals or months. A familiar opening line in newspaper stories of oldtime hangings went: The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast. Sure. Appreciation was raised to the nth degree. Only we oldsters, riding our tumbrel a last mile to God's guillotine, view with final clarity the beauties of a life we must leave. But the geriatric paradox is that if we clutch at this beauty too long, it disappears. How did Jesus put it? Whosoever will save his life shall lose it. I'm punching this out in a hospital room. On my trusty old portable, It's late at night. The medicos, after days of arterial studies, have decided I must be cut up in the morning. This, hopefully, will improve the worst of my vascular deficiencies, a neck obstruction that cuts off vision in one eye at times and threatens things more dire. I've been lucky, really, for thirty-five years. Back then I lost all circulation in my lower legs and faced amputation. Two things saved me from the predicted wheelchair: One, coldturkey quitting of cigarettes; Two, forced walking, despite calf pain, to develope collateral circulation. The lesson for all of you blood-re lated descendants is clear: lay off cigarettes. Others may inhale the weed with possible impunity. Not you; you've got Hill genes. Enough of anatomical detail on your antique ancestor. Now back to his views on death; his thanatopsis. Does your grandmother share my unorthodoxy? Yes, in part. She, too, will talk of "a pill" when feeling low; never when her spirits soar. Her appetite for life is too voracious. So is mine, oh sensuous woman who taught me to drink deep of life. And yet ... I wear my geriatric rue with a difference. With me, it's precisely when life is most glorious that I'm moved to end it all; end it up there on a mountain top. Oh the heights we've known, my love; in youth and age, on land and sea. If we could only preserve the glory; by going together. Maybe we still will. The Hill luck, you know. Now the nurse is calling me to bed and to her waiting needle. Good night, lover. See you tomorrow. On the off chance that I don't, courage! You've had this all your life. You have it now. Plus riches untold and untellable--the amazing love and devotion of thos~ young people who comprise our wondrous family. * * * * * * * It's a week later. No operation. Instead, postponement and anticlimax. I was horizontal on a cart rolling down a hall toward Surgery, when a "co~s1J1ltant" (supposed to see me the night before) rushed up, plugged in his stethoscope, flipped the pages 1of an inch-thick "chart" and made the pronouncE~ment: "Put this man back in bed. Hemoglobin is down to three-point-five. Internal bleeding. Must find out where. Give him iron shots for two days and then send him to X-ray for upper and lower GI series. If negative, have him inspected by sig1moidoscope." I'm sorry, readers. That's all for boring physiology and dull diagnostics. You have my promise. And I have my surgical reprieve so I'll rush through this chapter on our necessary end and turn to subjects less lugubrious. As I was saying, the departure of oldsters from this world with euthanasia and without recrimination will be available to you. Not for us, however. Hortense and I must die separately. I hope she go1~s first. Desolate as I will be, my powers of coping with solitude are greater than hers. If I do go first, I hereby request no funeral. Some sort of annountcement will be expected and I ask that the following, approximately, be put in any public prints you consider appropriate: "Roger Hill, for thirty years Headmaster of The Todd School at Woodst:ock, Illinois, and known to generations of boys as Skipper, died at ............There will be no public funeral at this time but memorial services: are planned and will be announced later." Now about those memorial services: These are to consist, simply and only, of times when family, friends, or alumni happen to be foregathered and happen to come up with memories of the departed that are worthy of recall and, mayhap, of some lingering love and, hopefully, of laughter. An announcement like the above. was made when Edwin Embree died in 1952. Months later they carried out the plan and had a formal service in a Ulfliversity of Chicago chapel. Eulogies were delivered by Marshall Field, Robert Hutchins, Jim Sparlin~( and others. Jim had been President of the YMCA college and had quarreled with his Board when they demanded he set a quota for black students. He demurred and was fired. Edwin, using the last of the Rosenwald money and enlisting the support of Marshall Field, started Roosevelt University with-Sparling at its head. For a "campus" they bought the old Auditorium building, long the home o:f the Chicago Opera Company. The dedication dinner in 1945 was a thousand-dollar-a-plate affair (E!Xcept for your freeloading grandparents) and featured an inauguration talk by F.D.R's widow. But my subject was funerals and formalized memorials. The Embree service was impressive. Still it seemed to me flavored with a tincture of oblig·ation, both on the platform and in the audience!. I said then, and believe today, that the same eulogies put into a commemorative book would htave been a more lasting memorial. But judge not that ye be not judged, Hill. Here you are writing your own memorial. Oh well. Each to his own folly. 55 �THANATOPSIS Speaking of do-it-yourself chores, I long had a scheme in the back of my mind that a great way to finish off our wonderful, adventurous, seagoing lives would be not only to arrange our death ahead of debility but our internment ahead of the undertaker. This by taking our heavy-ballasted sloop out into the Gulf Stream, going below, closing the hatches and opening the seacocks. (Shades of Elbert Hubbard! My highschool hero was aboard the passenger-crowded Lusitania in 1916 when it was torpedoed by a German U boat. There were few survivors but one of them reported that Hubbard, on deck, seeing the heavy list and the rapid sinking, said to his wife: "This is it. Let's go to our cabin.") But don't worry children. We'll not embarrass you by unorthodox behavior. Our deaths will be in bed. They will be separate and they will be needlessly slow and painful. May you fare better. A final paragraph now on your chances: Death with Dignity. This slogan is increasingly seen in our prints and heard on our platforms. Passive euthanasia (that's Greek for good death) is widely accepted. Active euthanasia--direct action to speed the death of a dying patient--finds more and more advocates even among the clergy, those self-righteous moralists who have so long condoned the torturous killing of "enemies" but condemned the mercy killing of friends. These religionists believe in an afterlife (the Mass for the Dead says life is changed, not taken away) and yet they fear death far beyond those of us who believe it means sleep and that immortality means offspring, the products of our loins; as well as the products of our influence and of our minds. (Shakespeare is immortal not because he conceived Susanna and Hamnet but because he conceived Falstaff and Hamlet.) The main reason Hortense and I are ready to die is because we have lived. This was true in our youth. It was true in life's glorious apogee as diagrammed here for the fifties. It's been particularly true in the twenty years of our descending decades when we found a second youth (an even more sentient youth) in life's lovely twilight. This pictorial representation of life's time and its tide, its flow and its ebb, is from a ceramic tile Emily once sent us. The message is charming and the symbolism accurate except for that phoney rejuvination in the nineties. But preceding that, the stumble and stoop pictured for the eighties is straight out of the Psalms. Did you ever play Blackjack? Maybe you called it Twenty-one or Bust. Hoyle tells his gamblers to always "stand" at seventeen. Yes, there's a possibility of drawing another advantageous card or two but the probability is disaster. Similar advice is given to us by David in the Bible for playing life's game. His cut-off point is eighty: ''The years of our life are three score and ten yet if by reason 'of strength they be four score still is their strength but labour and sorrow." On 56 Emily's tile I particularly like that confident and consumate summit of the fifties, that high point of life's trajectory. How well I remember. How I rejoiced. How I looked forward to those descending stages, life's dessert, a second course of sweet relaxation. Hortense failed to share my exultation. Does any woman rejoice at advancing age? Anyway, a letter I wrote heir in that dim past has just turned up. It is pertinent. She was recuperating from a Mayo operation; staying with Rita and Orson in California. It recalls things nearly forgotten and reads in part: "Sorry you're feeling old? Who isn't?But with me there's a side effect of rejoicing, not regret. We're that much nea1rer to retirement. I philosophized about this in rhyme last night. Not a jingle as is my wont but a sonnet, no less. Here it is: " - TO HORTENSE ON HER BIRTHDAY - When April nineteenth looms to herald spring And mark the passing of another snow Encircling my love's life with one more ring Surrounding mine (it's thus that forests grow) My joy for her is tempered knowing she Resents each added count of one band more Forgetting rings grow larger on life's tree With each new circle circling those before. As so, in adoration, this I pray: Forswear, my sweet, such thoughts that bring you sorrow. Those yesterdays were not above today. Today, I swear it, not above tomorrow. The best of life's great thrilling view Lies just ahead, because our love is true. ... .····-- (': t ) . ·.. - ·. \~~ .[Jc>fPJl:: v<·~ ~· ~~: f i~ {zya"' Ila,~ \) SI '1;~ vy 1 ~'!• i1, a~ ©n(~ 10 fJt; -- - �THANA TOPS IS I promised this would be a final paragraph in the chapter. Then I turned to a file labeled Thoughts on Old Age. Wow! An accumulation of years. Thick. Bulging. Sample: the letter quoted above. Also enough random ideas jotted down to outline a book. But it's too late for that book now; the market for the subject has recently been flooded. I close the file and ponder a way to close this thanatopsis. Maybe with a jingle on death. These flow regularly from this compulsive rhymer and are more typical than his iambic pentameter above. I wake up most morn· ings with one dancing in my head. Why? Maybe you can figure it out. Here's my regular routine for wooing Morpheus ·the night before: a news magazine read until eyes grow heavy. Then lights out and the mental pulling of a poetry volume from a shelf to continue sightless reading until slumber. But why should Shakespeare or Masefield or Whitman or Kipling bring on thoughts or dreams or jingles of death's desirability? Possibly because so many of my authors found tragedy in· old age. Take Walt. You remember he wrote in his youth: Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die. But the good grey poet didn't find that luck; not, at least,until he was 83 and had endured 11 years of imbecility. Ditto for Ibsen, for Mencken and so many other mental giants who suffered their long Gethsemanes. Please, dear God, not for us; not for our loved ones. Some sample jingles that come from my shaving mirror: The woods are lovely, dark and deep; We've no more promises to keep, No miles to go; it's time to sleep. Cheer up, he said, and then he winked; It's kinda fun to be extinct. We've lived the life abundant On the land and on the seas. It's wine approaches bottom; Let's not linger o'er the lees. So goodbye world, it's time · to leave; Hail Death that knits the raveled sleeve. I'll now drop the ridiculous and close with the sublime. Here's Ecclesiastes, the overall mentor of this memoire: A good name is better than precious ointment; And the day of one~ death than the day of ones birth. Hold it, Preacher! Now you've gone too far with your vanity of vanities; all is vanity text. Death may be fine. I've been saying as much. But it's not-better than birth; it's only a concomitant of birth. I know a better closing quote. It's by a contemporary, an eighty-year-old named Eli Kahn and was reported in a recent Euthanasia Council Bulletin. A doctor tells there how the octogenarian was long kept alive (painfully and against his pleading) by tubes, wires and oxygenation. When the doctor was called from the room, Kahn reached over and switched off the oxygen. The nurses found this note scrawled on his bedside table: Death is not the enemy, doctor. Inhumanity is. ... ... ... ... ... Before I got detoured onto the subject of death, I was recalling a childhood. I'll return soon to those dim days in the early century but first a postscript on death's necessary aftermath, the distribution of a departed's worldly goods. I'll call this subchapter Wl-IEN YOU DIVVY-UP THE WHACK An' Bill can have my seaboots, Nigger Jim can have my knife. You can divvy up the whack I haven't scoft, An' the ship can have my blessing An' the Lord can have my life For it~ time I quit the deck and went aloft. Masefield You will find our affairs in reasonably good shape. ·Our will is in the form of a living trust which, we are told, will require no probate. It consists mainly of our stock in Gettys Mfg. Co. and provides for this to be split equally among our three children with the proviso that Rog has the option of buying, at book value, his sister's shares. This so the man who conceived and developed the business will not stand in jeopardy of some day losing control. Joanne has the key to our strong box and the bank's authority to enter it any time we are incapacitated. She won't find much there beyond the will, some minor jewelry and some minor war bonds in clifferent grandchildren's names. Also a letter from Hortense giving her suggestions for the division or distribution of certain personal effects. On many of our antiques you will find a typed card giving its history. These pieces have been collected on family trips starting back in the twenties and ranging from Mexico to Canada. Only one item of furniture is a true family heirloom: our blue velvet Victorian sofa. It was a. wedding present to the Richard Kimball Todds and ...once carried a Wells-Fargo Express tag showing it shipped, in 1845, from New Jersey to Woodstock. Horty discovered the lovely piece long ago relegated to the "Maid's Spooning Parlor." It had green carpet tacked over its black horsehair. One piece, that I know of, has already been promised; our pendulum clock to Rick Smith. Years ago this Woodstock school boy spent a summer in our home and demonstrated his now famous financial acumen by this statement; "Granny, you know the vultures are soon going to be circling around in this house and snapping at the goodies. I put my bid in now for that clock." You won, Rick. A note will be found inside the door stating as much. 57 �LUMBER SCHOONER BOY I have one or two distributive ideas myself. As follows: Hascy should get any movie material he wants. Many of the films represent his work as much as mine. But don't let him grab any of the seagoing goodies. That Tarbox turncoat has foresworn his sailing childhood on the Minnesota lakes and his cruising youth with me. Now he sneers at those of us holding the true faith. All right for you, Hascy. As Solomon put it (more or less) How sharper than a thankless tooth it is to have a serpent son. And of course Rog should get the antique sextant he used throughout the Caribbean; also the lovely and priceless model of the Isabella B. Sands. flagship of the great lumber company's fleet and my childhood jungle-gym in the early century. This because a nephew of "Uncle Louie'' Sands lived in the Sans Souci cottage at Red Park and was my summer pal. He and his wierd mother had a Stevens-Duryea complete with chauffer ready to drive two boys, at their whim, to the schooner (preserved as a museum) at a dock near the screaming saws and the great log-booms afloat in Manistee Lake. This model is unique. Most are inert, vertical, becalmed on painted Our Christmas card, long years ago, pictured a growing family in front of a Woodstock fireplace with the schooner model outward bound on the mantle above. Also this mock-Masefield ditty: DREAM SHIP Lumber hooker of my youth, Able argosy of Dream, Bound from Port-of-Past in truth, Tell me, are you what you seem? Is that spacious cargo hold Crammed as in the days gone by? And that lad that skips so bold Through your rigging, is that I? Do I hear your sailors chant, Your peak blocks groan, your bow wash roar? Do I feel that deck aslant Underneath me as of yore? Are those running lights agleam Twinkling bright off Charlevoix? Or is this an old man's dream? Are you nothing but a toy? Ah, I fear this fireside light Plays its tricks like mellow wine. I've been dozing here tonight Dreaming of a happier time. Happier time? Ah no, forsooth. Let's be honest, you and I Though when age looks back to youth Sure the retrospect is high. · water. This ship is alive, aslant, close-hauled on a starboard tack, beating into the prevailing westerlies with a 15 degree heel. Is she outward bound for Milwaukee? That's what the Manistee saloon owner told me the day of his auction. (Prohibition was closing his elaborate establishment with all its multiple moose heads and langurous nudes.) Now the lovely replica sails a recessed alcove in our Florida library, a diarama with a Great Lakes chart for a back-drop. The snapshot is none too clear but, hopefully, you can make out the ratlins just ahead of those spider-web lazyjacks. The small sailor climbed these to gain his glorious seat on the crosstrees for a view far over the city to a limitless horizon on an inland sea. By extension, this sea carried him on and on to all the beckoning waters of the world. Ah, dreams, dreams ... 58 Dreaming? Yes. Let's not complain. Here's one happiness that's sure. Ships may pass and moons will wane. It's our dreams alone endure. Lumber hooker, hold your course Across wide Memory's open sea And no cargo of remorse Let there be consigned to me. Lumber hooker, this I ask: Keep those running lights agleam Rolling down from Port-of-Past With your cargo of a dream. • • . And now a reprise of my abandoned subject of childhood. - -- - .. -- .. �.. .. CRIPPLED CH ILD INVALID DAYS I "' fall from a giant climbing complex that Noble Hill had designed and built out of telephone poles and rope as per my rough sketch. A schoolmaster's vanity was involved. The onetime sailor (three voyages to England on square riggers) was still an an:azingly powerful man and delighted in showing this off. None of his boys could shinny up those "masts" with his agility or "lay out along that boom" with his confidence. His boys competed ag:ainst time when climbing those outside ropes to end up astride that "yard-arm. " Actually, this was big-boy stuff and I couldn't do it at alL Not, at least, if I stuck to rules which called for a handover-hand climb without the use of legs. My d?wnfall came on a prosaic swing, albeit a super high one. There was competition involved here too, a matter of how high one could pump and then how far down he could see "over the beam." A numbered grid was painted on the tennis court in front. You were· standing up and when your ropes were horizontal or higher you yelled out the number on the lowest line you had glimpsed. Boasting was inevitable; lying probable; arguments continuous. The point is we strained ourselves to capacity and beyond. The arc of our swing must be beyond the horizontal which meant we came down with a partial drop and a sickening jerk. Someway the kid jerked loose. His father quoted Masefield to him later, that line about a sailor falling to his death from a yard-arm: Which comes o' playin' the giddy fool an' leavin' go the jack." I probably extended my right arm to stop the fall. Anyway, the elbow was ripped apart and the lower arm bones pushed out through the skin near the shoulder. A mess. The Woodstock medico put on a straight cast but a Todd boy's father, a doctor, insisted I be taken to ·" Bonesetter Reece" in Chicago who was dean of America's orthopedic surgeons at the time. Lucky me. This genius opened everything up, sewed the tendons and blood vessels and put on a new cast with a 45 degree bend. His prognosis for recovery was gloomy: "Some motion in the joint should develope over the years." When the cast came off I was required to constantly carry a strapped bundle of books. This to straighten out the crook. For improvement the other way and increase the bend I must hourly and painfully pull my right hand (with my left) up toward my chin. I told you earlier that in highschool I collected a long promised reward for touching my nose. I said this was with a thumb. If this implied contempt for a father I now blush and herewith do penance. Noble Hill could be cold but not with a son in trauma. Now he read to him by the hour. Now he bought him a new phonograph and a new library of records. These were wax cylinders. Many were poetry. There was more: When the boy was ambulatory the father had a bowling alley installed in the gym. This because Bonesetter Reece said handling those heavy balls would be the best therapy of all. The next winter he built the toboggan shown. Partly, at least, for a crippled son. Other boys could drag their sleds back after a long ride. Roger was admonished to carry his in his right hand. The memory of such indulgence by a father prompts me to change the subject again. It's a matter of priorities and available time. I'm the only one who can tell you of your great-grandfather. Others can tell you of me. Get Hascy at this and you'll have a bonus of high entertainment. Melinda can be equally hilarious on her off-beat grandmother. But only we ( / ..___::;; -t-- ._ Sailor's Cl imbing Complex-'--'--- 59 �LIFE WITH FATHER octogenarians can tell the story of your earlier ancestors. Hortense has finally put on tape much about the Gettys and the Pauleys and I must tum this into print and picture, a more important chore than maundering on about childhood. Another priority is to tell the story of that unique boarding school so dominant an influence in all of our lives. Then there's the sea and its special spell over many of us. Plus, of course, Orson, whose chapter should revive interest here when reader boredom mounts. We are constantly asked about him. The childhood of this lad who became a legend in his own time has never been documented. This should be done but for now I turn to your progenitor, my father: NOBLE HILL I'll start with an excerpt from his own writings. Typically, this will be self-laudatory. I told you that when Todd had its Centennial in 1948 the retired Noble wrote, for the school archives, its early story. Back on page 5 I find my comment· on this history and on its author included the following: He was admittedly, a man that few Jovect and many feared. Still most, even if grudgingly, admired. And above all - and beyond all gainsaying - he was strong. Yet he writes himself down a petulant scold. Worse, his story of Richard Todd's senile failures and his own youthful triumphs write him down something pretty close to a conceited ass. Pity. So far, far from the fact. In a later chapter I shall try to correct the record. I've come now to that chapter. You've just been told of the man's compa$ion. Have you heard the Tarbox impersonation of the man giving his boastful tale, The Time I Broke the Capstan Bar? No? Then hurry to Hascy, my pets. In fact, get him to put this on tape before it's too late. It's a family classic. I bring you now a companion tale of the Great Man: The Time I Quelled the Student Riot. I bring it only as he wrote it, not as he dramatized it. Maybe you can supply the histionics. Try this, especially at the climax which should be read aloud. Your ancestor has been giving us paragraphs in praise of his pedagogy. He continues: Lest I give the impression that my task was too easy and my techniques too perfect, I must confess some cases were conquered by resort to methods less subtle and refined. There were boys in Todd who could not be reached by an appeal to reason, who lacked all sense of justice and honor, who recognized no law but the law of the jungle. Mr. Todd would not remove them from my path so my philosophy of life, or my red head, compelled me to see it through. One example will serve to illustrate. 60 The leader of the hoodlums was a young man 21 years of age who prided himself on being a tough guy. He claimed to be light-weight champion pugilist of MiJwaukee. He was, of course, toadied to and accorded th•e leadership of his gang. Naturally they resented my leadership and that of Mr. McCallum and thought themselves quite capable of ' "doing us up." It came to us through some of the younger boys that they had worked out an elaborate scheme for doing this. They had armed themselves with "billy clubs" concealed in their clothing and bootlegs. The coup was to be accomplished in the study hall when all could witness our humiliation . It was to be precipitated by a signal from the leader who sat in the 'rear seat of the right hand row. He was surrounded by his gang and supported by at least all the boys in the two rear rows. McCallum and I had talked the situation over and had no plan for meeting it except that he heard his classes in an adjoining room and we both expected to be in' at the kill. Forwarned as we were, the crisis came and was over before McCallum had 1time to hear of it. Our doughty pugilist, when he thought the time was ripe, raised a disturbance. When I inquired the occasion of it, he answered in· distinctly and insultin11lv and raised a guffaw from his lieutenants. I knew instinctively the zero hour had struck! To gain time I asked him to repeat his remark as I didn't understand it. Again he muttered an insolent reply, creating a tense feeling all about him. The situation was charged with dynamite! I took off my glasses arnd laid them on my desk! I walked very deliberately down the aisle to the rear seat where om hero sat! He waited! When directly opposite him I whirled out with a mighty blow on th1e side of his head! ! knocked him from his seat into the opposite aisle while I maneuvered so as to have my back to the wall! The entire gang was now in front of me. The leader sprang to his feet and squared off to strike! I folded my arms, looked him the eye and said sternly Sit down sir! He collapsed into his seat. The study hall was silent as a1 tomb while I walked a eliberately bacic to tlile platform, resumed my glasses, and called the next class. It happened that our champion pugilist was a member. When called on to recite he rose and in a shaky voice did the best he •could, which . was very p.oor indeed., I saw the top of his ear had caught the full force of my blow and was puffed up like a doughnut. Also that his ego had collapsed; that he had lost all cast with his gang. Thus with a single blow I had crushed a rebellion and established my dictatorship. The operative word here is the final one. Noble could be benevolent all right but evm and always, young and old, dictatorial. Read that final line again. It duplicates, in essence, the gist of all his stories. Example: The classic Cap:stan Bar tale - �THE BROKEN CAPSTAN BAR ended, "Thus with a mighty effort I had humbled a haughty bully who turned and stalked to his afterdeck.,, Until Hascy can add the flavor, I suppose I sh ould give you the bare bones of this family favo rite. So be it : Noble, along with his foredeck companions, was "walking the capstan 'round," warping a great ship into a Liverpool dock. Progress was slow. Then it became nonexistent. The vessel had grounded forward. A bully of a bosun swore at his eight men straining against their radial spokes of solid oak. Then he singled out the you ngest for special abuse, "You there, boy! You're not pushing a pound." Our hero's calm and dignified reply: " Do you want me to break it, Sir?" The bosun replied, as Noble put it, "with a great oath." The exact oath he would not repeat. His substitute: "Yes, blank-blank you! Break the blankety thing, you blankety pup!" Then the denouement, the mighty heave, the splintering oak, the laying of the severed parts at a bully's feet, the hero's calm comment: "As you ordered, Sir." Noble's 1930 Christmas card, from California, had this picture and th is message: On a recent visit to my boyhood home in Nova Scotia, after an absence of half a century, I was delighted to find my old sai ling master hale and hearty at 93. He had a painting of the good ship Harmony in which, as an apprentice seaman, I made my first voyage to England 54 years ago. l ~ -- An old Picture A lbum, the kind that looks like a family bible but with thick pages and framed sockets for insertion of studio portraits, was found by Emily in Grace Hall. In it was a picture, made in Bristol, of this bucko boy which Noble had labeled simply "Shipmate." (What a comfort to have this giant beside you on a yardarm). In chi ldhood I had imagined a young sailor father looking just like this as he :spl intered capstan bars. Disillusionment ! The same album shows the youthful Noble below. He's on the left, a Berea student, and looks as ifM might have been nicknamed Puny. Noble's companion is Ed Fee, son of the college co-founder. Date, 1871 Edward Hil l, Noble's father, operated a shipyard plus a farm at Economy Point on the Minas Basin in the Bay of Fundy. Minas Basin tides are the highest in the world (50 feet) and the twice daily "bore" at Truro a sight to behold. Same pa ir in the same pose 1911 . Noble 61 �... LIFE WITH FATHEB So much for your ancestor's boasting. Let those of us without sin cast the first stone. On the other side of the coin there is humility as he closes his personal history of his school. He ends by telling of a wife's partnership in a school's growth and says of Grace: ''She was Todd's adored 'Mother of Boys,' created by nature and trained by home environment for sutch work. The only daughter among six children, her five brothers all went to college and she grew up with a sympathetic understanding of boys and their problems. She was universally loved by help, teachers, boys and parents. I haue frequently said there might be a question as to whether I was in the right work but not in your mother's case. Dichotomy. Paradox. Badge of all our enigmatic tribe. You grandchildren can't judge this man; you never knevv him. I can't judge this man impartially; I was too close. Better ask your parents. They knew him, without emotional involvment, both as children and as young adults. They knew him mainly in the summer time and at his camp for boys (Tosebo) on Portage Lake, Michigan. He had deeded his School to me in the summer of '29. He then retired, with his second wife, to some homes and other investments he had in California. The camp was deeded to my sister, Carol, but he retained the management and returned each Spring, until '42, to indulge in his passion of ruling a roost and preaching to boys. Among these "boys" were Joanne and Bette. Also those lads they later married, Hascy and Sandy. One of these, I hope, will write a sequel to my story and tell more of their grandfather. Joanne's evaluation may be bitter for she feared and avoided him. Bette's probably softer. And there are many older Todd boys who give this man fulsome praise. Witness the Herb Knowles talk at our alumni reunion last winter. Others spoke of happy days with Good-Old-Coach and Good-Old-Skipper. Herb rose to eulogizH the Good-Old-King. Knowles is far from alone. When planning our Centennial in '48 we wrote oldtimers promoting a reunion with their long-ago schoolmaster. A newspaper editor in Oregon sent his regrets along with a formal piece entitle An Appre:ciation. Here are excerpts: What's in a name? Shakespeare answers "not much" but to those of us who knew lhis mountain of a man his name always seemed appropriate. NOBLE HILL indeed. Here was a giant, towering above us, daring to be different, unswerved by arguement or adversity. An ocean sailor at sixteen, he took for his lifetime compass a sensitive conscience. This instrument knew no Variation, no Deviation. It pointed unfailingly tp True North. He has been called stubborn. Yes, stubborn in the right as he saw it; stubborn like so many men of strong character . . . . . 62 There was more, much more. There were other letters. A few were critical of the man but all echoed his son's earlier statement, that he was "above all, and beyond gainsaying, strong." That son, lacking his father's certitude in everything has often wished this strength had been passed on. Then came a Grandson One me!mber of our family never let Noble annoy him. This was. your Uncle Roger from Racine. At six he brought his grandfather to maybe his first defeat. The rest of us, wide-mouthed, watched this miracle in wonder. One arena for this David-and-Goliath encounter was in front of the Great Man's Cottage, The Vista. Here adrinking fountain flowed continuously, piped from a spring back in the hills. It flowed with considerable pressure and formed a mouth-cooling mound as it emerged from its large aperture. It also formed a directional jet if a camper's thumb was skillfully applied to happily drench a companion. But the King was probably on his porch ready to roar out frightening deprecations against "muddying of the waters." Onie or two such outbursts taught most campers that this fountain was for drinking, not for squirting;. But young Hill wasn't a normal camper. His squirting, actually, was not combative; it was experimental; it was scientific. A loner much of the time, this lad was intrigued by how far the stream could be deflected into the sand; how high it could be coaxed into the trees. The rest of us were intrigued, nay, fascinated, by how high Noble could climb his wall. Writing this down now and recalling a son's early independence brings me new self-doubts. I have clutched, in latter years, one flattering unction to my soul. Well, maybe two or three. I speak now of my long belief that I trained this kid to be fearless. But was this simply inherent? Was this a legacy not from a wise father but from a fear:tess grandfather? Time out, while I do some soul s1~arching. - - - Who's Afraid? Fascinated always by the subject of Fear, I recognized as a child the sad fact that I was cowardly in comparison with a father. The dentist told me this. Flinching under his drill, I was compared unfavorably to a stoic parent who suffered extractions without anesthesia. As a child I was fearful of fights but luckily learned a kid could be "beatup" and still. feel no pain. Something had deadened the nerves: Excitement, anger, whatever. Kids are less belligenmt now, I'm sure of this because in that early day chips were literally placed on shoulders and he who laughed or turned away was branded craven. Wanna-make-sumpin-of-it was not a gag but a guantlet-slap. When real war came, the young adult was frightened of Europe's trenches. Half a continent's youth had died horrible deaths - �BOYHOOD in those ditches or out in front of them. When the draft came in '17, I was married and therefore deferred. I signed up for the Navy (Officers' Training) but this involved neither courage nor patriotism, just avoidance of unfaceable carnage out there in no-man's-land. I could face drowning. In fact I had drowned in childhood; passed out to be revived on a beach. This happened when our gang was ducking under an overturned canoe, coming up into the air space beneath. I missed the airspace, hit the stern seat, went the wrong way to clear myself and got tangled up in that narrow triangle aft. I panicked and sucked in a great lungful of water. This felt rather pleasant, really. Cool and satisfying. Certainly not painful like water-upthe-nose. Then the blackout. Also I could face shipwreck; had done this, in fact, at twelve without panic and with ability to keep working to save a vessel. This was off Point Betsey which reminds me that Roger Gettys, at the same age and in the same waters, had a similar dramatic situation at sea. His was aboard the Tosebo Camp power boat, Wanderer. Coach Roskie was nominally in charge of twenty Junior Campers but Tony's seamanship was negligible. In a Westerly blow, the trough of the seas had everyone sick. It also had dirt from the bottom of the gas tank stirred up, clogging the line to the carburetor. With a dead motor, the boat drifted toward the beach while young Rog tried all those tricks he had learned from a father: Disconnect the gas line. Blow back into the tank to clear the debris and start the flow. Reconnect the line. Start the motor and hope it keeps going. It never does for long, once that gook in the tank is loose. But the young engineer had to keep his ship off the beach so he knelt for an ·hour, seasick, dribbling gasoline from a coffee pot into a carburetor! Oh well. Things happen at sea. My childhood experience in these waters involved no such fire danger, only sinking. It was like this: .. I• • From age five to fifteen (when my mother lost her summer paradise and my father started his summer school) my Michigan months revolved around two heroes: Noble Hill who discarded, during vacation, his schoolmaster severity and Leo Kelly who helped in his father's "shipyard" and, by the time I was ten, Captained a motor ferry circling Portage Lake every two hours. I was "Mate" for Leo, steering the day long and leaping on docks for landings. Reward for this labor was boyish pride, free use of his rental sailboats and joyous "cruises" on Lake Michigan. Mostly to nearby towns like Manistee for lumber or drums of gas but once across to Wisconsin and once -- the time of this story -- to Fox Island, north of Manitou, for a load of potatoes. Bags were stacked around the engine but the rest of the tubers went in loose where th~y rested, under the foredeck, directly on the planking. Pounding in a heavy sea off Point Betsey, the pressure of this loose cargo forced the starboard planks away from the stem! Terror!! Roger Gettys, a generation later, far.ed the loss of his boat pounding· in a surf. We faced the loss of ours sinking off shore. It didn't, of course, but Leo said later it surely would have if he had been alone and that it might have if he had taken a big boy for a helper instead of a little one able to squeeze between the bitts up forward and stuff rags in the opening. While I held these in place, Leo steered us into Frankfort and beached Beaver II in quiet water. Yes, the study of Fear was obsessive with this boy. Also with a young husband who was able to help a young wife overcome hers. Then a son came along and the young father planned a preventative program for him. It appears now he didn't need those back-stiffening exercises, that he was born self confident. Anyway I packed him off, at 12, alone on a Pullman, to meet Connecticut friends and cruise the Sound. He had a round-trip Pennsylvania R.R. ticket and decided, on the way home, to take advantage of a discovered stop-off privilege and visit our Capital. There he took himself to the galleries to view Congress in session and went on to see, solo, that whole world's-fair of a city which is Washington. Some kid! No, Rog, you didn't need help in overcoming fear. Your mother did, though, and in this help I felt some pride. Still do. There are few things I've taught that wise and wonderful woman; many she's taught me. My lifetime debt is huge. Partial payment so early was possible because of my more fortunate beginnings. • ... Young Rog alongside WANDERER. He's in the dinghy. This girl-child had been raised in a series of city apartments and had seen double bolted doors breached repeatedly by both burglars and bill collectors. In contrast, my boyhood castle had no locks. Our King forbad them; said they only invited theivery. Even now I get an expansive feeling sleep- 63 �MICHIGAN BOYHOOD ing in the Tarbox home where no lock is ever turned. It ennobles me, sort of, to trust my fellow man. Foolish? Maybe. But let an old guy hang on to boyhood illusions .. . Right up to the moment of the murder! * * * * * * * So much for Fear. My larger subject was a fearless Father who was also a feared father. But not in the summer time; not when he ran a home instead of an institution; not in those pre-Camp days. To see what he looked like then, turn back to page 52 where he stands resplendent in yachting cap and double breasted jacket with loving and loved (but always subservient) family around him. No, this sailor didn't teach me to sail but oh, how he taught me to row. Our first craft was an 18-foot clinker-built "pulling boat." I use his term. He sat in the stern, coxswain fashion, holding the rudder cords, giving commands to his boy and girl at the "sweeps." It was Up Oars! . . . Let Fall! . .. Give Way! At this, we lean forward .. Together! . . . We drop blades in the water and heave. Feathering of oars was a religion. " Drop those wrists on recovery, Roger! Here, let me show you." Show us, he did. A powerful, perfectly feathered stroke propelled that loaded boat at five knots. I know; I've timed him to Onekama. I mentioned a rudder. This was never used for a single oarsman who must maintain a bee-line course with no wobble and no over-the-shoulder look across the bow. Instead, he must determine his course early and hold it by sighting astern. The old sailor may not have taught me to sail but he gave me the first sailing craft I ever owned. This was the year before we got our motor "launch" when he converted our pulling-boat to a sloop rig with a leg-omutton main. For lateral resistance he attached a six-inch board nearly ·the length of the keel. Perfect for eliminating leeway but lousy for coming about. To the old square rigger this seemed minor. Just "wear ship" instead; reverse your tack by this standard ocean maneuver. But the boy had done a little racing and losing those lengths on every tack was hard to take. As was that necessary jibe. Then there were those wonderful walks; a boy and his poetry-spouting father marching to the cadence of Shakespeare and the other immortals. The good-grey, exuberant Walt would probably start us off: Afoot and light hearted I take to the open road/ Healthy, free. The world before me/ Henceforth I ask not good fortune/ I myself am good fortune. Or maybe Sir Walter Scott, a favorite of Noble who could give you the entire First Canto (The Chase) of The Lady of the Lake from The stag at ev'e had drunk his fill to Soldier rest thy warfare o'er. We'd usually start our trek up th; l 64 sand road past The Vista and then across the stumpland left by the lumber barons to reach a breathtaking plot of virgin pine still standing near Lake Michigan. Saturdays we might walk that sandy shore all the way to Manistee or at least to the amusement park at Old Orchard Beach where a street car could carry us the final two miles to a still-rowdy lumber town with its saloon-lined River Street. Herie we would fill a mother's shopping list and later catch the night excursion steamer with its noisy dCJtnce-bound crowd headed for our very cottage. To be exact, they were headed for the bar and the "Red Park Pavilion" across from it. This brings up the mystery of how come the puritanical Noble ever bought that property in the first place. I've told you that Gus Kitzinger, a rich Todd patron who owned the Pere Marquette Line Steamers (Milwaukee to Ludington with feeder freighters up to Frankfort) sold him the lot and arranged for a cottage to be built during the winter. Did Gus hide the fact that a facility of questionable repute was adjacernt? Doubtful. How could he? Sure, he was an ope1:ator and full of tricks. Sure, Noble was a compulsive real estate buyer and prone to build on any land he owned as fast as banks would finance him. Still, he wasn't blind and he wasn't dumb. He never in all his life made a mistake in .real estate so he must have known about the "dance hall" beforn he signed his deal. Be that as it may, this "pavilion" and this excursion boat (with every stateroom filled for the one-hour ride) were early elements in the sex education of his son. I'll put in here a picture of this dance hall after it was converted by Noble into a Camp Clubhouse. This for younger readers who never saw his camp. He had named this To-se-bo, a contraction of Todd Seminary Boys. For your parents, who knew the camp and knew Red Park but may wonder how an "excursion steamer" could ever dock there, I'll add a hand-holding shot of a college boy and his visiting girl friend that shows the long ago, Kitzingerbuilt pier in the background. This extended out - - - - - - DANCE HALL sanitized into DINING HALL - �BOYHOOD into deep water to accommodate the daily arrival of his coasting steamers which collected fruit and freight for Milwaukee and made all stops between Ludington and Frankfort. Gus, in fact, had owned all of Red Park and developed it as a cottage community for Manistee families. We couldn't use his daily service to that city without spending a night in a hotel. Needing transportation (those sand roads were not for automobiles) we bought our little motorboat. I'll put in here a picture of Grace Rogers Hill. No, my mother never dressed like that in Michigan but it shows the city finery of our early century and the face of our contented cottage dweller then. One worry stayed with her even on vacations. This was the matter of those huge debts back in Illinois. The nearest thing to husband criticism I ever heard her utter was: "Oh Roger, your father is such a plunger." Another wife might give the same despairing inflection to the word drunkard. Indeed, Noble's mania for building and his pride in ability to hypnotize bankers into backing expansion of his acres was somethiing near an intoxication. Example: I was with him in Chicago. He was buying furniture for a new dormitory. We were on the "wrong side" of State Street in the old Boston Store or maybe The Fair. Anyway, a place where we had no charge account. The credit manager was told to phone the bank in Woodstock. His report of the conversation: "I got Mr. Hoy, the president and he said to sell you the whole store . if you would sign for it." This became another of Noble's prideful and repetitious tales.. Parenthetically, I'll say now that the one bad invE!stment he ever made in his "plunging" lifetime was to buy bank stock in the institution that had made him a Director. This was wiped out in the bank crash of 1933. The "Mr. Hoy" mentioned above was then in jail. But Noble Our little motorboat. Originally called SCUD. Later, when Pogue and I were councilors, we named it ILLINI. This brought new emancipation for a mother. Poor dear, a painful stomach ulcer had long kept her chained to a hot water bottle and some source for its refilling. She even carried a miniature one to Chicago for shopping and renewed its heat in Marshall Field's Ladies Room. Then came the internal combustion engine with its water cooling which meant water heating. All a son had to do was put a faucet on the bottom of a radiator. Marvelous! Now she could satisfy her passion for travel and still know comfort. With the motorboat, this therapy became available on the water. Her fear of the sea was really fear of sailboats. Once a week, for Manistee shopping, she rode this more dangerous craft (a sinker if those Lake Michigan swells ever swamped it) with exhileration. She.even let me take it to Chicago once. This was madness although the little boat had reserve buoyancy forward and would climb swells far better than that death-trap, Tosebo, pictured back on page 46. 65 �SMALL TOWN BOYHOOD was then in California and finding new banks willing and anxious to finance new projects. (Aside to young Rog: Again your grandfather reminds me of you. Courage, I've mentioned. Now, borrowing efficacy is brought to mind. All of us, my boy, are in your financial debt. Just as we are in debt to old Noble. I can afford to be a dreamer because I'm related to doers.) established up there where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron. Faithful Indian paddlers buried the . body on a sandy promontory and hurried north to give the sad news. Noble's angry news and angry letter to vox pop was that a robber baron had desecrated one of History's heroic names by obliterating it. I've never forgotten the final, flowery peroration: Anyone who would so defile history would make a hay-sickle of the sword of Washington. Yes, he would make shingles of the Tree of Life. SMALL TOWN KID This was Sum-mer Ti-i-i-me . . . An' the livin' was E-e-e-zy ... True for Bess on Catfish row and for the kid in Woodstock as well as in Michigan. Yes, the hoarding school boy spent glorious, carefree days warmed by a summer solstice and freed from a father's fence. Not that the winter's confining iron pickets really bugged me. No, I reveled in fraternal living with those fifty over-privileged pals but I was in love with life and found equal thrills in partnership with under-privileged town kids. In particular, the Green brothers, Chuck and Jim. These deprived urchins were straight out of Horatio Alger. They lived in a shack down at the end of Seminary avenue. Their father was the town drunkard and their sainted mother fed the four from their after-school earnings and her gleanings from a garden plot. Half of this was planted to horseradish which we would grind and put into hundreds of bottles for door-to-door selling. A routine chore for them but an exciting business education for me. Nights brought more thrills. I helped with their popcorn stand, a glass-enclosed box mounted on a two-wheel pushcart. Over its r ] ..., ] ] ] ~ The P~blic SQ_UARE of my Woodstock childhood. Town Pump, on the left. Bandstand on the right. Civil War Monu· ment m the middle and G.A.R. Veterans on every bench. Our 'Opera House" is across the street. ] 66 1 �ANTIQUE OPERA HOUSE basket. When the yellow kernels popped out white, the pile was swept into a corner, buttered, shoveled into sacks and dispensed at a nickel a throw. A similar wire basket, with its long wooden handle, hangs over my desk as I type. It holds some old time buffalo nickels and giant-size dollar bills reminiscent of those early earnings. The nickels stand for the popcorn receipts; the dollars for a taxi business we ran. (These boys grew up to be lawyers and wealthy real estate partners in Chicago while their cousin, Frank, equally poor, ended up President of Noble Hill's bank after that Hoy debacle. The American Dream. Land of Opportunity.) In our taxi business we took in at least a hundred of those oversized greenbacks. It was like this: The McHenry County Fair bloomed each year about the time the Hills returned from Michigan. Trainloads of country bumpkins pulled into town and half of them would pay a quarter to ride that mile out to the "Grounds" in one of several large buses that Hanaford, the local drayman, lined up at the station. Chuck, always the entrepreneur, said why not give Hanaford competition with my Mitchell. Noble, proud of his son's business success with popcorn and horseradish, gave consent and our bonanza burst. We had a half-day brush with the competition and with the law but Chuck ironed out the matter of a ten dollar courthouse license and 'we piled the yokels in. Most of them had ridden many a merry-go-round but never a horseless carriage. Main trouble, we were slowed up because everyone wanted us to shoot a picture of them, with their Brownie, in that chariot. young prose that went with it. The writer, Orson, is nineteen. His copy, if a bit over-ripe, is memorable: Woodstock, as you grandchildren know, is laid out around a Town Square. Such a plan was common, for county seats, in the nineteenth century. But too often these towns filled their Square with public buildings. This brought congestion instead of the expansion found in the center of our unique town where the Court House and the City Hall were built outside the central park. The drawing on the opposite page is by Todd's Art Director, George Shealy, and was made way back in 1934 when we were promoting our Summer Theatre Festival that featured Orson and those Dublin-Gate celebrities, Michael MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards. Our mailing piece announced a campus school for drama students and three Opera House productions with international stars. Hamlet was scheduled so Michael could show America his sensitive Dane so praised in London. Hilton would star in Czar Paul, the tyrannical role that brought him European fame. Orson, back from his Irish triumphs, would be given free rein to emote as Svengali in the Victorian thriller, Trilby. The story of that whole mad, mad summer belongs in a later chapter but fve put in here an old drawing so I'll give you the Back now to my popcorn boyhood in that Square. Alas, the lovely trees in the drawing are no more. Dutch Elm Disease! It desiccated our town and a thousand like it out here on the Middle Border. Look at my snapshot of the park today. The camera is aimed West to the old Court House, now a re- Like a wax flower under a bell of glass, in the paisley and gingham county of McHenry is Woodstock, grand capital of mid-Victorianism in the Midwest. Towering over a Square full of Civil War monuments, a band stand and a spring house is the edifice in the picutre. This very rustic and rusticated thing is a municipal office building, a public library, a fire department and, what is more to our purpose, an honesMo-horsehair Opera House. This purpose is the founding of an American Festival Theatre for the summer consideration of plays great and neglected; for the reverent uncellaring of vintage Theatre, full-bodied and of good bouquet. Where more fittingly should we recover that splendid, almost forgotten older theatre than in its very heart, the provincial Opera House? In Woodstock, deep in the sticks but forty minutes from Chicago's North Shore, we have found the right Opera House and the right Festival town. The Company is also fortunate in its residence, a short stroll from the Square on the lovely campus of Todd, eldest but most progressive of boys' preparatory schools in the West, a new oasis of adult culture, the headquarters of the Todd Press and one of the most unique educational institutions in the world. Vacant in the summer months, Mr. Roger Hill, its Headmaster and Festival backer is opening it to us, and to fortu nate drama students, for the season. Here patrons are invited to join the company for buffet supper after performances. stored museum. Those saplings will need another two generations to duplicate the grandeur you and I knew. One surviving elm stands sadly alone. Like that Last Rose of the great Irish poet, all her lovely 67 �ANT IQUE OPERA HOUSE companions are faded and gone. That's the bad news. Now for the good news: Our ancient Opera House has been designated a National Historic Landmark. This brings no federal money but provides impetus for us to pitch in and finance a restoration. Raising such dough will be a reprise of an old tune with our family. Ask Hascy. We produced dozens of Todd shows and sold thousands of tickets to finance new seating, new lighting, a new curtain, whatever. Actually, it's the other parts of the building, planned as a Civic Cent.er, that cry for donations just now. The auditorium itself needs no major change. It is acoustically superb. It is an archit.ectural delight. It is a period piece with its graceful, curving balcony. ties for self expression at a very young age; On the other hand, what I did for Hascy may have been injurious and surely delayed his financial success. It was like this: When he finished Todd, he entered Chicago's Art Institut.e. After a year Hortense decided to take her girls out of school for a semester to gain the richer education of travel and a stay in Mexico. Hascy was by then part of the family, almost, and went along to drive and provide a male 4!0mpanion. By the time they returned, he was indeed part of the family even if marriage was two years off. He went back to school for a semester but quit for an artist's job and soon was able to support the gal. They lived in Chicago until history repeated itself. I did a Noble Hill. Once again a schoolman's son was persuaded to drop Advertising and try Education. This may have been good for his general development but was bad for his financial future. I so-enjoyed working with him (and using his great drama and art talents to supplement my lesser ones) that I kept him beside me right up to the closing of ~~~~~~~~~..; Todd when suddenly the mature man with a growing family and with small salable experience found himself out in the cold. I was guilt ridden. But with him, no sweat. There was strength of character along with talent. My readers know of his triumphs in Advertising. They know of his further success It is historically precious; our country's early great after pulling out of that rat race. What they don't were here. We bragged, back in '34, about the know is the story of his years as an inspiring educavenerable names that preceded us on this stage: Joe tor. I'll get to that later. Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle, Ben Greet in ShakesLAKE C.£N£VA peare, Bryan giving his Cross of Gold speech. Now our names, so young then, have turned venerable: Welles, MacLiammoir, Edwards. A new generation of stars followed. These came mostly from the Goodman School in Chicago to put on their summer stock out here in the sticks: Paul Newman, Betsey Palmer, Geraldine Page, Shelly Berman. Now these ~ are aging. But Youth is et.ernal. And the Bible puts ~ it best: Your young men shall see visions. Your old i... men shall dream dreams. Carry on, old Opera House! For us. For all who will follow. i>) ~ -- I mentioned Hascy just now. I should add a paragraph. If I'm going to brag about a son, Roger, (as I have) and if I'm going to praise a foster-son, Welles, (as I will) it behooves ·me to tell here the talents of a son-in-law, Tarbox. This lad landed in our school, a scion of wealth. A mother had died; a fortune soon evaporated; a child became ours. He was as gifted as his schoolmate, Orson, and could have found predictable fame in many fields: acting, singing, writing, painting. He did find acclaim as writer and artist but this came in lat.er life and With no help from me. With young Roger and with young Orson I flatt.er myself I was of help, admittedly minor. This consist.ed in offering unusual opportuni68 Woodstock, in case a few readers don't know, is ~ 51 miles northwest of Chica o. ~ This diagram is from our ~ ~~ Festival Promotion. ~ 11. [ LC.IN r r """'" ..... �LAKE MICHIGAN EXCURSIONS Floating Dancehalls - One more remembrance of summers past ... Steamboats! In addition to overnight ones that carried us to our northern home there were day excursions on lower Lake Michigan. My mother, with the Rogers passion for movement, found these a delight and used them to entertain all those relatives and friends who poured in each summer to fill our dormitory beds. A fleet fanned out from the Chicago Goodrich docks every morning at nine-thirty. With flags flying and bands blaring, each ship was bound for a different Michigan port: Saugatuck, South Haven, St. Joe, Michigan City. Passengers furnished the color. Freight furnished the profit. Now, alas, all our pomp of yesterday is gone with Nineveh and tire. Sorry about that, Kipling, but your Tyre stuff is just too apt. It was the tires that sank our ships. Truck tires took the fruit to Chicago and then passenger tires took the vacationer to Michigan. Mark Twain bemoaned the passing of palaces from his river. I bemoan their passing from my lake. Hortense bemoans their passing from the transatlantic run. - -- Soldier and Sailor PIN-UP This picture vvas reportedly on the bomb Jimmy Doolittle dropped on Tokyo. go" I said. "I wanna renew my childhood." An unfortunate impulse considering the nature of our guests. Rita was at the height of her fame: sex goddess to a nation, pin-up girl to an army. We were mobbed. The innately shy girl was recently out of a maternity ward. Our efforts at protection proved futile. A stateroom key was in my pocket and we maneuvered toward its door. Once behind it, a frustrated crowd's adulation turned to anger. We cowered inside for a frightening two hours. A celebrity (I forget who) once made this comment: "Notoriety and autograph signing is such a bloody awful nuisance. The only thing worse is when it stops." .B OARDING SCHOOL EXTRAORDINARY One Lake Michigan ship was unique. It was also our family's favorite. Here's a picture of it, snitched from that book of Michigan maritime history, Red Stacks Over the Horizon. This is the Christopher Columbus, only passenger ship ever built on a "whaleback" hull, a semi-submarine type used (for a short time in the Nineties) to carry loose cargo on the Lakes - grain, coal, ore. This passenger oddity was built specially for the great Chicago World's Fair of Ninety-Three. She carried five thousand passengers at a time on trips from the Loop to Jackson Park. Later she was put on a daily excursion schedule to Milwaukee and every night made an additional "Moonlight Sail" off of Chicago. This reminds me that such maritime dances were still operating (on other ships) years later. We were dining on the terrace of the Tavern Club in Chicago with Rita and Orson. lt was in the Forties. Below us was the Theodore Roosevelt docked by the bridge on a one-day lay-over from her weekly cruise to Georgian Bay. A sign announced MOONLIGHr SAIL THIS NIGHT. "Let's The Todd School closed in 1954, a sad death after a long life. It had been established by a pioneer preacher from Princeton in that momentous year of 1848 when everything was happening in our country's West: A Mexican peace was signed. Our boundaries moved down to the Rio Grande and out to the Pacific and up to the Forty-Ninth parallel. The first gold rush began. In 1892 Todd's property was purchased (on time) by a pennyless Canadian, your great-grandfather, Noble Hill. This financial genius spent forty years building up the institution's pitiful plant and run-down reputation. In 1933 he retired to California but long before this his acres had been deeded to me. This because a canny Scot wanted his estate unburdoned by any inheritance tax. In 1934, Hortense and I gave the property to a newly formed not-for-profit corporation with Edwin Embree and other dignitaries as directors. This freed us from some ten thousand in taxes and made gifts from rich donors deductible on their returns. A wise move. A foresighted move. Too bad I didn't have the further wisdom to exploit this opportunity. Our program was already unique and gaining national recognition. My next move should have been to hire some high voltage promotion and sell our interesting 69 �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY product to foundations or individuals looking for philanthropic outlets. Instead, I concentrated on making our program and our product even more unusual. Some ideas were good. Some, possibly, goofey. But my Board seldom demurred. A banker member might wonder if a program I touted was financially wise but no professional schoolman (such as our friend Dick Bardwell who was then Superintendent up at Madison) ever seriously questioned my amateur pedagogy. Our meetings ran pretty much to sociability and banter: "I wonder what new hobby Skipper has that he's sure will. be Good-for-the-Boys." Yes, the crack was true. I worked Sailing into the curriculum even though we were eight miles from dinghy racing on Crystal Lake and twenty miles from schooner cruising on Lake Michigan. And Aviation. When our son learned to fly in the Navy, I got the bug and we ended up with Todd boys operating their own airport. My passion for personal travel brought on that series of ever more elaborate sleeper busses for Educational Travel. First these journeys were to Washington and historic shrines in the East. Finally we were delving deep into Mexico and operating a Winter Outpost on the Florida Keys. The above deals with the Todd School as a not-for-profit corporation, an entity that was established in 1934. Years earlier (in 1929) Noble had retired to California and left his proprietary school in my financial care. Hortense was caring for buildings and grounds. Business was booming. We opened in September without a vacancy. In October, CRASH!! Stock brokers leapt from windows. Todd boys left for home. Our income was halved. How did we survive? Easy. We had a gifted faculty, maybe the finest ever at Todd. ·A facu lty makes a school and this super group was delighted to stay at reduced salaries. Their compeers in Chicago were being paid in "script" if at all In contrast, we lived in Arcady, certain of meals and amenities. Noble had known a similar crisis when he took over the school just before the great Panic of '93. The story he has left us tells of eighty house guests from both coasts that summer of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Then he continues: So the summer passed happily away. Because of the activity in our home and in Chicago, we were unconscious of the financial disaster brewing. I had booked a satisfactory number of boys and felt that all was well with Todd and the world. Came the rude awakening. As opening day approached I began to hear from parents saying they would be obliged to keep their boy at home. Even this did not awaken me to the real conditions. But when on opening day I received no 70 less than eight telegrams to the same effect my house of cards tumbled ahout me and my temples turned gray overnight. I do not remember how many boys showed up for opening day nor how many we had du ring the year but it wc1s the zero hour for the school. My sensations were, no doubt, much like Roger's when he took over in the great depression of 1929. Somehow we weathered the storm and curiously enough my memories of that year are less vivid than any other. Memory has a way of restoring roses and secreting thorns. As long as your mother was my companion and helper, all Todd memories are joyous. Noble wrote those paragraphs in California. Our Woodstock records show his school's enrollment that panic year totaled twelve. Eleven are in the picture opposite which is dated March, 1893. Grace is on the right. The stern faced female on the left "is unknown to me but the Irish setter in front (or one just like it) is an early memory. r - r - - r BUYER and SELLER in 1893 I pasted in that framed "oil" on the wall. It's a reduction of a large painting of Richard Kimball that was commissioned by his wealthy son, Henry, and now hangs in the McHenry County Historical Association. �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY necessities of life. His children are: James, now a gold-miner at Cape Nome, Alaska; Noble, the sub· ject of this sketch ; Annie, now wife of George W. Jeans of San Francisco and Richard A. of Los Angeles, Cal. About 1884 Edward Hill went to California where some of his children had previously located, dying there in 1889. (Note: The writer left out another son, Joe. I tell of him back on page 23 under the Berea graveyard picture. Also my mother writes to her baby Carol about her Uncle Joe on page 36 of that family story.) Total Enrollment in the Panic Year J - Someday some grandchild might decide to delve deeper into the history of this school. Maybe for a thesis on, say, American Private Schools in the Nineteenth and the Twentieth Century. (If these keep on folding, your title might change to the Rise and the Fall.) Where should this degree candidate turn for further Todd research? Start with the McHenry County Historical Association. It will soon move to the old Opera House building now under restoration. On their shelves you will find three antique tomes of county history. These contain fifteen or twenty pages on t he Todd School and its leaders. The first book was printed in 1885 and contains the story of the Seminary and its founder as written by the Todd son, Henry, while a professor at Leland Stanford. Later, when Noble bought the school, this son was a dean at John Hopkins and had married a Baltimore heiress. The second book on those shelves was printed in 1903 and contains an article on Noble Hill and his school. These early volumes were "subscription" projects. Each article covered one person or one family and the space was purchased. The family got as many paragraphs and as many pictures as they would pay for. Noble scorned this procedure. A proud man he knew .hi~ ~ontribution to the history of the cou~ty w~ significant and ~~fused , as he put it, to "pay tribute for puffery. Still the pages about him (801 and 802 in the 1903 volume) tell us much. This opening paragraph gives family facts not found in his own writings: Noble Hill, Educator, Principal of Todd Seminary, Woodstock, Ill., was born at Economy, Nova Scotia, June 1, 1859, the son of Charles Edward and Isabel Hill, and is descended from Scotch·lrish ancestors who came to Nova Scotia at an early day. Edward Hill was a shipbuilder. He had general charge of the business and, according to the custom of the time, ran a store and supplied the men employed with the I said there were three volumes on those Woodstock shelves that contain Todd history. The third is titled McHenry County - 183~1968 and carries the school's story up to its closing. Pictures are shown of three Headmasters: Richard, Noble, Me. A!5o one of a "famous alumnus," Orson, dining with Todd boys in their "Classroom on Wheels." Six years later. Now 27 boys, all in those choker collars, and a faculty of six. Also a big girl in the family and a Little-Lord-Fauntleroy boy. Speak ing of lace, look at the 1893 kids above. They wear this until about ten. Then the opposite: severely formal in vests, chokers, even watch chains. At least one other history of the school has been written. This is Joel Hoke's dissertation for an advanced degree at the University of Chicago. A copy should be available in t he Harper Library on the Midway. Ifs been thirty years since I've seen it and memory is vague as to its content but this Todd teacher labored long in old files of the Woodstock Sentinel and in interviews with old citizens who attended the school or remembered its preacherfounder. Joel, a lifelong friend, is now special lecturer at the Museum of Science and host to the VIPs who frequent t he place. He lives in that much publicized product of his creativity and his promotion, the "Atrium Apartments" near the University. (Typing this out prompted me to phone Joel and ask the loan of his original manuscript. He said we could have it. Great. It will go into the family archives. These consist of some half dozen large file drawers of printed material, pictures and letters. Joanne will have this material after we're gone. 71 �- TODD SCHOOL HISTORY Another Young Preacher heads West 'You read, back on page 13, our grandmother's story of her long train trip to Illinois with those destitute orphans and that dedicated husband. Now read Henry Todd's tale of his parents' trek to the same prairie state. This was eight years earlier and the whole journey was by water. From page 571 of the 1895 edition of McHenry County History I copy this paragraph: Having long been imbued with the missionary spirit, the now fully equipped divinity student started, with his bride, upon the long journey to the West. This was the year 1847 and the day of the railroads had not yet come. From Albany to Buffalo the distance was traversed by the Erie Canal and from there a steam propeller was taken to Milwaukee. This surprised me. Twice. First, I didn't know there was passenger service on that ditch but indeed there was. With amenities. I learned this by turning to the Encyclopedia Americana's article on·the Erie Canal. I reproduce here the picture .showing fashionable folk enjoying the passing scene atop their dining and sleeping quarters. That helmsman blows was herself "chosen" for adoption by one couple. I'll now add another paragraph of her graceful prose describing that early day. It's from the same family history, written in 1896, which she called Full Forty Years. The long railroad ride had come to an end. We had seen our first prairie , glimpsed one of its fires, stopped over in Chicago. This was a little town of frame houses and wooden sidewalks. Even then we sensed the vim and the energy nothing could con· quer. Forty years ago Chicago was little more than a village; Today the wonder of the world, perhaps the most prosperous city in our country. Riding ove1 this same road not long since in the most luxurious of cars with a chambermaid at my call, if I but touched a button, with a dinner table groaning under a burden of dainties, I could but mark our nation's progress. That long stretch of country we once travelled without seeing a shanty was now a garden. Prosperous villages, rich farms, comfortable homes and barns all gave small sign of the wet, undrained earth of those days. I could but think with sadness of the manv lives sacrificed to build these homes. to bring this wealth to beautiful Illinois. Life on the prairie forty years ago often meant death from fever, ague, exposure. The West is full of lessons of brave self-sacrifice for the good of children. Flowers blos· som over graves of unwritten heroes. Our present prosperity is their monument. AMATEURS TAKE OVER Hortense and I entered our new profession untrained but undaunted. Life was at the Spring. Juices were on the rise. Confidence and Creativity oozed. For me it was the single time in a lengthy < life I knew individual, acclaimed Success! Sure, , those later years at Todd were propitious but this .. I. •:fr . .,.....,,!'.., ~ success was shared. More, it was produced, largely, .. l ' tr'- - "' : J ....·:\l by a fabulous faculty and a wondrous wife. Now I \ ' .... -=--:: tell of a lad, long labeled Puny, finding fame (at '. ~ t least newspaper notoriety) as a wonder-working his horn, presumably, to warn of the bridge ahead. Muscle-Man. It's hard to believe. It's even hard to The mules on the tow path are at a trot so those recall. I don't mean the Basketball bit, writing that followers of Greeley's advice were going West best-selling book and building those championship (between locks) at about seven knots. The Ameri- teams. No, I speak of another facet in the life of that cana also cleared up my second surprise. This was unlikely Athletic Director: Gymnastic coach. Back over Henry's statement: "the day of the railroads on page 50 I told of my one-semester enrollment in had not yet come." He was wrong, at least in part. Bernar McFadden's muscle-college on Grand BouleThe encyclopedia has this to say: vard. The school was big on tumbling and all those New York tried to protect its canal investment swinging, twirling and flying events on bars, horizonagainst competition. Freight by parallel railroad was tal or parallel. One instructor was an Olympic restricted to winter months when the waterway was coach. I never learned to do his spectacular stunts closed. This resistance collapsed in 1851. but I learned how. So I could teach all those talented, muscular and eager kids. I bought tumbThe subject of mid-century train travel prompts lers' training belts and a great landing net that a me to return to your great-great grandmother's class would circle and spread tight while their comstory of that chartered car fu ll of New York slum patriots practiced all those flying stunts. Result: children going West for adoption by labor-hungry fabulous junior gymnasts whose traveling exhibifarmer families. She was sixteen years old and helptions became newsworthy. ing her missionary husband chaperon the group but . 72 r r - - - r .., • �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY I can't bring you pictures of those amazing gymnasts (I would need movies) but I could show dozens of champion basketball teams. I'll spare you this boredom but put in one shot here of a young coach and his youngest charges. This group, with a few changes, grew up over the years .into State Champion Heavyweights. About those weight classes We beat out those Wops from Armour Square an t at tate Championship" claim: Several of my fellow graduates from McFadden's American College of Physical Education got jobs in the Chicago Park System which was just building all those indoor and outdoor basketball courts. Throughout the city1 teams were organized in different wei~hts. The Chicago winner claimed a somewhat dubious State Title which was seldom disputed. This program, and one like it in New York's Harlem, started the black ascendancy in basketball. The thump of the dribble was heard in the land. And in the ghetto. By eager tots and by towering giants. You know the sequel. A classmate from McFadden's became Director at Hull House; another at Armour Square. Such street groups were our opponents. Tough, supertough competition. My kids learned from them; I learned from them. We both learned so much that when we played the rich boys in the Private School League we trounced the sissies most of the time. Even though we were tenth graders up against highschool seniors. Enough of bragging. But I couldn't resist; I've had few enough chances in a long life and after all I am my father's son. Deflated Ego [] [] Speaking of that, I have favorite stories of my own but these are the reverse of Noble's. They are tales of ineptitude, of embarrassment. Some have been known to set a table on a roar but they need dramatization. Again, I suggest you call on the talented Tarbox. He can do this old man better than this old man himself. Oh well, I'll bring to you now in type the bare bones of one typical tale of painful deflation. It will take away a bad taste still in my mouth from boastin~. . It happened in St. Loms at a convention of the American Association of English Teachers. I had been asked to give a talk on The Teaching of Shakespeare and agreed because of the opportunity to plug our texts and records. The publisher, Harper and Brothers, paid for a commercial booth complete with sound blaring out Orson's Shylock. Hascy tended the store. It was Thanksgiving. A month earlier Orson had become famous. Or infamous. His Halloween program (The War of the Worlds) had been planned, as he put it, "to don a sheet and and say Boo to a nation." A third of that nation panicked. The Hill name had been linked with Welles and the entire convention tried to squeeze into my "sectional" talk held in a hall seating only two hundred. The melee outside dispersed after it was announced this mentor of Welles would talk again to the entire membership at the next day's banquet. There, seated at a too-crowded speakers' table and scheduled at the end of a too-long program I was introduced as "the final treat of this wonderful weekend." The only treat that audience wanted by then was escape. (It was Three P.M. after a noon dinner and many were driving home.) I could have earned the gratitude of fifteen hundred potential book buyers by giving them a gracious sentence of dismissal. Instead, drunk with former succe~, I started in on a new lecture and a favorite pedgogic proposition: your good teacher never flaunts his erudition. He uses, instead, seduction. He seems to discover beauties along with his class. He woos his kids into love of a new language, the gorgeous and gutsy diction which is Elizabethan. Earthy pa~ages can help create interest. Did I detect disapproval here? Yes. My audience was half fem ale and bloodless and aging. Still, I pressed on, illustrating my point by telling of a long-ago Chaucer teacher of happy memory. He opened our term by telling us (falsely) that he knew little about the medieval poet beyond the Canterbury Prologue but we'd read together the tales of the pilgrims and hopefully find them fun. And how! I summed it up for my drowsy audience with a sentence designed . to wake them: "To this day I know every detail of every dirty story in Chaucer." ...Thereupon half my audience rose, turned their back and walked out!!! In shame and bewilderment I stuttered out an ending and sank disgraced. Then I learned the cause of the exodus had been a rear door annoucement that buses waiting for a scheduled trip to Washington University were about to leave. CBS Halloween 1938 Welles at Upper Left 73 �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY THE AMAZING TODD OF THE MID-CENTURY How should I start on the hard-to-believe story of this never-to-be-duplicated community of youthful creativity? Not with an evaluation because I'm prejudiced. Your parents are better equipped for this. Like you, they were born in Todd. Unlike you, they taught there. Unlike me, they have earned advanced degrees. Most important, they've had teaching experience in other school systems; they can compare. My story here, I've decided, will be simple and uncontroversial: a paste-up job of pictures and paragraphs I can snip from old publications. I'll start with one of those catalogues "done by the boys.,, Sure, there was exaggeration in this claim but not much. I may have edited such work but it was the kids who wrote the copy, took the pictures, did the art work, set the type and ran the press. The first such job was in the year 1930-31. I had just assumed the title of Headmaster. Orson, a fifteen year old tenth grader, wrote much of the copy. He also drew the cover shown here. It's his conception of our campus from the air and of our happy, creative boyhood confusion below. ..................._,.. ._.... ..... ~._... CATALOGUE MAKING . T... CAMPUS EXPANSION · Airport and Farm In this air photo of an expanded Todd School (ten years after Orson's drawing) his original campus is seen in the lower left. Trees hide his buildings but the old football field and riding ring can be spotted. Now a lane leads from there to a just acquired "back-campus." I snapped the picture before the new football field was built. Indeed, our cow-pasture airport had then but one runway. Those others are drawn in as "proje:cted." To the North is seen our new farm. We had sold the one in Bull Valley with those lovely lakes and hills. Beautiful but too far away. We could live out there only during vacations. Now Hortense and I could, in good conscience, have our own home. Annetta Collins took over Horty's job of kitchen management and moved into our Wallingford apartment. This was at the top of Richard Todd's staircase shown back on page 50. In the above picture, 40 acres of woods are seen at the top. This was no new purchase. Noble Hill had owned those oaks as far back as I can remember. His boys spent Saturdays out there. Maybe Sunday afternoons. This meant a two-mile hike on country roads. Now Todd boys could ride horses on a bridal path along that creek bordering the airport. Noble Hill's tract is today a building development of small estates. It's still called Todd Woods. When I drove through recently, a half-acre lot was unsold at the corner of Roger Street and Hill Lane. Ah, fame. But how brief. I looked in vain for a Noble Avenue. The Old Campus Now The cottages and the brick buildings remain but those Victorian lovelies are, sadly, no more. A Nursing Home corporation bought these and kept them filled for years. Then state fire regulations wisely limited geriatric use to the first floors. Finally, all were torn down and replaced by a sprawling new structure. Rogers Hall (your classroom building) is now the Woodstock Masonic Temple. Grace Hall now belongs to our oldtime neighbor to the North, the Woodstock Children's Home. Pictures of all the old buildings will be shown on following pages. The brick ones are in Orson's upper center. 74 �, ' • ORSON'S COVER on the first of all those Todd catalogues "Done by the Roys." • • l 75 �This is a typical pose, then and now, for your dirt-digging grandmother. In the Florida sun, the hair has turned white but the thumb remains green and now there's a different boy, with a darker skin, to lean and learn and help. My subject, though, was that northern campus so I'll give you here beforeand-after views of a typical Horty triumph. Noble had made R.K. Todd's 70-foot barn into a fairly adequate gym. She made it into a thing of beauty. . . ,, pu Above are the only campus buildings still standing. Grace Hall was built by Noble in 1920 as a memorial to his dead wife. It is bigger than it looks and the Frank Lloyd Wright influence is obvious. Its basement was ever busy. It held our Sound Studio where we cut phonograph records and taped radio shows and edited movie film. Also an electronic lab and photographic dark room. On the first floor there were school offices and a faculty apartment. Twenty boys lived'Upstairs. Now it belongs to our long-time neighbor, The Woodstock Children's Home. Rogers Hall was built in 1910. It's corner-stone was laid the June day I graduated from Noble's original school building, Clover Hall. Over the years the English basement was gradually filled with shops: Woodworking, Printing, Ceramics, Forge, Auto Mechanics. The second floor had our 200-seat theatre. This is now the Mason's "large upper room," symbolic of the Last Supper of the Apostles (see Luke 22: 8-12) which, I'm told, is a requirement for lodge meetings. The planting around buildings was very much Hortense. In fact the entire campus in its lovely latter years was the product of her artistic talents, her drive and her green thumb. She studied both Architecture and Landscape Gardening in college. 76 Noble's Modification of ~9'1j~~~ Todd's Barn 11 II I !fr ·-· �l TODD SCHOOL HISTORY - l -- Our much-publicized Activity Program I'll reprint here a piece that John Clayton wrote for the Chicago Sunday Tribune describing Todd's activity program. He had been Bureau Chief for that paper in Paris. Now he was moving to Chicago and with his Estonian wife, choosing a boarding schooi for two small sons. John had long worked for Bertie McCormick and his self-styled World's Greatest Newspaper. Now he was assistant to another tycoon, Sam Insull, with his self-styled World's Greatest Opera. The duties were diverse. One was to entertain the musical great: divas, directors, conductors. He asked our help. The parties, like the Embree evenings, were stimulating, fun-filled and free. We were deep in the Clayton debt. Soon this was reversed. Insull's empire started to crumble. His executives we~e now paid in Edison stock. To sell (on that falling market) was to risk dismissal. The Clayton boys stayed at Todd but were now "on scholarship." Bread cast upon water never returned more surely. It came rushing back the summer of that Theatre Festival. The story belongs in the Welles chapter but if I never get that far, learn here how John saved Todd from a financial debacle. Orson, on tour with Katharine Cornell, had been phoning and writing and pleading for a summer of professional stock in Woodstock's Old Opera House. Whitford Kane had promised to join him. Some of his Cornell cast were interested. When his old employers, the Dublin-Gate boys, agreed to our terms I wired funds for their transportation and we were committed to three expensive productions. Our competition would be awesome; Chicago's second World's Fair. the great Century of Progress. Still I had faith that the drama critics (all friends) would give us enough advance build-up and rave reviews to fill our seats. I had not consulted Clayton. When I met him accidentally in the Tavern Club and broached the subject he said to forget it; no chance of paying out; Woodstock was too distant. I said I had already contracted with Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards. They were about to sail. John stared at me aghast: "My God, Roger, do you realize what you're up against? There's a World's Fair out there on the lake front with a million dollars worth of ballyhoo and a dozen publicity men to feed stories to the papers all summer." My heart sank. I rang for a waiter, ordered two doubles and wondered silently if an overseas phone call might bring back my dough. John sat thinking... And drinking... And mellowing. Finally: "There's one way we might pull it off." I mentally blessed him for that "we" and waited. Chicago's foremost publicity man was pondering . . . "No, your drama boys can't help us. Might pull fifty, maybe a hundred theatre buffs out to each opening but so what? There's only one hope ... the society gals. They all owe me favors. I've fed them half their copy for the past season ..We'd need some newsworthy splurge for a blast-off; a gala dinner for our patrons to meet our stars. Could you afford a few hundred for a party up here?" "What do you mean by a few?" "Seven, maybe eight. Less than a grand at the most." "I'm in too deep now to back out. And my credit here is still good." "Fine. First we'll need those all-important Patrons. The list must be impressive. The money crowd and the social crowd are easy to get. They love to link their names to any obvious Culture. But we'll also need the intelligentsia; some college presidents; maybe some ministers; surely Preston Bradley who's a theatre buff himself and t he idol of the thousands in his Uptown congregation. Let's make a list. Waiter, bring us some stationery please." That was in early June. By the end of the month, our company was in rehearsal and our literature in the mail to every address in the Social Register. Then came the party at the Tavern: twenty actors to meet thirty sponsors plus a like number from the press. After dinner, John herded the society editors into a side room; regaled them thus: "Drink up gals. It's on the house. To be exact, it's on these two people beside me, Hortense and Roger Hill who run that wonderful school everyone's talking about. This is not a professional job. These are my dearest friends and they stand to lose their school or at least lose their shirts unless we get behind them for a push. You'll be helping yourself as well as them because this project will be great copy; the most colorful project of the summer. For instance this affair tonight will have a repeat after every performance in Woodstock. The cast will meet the audience at a midnight supper under flood lights on the beautiful Todd campus. On each opening night you gals will get a unique ride out there and back. Todd has a sleeper bus with a complete galley. This will come into town to pick you up. I'll join you to serve drinks enroute. On the way back,; bunks will be available for sleeping; also desks and typewriters for those who want to catch early editions. That's all, my dears. Give us a big send-off .. . .. Our first sleeper bus was an" Aero-car" semi-trailer built in Detroit. Cornelius Vanderbilt got the first one off the line; Todd School the second 77 �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY Su nday. If you need names and background you'll find everything mimeographed here on this table. Good night. I'm counting on you." Horty and I drove home hopeful bul dubious. It had cost a fortune by Depression standards and seemed to us only a moderate success. A flop, in fact, if you compared it to those gay, exuberant, integrated Embree parties. Then came the Sunday papers!! We read them in utter disbelief. It was our first lesson in t he phoneyness of "society" as portrayed by our press. Our little bash, we learned, had been the biggest of the season; maybe of the century. A paragraph was needed to describe the Hortense gown. Then get this: "That debonair host, Roger Hill, was everywhere at once greeting each and all by first names. " Rhapsody, dear grand children, rhapsody. This old guy was, in truth, as taciturn then as now and spent much of that evening nursing a drink in a corner. Anyway, we were gloriously launched; a flaming rocket in the sky. The glow lasted all summer. Marshall Field ran a full page ad on what to wear at our final opening night. No, we didn't make money but we didn't lose much either. This because John Clayton, like de Lawd in Green Pastures, had " rared back an' passed a miracle." Years later, John's wife, Helena, was equally helpful to the school. War was on and maintenance help impossible to find. I once picked up, literally, one of those drunks that littered the lower level of · Wacker Drive. This in the hope of salvaging him and squeezing out a little help. (Another idea that didn't work.) Helena solved otir dilemma. She had been very big in Estonia; executive secretary to t he prime minister. Now she was head of a Chicago committee finding American sponsors for hoards of blond war refugees. Todd 's labor t roubles vanished. At one time we .had twenty happy and helpful Estonians in residence. Now the Sunday feature story John himself had written much earlier: " H'lo Skipper!" This was the fearless, fond, admiring salutation to the Headmaster o f Todd from a youngster of nine o r ten. It was my first visit to this communi ty and it revealed the en tire spirit of the school; th e oldest in the West and for nearly ninety years a successful fount of inspiration for American boyhood. I found today the most progressive of schools. If the superla tive is ever justified it is fa ir to say that Todd is the most complete laboratory for self exp ressio n to be found in the land. "Activity " is the key-note on a campus where I discovered groups doing volu ntary work in almost every phase of human endeavor. In the print-sho p I found a group o f editors ~ t work on their school magazine. From the Music Building came wierd sounds that h inted of future 78 orchestral melodies. In the manual shop a group was building an amazingly authentic stage coach. It seem- - ed they needed a " coach and fou r" to use in a western movie they were producing. T he same group, I learned, had constructed their J 2-horse stable and were planning, come Spring, to brick-veneer it. - Seventh graders were cleaning rabbit hu tches. They had started their business from scratch: sold bonds, bough t lumber, built a building and purchased breeding stock. Nature, presumably, would now take its course. An older group, under student direction, was working in their beau ti fully equipped theatre, rehea rsing a play that had been written and planned by anoth er stu de nt. And I learned that every Saturday night they produced one of these original works. In the paint shop I found a group preparing a new stage set for an elaborate production of Everyman. The boy artist in charge informed me that the Oats and boxes which were getting a final spatter coat were " not p lanned for realism but for symbolic impressionism thro ugh the use of mass and line." l hoped my gasp was not audible to the lad. After an hour cf breathing the rarified, vitalized atmosphere of this boyhood Utopia I could understand what Mr. Hill meant when he said, "Boyhood is not a preparation for life. It is life itself in one of its most glorious aspects. Text book training is a part o f this life bu t o nly a part. Exercises in Living, in Creating, in Achieving are the vital things. Calisthenics in Self Con fidence, in Leadership are what we - .._ - - �must offer our youth if we are to strengthen the rihers of inspiration within them. "At Todd we 'expose' our boys lo opportunities for expression of any inner urge. This may lie along Jines of Music, Mechanics, Literature, Business Management, Art, Printing, Debating, Athletics or Dramatics. In each one of these the standards must be kept up - way up. Let the boy hitch his wagon to a star. He 'll never rise unless he tries. We're dedicated to the proposition that all boys are created creators. Okay, make that most instead of all But let's give all the opportunity." "Modern youth receives too few of the first hand experiences their forefathers knew. In their place we have substituted the second hand ones of the bleachers, the movies, and - yes, even the text books. But life isn't a matter of re-citing things. It's a matter of thinking things; doing things. At Todd we offer boys this chance . . A.E. Johnson - Genius I told you that Todd's success during t he decades of my direction was largely due to a wife and a fabulous faculty. Many of those t ireless teachers deserve mention. One, at least, must be singled out. Boys called him The General. I called him, then and now, the Genius. Years my senior and classically educated (he taught me Latin) this man's natural bent was engineering. He could master anything mechanical in a month. Example: A Llneotype machine is infinitely complicated; so much so that it's losing out today to computerized typesetting. We bought our first Mergenthaler monster, second hand, in Chicago. A.E.J. tore it down, trucked it to our print shop and soon was an expert. Newspapers throughout the coun ty now phoned him, instead of Chicago, for trouble-shooting. His greatest joy was to build. This could be barns; it could be boats; it could be bus bodies. If I could dream it up, the boys, under the General's direction, could produ ce it. And I do mean t he boys. Hascy and I might fudge a bit - ascribe our work to them. Not A.E. This gruff man was devoid of the sentimentality faulting so many capital P Progressive educators back then. Yes, Todd carried the John Dewey label and I was taking courses in his old Teachers College on the Midway. Still, we recognized t he excesses then prevalent - the seewhat-the-dear-children-are-doing syndrome. To illustrate, I'll clip this from some old promotional literature: Todd is not a Progressive school in the commonly accepted connotation of that term. True, our activity program is nationally famous but our activities are genuine, not artificial. Our standards in these activities are professional, not sentimental. Our viewpoint on childhood is realistic, not maudlin. Our classroom pedagogy relies on mental discipline, not ego building. To illustrate the difference between a Todd activity and its capital P Progressive counterpart, take the matter of dramatics: Most schools give bad plays because all are shown to prejudiced audiences of indulgent parents and friends who gush "Wasn't Willie wonderful" no matler how horrendous Willie may have been. The local paper echos the fiction. WiJlie's standards become hopelessly distorted. In contrast, our Todd Troupers, a semi professional group, take to the road to perform for audiences who have paid for tickets and will pay again only if entertained. Or take the matter of Shop: "Progressive" school kids build bookends; Todd kids build barns ... There was more, much more, of such selfpraise in print. Suspect? Of course. I was selling a product; my tra~ning had been in advertising, not pedagogy. Still, I read those old lines now with a sense of awe, not shame. Damnit, it was a wonderful program. For instance our boys turned out printing of t rue professional quality; books by the hundred tho.usand for the most particular publisher in America, Harper and Brothers. And it was a wonderful plant; two hundred acres of youthful excitemen t and opportunity. Ask Ted Winsberg, now a wonder worker in F lorida's mechanized agriculture. Sure, he took graduate Ag studies at Cornell but his start and his inspiration was at Todd and as a youngster. At thirteen he would take over a huge diary herd whenever a wayward farm manager became sick or took to booze. If all the above is true, how come we let this wonder-working school close? It's a fair question and an answer will come later. For now, our subject is AE. Johnson so back to my eulogy: Not only did this man spark Todd's program of boy builders but he was wheel-horse to its administration and added those strengths needed to negate weakness in his boss. Todd's Principal, with his stern discipline, was a compliment to Todd's Headmaster with his leaning toward leniency. History had repeated itself. Once more the school had a 79 �- TODD SCHOOL HISTORY balance at the top. In the early century the King had his Seezy. (See page 15.) Now the Skipper had his General. The Calvinist, stiffneck Noble needed that flamboyant, scatologic C.Z.A. to leaven a loaf. Noble's permissive son had equal need for the punctual severity of a no-nonsense A.E.J. Maestro Hendrickson - Coach Roskie Other stars stood out in the galaxy of our faculty firmament. Two must be mentioned now. Carl Hendrickson, our Music Director, had been a boy prodigy on the violin, traveling with those famous Chautauqua shows. At 17 he was putting himself through college directing a Grand Rapids vaudeville house orchestra. Later, when concertmaster in the great Chicago Theatre (movies plus a Roxietype stage show) he listed his name with a teachers agency. Lucky for Todd. And lucky for Carl. Carl Hendrickson recently. Now back to the Maestro: - In the nineteen twenties Todd was famous for musical comedies, not for Shakespeare. We were cashing in on a theatrical aberation of the time allmale casts of collegians that traveled as girlie sh~ws. Harvard's Hasty Pudding and Princeton's Triangle Clubs started this silliness. Soon a whole country was finding hilarity in chorus lines of bony kneed transvestites kicking up hairy legs. In college I had written one such show plus lyrics for another. In To~d I continued the foolishness. Not, however, un~1l basketball became boring and a talented song writer came to form a partnership. The handsome young Swede was prolific at turning out singable, saleable. tunes. We won a prize, five hundred big bucks, m a song competition for a F lorida real estate swindle. One of our shows was sold complete to t~e great Rogers (no kin) Productions Company. The~r boo1!1ing nationwide racket was to put on musicals with local talent; say the Kiwanis Club or whatever. Rogers would furnish the show the director, the costumes, the scenery, the prom~tion. Then split the gate. · partner in all those musical shows - - - by - Hendrickson and Hill • Other schools suggested he get more pedagogy. Todd wanted his professionalism. He was with us till we closed. Then he turned down an offer from an Eastern school, at twice our salary, because he wanted to relax, teach privately, and write more music. A tragic ulcer operation took him away in his prime. His French widow, Nanette, carries on.She worked in Woodstock's Library for years and is now retired in Carl's old studio cottage which she rents from its new owner. She and Annetta Collins visited the Winsbergs and the Hills in Florida this winter. (Ted had sent his old teachers plane tickets.) I'll have more to say of the indispensable "Miss Collins" when I take up the matter of our school's closing and my responsibility to those longtime faculty members who went down with the ship. No lifeboat was available in the shape of a pension plan but all swam to sunny shores. As for A.E.J., he was delighted to retire. Others, like Colly, were offered, at long last, the sort of salaries they deserved. The Roskies were grabbed up by Woodstock High and they continued summer work at Camp Tosebo until 80 • Here's a Todd boy chorus line from that show sold to Rogers. We called it Finesse the Queen and it was still playing years later when the Hendricksons and t he Hills drove to Ohio to catch an American Legion production and to cringe while those yokels murdered our masterpiece. The next page shows a specialty number in the same show. Its only interest is the boy standing second from the right. That's Orson in his first year at Todd. The chubby 11-yearold was just the size and the shape for the chorus. Unthinkable, once you had talked to him. The child had an adult stage presence even then. Also, believe it or not, that same voice now recognizable the world over as Welles.So we cast the prodigy as a juvenile lead even though he had to look up to his girl. The influence of this lad on Todd dramatics will rate a chapter later. Also I show a picture of him at the other end of his Todd career, a senior ( �I TODD SCHOOL HISTORY .... The seventh-grade Orson rates a juvenile lead the Chicago Drama League contest cup. But now the Todd Troupers were forsaking Shakespeare and returning to the Maestro's music. I'll show here shots from a burlesque opera we wrote and produced that first twelfth-grade year. Called The Judgement of Paris, it was comic, different, singable and immensely popular. We tried to make it into our first "talkie." Th is by filming it silently and going to a Chicago studio to dub on the sound. Not very successful and, alas, the film and the records (lacking accurate sync) are now lost. Joanne and Rasey had leads (Helen and Paris) and can still do some of the arias and duets. Ask them. This coauthor is still sorta proud. The earliest sound-onfilm picture which will come down to you (via Rasey) was made in 1939: The Shooting of Dan McGrew. I'll show a scene from it here. It's the interior of the Malamute Saloon where a-bunch-ofboys-were-whooping-it-up. The set was built 'in the gym right after basketball season. In later years we made so many movies in that gym that Coach took his teams to a larger, rented facility in town. on that log with classmates out in our woods. He's there in shorts, a little left of center. I show this mature looking group to make a point about our pedagogy; Noble Hill's pedagogy, really. You are not looking at high school seniors, remember. Those are tenth graders, all sixteen or less. Noble, I now believe, was right in making this age-group his seniors and his leaders. Seniority brings responsibility and this is the great educator. I've told you how responsibility educated and matured young Winsberg, the farmer, and how it hastened the manhood of our son, the sailor. Why then did we tum conventional and add t hose two years to Todd? For money, the root of all evil. Those were Depression days. Next year's full enrollment was always in doubt. Each June a dozen parents begged us to take their money for two more years. When the stock market kept going down and fear in the -.. land kept rising we said yes. The change came five --=i:w Our most ambitious film project was the musiyears after the picture on the log which was taken cal allegory, Rip Van Winkle Renascent, a "peace" in 1931. In 1936 we graduated our first twelfth picture made at the end of Hitler's war and touting graders, Rasey among them. He had earlier taken a hoped-for world government. The United Nations over Orson's role of student artist, catalogue editor was then being formed and we, a little starry eyed, and drama star. He played Aguecheek in Twelfth dreamed along with Tennyson, that soon the com· Night when we finally won permanent possession of mon sense of most would hold a fretful realm in awe. Sound like a dull documentary? Far from it. Delightful comedy...., Catchy tunes. Amazing "special ,,. Todd Seniors Tenth graders 1931 Hascy's drunken Sir Andrew in the Kitchen Scene 81 �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY effects." We have no stills of this production except the one below showing Kleig lights aimed at a mountaintop where Derrick, the Schoolmaster, stands over a sleeping Rip lulled by three of eight little weirdos (Washington Irving's bowling boys) who change their roles (all evil) throughout the play. These dwarfs become American politicians or world diplomats (who bowl with bombs) or other historic menaces. Always they have but one goal: to lullabye Rip (America's common man) to slumber. Derrick (Rip's conscience) is forever trying to kee~ him .a~ake but can accomplish this only durmg a cnsIS such as a war or a depression. From their mountaintop they can see, along with us everything going on in the world below: Kia~ rallies, prohibition mobsters, the stock market crash, bread lines, Hitler's rise and fall. Finally, Rip comes awake for keeps when those atomic clouds mushroom over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The offbeat fantasy met with amazing success both here and in Europe. A grand opening in New York's Museum of Modern Art brought three hundred celebrities including cinema great like Robert Fla~erty of Nanook of the North and New Deal great like Eleanor Roosevelt. We circularized colleges and peace groups in America and took in at least enough to pay for the prints they wore out. In Europe, the newly formed UNESCO handled distribution. Finally, our sardonic preachment had the distinction of being the only movie ever shown in the British House of Parliament. It's dated now, of course, but you may still find it interesting and amusing. I know you'll find its special effects amazing: mountain climbing someway done on an Illinois prairie and European palaces produced with a bit of cardboard up close to a lens. These were Hollywood tricks taught us by Welles and executed by Tarbox. A new print was ordered a year ago and this should last the family for generations. And I find there are still two old scripts in my file drawers. These are complete with Tarbox cartoon illustrations. 1'l'f Our gym was finally turned into a movie studio. This required heavy new wiring and a new transformer on a pole outside. It also required moving our basketball to the Saint Mary's gym. 82 Inventory of existing films Whi~e on the subject of movies, I'll list the other f llms you will find in our projection room. Yes, we've gone Hollywood here in Florida and cut a hole through a wall to project onto a screen that comes down from a beam. Such luxury is almost necessary with 16 mm film because pulling out a heavy sound projector and setting up a portable scre~n is to? much of a chore. Maybe Hascy, always addmg to his farm buildings, will work out his own projection room. Or (happy t hought) maybe one of you will be living here in our never-to-be-duplicated bit of Florida felicity. If so, the family can do its viewing down here. Anyway, here's a list of other films I leave you: . There ar: two travelogues - films covering educa-. t1?nal tours m 'Podd buses. One thirty-minute color picture covers a student group soaking up history ~hrougho~t the East and another one going down mto Mexico. The_ narration is by your Uncle Roger at the age of thirteen. Some comedy sections are dramatize~ by Y?Ur grandfather, then about fifty. I used to 1mprov1se burlesque historical nonsense to act out in shrines we happened to visit.Below you . see the Chicag~ cast of Meet the People visiting Todd and watchmg some of our Indian-fight foolishness at Fort Necessity in Pennsylvania where young George Washington distinguish~d himself. 'That gal wiping tears from her eyes is Nanette Fabray. An earlier travelogue is black and white and silent. In it, Orson is seen as one of the teachers. He had graduated the year before, gone to Ireland and the Gate Theatre and come back in February to take over our dramatics. On this trip he is supervising the class work (daily written reports) expected from Todd student travelers. We were using our first sleeper unit, the semi-trailer land-yacht pictured back on page 77, Then you'll find the productions mentioned above: the Washington Irving allegory and the Robert Service Lady-that's-known-as-Lou number We shot this with tongue firmly in cheek; it'~ monstrou~ly overacted. We showed it only in our own studio and then to influence any prospective studen~s or parents who were interested in our dramatic work. To take the curse off its corn we early put in a ten-minute excerpt, with Ors~n's r -r ' �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY narration, from our first color film, Twelfth Night. No print of the full length version has survived. This. was widely distributed to schools and colleges as promotion for our Shakespeare texts. In the Chicago area J. would sometimes go along to 'lecture and plug our product. I remember a standing ovation once. This was at Northwestern University and for me, not for the film. It was for a. simple trick that would surprise no one knowledgeable in soundfilm production. I'll give you the slightly boastful tale after explaining our early sync problems that led up to it: c S<;!und-~ynchronizing problems 1927. Warner Brothers scooped the industry. They bought Vitaphone which the big producers had scorned. Will Hays, movie czar, was the first voice heard on a synchronized phonograph record. Al Jolson, The Jazz Singer, second. Like Hollywood, our first attempts were with sound-on-disc. Unlike Hollywood, we had no mechanical means of synchronizing turntable and projector. Our physics man, the "mad genius" Charlie Marsh, devised a stoboscopic method whereby a practiced hand at our projector could vary its speed slightly and hold the picture close to the sound. Good enough for narration of a travelogue but hopeless for lip sync. Then we persuaded a rich parent to donate a film recorder with a synchronous motor match ing the one on our camera. Now all we had to do (we thought) was start each scene with that slate-and-slap-stick technique and later edit the two films into a composite print. Voila! The Todd stage successes would live forever in celluloid. Ha! Babes in the woods! We had not foreseen a hundred problems. First-off we needed a "blimped" (silenced) camera. Next, moveable sound booms to hold microphone's over actor's heads and out of camera range. I could go on and on. Upshot: we t urned to techniques used widely by professionals. One is dubbing: filming silently and adding the sound later. You make up "loops" of film which repeat a section over and over while actors practice and practice until they reach lip-perfect sync. The other method, commonly used for musicals, is mugging: recording the song or the dialogue first and playing this back while the singer or the actor " muggs" for the camera. This was our main method. The Northwestern University incident came about because the Twelfth Night film had sound that was dubbed. I had spent weeks coaching actors on lines and re-running each scene dozens of times. In Evanston everything went well during the Introduction which consists of Hascy's art work and Orson's narration. But during the opening scene, Seacoast o f lllyria, the sound went dead! A projectionist came from his booth to explain that an exciter lamp burned out. He had no spare but could drive across the campus and bring one back before too long. Fearing my audience would drift away, I said "Go on with the picture; I'll put in the sound." Wit h my long practice I was, of course, letter perfect ; therefore the ovation. The sound-on-film had lasted, luckily, through Orson's introductory narration. I could imitate the bellowings of a drunken Sir Toby or the simperings of an effeminate Sir Andrew but no one should sacrilege that voice of Welles. I'll give you his text here. It's from our Mercury Twelfth Night. These books and records will come up later and then I'll discuss our methods of bringing scholarship into the classroom in palatable form. For now, just this excerpt: Roll of Thunder. Storm Effects. Narrator: Once upon a time, long,long ago, there was a storm at sea, and a ship went down and a beau ti· ful girl and her twin brother rode out the waves and were cast up separately on the shining beaches uf a strange land. Viola: What country, friends, is this? Captain: This is lllyria, lady. Narrator: This is Illyria, lady. lllyria. That's what the captain told the beautiful girl. Illyria, with a lovely countess in it, and a Jove-sick duke, with a bluenosed butler and a red-nosed knight and more mad people I needn't name and more matter for a May morning. Captain: This is lllyria, lady. Viola: And what should I do in Illyria? Narrator: What should you do in lllyria, lady? Why, dress up like a boy and be mistaken for your brother. Fall in Jove with the Duke and woo the countess for him. Do all the improbable, comedy things, lady, for you've come to improbable latitudes, to a comedy climate where anything Cltn happen and everything does. But all's well, lady! Like Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy in Oz, you're not on the map and it all conies out right in the end. For this is long, long ago. This is once upon a time . . . 83 �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY F inally, there's that twenty-minute musical called Singing Todd. This is a filmed version of four songs from our Centennial Album. I'll discuss these records and their acclaim later; maybe give some lyrics and cartoons from the album booklet. In the film the first boy behind the piano singing College Entrance Blues is Gahan Wilson, famous now for his weird Playboy cartoons. He also played Rip in the Washington Irving allegory. Its other lead, Derrick, was a lad named Jon Geiss who had a professional movie career for a time but turned to medicine and is now a psychiatrist in California. The piano player and composer of t he number, Henry DeMichele, has stayed with his music, earned a doctorate and now teaches. And oh yes, Hascy, those cans also contain your unfinished cowboy masterpiece, The Lost Mine. There's a tape of the sound plus a thousand feet of film. It was done, you remember, with grade school kids and there are shots of the Smith girls (as old ladies) bumping along atop that stagecoach plus a torch number by an unbelievably seductive saloon singer, your daughter at the age of eleven. This brings me to our fam ily movies and the end of my list. The many personal reels are all silent of course. They start with a trip in that early landyacht when Roger Gettys looks about seven fishing off the Florida Keys. Later family history is rolled up in some three thousand feet of color, all needing editing and drastic cutting. The reels go back to the time when grandchildren are tots and continue until great-grandchildren are champion swimmers. Our schooner-sailing footage (Sea Hawk on the Lakes and Yankee Girl in the Caribbean) is partly in Racine and all of it should end up there. About the SINGING TODD record album Here's a reduced facsimile from the booklet that went with the album. Jes the first of those eight songs that received such surprising national acclaim. Mostly on Dave Garroway's program. He was host on the Tod~y Show. 1. RICHARD T0DD The founder of our .c:bool yowiq Princeton theoloq· ical cpaduate who CCllM to the American fronti« in 1848 aa a pioneer miMionary and teach· er. The wOlda of the 8C11MJ ..U of bow he "ataked bis claim. Thia la not Bi.rally true. Early court records show that he purc:haMcl the ..-nt c:ampua property for $67.50 &om an E. G. How. who had. one y.ar earlier, received it from the U. S. qovemment which bad, a tew years earlier, taken II &om the Indiana. was a H We'll sing tonight that famous date When R. JC. Todd first reached this state, 'Twa11 back in eighteen forty eight His covered wagons rumblinq Richard Kimball Todd Today he might seem odd With whiskers flying in the breeze He turned liis back on eastern ease To found our school and plant its trees So raise your voice in homage please To Richard Kimball Todd He stciked the boundaries of his claim. He raised a sturdy school house frame While keeping one eye out to a im At red skin neighbors snooping And so we sing this song to tell Of the school he planned and built so well That when he rang its righteous bell The little boys all came trooping Yankee Girl off Bermuda Part of our schooner footage 84 - KIMBALL You've heard of fourteen ninety two And eighteen twelve's a date that you Must keep in mind but there are few Historic years worth numbering Old Richard Kim Raise your glOllS to him, The Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, First who on our campus trod, Who pioneered to break its sod. We sing that sturdy man of God, Old Richard Kim. No studios were in his school. No microphones or swimming pool, And mayhap he would term a fool. One who soent such time in singing Yet we'll sing of his school of forty eight And its fame that's spread from state to state And we pledge that fame will not abate And we'll keep his school bell ringing Richard Kimball Todd, That sturdy man of God, With all the zeal of old John Brown He built a church and he built a town, He built our school of gTeat renown, So raise your glass and drink it down To Richard Kimball Todd. -- - - - - - - �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY On the left is the album 's opener. In the number below students bemoan their peonage and Todd 's adherence to the work ethic. On the next page is a lampoon on your grandfather, their "eccent ric" headmaster. It was such off-beat songs that enthused Garro way in his pre New York days. He was disc jockey for NBC's nationwide radio chain and he plugged Todd stuff repeatedly until the musician's union clamped down on his use of ·our "scab" material. I h ave this recording, taken off the air, of his fulsome praise: "School and college songs are notoriously humorless and boring and self-aggrandizing. Now comes an amazing prep school with songs free from puffery and fil led with wit. No wearysome ~ump~g of chests; just delightful poking of nbs. Listen to one called Our Eccentric Head. Orson Welles, now a creative partner with his old Headmaster, wrote it." i WORK WORK WORK Actually. Todd boys do Jess compulsory physical labor than members of various other schools. But they probably do more voluntary work than any similar group. Surely Todd's program of extra-curricular activities is t:r.aqualled in scope and many c Todd boy is hard put t::> find enough hours in the day lo participate in all of ~~~~~~~~~~ his interests. This number .,.. ~ was written especially for our movie, SINGING TODD, and planned for picture accompaniment. What do you do when you come to Todd? You work, you work, you work. What do you do ii you stay at home? Well you've got a chance to shirk. But out here at Todd why they think you're odd If a lazy thought should lurk, so What do you do when your studying's throw;h? You work, you work, you work. -- The hard way. The hard way. lt's education a la Todd the hard way. To give just one example how they'll try your soul We'll do a documentary labeled "Lousy Coal." The shovel is the instrument of torture used. On mountains high, bituminous, you'll gPt abused. You shovel ii off the car and into the truck And when you get it back lo school you still are stuck. You shovel it off the pile and into· the mow. The stoker's gelling empty boy so fill ii up now. Long-ago SOUNDS we still can hear Voices can recall a scene as well as pictures. Sometimes better. Many sounds of the past are available to you. Cat aloguing tapes and records recently, I listened with nostolgic delight to thirty minutes of family chatter, persiflage and laughter in this house fourteen years ago. The tape was made to send to Tom Standish, Todd boy extraordinary, blind and bedridden. (See page 4). The Tarbox family had foregathered in Florida. Todd had come from his college in Mexico ; Melinda had come from her job in St. Louis; their parents h ad come from a And when it's burned a while you shovel once more. It's ashes now and not so heavy as before. At last the stuff is leaving us and all is joke. The only difference now is that you'll get a - rake! They'll keep you working. You'll think you've had enough. They'll keep you working. You'll shovel other stuff. And when you shower up and you hit the hoy Jn troubled dreams al night you'll hear your pals all say. What do you do when you come to Todd? You work, you work. you work. What do you do when your studying's through? You work, you work, you work. Not a cent do you earn but you finally learn That a lazy guy's a jerk, so Don't think it odd that you come lo Todd To work, to work, to work. Work Work Work Work Work Work Work Work Work Work Work Work - Feed that press now ! Mustn't rest now! Don't protest now! Paint that drop now! Mustn't stop now! Push that mop now! Spin that prop now! Bring that pail now! Comb that tail now' Hit that nail r.ow! Hoist that sail now! Roll tha t bale now - Ooooo Not a cent do you earn but you finally learn That a lazy guy's a jerk, so Don't th ink ii odd that you come to Todd To work, work, work. 85 �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY home in Milwaukee. Also I find another Tarbox fam ily tape made at Tom 's bedside four years later. Now there's a great-grandchild, Jon. The Reitman kid is maybe two and his loquatious parents are trying to have him join the chatter. These memories of a yesteryear are on large reels, 1200 feet each. You'll find a box of twenty, all fairly well labeled. There is one for each of our Shakespeare plays, more convenient to use than those Columbia records which require a change every few minutes. On one reel you can hear Wendy Hill at the age of five singing popular hits of 1960 with perfect pitch and a verve that foretells her present stardom. More recent sounds are on cassettes: phone calls, conversations with family and visiting alumni. Earlier sounds can be recovered from scratchy old discs. Long before magnetic tape was invented, Todd had professional recording equipment. Trouble is acetate or wax cuttings have no permanence unless t urned into " pressings." Still you can hear a ninety-year-old Noble give a message to his old school at its centennial and you can hear his grandson's syncopated singing at the age. of eleven. Young Roger's fine voice (a few years later) is of 6. 0 UR ECCENTRIC HEA D Roger Hill, the adored and un· inhibited "Skipper" of Todd since 1928, is such a cosmic creature of boundless talents and hobbies that any one song regarding him must, of necessity, be like the impression of any one blind man regarding the elephant - completely inadequate and misleading. For instance, he is an erudite scholar who can quote whore volumes of poetry or Shakespeare. Again, he is a top deck hand in a race or a storm as well as a licensed marine and air pilot. Certainly he is not an "eccentric" Headmaster but just as certainly he is not a typical one. The New Yorker magazine once wrote of him, "He is a slim, silver haired. tweed bearing man who looks as if he had been cast for his role by a Hollywood producer.'' Well, in Ne w York when addressing a convention of educators, yes. On our campus, no. There you are more apt to get a fleeting glimpse of a figure in shirt sleeves, sans necktie, dashing across the acres enroute to the sound studio or a play rehearsal. "Who is that character with the locks streaming astjjm?" you a sk. "That's no character," we answer. "that's our Skipper." Another magazine piece recently called him "a genius's genius." Whatever that means, it sounds more like it. Probably the easiest way to sum up is to say that the unique Todd School of today is but the lengthened shadow of our unique Head. Yes, yes. we'll sing no w of Skipper and the s chool he's Id. Yes, yes, we'll bring no w the song of our e ccentric head. 86 course available, sans scratch, on several of the Singing Todd songs. Albums of these are in the family as well as in the homes of many alumni. Other albums piled in our store room include a dozen old radio plays by Orson's Mercury Theatre of the Air. Also you 'II find a great stack of "Mood Music" and "Sound Effects." Before you toss this stuff out, I'll clear up its mystery: Rasey used these in the amazingly fine radio plays he taped with boy Now when doting parents who think their son is God Decide they want the finest so they visit Todd Well they'll ask some freshman by the name of Bill "Sonny, where's the office of Doctor Hill?" And they'll get this answer ii the boy 1s new: "It's in the brown brick building just ahead ol you" But any Todd boy here a month could tell The only one they'll find there i.s Viola Belle. Yes. yes, we'll sing now of Skipper and the school he's lead. Yes, yes, we'll bring now the song of our eccentric head For the Skipper's prob'ly in the Studio Painting scenes or making movies er about to ao With some boys out sailing or he even could Be flying in his aeroplane to Ho llywood And those folks imagined, as now wouldn't you. An office sanctum and an intervieVI With a good grey pedant in a tig ht pince nez Who matches tips of fingers and sedate ly sa vr.· I'm Todd's famed Headma ster. Home training's d isaster So just leave your· hopefuls wilh I'll formulate meas ures To bring up your treasurez In ways that you're hoping to - - - - Ill(' !>Cf'. I know the relation Between motivation And pupil response and I. Q. I know how to save your Young son from behaviour That's likely to mortify you. But what they really find is just an office bare. At least a llho it's littered, no one's in the chair. So they search the basements and they search the shop::i, The farm and woods and airport and his other stops But alter searching all the places, the places he aint, They find him up the flag pole with a pot ol paint. They yell "We've got a super boy that we'd like to place." The Skipper simply flicks some paint in their lace. Yes, yes, we're sung now of Skipper and the school he's led Yes, yes, we've sung now the song of our eccentric head. - - �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY actors. The shows were aired on an Evanston FM station Sunday nights. Alas, son, none of your lengthy labor is preserved. You goofed when editing. Your many patches were made with ordinary scotch tape. Good enough for a year but no good for permanence. Each tape ended in a hundred pieces. Some of your old boxes remain but now hold new sound. Such boxes are frantically crayon-marked with your instructions to Evanston: "DO NOT ERASE!! For Feb. 2 airing. 8:30 to 9:00 slot." In the picture opposite, Welles is taking your rightful place. For the family record, that's Ross Taylor Carol's son, peering out of the control room window'. More about the Maestro I started to tell you of our opera, The Judgement of Paris, a ragtime version of Homer's Illiad. Recalling Todd's early attempt to film this, sidetracked me into the subject of movies. Yes, we've lost the early film we shot and the early sound we recorded but I started a search for the script and, though it failed, I turned up three old stills. I'll show these because at least two of my readers, Joanne and Hascy will be interested in their longago stardom . The first shot shows Rasey (Paris) with his Apple of Discord judging between the three graces, Juno, Venus and Minerva. Each tries bribery; Venus wins out with her offer of the world's most beautiful woman. I maneuvered the plot into this mythology and this Trojan War theme after an opening act on a college campus. There a little pipsqueak of a Greek professor tangled with a football giant in a co-ed beauty contest. The athlete conks the midget; sends him into a Walter Mitty dream and a trip into Homeric history. I'll outline some of the plot for you grandchildren. Your parents can sing you some of the music. Put these remnants together and one of you might want to re-write the piece. The maestro is dead; his collaborator nearly so; you 're welcome to anything you can salvage from a onetime hit. Paris must steal Helen, of course, from the Greek king, Menelaus. This brings on a sea chase as shown. Runaways (now bored with each other), are on the left. Greeks, in hot pursuit, are to starboard. While strips of waves are rythmically rocking, Neptune rises from the sea to give his directions in syncopated song: Troy?....Now.... Let me see?.... Second stoplight hard a lee. Other scenes fade into each other with more matter for a May morning and for a mad conception. The final scene is pictured here showing Menelaus with his wife returned to his side and his little enemy knocked out at his feet. This is the same pose that ended the opening scene when a giant football player, his girl by his side, loomed over a defeated little professor. The football giant and the Greek king were both Bill Meigs. He's been playing big guys on the stage ever since. A handsome face and a dulcet baritone set him to singing "Oh what a beautiful morning" in recurrent Oklahoma openings over the years. Plus a thousand reditions of "Some enchanted evening" of hallowed South Pacific memory. We caught his nightclub act in Miami last winter. Like old times. Just now he and his partner, Claudia Genteel, have joined Edgar Bergen's new act in California. I dug into a carton of Todd memorabilia yesterday (looking for the "book" on that opera) and turned up an old Todd Record telling of Bill's professional debut. I'll miniaturize part of this on the next page. 87 �TODD SCHOO L HISTOR Y THE RECORD 1-:c.-:--I ".. ;.".;. 'w_,.._.._ _._ _ _ _ _ _ ___.-_-~-. Ofn. 1'.., ...... rw April 24. ~,,8 v.a.... n1 _. Bill Meigs Makes Operatic Debut Si1p .. "Cl...." Ski'"' Tt ltctr4 ,,.... ,., ... Ai All4ittri1• I T•••i•c i• • ..., lift 1•,.•un...,,1 th•I 1•'""11') l~ 1. 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(See more on this on page 4.) Yes, the above yellowed newsprint brings back memories long dimmed. First, those ambitious plans of mine to revolutionize the teaching of literature by bringing back the Noble Hill technique. Second, t hat Lawrence Tibbett role Meigs sang in the opera version of O'Neill's classic Emperor Jones . But my subject was the Maestro. Let's conclude: We must mention his Bach to Boogie tours complete with a boy choir acclaimed throughout the midwest. (Carl had spent a sabbatical in Europe and became enchanted with the work of the Vienna Boys Choir and their soprano training.) Tours started in Chicago's Civic Theatre and continued to at least Detroit and Toledo, cities where the group had gained repute and audiences were assured . Specialty numbers included instrumental combos, comic skits 88 and a cowboy quartet. Christopher Welles, Orson's daughter, starred on two tours belting out hits from Annie Get Your Gun in true Ethel Merman style. We have a tape of Chris singing No-Business-likeShow Business. The demure child pictured here belies the eager Thespian within her. She entered Todd at the same age as her father, eleven, and found the same instant t heatric success. t After this chapter on Todd, rll t urn back to family matters and tell more of this adopted grandchild now a freelance writer living in Manhattan but visiting here often. Her published work is a mixed bag consisting of magazine pieces and textbook material and articles for the Britannica. Some are credited to Chris Welles; others have her married name, Feder, added. �I _, TODD SCHOOL HISTORY Tony Roskie - Coach Extraordinary The family is pictured on their cottage porch at Camp Tosebo. Tony and Kay met in college. The children, Carol and Barbara, were born in Todd and grew up in a Grace Hall faculty apartment. This great athlete grew up in Rockford and went to Lake Forest to exhibit such prowess in four sports as to put that small college on the nation's athletic map. He produced similar miracles at Todd. His college celebrated a special " Roskie Day" recently. His prep school boys celebrate an informal Roskie Night every t ime they get together to pour over movies of their old games. Many of these athletes went on to college stardom and all pronounce Tony's coaching best they've ever had. The Roskies are maybe ten years younger than t he Hills but, lacking our luck, have aged in recent years enough to match our own decline. Tony 's present arthritis stems from a hip injury received years ago. He was captain of Woodstock's professional basketball team playing the Harlem Globetrotters when he crashed against a radiator on the wall of St. Mary's gym. This writer, once a lesser coach himself, was referee One of many championship teams. Sandy Smith in the center for that unfortunate game. In the Singing Todd album , there's a football number called "Red Raiders, Ride." It doesn't brag about any coming victory but it does brag about a coach. Thus: I met a boy from Latin School who looked so very blue. A Harvard lad looked just as bad and Francis Parker too And with a sigh from old U High each said altho we've tried We can't explain in every game what makes Red Raiders ride. We'll tell each guy the reason why those Raiders ride like mad. The coach they've got is just so hot the others all look bad. When Roskie reads the riot act you really want to roll Beneath the bench, you're just a stench in that great coach's soul. Red Raiders ride; ride high and wide but win lose or tied • ' You J ve never cried and I'll confess I'm on your side ' So ride, Red Raiders ride. Another of Tony's teams. Our super pool for year-'round sun tanning was Todd's one bit of luxury. It was an extension of our dining room in Wallingford Hall. 89 �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY Ed ucatio nal Travel Todd 's first class-trip to our nation's capital and to the shrines of our colonial history was made in 1932 when we ate and slept and studied and wrote our t hemes in that early travel unit pictured on page - - 77. Orson's part in that trek is described on page 82. Now we show him years later, a Man-from-Mars radio celebrity, dining in New York with another Todd class in another "school on wheels". That - Our final Behemouths - - By Day first trip in 1932 received considerable publicity and may have started a national trend. At least Oak Park High sent their seniors the next Spring on a train trip to Washington and Evanston followed suite a year later. Soon the galleries of our senate were bulging with juveniles every June. This much at least is certain: travel combined with study is the epitome of education. Noble Hill believed this before his son. He married into the Rogers family who were . obsessed with travel and I remember him quoting Shakespeare in their defense. Homekeeping youth have ever homely wits. He sent his children often to Philadelphia so t hat Uncle Joe, t he historian, could On the Keys before our Clubhouse was built 90 By Night When we established that Winter Outpost in Florida we used them to transport faculty and students, making the trips to the Keys in 36 hours non-stop. Here's the start of a song you will hear on our Singing Todd movie: Over hills, thru the dales, we will roam the highway irails In Big Bertha a-rolling along, Thru the day, thru the night, over mountains, 01Ut of sight As we roll why we11 sing a song. New Orleans, Monterey, San Antone and T.V.A. Let them all hear the Todd bus song. From Quebec to Mexico, we will let the natives know That Big Bertha is rolling along. - r - �r TODD SCHOOL HISTORY Todd Graduation Ceremonies These were informal. Instead of speeches, theatre productions. Any sermonizing was short and done by me. Here's Hascy's cartoon of the offbeat Headmaster bidding a class Godspeed. Once we imported oratorical talent. The best; Edwin Embree, then the most popular commencement speaker in America. Yale used him twice. For our centennial, I presumed to ask Todd's Board Chairman to shrink to our little measure. One talk of mine, to the class of 1953, was printed, with illustrations, in our school magazine. As follows: Each of us born on our planet has been alloted a limited life, a one-way journey down the roadway of the years. Today, at eighteen, you have traveled about a quarter of that road. Today you leave childhood behind and step out into maturity. Down life's road a piece, just around that corner you can see ahead, lies middle age. You'll reach that corner, believe me, far sooner than you expect. And over that hill you see in the distance lies old age. But I'm wrong. You can't see that far. Not from here. Childhood, even youth, still holds an illusion of permanence. This may be fortunate. Anyway, boys, this road of life can be very pleasant and it can lead to a glorious sunset. Or the road can be monotonous and frustrating. It can lead to disillusionment. Adults are prone to tell children they live in the happiest period of their lives. Don't you believe it. The joys of maturity, of living a full family life, of doing for others rather than accepting from others; these are life's greatest rewards. Childhood, of course, can be wonderful. The Todd plan is dedicated to making it so, bringing some of the satisfactions of adulthood, finding pride in accomplishment, freedom from fear and a sense of personal worth. Last month I asked each of you, as English assignments, to write ·for me two personal statements. In one, you were to evaluate your years in Todd. In the second, I asked you to tell me your dreams for the future. My assignment, as mimeographed, read: "What are your hopes? What are your aspirations? As an eighteen year old philosopher peering into the future, what for you is the summum bonum, the supreme good? What, above all else, do you seek from life? Happiness, I hear you say. Of course. We all seek this. But what, for you, are the necessary ingredients? Fame? Fortune? A family? Adventure? Security? Peace? Contentment? Some of these goals are contradictory. Again I ask, what for you is the summum bonum?" These were tough assignments. Become a philosopher! Put your philosophy on paper. My motive was partly selfish. I faced the task of writing a commencement sermon and I wanted your thoughts as a springboard. Also I knew that such self.analysis would be salutary; sort of a grace-before·graduating. Most of your papers, I'm glad to say, tended to refute that recent Time Magazine study called "The Younger Generation" and on which Thornton Wilder commented last month in Harpers with his "Silent Generation." We were told in those magazine pieces that you and your post war contemporaries are an apathetic lot, lacking the assurance, the drive and the gu ttiness of your fathers and your grandfathers. Specifically they told us "These young people issue no manifestoes, make no speeches, carry no posters. Their ambitions have shrunk to a search for security. Through fear, passivity or conviction they are ready to conform. In their domes· tic life they look forward to "the suburban idyll." Okay, Mister Wilder and Mister Luce; you may be right. I say maybe. But I don't think so. The young men on this platform don't think so. Middle age always feels you th is slipping. Yours is but the repetition of a chronic elderly gripe. The only nov· elfy is that a switch has been introduced. Youth is not too wild; it is too tame. Even if so, is this bad? What's wrong with planning a nice home next to the country club with a Cadillac in the garage and kids on the lawn? Not too much although I admit that as a non-conformist I rejoice in some of your unorthodox dreams. Just as I was sympathetic when the class of '44 planned, during their final week in Todd, that as soon as each had earned a college degree and each had saved a thousand dollars, they would unite again and, for two years, cruise the world in their own sailing ship. And with only slight modification because of the Korean war they followed through with their dream. This was, frankly, more than I had expected. So many youthful dreams dissipate and fade. Take my own for example. In youth I was supremely sure of what I wanted from life- adventure, experience, freedom from monotony or rut, from the boredom I saw engulfing my elders. Life was short; its diet must be varied; there was so much to be tasted. Time out for hollow laughter. For that youth, through circum· stance and a feeling of obligation, has plodded down a confining rut for thirty years. 91 �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY But my Todd rut has proved exciting, adventurous. I'm sure this would not have been true in other educational work but your school has, for more than a century, been dedicated to the adventurous life. One month after Richard Todd, our founder, graduated from Princeton's Theological Seminary he forsook the home of wealthy parents to travel west via the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes to a raw frontier to establish a pioneer church and a pioneer school. Forty years later he was succeeded by another adventurous spirit who had run away to sea at sixteen and worked his way through college at thirty. This, of course, was Noble Hill, the beloved "King" of Todd for its second forty years. Death came to this towering figure only last month. He was retired in California, a still vigorous ninety three. His zest for life was a legend among older Todd boys. Some years ago he wrote a letter for our school paper describing his elation during the Santa Barbara earthquake. While the walls were cracking he woke to rejoice that at last he was gaining this new experience which up to now a niggardly fate had denied him. (His mother and his brothers had gone through the 1906 San Francisco disaster.) Probably Noble Hill's greatest influence on a son was not his love of the sea or love of adventure but love of poetry. He could, and would, recite (with the rolling voice of a· Barry!llore) whole volumes of narrative poetry or any of the great Shakespearean passages. His greatest joy was to mix nature walks with poetry spouting. So this man and boy would tramp the woods, footsteps in cadence with Shakespeare's pentameter. But Walt Whitman and his doctrine of self reliance was the favorite. Even today when I am in the Todd woods, and find a moment to withdraw from surrounding horsemen and wienie roasters, a metamorphosis takes place. When I have strolled over the first knoll I have shrunk to seven and am striding beside a diety expounding scripture. It is the gospel according to Saint Walt and again I hear the litany: 92 Afoot and light hearted I take to the open road, Healthy. Free. 111e world before me. Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I, myself, am good fortune. Henceforth I whimper no more. There is a pause. "You hear that, boy?" "Yes sir." "What did it say?" "It said henceforeth I whim-whimper no more." "Correct, boy. Heed it well! " Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more. Strong and content I travel the open road. It was potent medicine. We have tried to nourish later generations of Todd boys with the same vitamins of confidence and self reliance. Most of all we're trying to educate for happiness and we think this can be best assured by choosing a life work this is self expressive and creative. If it can also be helpful to our fellow man we've got life made. For when we die we take with us in our clutched hand only those things we've given away. There he goes, I hear you whisper. Another quotation or two from Emerson and he'll be through. You're right. Except that I propose to repeat, in closing, that preachment I gave you two years ago on a May morning in Quebec. Our audience has never heard it and one of you asked, in your recent theme, to have it put in print. You all remember well the time and cause of its delivery. For our audience, I must set the scene. We were on a class trip. Civics and History. In our land yacht and traveling school we were doing the French city and provence of Quebec. The seniors on this platform were then sophomores. We had left the Plains of Abraham and were rolling toward Montreal. It was late at night; our driver, Flip Pehlps, was sleeping while I relieved him at the wheel. The boys had made up their bunks and were lolling on them. None were sleepy. They had stayed in the sack until ten that morning and were now wide awake. This was all right with me as long as they kept their voices down and aJlowed the exhausted driver to sleep during his six hours off watch But time and again their conversation would swell to minor shouting and their hushed laughter build to bellowing. It was midnight when the Hill patience snapped. I stopped the bus and in a whispered shout I ordered them out of their beds to stand in the aisle. I denounced them as a pack of infants without a spark of maturity or consideration in their make-up. "You will," I croaked, "stand this entire night-watch with me. You will, by dawn, I hope, have learned something of the difference between childhood and maturity, between acceptors from society and contributors. So .. there they stood in the aisle and for the next six hours I was miserable; ashamed of myself for losing my temper; disturbed and unhappy as always when meeting out punishment. But I let them take it; on and on through the long hours. Every thirty minutes I would flick on lights and observe in the mirror the latest stage of knee sag. A few , with head and elbows buried in upper bunks, were asleep standing up. But most stood their -- --- - - ,..... - - - �TODD SCH OOL HISTORY watch like men. At last "rosy fingered dawn stood tiptoe on a mountain top." We were nearing Montreal. Flip was sleeping like a baby. Why not? Hamlet may have had flights of angels sing him to his rest; Flip had a crew standing watch to insure his. Again I stopped the bus. I whispered to the weary group to join me on a grassy knoll to starboard. There, with my class before me, I unburdened myself of a speech. It was my graduating address to that traveling history class. I warm it over for you now and for our guests. It went approximately like this: Sit down gentlemen. Relax. I've kept you awake through this Jong night partly that you might put yourself in our driver's weary shoes but mainly to add a new and maturing experience to your lives. None of you, probably, have ever before stood a night-watch at sea. So you've never known the thrill of having a watch ended by God's miracle of the dawn. Look at it. Terrific, isn't it? And it's ours. Because we've earned it. Setting an alarm clock and rising from a bed can't produce this thrill. And as for those lesser mortals, those slug-a-beds, who three hours from now will tumble toward the light with creaky yawns, how can such clods appreciate this day? Unlike us, they know no partnership with God in its creation. r r r r [ We who sail small boats over large oceans have long discovered this almost religeous exaltation. We also know the satisfaction that comes from standing at the wheel of a ship throughout a long night of either beauty or terror and controlling that ship's plunging while below the crew and passengers sleep in confidence knowing the hand at the wheel is trustworthy and competent. I find the same satisfaction inherent in a night spent at the wheel of our land yacht. What I'm trying to point out, boys, is that the truest satisfaction in life comes from helping others. The greatest teacher who ever lived pointed out this truth to another group seated on a hillside in Galilee centuries ago. Yes, Jesus, expounding the towering philosophy of the Sermon on the Mount said Whosoever would be the greatest among you, let him become the servant of all A paradox. Great truths are often paradox. Let me repeat it again, slowly this time: He that would be the greatest among you, let him become the servant of all You recognize that this is true with world-famous men. Our heroes are our great servants: Edison. Pasteur. Salk. Do you recognize also that the top boys in Todd (and the happiest boys in Todd) are those contributing most to the group? One reason I like these bus tours and consider them educational is that on trips like this you do see the Sermon-on-the-Mount truth. In ou r tight little group living so close and sharing so many chores it becomes clear who are the lifters and who are the leaners. Just so, it is recognized by yachtsmen that the quickest way to learn if an acquaintance is a brick or a bastard is to cruise with him or to race with him. At sea you will find wealthy brokers, businessmen and board chairmen scrubbing decks, cooking meals, setting and dousing sails day and night to the point of physical exhaustion and calling it a holiday. And it is a holiday because, one, it's a change and, two, it 's a thrilling, cooperative effort. At the end of the race or the end of the cruise the validity of that doctrine expounded by Jesus on the hillside will be crystal clear: the greatest among the crew is the o ne who has served the most. Yes, my young friends, the truths we must engrave on our hearts are the great paradoxes. Yes, we can get out of life only what we put into it. So I plead with you this morning, here in the dawn of this glorious day, here in the dawn of your own maturity, I plead with you to develop the habit of giving. Give of your time; give of your help; give of your cheer. It's the receipt for happiness on this Earth. And heed me well. For I am an expert in this matter of happiness, of enjoyment of life. You will do well to take advice from experts. If you want advice on getting rich, speak to the wealthy. If you want advice on holiness, seek it from the pious. But for low-down on the all important matter of happiness, heed this greybeard well. I speak as one who has packed more pure fun and joy into fifty years of abundant life than the total of any dozen fortunate folk you will ever meet. And now it's time for a well earned rest. Before turning in I suggest you offer up a prayer to God, thanking him for your own good fortu ne at this moment. For your youth. For the new maturity opening before you. For your health. And most of all for your potentialities for service and therefore for happiness. * * * * * * * * Ah yes, memories! Sophomores then; seniors now; alumni for life in our proud and happy bond. God love you and bring you back often to your Todd home. 93 �TODD SCHOOL HISTORY T he Story of Todd's Closing At fifty I began to dream of retirement; at least of a change. Hascy was su perbly equipped to take over except for the minor (in my view) lack of an advanced degree. Still, a prep school must be accredited and the all-important North Central Association was now using criteria increasingly quantitative instead of qualitative. Even our administrating genius, the General, had to step down (nominally) from his position of Principal in favor of Ed · Cole with his superior pedgogic statistics. But Ed, a year later, was struck down with vicious and crippling polio. Then Roger Gettys and Emily, back from their seagoing adventures and each equipped with the needed master's, were persuaded to take over. Wonderful! Light at the end of the tunnel! This restless and aging administrator began dreaming of his own sea voyages. Emily started a new era in Todd dramatics using those "creative" techniques of her alma mater, Northwestern, and its drama school. Roger began to make up for his old man's many sins of omission. For instance, I had no formal Alumni Association that could be milked for funds. I wanted none. I would milk their parents and I would dream of milking the great Foundationsbut I retained a Noble Hill philosophy of a "family school" where free meals and even free lodging was considered the lifetime bonus due every Todd graduate. He was now a "son" who had earlier earned family status by labor and by Jove. Dreamy eyed? Of course. Roger Gettys, a born financier and organizer, saw things through no such mist. He hired Carl Burlingame as Alumni Secretary and put him to work on promotion: a new directory, a new quarterly and a fund raising drive. All of this had started to click when Todd's death blow fell. In retrospect I consider it fortunate. At any rate it happened like this: The North Central "examiner" made his usual "visitation." At the end of two days he came to my office to say goodbye and add "I must congratulate you, Sir. Never have I seen such impressive teaching of math as that done by your son. I was fascinated and remained for an entire period. He had ninth graders handling quadratics. I tell you this, Doctor Hill (everyone assumed this distinction along with my headmastership) -to soften what I now must add: unless he goes to school this summer and earns eight more hours of pedagogy credit he will not be allowed io teach for you next year!!" That did it. No, Roger's disgust with such pettifoggery wasn't the sole reason Todd closed but it was the final straw. There were problems in those boom times greater than we had known during the Depression. Financial problems, yes. But faculty problems, mainly. The teacher makes t he school and always has since Mark Hopkins sat there on the end of his log. In the thirties, the finest in the land 94 waited at Todd's door envious of our meager salaries but marvelous amenities. In the fifties, quite the other way. By then every teacher on our campus had · a dozen offers to double his dough elsewhere. Todd's new Headmaster as pictured in the first issue of his Alumni Magazine -I and that Old Head master looking a bit too smug about it all Evaluation This tale of Todd under your grandparents' administration was started with the statement that evaluation would be left to others. I've backslid and indulged in praise. Discount this. And later look for Jess subjective evaluations after I've called on some distinguished alumni to write down theirs. Many are qualified to speak professionally as well as personally. Dozens have earned doctorates in Education. Offhand I think of two I might contact who had disparate Todd experience: Jim Murray is a college professor who spent twelve years with us, entering as a first grader. Roger Bardwell is a school superintendent who had a shorter Todd stay but has a better basis for comparison with other fine schools. He grew up in Madison attending his famous father's super-fine elementary system. When this father moved to the editorship of Harper and Row in Evanston, Roger spent years in the super-fine highschools of Chicago's North Shore before transferring to Todd for a final year. Or I might call on some of our literary lights and professional writers such as Robert Goldston (see page 53) or Dwight Whitney who could compare Todd with the great Eastern prep schools because he graduated as a tenth grader (right after Orson) and went on to finish at Deerfield. For now I'll close this chapter on our beloved institution with a latter-day group picture. I choose one where Melinda is shown as a babe in arms and her parents were new in their faculty status: 1943. -- - -- -- �On this panorama (taken at high noon with the sun illuminating mostly our noses} I've indicated names of those we can identify. Mistakes are probable. We're peering through the dim mists of memory and onto a poor reproduction of an old photo. Seniors that year of 1943 were Louie Bate, Dave Browder, Paul Colvin, Nixon Elmer, Alan Greenberg, John Hein, Jim McKee, Jim McLean, Burt Miller, Jerry Ruskin, Bill Thoms and John Wells. Six seem to be missing; maybe home for the weekend. The Juniors (young Roger's class} are all pictured here except Wally Bishof and Jim White. The ones shown are John Colby, Tim Eis, Bob Goldston, Roger Hill, Hi Howard, Jerry Levi, Wally Priest, Richy Rose and Ross Taylor. White, the class genius, missing here, is pictured on page 53. He's in uniform then and leaving for Germany where he was killed in action. _ _L �_J FAMILY HISTORY Mea Culpa Writing that final page of Todd history (its Decline and Fall) has left me "sick of an old fever," the 1954 devastating, face-burning sense of Guilt. I'll recover just as I did in the long ago. And quicker. Then it took years. Now it will subside in days. Hortense feels none of this. Of course not. No family torch was passed to her. No childhood memories return to haunt her. Our son was tossed a torch but he caught this reluctantly and there is scant comparison between his obligation and mine. I had taken over a school that was booming and found years of easy, faculty-produced success. But when things got tough I lacked, alas, the toughness to stand and fight. My father was made of sterner stuff. So was my son. Had Rog been ten years older and taken over Todd ten years earlier I'm reasonably certain the unique institution would be funded and functioning today. Yes the strength that was old Noble skipped a generation. I've suggested this earlier and my readers have probably sensed by now that this writer is more of a Rogers than a Hill. All of which leads an ancient scribbler to contemplation of his childhood so hang on for final paragraphs on Parents before I turn to the topic of Children. Your Great-Grandmother Hortense holds the following theory about a step-parent she never met: Grace Rogers was an all-wise mother, fine-tuned to a sensitive son, and constantly shielding him from a too-stern father. Not really. Yes, the boy avoided that father because of his severity but he never really feared him. As for Noble, he feared nothing, least of all the unthinkable idea that his only begotten son would turn out badly. The boy might make mistakes; he would surely need copious censorship; but he was a Hilt wasn't he? Why fear? On the other hand, Grace, lacking her husband's fierce pride and ~elf assurance, was constantly fearful about her son because of traits she saw in him that resembled her wayward brothers. "Oh, Roger, that's so much like your Uncle Alan" was her repetitious and unwise criticism; unwise because it was ineffective; ineffective because the boy adored his talented uncle. The criticism may have been unwise but the fear was understandable. Consider just the matter of her son's off-beat writings. Most of these she read with pain. I speak of the type of foolishness (and praise of the bohemian life) you'll find in the book, Boneyard Babblings. These jingles, along with the Morrissey cartoons, first appeared in the Campus Scout when I was guest-conducting that column. Grace had subscribed to the Daily fllini so none of this could be hidden from her. To appreciate her perturbation, turn, in your book, to a piece called 96 The John Street Passing Show. If that versified girl-ogling isn't available to you, consider only the Morrissey illustration reproduced here. Can you wonder at a mother's worry when she saw her son depicted as this dissolute character? To heighten her fear, her favorite nephew, Jack, equally worrisome to her, had just met that bizarre and alcoholic disaster described on page 43. Then that spring <?f of 1914 brought tragedy to me as well as Jack. Within a month the woman I had so worried was dead and I was desolate. :J :J * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Farewell dear devoted one! That son you never saw after his seventeenth year has paid his punishment of long regret over the small comfort and large apprehension he brought to your final years. Can you now look down and know that the exhuberant experimenter who caused you so much worry has, after all, not gone to jail; not even to alcoholism. Do you now know how he found a mate worthy of your memory and how they have produced a grandchild as fabulous as you for love and for selfless devotion to motherless children? But enough of such apostrophic discourse! It's a contrived form and unsuited to an agnostic. Grace may not be mothering homeless children in some boarding school in the sky but her influence and her genes go rolling on. As for Melinda, when we photographed the Reitman clan a year ago on page one, the children numbered five; today, by love's arithmetic, nine! So now belated appreciation to this earlier "Mother of Boys" as the bronze plaque in Grace Hall named her. The Todd Seminary lads who loved her are legion. They're also dead; therefore silenced. Even a later foster child, Hal Pogue, my college roommate and the football hero of that pre-Red Grange day, has now died. His memory, however, is green and his story is typical: an orphaned youth, he spent his vacations in our home and in our Camp and called this woman mother and called her son an unappreciative ingrate. Another contemporary of mine who held similar adoration _J �...J__I . • - • FAMILY HISTORY was that aforesaid son of Eugene Field. "Po" based his devotion on the lady's musical as well as motherly qualities. At ten he was a talented singer and, to my great envy, could "fake" an alto or a tenor part to any song. Grace would help him refine these into closer harmonies. (One additional musical memory : Singing There is a Tavern in a Town, Po would work in a bu-bu-bu-boo that was pure Bing Crosby twenty years early.) Grace, the gregarious, died alone! It was on her beloved school's Commencement Day, J une 11, 1914. She was in the Battle Creek Sanitarium "recovering" from a stomach operation to removEf that long-torturous ulcer. It was on her insistance that a husband left her and returned to "her boys" for their great day. They were singing out a joyous operetta she had taught them at the very hour she was sinking to eternal rest. As our old hymn had it: Amazing Grace! • l - Your Parents - Children of Joy I come now to the story of our married life and of our three children, born and reared, like their father, in an institution. Joanne, pictured here with young parents, arrived actually in Chicago during those wondrous days of vine-leaves-in-our-hair that were rhapsodized back on page 44. With a new ~ I• • w .I a ~ ·less. Ragged World War veterans, thirty thousand strong, were marching on Washington to be met by chain-locked gates of a White House hiding a quak mg President who refused to meet with their leaders. Instead, Herbert Hoover called on his Chief of Staff, Douglas MacArthur (and a young aide-de-camp, Eisenhower) to disperse the trouble makers. Then came the '32 election; . a Roosevelt landslide in November followed by mont hs of marking time for a leaderless nation waiting for March and a new administration; a frightened nat ion drifting down, down, into_chaos. This business manager of a boarding school became alarmed at long last. I was drivmother she is shown on a South Side apartment · ing a bus full of boys to the Board of Trade building porch and then with a proud father in a studio. in Chicago when we were crowd-surrounded and Bette, product of youthful educators' ecstacy, stalled for an hour on LaSalle street. It was a run on came three years later in Woodstock and finally the great Continental Illinois Bank. I rushed home young Roger arrived in Manistee, Michigan, after to pull a corporation's cash out of Woodstock's his first summer of sailing - prenatal, that is. First National. Lucky thing, too; the bank soon Here are all three lined up on a Wallingford failed. Now front page headlines across the country wall, circa 1932. Parlous years, those thirties, for shouted the sorry state of a nation's finances. our nation if not for our family. The stock market EXTRA! GOLD RESERVE SINKS AGAIN! (We crash was three years behind us but time had only were still on the gold standard and during the last deepened . the Depression and now despair gripped two days before the inauguration five · hundred the land. Fifty percent of our workers were jobmillion in that metal was drained from the Federal 97 �FAMILY HISTORY Reserve system. Then came the great day and the great speech and someway we believed the great man when he told us we had nothing to fear if we would just stop fearing. He was wrong of course; the nation faced infinitely fearful times that would continue till the day of his death and the end of his thirteen year reign. Somehow, though, the. jaunty cripple brought confidence that bleak day to a frightened nation grateful for a father figure. When three gloomy governors had earlier closed all banks in their states, we shivered. When this so-sure man, cigarette holder atilt, closed all banks in the country, we cheered. Sorry. I've wandered. This is the history of a family, not of a nation. But our country's crisis in that early day enriched our lives, indirectly, and the lives of our children and of our children's children. Example: acquiring that beautiful Bull Valley farm for family felicity. Such luxury became available to us only because of the national distress I've described; specifically the distress of the still solvent State Bank of Woodstock. Its assets were in farm mortgages, mostly, and most of these were in default. So anyone who could offer a token down payment and an acceptable signature on some "new paper" in the form of an installment note could become, overnight, a Gentleman Farmer. Trouble with us: we got drunk with power, or at least with beauty, and sank a fortune (by Depression standards) in improvements. Still, the extravagance paid off. By the time we found our second farm (close enough for us to live on and Todd boys to learn on ) a Bull Valley estate had become a prestige symbol for Chicago's wealthy. We doubled our money. Here are two views of that first farm, two hundred acres of woods and rolling hills. The lower one shows our little lake made by damming a creek; also the cottage we built on its shore. This was for Grandad Gettys, a true character who still lives in hallowed memory, always loveable and often laughable. Ask Hascy to expound. In this Walden setting the onetime Chicago lawyer, and early liberal, lived out his days in joyous cameraderie with grandchildren. He died of uremic poison with small pain and no artificial extension of the half life that began. This because a daughter vetoed the tubes and gadgets available to prolong the cruelty. Emil Jonas, Emily's father and world-renowned surgeon, was an equally loved member of our family. Once, before his death by heart attack, he said to his favorite, Hortense, "You murdered your father you know." We disagree, dear departed friend. Your medical reverence for "life" taught you that breath must always be preserved. We think a joyous memory is more important. We wanted no dimming of his exuberance by a drawn out degredation. 98 c;;ra ndad's Lakeside Cottage with Roger Gettys and ._ I -- Bette Jane '• ~J ,_ I �L FAMILY HISTORY tempting offers of all: acres near Varadero Beach that could be ours for the price of lots in the Keys. -~~liil~I Again that guardian angel watched over us. An 7 erstwhile Todd teacher was in Havana, heading an !American School. His wise advice a few years before Castro: "Forget it! This island's hot; ready to explode.,, The ocean frontage we bought in the Bahamas and our lots in the Keys have all been sold. The profits kept groceries on the table for twenty years. (An income from chartering our sloop helped.) Speaking of investments (and luck) our final good for tune was of course when we bought that small share in Roger and Emily's burgeoning Gettys Company in Racine. Yes, our ocean property is long gone. But now I start dreaming again. An old hope refuses to die; the hope of leaving a seagoing spot in the sun to a seagoing fam ily in perpetuity . . . Perpetuity? Didn't I learn anything when that hundred-year-old --------~..... Todd School closed? Oh well, dreams are the stuff Here is an interior view. Joanne is on the bed in of life. .When they cease, we're dead. Now reverie the window; Hascy and Roger before the fireplace. turns to that hallowed beach on San Salvador! That's Bill Meigs in the big chair and Seymour We've never seen it but that island should become Standish beside Hortense on the couch. It was the America's number one shrine once it is given easy Tarbox memory of this sylvan Shangrila that set access. Now a developer is laying out lots and an them searching, in t heir mat urity, for a reasonable airstrip. When t his typing· chore is finished I'll ask facsim ile. They found it in their lovely estate at Hortense to join me in a two hour flight to those Leaf River. How did Horace put it? Read his Sabine sands once kissed in pious gratitude by the great Odes: I often wished I had a farm, Admiral-of-the-Ocean-Sea. And t hen, who knows? A decent dwelling, snug and warm, Maybe future families of sailors and scuba divers A garden and a spring as pure will sing our praises beside - and on, and in -those As Crystal running by my door historic waters. Incidentally, my Horace volumes must eventually grace their library. Full leather. Printed in London MDCLIII (1753). Latin on left-hand pages. Translation on the right. Worth a fortune today but worth even more for bibliophiles on their own "Sabine Farm." On the right is Ol:lr second farm, the one you grandchildren remember. The residence as shown · faces Raffel Road and the new owner was gracious last year when we knocked on the door for a memory binge. The aerial shot below shows the rear with dairy barn and chicken house. This is the view of roofs we had a thousand times as we glided down on the final approach to our North-South runway. On page 74 a view from higher altitude shows the juxtaposition of t hat airport. We sold the farm and the woods to a housing development. Fortunately those acres had never been deeded t o the corporation. I had of ten considered this move (to avoid taxes) but that guardian angel who hovers over us stayed my hand. We retired to Florida and became Capitalists. Minuscule ones but still manipulators of money. It was obvious we could multiply our small means by investing in resort property in the sun. The dwindling supply of waterfront lots was the obvious choice so we scouted the Bahamas and the Florida Keys. Also Cuba where we found the most 99 �- FAMILY HISTORY Maria Montessori, whose prescription for the emancipation of childhood included "Development through initiative -- Growth through independence Opportunity through liberation. " Such gifts, Al Peterson, you brought. to our son. Wise counselor, we salute you! Retired farmer and annual visitor to our southland home, we acknowledge your certain share in those engineering miracles now turned out by the Gettys Company in Racine. As for that pictured schoolboy sitting beside his mother, the meek look belies the cocky kid emerging and the attitµde (see page 62) that soon brought on a stock wisecrack from his elders: Why don't you send that brat away to a good military school? Now those same critical sibblings and schoolmates sing his success and cry his creativity. And family history repeats itself. I'm thinking of his first born, Wendy, but that story must wait. More About Your Parents Here they are, younger than when lined up on page 97. Now they're back in 1926 and that baby, your Uncle Roger, is newly out of the Manistee hospital. The family has just returned from Michigan and I've lugged out a camera (this time a bulky Press Graflex, 5x7) and pridefully posed my treasures in front of our Wallingford home. Wonderful days. No man ever felt (or ever was) more wealthy. The Hill Girls take Husbands I t urn now to nuptials; to the momentous events of 1939 pictured on the next page. These shaped the lives of all our tribe. Bette's wedding was in September; Joanne's in December. Their consumations brought to us six of you grandchildren. Your cousins, Wendy and Roger, axe products of the later marriage shown on a following page along wit h pictures of the bride's parents, the dearly beloved (and now departed) Rene and Emil Jonas. - - - - ..... This pic ture was ri1ade on an old glass plate! Don't throw away this piece of glass when y ou come across it. Frame it with a light behind it. Or hang it in a windo~. It 's an antique. On the right, the family is posed once more in front of our Wallingford home. Several years have passed and now a greenhouse-swimmingpool addition is in t he background. Those jodhpurs the girls wear bespeak our horsey community. The young brother has now reached the second of Shakespeare's seven ages and "creeps unwillingly to school." Unwilling? Yes, because that classroom separates him from his day-long pal, his first tutor, Todd's chief maintenance man, Albert Peterson. Until the school bell called, our moppet had filled his days joyously roaming roofs, prowling basements,fixing faucets, wiring waU sockets or, as he put it, "helpAl. " Joy unconfined. Education superlative. Education according to the theories of that wise woman, 100 Another pose. This looks ..... more like our little �"""i"NFRONT OF THE TODD GYM, SEPTEMBER 3, 1939 The back row of the wedding party pictured above: Charlie Luckow, Hascy Tarbox, Sandy Smith, (see better picture in the group.below) Joel Hoke and John Campbell. In the front row: Jane Jungkunz, Joanne Hill, Elizabeth-Jane Hill (named for two grandmothers) Jacques Hendrickson, Barbara Ellis Helen Reed. * * * * * * * In the back row of the indoor group: Clarence Murphy, Bill Meigs, Hascy Tarbox, Joanne Grace Hill, (named for two other grandmothers) Dwight Whit· ney, Sandy Smith. In the front row: Frances John Murphy, Catherine Hed· man, Jacques Hendrickson, Barbara Roskie, Catherine Embree, Bette-Jane Hi ll Smith. IN THE WALLING FORD DINING ROOM, DECEMBER 16, 1939 101 �FAMILY HISTORY The Jonas Girl takes a Husband I The husband she takes is our boy, Rog, but there was no mother-moaning from Hortense. To enlarge on the old cliche, we gained not only a daughter, Emily, but a brother, Emil, and a sister, Renee. Doctors both, they earned their degrees in Europe. Emil, a wonder-working surgeon, had honed his student skills on Czech soldiers during the first World War. Then he rose to fame in Prague and in Chicago's St. Joseph Hospital. Most of you grandchildren are medically indebted to this amazing man. Hortense and I might well be dead were it not for his miraculous knife. Renee has a story equally colorful. The young girl was into theatre work at the University of Budapest. Later, a professional musician, a suffragette, a leftist and a leader in the International League for. Peace and Freedom. It was to this European organization that Henry Ford sailed his idealistic band of young Americans (un- 102 Todd ? ? Pamela Melinda Priscilla availingly) to "end the war by Christmas." This was Ford's famous "Peace Ship" of November, 1915. After the war, another famous peace-worker, Lola Maverick Lloyd, sent money to the medical student for passage to America and a stay in her Evanston home until immigration matters could be cleared. (Maverick, Lola's father, was the Texas dissenter whose name has become generic because he refused to brand either himself or his cattle.) Renee first met her fell ow doctor and her fell ow Hungarian at a party in Chicago. The Emily-Roger wedding, at the insistence of the bride's so-proud father, was a formal affair complete with cutaway attire. It was solemnized in the First Methodist Church of Evanston, February 11, 1951, with a reception in the Georgian Hotel. The big bash was a charade, really; the kids had been married secretly a month earlier. But the doctor had his great day and the family have the pictured record in albums now available in several of our homes. Turn to these enlargements to get the full effect. Don't miss the shot of that male contingent (all former Todd boys) hamming it up in their House-of-Lords monkey suits. - - - -Grandchildren I turn now from our children to their children, the eight of you to whom I've been writing this practically posthumous letter. I've added pictures and the ·package should be around long enough for perusal by· your grandchildren. For them I think it meet I give some account of your youthful accomplishments. I must hurry for I 'gin to be aweary of this chore. I've dawdled over it for months and long to write finis; send these pages to a bindery and turn to less sedentary pursuits. Such as those trips Hortense and I still plan; also a completion of my exciting new course in soaring. This sport, I've learned, is what I was really searching for back in thqse putt-putt Piper Cub days. Now I've found silent sailing up there on a blue ocean of air. Superb! Jonathan Livingston Seagull Hill! Oh, there's so much to do; there's so little time. We've just celebrated (if that's the word) our frightening sixtieth wedding anniversary. Sorry. Old guys grow maudlin. Now back to my subject which was you. -- - �- FAMILY HISTORY to Carol at the same time he deeded his School to me.) Hortense is paying for your tuition by teaching Crafts for Ross and being housemother to a coed contingent. I spend weekends in Woodstock that summer meeting "prospects" and selling my educational wares. On Mondays, you'll remember, I would fly one of Todd's light planes across Lake Michigan, land on the beach and give kids rides along the dunes until a return flight Thursday or Friday. ABOUT YOUR PICTURE ON THE COVER You first three grandchildren were girls. You are seen on the opposite page, flower bearers at that wedding in 1951. In the picture above, we go back a few years to show Melinda bounced on a grandmother's knee and her young brother, Todd, happy in the arms of a mother. This is a four-generation picture. It is June, 1948. My father and step-mother have come from California for Todd's centennial celebration. Noble is 87. He will live six more years. Hascy is seen at the age of thirty. Your grandparents are 53. L - - Hortense and I used · that colored cover last Christmas as a greeting card. Howls of protest came in from several cousins. Understandable.' The galaxy of brilliance and pulchritude which is our grandparental pride is there presented slack-jawed and awkward. But my layout called for color and this was the only such shot available. Blame it on your Aunt Emily who posed and snapped the Wallingford group in the Spring of 1954. That infant on the knee is Wendy. Her brother, Roger Hill III, is seven years in the future. For other readers of this memory book, I'll identify you. Left to right: Priscilla, Melinda, Pamela, Todd, Rick Smith. Roger Smith has not been born. Edwin Embree, on the right, is here to give the commencement address. He will die of a heart attack two years later. That's his sister, Nellie, in the middle. Here he is: Roger, the final Smith child, held in the arms of his father, Sandy. Below you see him some ·years later in the family pool. He is now escaping-the arms of his grandmother. ~ .. ~- -~ 103 �,, Here's another four-generation group; the distaff side. We're back into Melinda's babyhood. I use the picture to show you grandchildren your greatgrandmother, Dolly, mother of Hortense. She is 66 here and remarried. Her name is now Miller. She will never live in our home as did dear "Grandad,, Gettys, idol of your parents in their·childhood and his old age. Pictures of that ancestor and his retirement cottage are shown on page 98. and things happen fast with the young. They surely happen fast with your group. I'll record a few new honors and start with your senior member, Melinda, who has been so publicized of late. This acclaim has been shared by her husband, the amazing merchant of Rockford who keeps on expanding his stores and integrating his city. Al was our first grandchild-in/aw and this brings up the subject of blood relatives and legal relatives and love relatives. When those last two categories coincide the bond can be strong; stronger in fact than the obligatory bond of blood relationship. Hortense and I now have three grandchildren by marriage: Al, Gordon and Shirley. Each is family as surely as their mates; as surely as is our love-adopted granddaughter, Chris Welles; as surely as is the mercurial Hascy and the talented Emily. You've all heard that blood is thicker than water. I say that love is a cohesion stronger than blood. · ~ - -- -- * * * * * • * * Moving ahead some twenty years we see, below, another four-generation pose with Melinda now the holder instead of the holdee. That's Jonathan Reitman at six months. At six ears he's seen a ain on - ~ J. our color cover. Eldest of a growing group of greatgrandchildren, Jon is now twelve, an artist and a Junior Champion swimmer. But I mustn't start on his generation. That would mean prophecy; these pages are for history. You grandchildren are already making this. I've given an account, albeit condensed, of your ancestors. Your descendants will be interested in you. I gave resumes and pictures of you in my opening pages. That was a year ago, however, 104 But my subject was Melinda. This gal's glory is her family, conceived in love, wondrous to watch, inspiring to visit. I'll skip the Rockford press laudation and copy here a piece in the Illinois Alumni Magazine whose editor someway heard of her fame. A retiring professor had given the Association a copy of Boneyard Babblings and the editor wrote me to ask about it. I answered with a short note that contained no mention of Joanne, Al or Melinda but someway they learned of that family and phoned Rockford for her story. See the last two paragraphs of the piece on the next page. .. -- .. -.. �J..: FAMILY HISTORY J__- VA~~p~o~=cy~~~~!.~.~ - 9" - - -- cago agency. and lived in ll igh land Park at the time of his dea th in 1949. The Champaign notive was a member of one or the city's rounding families. Hill and his wife, the former Hortense Gettys '17, now live in South Miami, Fla. Hill still enjoys writing, though he greeted announcement of the resurrec tion of his college verse with mock a larm (or ala rum as -- ,.. .. • I - - - -- - ~~~~f ~~:ic~~~~or- sli! , h : volumc o r carloon.s by the lale Ed gotten past! Like Longfellow, I shot that Morrissey 'IS and verse by Roaer Hill '16, arrow into the air, thal ma.J hit of youthrul has hren presented 10 the Alumni Associ3Bahhling." tinn hy Prof. T om Thorn hum '38, a Although HiU ahantlone.J his stu1lies jus1 . Morrissey rclallve who recently w3s short o f completing them in llrhana. he promrtcd to thm out his library hy a m ove later was attracted to an rtlu.:atinnat .-arecr from Champaign to Nevada. and hecamc headmaster of Tod.J, a wcllMorrisscy, well-known for his talents as known prep school in W<><.>ds lock which an illustrat or while on campus, left to now has closed its doors. The ll ills also make his career in advertising. He was owned a camp in Michigan. president o f Fu lt o n Mo n iS$C)' Cu •• a Chi· • Last week he and his family spent a few days with us in Florida where he talked the Miami Herald into an interview. Their half-page feature story came out after he was back in Boston but now we are kept busy on the phone_ He had eulogized his teaching family as a long line of super educators. For local color he placed his grandparents here in Miami. This started the calls. Book stores want to know his company's address. Fine! But it's far from fine when worried mothers call expecting super advice about troublesome sons. Please, Todd, no! We moved down here to avoid distraught parents and problem kids. Actually, for your born-into-the-business approach, you could trace your teaching ancestry beyond Todd School; beyond Berea College and its first president, your great-great-grandfather. Even he had teaching ancestors. The reason he took his doctorate at Oberlin was because his father had moved to that Ohio town to head a boarding school and his grandfather had been headmaster of Williams Acadamy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In that twenty-two volume Dictionary of American History which documents the great names of our "Babb lings" Rediscovered " If 'twere not for · thy charged up mercantile, I'd trod the campus wearing but a smile," Hill vowed in lines dedicated to Green Street haberdasher Roger Zombro with sketch by Morrissey. Ht11 became involvcJ in a litcrdry associalion with a famous Todd hoy, Orson Welles. He worked with Welles on his early plays and radio scripts and o n Shakespeare adaptations for Welles' Merc ury Theatre. But, back to the campus. "Babblings" opened with the disclaimer that "Service and Kipling would both recognize imitalions of their style, but I am sure the mediocrity of the a ttempt would pre>ent them from holding any resentment, were they to see this volume." Of his youthful doggerel days, Hill says, " Rhyming can become a real addiction (but) by gradual withdrawal through the years I kic ked the habit." When the 19 16 golden anniversary came around, however, he suffered a relapse and came forth with a clu tch or verses to commemorate the event. These were printed for the reunion a long with selected Morrissey sketches. The HiUs are the parents of three children, Mrs. Hascy Tarbox (Joanne Hill '39) of rural Mount Mo rris ; Mrs. Bill Raymond (Belle Hil}, a one-time Powers model who now li•es in Rockford ; and Roger Gettys Hill, Racine, Wis. Granddaughter Melinda Tarbox married an Illinois alumnui, Al Reilman '60, Pharm. '64, who owns two pharmacies and a supermarket in Rockford. - And of the laller, "We need it!," Melinda says, "to feed our nine children." Seven of the nine members or the Reitman brood are adopted and fo r them Grandpa Hill wrote a special aside in a book prepared for the Hill descendants " in praise of a fading institution, the family." "Never, never believe," he tells them, " tha t any one of you is Jess than a blood member of o ur family." 1 • Ed Morrissey's caricature of your teenage grandfather is apt: pencil on his ear, littl e on his mind, little of body, a grin for life's vicissitudes. ~ - - - Todd Tarbox, Author-Publisher Melinda's young brother, Ii.lee her uncle in Racine, is a throw-back to that early entrepreneur, Noble Hill. With supreme self-confidence and that ancestor's ability to turn bankers into backers, he has launched his own publishing company with no more capital than a small equity in a home. My guess is he will, against all the odds, make it and make it big. At least this much is certain: the bearded boy is a super salesman_ In short weeks he has promoted his wares and promoted himself with astonishing results. He is seen and heard on talk shows; he rates rave reviews in magazines and in the metropolitan press. I'll show here just one example of all the free ink flowing for him. On the right you can read (if your eyes are good) a reduced facsimile of the first of three pages given him by the prestigious Harvard Magazine. fil'c:t rPnt.nrv ( :mrl i~ :iv:iil:ihlP in :inv finP. lihn1rv) ~~~~ °"""""'.,.,1;ttv,,. '1f MWI '" ' " COMl!Mnl.,.,dout Horw.nl A11 Mil iu tVl1on. jri.t."'41. •"4 ,,.dtqna Tarbox Boob: Write yoar own Todd Tar1Jo1, a JI ·)'<&•·old pho<... rapher, ICKhcf. writer, and publisher. ts man with a dfClim: " I wa.nt li:k!s to thJnk of tht written word nOt jun u some-thins done in a tlkH«"OOm. which is kind of forcbod lna. but someth1ng that c.an be done In their rooma., something that can be done on a walk through the 1 woods . . . What I'm tryine co do Is 10 Cttate an a lttmallve co UtOe Ooklcn Books. which are pap, •bsolute pap. They ofl"er nothlna to a chit.d's lmaglna· tlon." And Todd Tarbo1 Books. • t•ncd last September In hit Cambridat apartment, seems likely to succeed. The fint title out. Tit• A11imot«I A11lm"I A lpMMt cl Malec Up You,. Ow" Book, wh0&e awowed p l is to "allow t:hildr.n to be co-•uthon: • h.u inspired both (hlldrtn and a.du.ht to make up their own books. Tarbox knows, bccal.lk some deliahi.d co-1uthon ha•t sent him their work . AJ it coma from the printtr, eath 8Ytob1· l l·in<h i>aa< 1111 an alphabel n1nnin1 Kross the: bottom. a small line d·rawi.ftg an uimal. and two llna of nnc: '1'ht a.mt..n has a tone 1tron1 snou•/ To find his food •od dis h ..., _.. lc:aYU mott than ~t.1 s.qu.an: iedtcs blank-tit k:as.t lhree-qua.nen ol lhc o( Tl>•• As·---.. . . pa... •uthon. c~ plfC: prova how stimu· tatias blank spoce eu be. And- Locbdson, • t.tude:DI at the H1n11rd 8wlnas School. tovklonod I.ho UldY&ll< ny\na to>ticlt his soout dOWft tho neck of •Gallia.no wine: bona&. Anna Cr&ntshaw. ~. of 8ekbtrt0Wll, Mt.ssl(husetlJ, 1 . - the bear .., tho "B" paae ..d drew a ballvi.n.1 lo1toad. " lfyou want to wri1eword1 btalnn1ng With 'X' on the pa,ac. that'• fi.ne," u11 Ta.rbo.a. " If you ·o· want to an out picture$ from m.sguina. that's Rne.'' Ta.rt>os wa:s bom into cdoca:tion. He: JftW up at the Todd School for .Bo,s in Woodstock. lUinoi$, whose founder, tlxR<Y. IU<~rd Kimball Todd. Tarbox is ul"l'ted after. Ta.rbox's pttC•gn.ndfatl•tt, Noble Hilt. had boupt tho «hool &-od paaed it on to bis son in tht 1920s. 8oc.h Kilk used it for erpttim.ents, em.blkhln1 fanns. a print shop, sailing pt'Otn~hatnrer (hey w&t!.ud 10 df' •ftd C'OU.~ justify as part of the school. The yoi.tnter HiU, • Sl\t.tcspc:a.tt sc:hola.r. wrote the E~ryon~·1 Sltak.a~ series <- wit h <moo WelSet fonnc:r Todd School stud~O. and printed it on ca.mpus until Harper & Row picked it up. Tuboa's fathtr. HMCy. an anist and fOl"l'OU Todd stud.au. married Hill'~ daugb\Cr, a pocl. and both paftftU taught tbt:re until Hill (loMd the school at>d soltl tho land in 19$5. But Todd Tarbo• wained to be a writer a.od pbotosraphtt, DOC a tud.aitr, He has had camcru klapr lhu he can remnnbe:t--.ht got • dartroom ro.- his tenth blrtbda7. And after clah• ,.an lo (lOll:\·cntional schools in Mitwautoe &nd Roclc:fO«d. J.1ll.oM. tw ..,., ofho • SM.ti libetal·•rts coUqc: la MuQ). 'The Univttt.ity or the Amecic:u, to become a writer. When he rradu.ated ln 1961, he lined up a ncwspaptt job. " But the (lraf't board said. 'You ao 10 Vie:taam or )'OU lea.ch.'" he rua.l~ hetauaht. At f\nt This piece ended with th is paragraph: "It is a dream, maybe a foolish dream he admits. But as Todd Tarbox sits in his basement apartment, surrounded by the advertising flyers and mail ing cartons that are the trivia of his trade, showing his fan letters and favorable reviews, he seems on the way to turning his dream into reality." 105 �FAMILY HISTORY you'll find biographies of two ancestors: ROGERS, JOHN ALMANZA ROWLEY of Berea · and ROGERS, JOHN RAPHAEL, the Line-o-type inventor. On my page 22 I tell of the latter and reproduce the column devoted to the former. My additional facts on his ancestry I have from his own lips and from his widow, "Pretty Grandma." No, I don't advise Todd to dig thus deep into his scholarly background for author-promotion. Why bore the readers? Me, I can take that chance. I write for the family and for the record. II'- ii The Racine Kids Our final set of grandchildren is shown here as they looked about ten years ago. Today Wendy is a college Junior and a stage star; a star in professional as well as student productions. As singer and comedienne with the Spike Jones band she has toured the States and Canada and been singled out for praise by that bible of show business, Variety. Such talent is hardly surprising. It comes straight from parents, both of them gifted in music and dramatics. Emily met Roger when she was in college and came to our stage from Northwestern's School of the Drama to play the d'ancing daughter in Moss Hart's mad, gay Pulitzer prize winner, You Can't Take It With You. Her child's talent bubbled out at the age of five when she was sent to us in Florida for several weeks and our tape recordings of that time recall her singing precocity. Little "Wendywoo" was the wonder of the neighbors and the bane of her teachers. Teachers!!? At five!!? Yes, because these oldsters simply had to have a few hours of respite. That handful of a child had the genes of her father who, at five, h;id been the pride of his parents and the bane of his grandparent. (See page 62.) Some typed doggerel on the subject was found in the files recently. Its subject, that wondrous infant of that earlier day. I wrote the rhyme while Hortense was packing the child for her solo journey home. There's mock joy in it but there was genuine sadness; we were ldsing something precious in our lives. The requiem went like this: 106 Listing blessings of old age Morning sleep heads up our page But Wendy's here so now the dawn In rosy mantle means sleep's gone And drowsy Gran must keel the pot For bairns need daybreak gruel ye wot. Now in shrieking accents clear Wendy is our chanticleer. Whittier gave his lad good joy He was once a barefoot boy Likewise now I tell you that I was once a he/ion brat. If memory serves (how well it can) Same in spades for your old man. 0 fearsome thought to dwell upon -Gonad strains roll on and on. One plan now this bli~ht might slow. Get thee to a nunnary, go. Through all time, old folks have seen Spittle on their gabardine. They expect no honor roll, No top perch on totem pole But Wendy when, like Shakespeare's Kate, You pound and beat this hoary pate I take umbrage, wouldn't you? (And aspirin and liquor too.) Grandchild, I must now come clean, Too much is just too much I ween. When 's that next plane to Racine? Here's our Wendy of today, a gal for all seasons and for all scenarios. For instance, her singing coach says she has a career waiting for her in opera if she wants it. In this view she is a model, selling one of the electronic marvels turned out by her father. She is holding a component (my guess) of some Gettys gizmo. These "controls" are mystifying beyond words, symbolic of our brave new (and frightening) computerized world. Christopher Welles - Foster Grandchild Back on page 88 we showed you Chris as a child in our Woodstock home. Here she is Mrs. Irwin Feder, an established writer entertaining in her own home in Manhattan. She is the daughter of Virginia Nicolson, Orson's first wife who came to Todd as a student in its School of the Drama the summer of our Theatre Festival, 1934. Those months of gay madness are· described on pages 77 and 78. Rehearsals were on the campus. Productions, including Micheal MacLiammoir's Hamlet were in the ancient Woodstock Opera House, lovely then and designated now a National Historical Monu- i ment. See pictures and history on : pages 66 and 68. Our "students," 'i like most such summer theatre . adjuncts, found little class work and much drudgery. They slaved 1 fi as scenery painters during the day / . and spear-carriers or ladies-in-wait-' ing during the night. - -- • - -- - - �~l~--------------------------~------~~~--~~------~~~-~--------------::-:-:----F~A-M~l~LY~H-IS_T_o_R_v_ Great-Grandchildren Most of this group (the Reitman children) are pictured two pages back. There I said I would not elaborate on this generation because these pages are for history, not prophesy. But three "elder sons" of our grandchildren have been intimately associated with our old age and besides I grew up influenced by that remnant of British snobbery, primogeniture. Those six rolling syllables were constantly thrown at me in childhood by a stern father worried about his only begotten son in whom he was not well pleased. ---·-· =... · -= Old Noble's influence lingers. 6 ....--~,.._._ t 3 It's stronger today than deE cades ago. So here I feature ~ the elder sons of all grandchildren who have so far beE@ come parents. A charming trio. 1 ..' - May their tribe increase. ~ ~ Here's the first of the gen11•~ eration,JonathanReitman,now - -- - thirteen, shown years ago keep) . l ing careful step with his adored and adoring grandfather Tarbox at the Leaf River farm. Jon (named for Emily's father, dear Doctor Jonas) is also j seen as a water sprite on our color cover and as a Junior 1 Champion Swimmer on page one. The second "elder son," Tim McGarry was born in Hawaii to Pamela Smith and her sailor husband. (See page two.) After a year in Australia they brought the redhead to our home and to our hearts and to our laps as shown here. Below you see the final male heir (so far) in this gen' eration. The boy with the exuberance over his snowball is Hascy Tarbox II whose parents, Shirley and Todd, are shown on page one. This picture comes from Todd's talented camera (his second book is a photo essay on children around the world) and his facility for turning a phrase. I -. ! ,...__ ....._ I I I :::: I: I ·: I !OllCh tl - bit Of fife be/on' it 111e/1s tlfilYJJ'... ~ Our Most Distinguished Living Relative Robert Rathbun Wilson . .. ~ ~ These pictures and captions are from SCIENCE YEAR 1974 A map o f the ~·mile. ringlike tunr.i;I no~ 1 sing the NAL accale-raccr frames Wilson as he sits in h;s nttice. From h ero. hi$ po1sonal touch oAiends !Cl ~very phase nf the op eretion. ~ ,._ This family scrapbook began with our Kentucky an cestors and a remembrance of things past. This pag" began with our youngest members and our hope for the future. Now I return to the famous in our family but bring you a member who molders in no grave. Instead he makes history in our modern age. Of your cousin Bob, the world renowned scientist, I am ill equipped to write. His field of nuclear physics is beyond my comprehension. His acclaim in a second field (he's an artist, a designer and a sculptor) is closer to my understanding but still beyond my critical evaluation. What I would like to limn for you here is this cousin, the humanist, this Bobby, the sweet guy in a sour world, this Robert the loner who became the team leader in enterprises of great pith and moment stretching from Los Alamos to Batavia. Other writers on other pages have done some of this humanizing for me, pointing out the dichotomy of his genius. Magazines, both popular and scientific, have told of this unpretentious man and his super accomplishments, most recently as head of the new National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. I'll pick up some of these paragraphs of praise and reprint them here. But first an outline of his kinship to us: Robert is the grandson of "Cousin Nellie," Noble's second wife, my mother's first cousin. She was born Nellie Embree, sister to the distinguished Edwin Rogers Embree who is pictured on page 103 and praised many times in this memoir. The interrelationship of the Embrees with "the Rogers and the Fees is outlined on page 24. Nellie had four daughters by her first husband, a Wyoming rancher named Rathbun. (See story of her pioneer days told on page 9.) One of the daughters married a man named Wilson and their child, Bobby, spent a year at Tosebo and Todd. Not enough time, alas, for the school to brag about any influence on his greatness. Page 24 also tells how the Embree daughter, Catherine, and the Hill daughter, Joanne, shared a room in the Embree home in Chicago some forty years ago. Catherine is now a writer living in Hawaii with her retired husband, Art Harris. Edwina, the other Embree daughter, has a family that grew up with the Wilson tribe in Ithaca where her husband, Ed Devereaux, is on the Cornell 107 �FAMILY HISTORY faculty. Robert was then head of its Physics department and building the Cornell accelerator. Both famili_es were into sailing and years ago when we had that Todd School winter outpost on the Florida Keys the Ithaca crowd spent a Christmas vacation there living in our empty clubhouse and enjoying our fleet of boats. Bread cast upon water never returned a higher dividend. We lost that lovely island when Todd closed but Bob and his wife , never forgot it. Now they own a piece of it. Now we are the fortunate guests and they are the absentee hosts. Absent at least most of t he t ime. They use their cottages on the ocean mainly for winter weekends. Also at Christmas time for a reprise of a remembered delight. From the mass of material in print on this amazing man I'll select for you now excerpts from Science Year 1974. Ask for this volume in your local library. There you will see my pale pictures enlarged and in color and you'll read an uncut account of Robert's most recent acclaim. As a bonus you will find a similar illustrated essay on the other great scientist they honored that year, Jonas Salk. Read now these excerpts on our cousin: Robert Rathbun Wilson is director of the National Accelerator Labora· tory (NAL). a vast $200·million installation of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which sprawls across 6 ,800 acres of Illinois prairie 35 miles west of Chicago. The NAL was built to continue the search for new insights into the nature of matter by probing the internal workings of subnuclear particles. This laboratory is clearly the product of thousands of hands and minds, yet everywhere it bears two unmistakable Wilson imprints: One of Wilson the physicist, the other of Wilson the artist. For Robert Wilson is a most contradictory figure - a romantic individualist leading a great scientific team effort. A visitor to the NAL site would have to look closely for clues of a major research laboratory. The heart of the project, a 4-mile ring of machinery designed to push protons up to 99. 99 per cent of the speed of light, lies buried in a tunnel beneath untilled farmland. Were it not for one architecturally striking high-rise office building, strange and aloof in this rural setting, it would be easy to believe that the state of Illinois had taken over the land for a wildlife refuge. The hundred or so farm buildings and low-cost houses that the NAL inherited when the site was purchased in 1967 still stand, although many were moved into a compact "village" that serves as the workplace for most of the laboratory's 1,000 employees. At the edge of the village stands a group of farmhouses. Their lonely dignity evokes the turn-of-the-century Midwestern mood of a Grant Wood painting. They provide housing for the hundreds of visiting scientists who come from throughout the world to use the NAL. The taste, the mood, and the practicality of the village are all pure Wilson. "I couldn't bear the thought of just knocking them down," he explains, "especially the old farm buildings. Besides, this way we could move right in without waiting for construction." The fun of playing city planner in the layout of the village was one of the aspects of his job that Wilson likes to refer to as a "bonus." He had a hand in the design of nearly every building at NAL. He takes particular pride in the high-rise office building and in the 1,000-seat auditorium adjoining it. He also got the chance to apply his sculptor's talents to avoid a traditional eyesore. The metal towers that carry high.tension lines are his unique and attractive design. C1tv pt.Miner Wilson fl.Id • o.utll'I C!MMIQ In 1935, Wilson, a graduate student, ,...,,.,.....,...lM*i""V _.MAL. "'11 t... ~P'Wielifl lNmodt""ott-""'dWIO went to work in the laboratory of Nobel prize-winning physicist Ernest 0. Lawrence, who had just invented the cyclotron, a relatively tiny ancestor of NAL's giant proton accelerator. While he completed his doctoral resea.r ch on collisions between protons, Wilson courted Jane Scheyer, an English literature major who came from San Francisco, across the bay from Berkeley. They were married in 1940, just before he left for his first job, at the new cyclotron laboratory at Princeton University , where he hoped to follow up his thesis research. ~~ff The_ great Fermi enlists the young Wilson . But fate had different plans in store for a nuclear physicist at that time. Wilson was one of a h andful of specialists in this field on the East Coast and .his skills were commandeered by Enrico Fermi. Fermi had just fled FasCJst .Italy and was working on uranium fission at Columbia University. The Princeton cyclotron was an essential tool in the informal "uranium project" launched by Fermi and other physicists before the federal government created the Manhattan Project. The Princeton group was assigned to study neutron capture in uranium. In 1943, when J. Robert Oppenheimer opened the Los Alamos, N. Mex., laboratory where the first atomic bombs were designed and built Wilson took his team there. He became the head of nuclear physics ~esearch though he was not yet 30 years old. Los Alamos was a strange community, isolate d from the world atop a desert mesa. Because the very existence of the laboratory was supposed to be a secret, most of its staff members were rarely allowed to leave the site. Jane Wilson worked as a schoolteacher for the many children who were trapped there by their parents' work. After the war, Wilson joined the scientists' fight to keep control of atomic energy out of military hands. 6ut of this political battle grew the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a liberal organization often referred to as "the conscience of the physicists." Wilson served as the group's first ch airman, and is still a member of the FAS advisory board. Jane Wilson is an editor on the staff of "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists," a monthly journal on science and politics. Returning to civilian research, Wilson spent the year 1946 designing a new cyclotron at Harvard University, and then accepted the post of director of nuclear studies at Cornell University in 1947. There he built a succession of increasingly powerful electron accelerators, but the laboratory was kept small. "It was an easy group to work with," Wilson recalls . "We had been together so long that we understood each other 's minds , and there were rarely any personal problems." 108 - - - -- �FAMILY HISTORY b l - I. r: .. - But in the early 1960s, a project was being launched at Wilson's alma mater that would eventually reach out and tear him away from the idyllic Cornell scene. A group of University of California physicists had designed a 200·billion electron volt (GeV) proton synchrotron, seven times more powerful than the biggest accelerator then in existence. It soon became clear, however, that it would be politically impossible to build this large accelerator laboratory in the San Francisco Bay area, which already had giant machines at Berkeley and at Stanford University. The AEC turned the project over to a nation-wide consortium of universities. The site was chosen in an open contest, with over 100 communities bidding for it. With great fanfare, the AEC announced the choice of Batavia, Ill., as the site for the new accelerator in 1966. By the time this plum was awarded, however, it was no longer quite so sweet. The post·Sputnik science boom was over, and Washington ordered $50-million cut from the project's $300-million budget estimate. In the new mood of austerity, Bob Wilson seemed a logical choice. He had just completed an electron accelerator at Cornell University for nearly 15 per cent less than the original cost estimate. Although a much smaller machine, it was a cousin of the NAL giant. Using an excavating "mole," Wilson had built it under the beautiful Cornell campus without disturbing the surface. To build the NAL machine on a stringent budget, Wilson cut out all the margin of error that had been allowed in construction design. The tunnel holding the pipe in which the protons travel was originally designed as a massive, air-conditioned structure anchored in bedrock. It became a simple cut-and-fill concrete sewer pipe. The magnets were redesigned so they could be produced on an assembly line. They were to prove so inexpensive to build that Wilson fou.n d his budget would cover enough for a machine twice as big as the original Berkeley design. This meant that it could ultimately reach 400 GeV simply by drawing more electric power. Even this economy drive felt the impact of Wilson the sculptor. He was delighted to find that his art-nouveau design for the stands on which the accelerator magnets rest would be cheaper to cast than a simple rectangular frame. Of course, this approach was a gamble. In a device so complex, with every component designed to just barely do its job, something was bound to fail. Wilson hoped that correcting the inevitable failures would cost less than building in the safety factors. The risks were not his alone. Given the stringent economic mood in Washington, any serious mistake he made might spell the doom of particle physics research in America. Wilson saved still more money by deliberately understaffing the lab. "People are happier and work better when they can see there's plenty to be done," he says. Just as at Cornell, chains of command were kept informal with Wilson intervening directly on all levels. Many staff members grumbled at the lack of help and chafed at having the director looking over their shoulder. Yet the pace of work grew. * I * * * - ••• ~··· At 1he tnd ot 1he d1y, Wil&on ch• sclenlis;t heads for hit 1t1o1dt0 in an.old tt.rn behind his hOuse. There. M beCOMeS Wilson the seulptOf ••he h,uns his hand to Ctteting ~megot In wood end ttone, * (These dots indicate fantastic technical problems encountered. I skip these in this condensation. ) I IW * Th·e re are still operational problems for the controversial director bu for now exhausted NAL staff members can find time for long-postpone• vacations. And Robert Rathbun Wilson can again experience, for a few hour each week, the solitary, deep creative satisfaction that comes from driving : chisel into a block of wood or marble. Which may well be the one reall! important thing a man can still do all alone. Wild rumors circulated about the condition of the machine. Even wilder ones circulated about Robert Wilson: "We thought he was done for," recalls one staff member. "Either he would quit, or have a heart attack, or one of us would go beserk and shoot him." Jane Wilson recalls this period as one in which she rarely saw her husband, and during which he lost his deceptively youthful appearance and began to look his age. On March 1, 1972, the machine finally m anaged to hold a beam of protons in line for the 300,000 turns required to reach an energy of 200 GeV. A rising line on an oscilloscope screen told the tale. In minutes word spread around the lab. The control room became pandemonium as most of the scientists crowded in to savor the nearly missed triumph. Bob Wilson led his exhaust· ed staff in a toast with Italian Chianti wine, a tradition started among physicists when Fermi turned on the world's first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago in December, 1942. Wilson and his team had much to be proud of. Against many obstacles, the NAL staff had built a machine that was capable of reaching twice the proposed energy, four months ahead of the original target date. And when they finished, there was still money left in the budget. In an era when cost overruns, performance cutbacks, and production delays have become the rule in government projects, Wilson's triumph at NAL ranks as a minor miracle. l can't sign off without proclaiming a final facet in the brilliance of this man, th is contradictory cousin who is both bomb builder and pacifist, both scientist and artist. The world acclaims his tangible art. I proclaim his linguistic art, his skill with the lilting phrase and the prose that approaches poetry. For examples consult his writings by way of the R eader's Guide in your library. For a quicker example just ask the desk for the June 12, 1976, issue of The New Republic. The article that starts on page _21 is not by Bob ; it's about Bob; it's about hjs super instrument for adding to our sum of knowledge: "Now an international colony of world-renowned physicists occupies a Wilson village of remodeled farm houses." That article ends with Robert's testimony before a Senate investigating committee. His words there, even when extemporaneous, are lyric. He contends, in essence, that the poet was right. Truth and Beauty are synonymous. Keats found these in his Grecian urn; Wilson finds them deep in the nucleus of his atom . But my space runs out. Here's his testimony · Sen. Pastore: Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of this country? Dr. Wilson: No sir, I do not believe so. Sen. Pastore: Nothing at all? Dr. Wilson: It has to do with the respect with which we regard one another. It has to do with are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets. I mean all the things we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending. 109 �_, FAMILY HISTORY Our Foster Son George Orson Welles 1" You must write a book, Skipper, and tell the real truth about Orson. This admonition has been repeated over the decades. It comes from his theater friends and from his theater enemies. It comes from his Todd teachers and his Todd classmates. It comes from my writer friends and from writers I've never heard of who want to "collaborate" and turn a quick buck. But what is truth? Pilate asked the question about another amazing man and wouldn't wait for an answer. I've been writing a book in search of family truth. At least I've pasted up this picture album and added one member's commentary. I find I'm not sure of the truth about little Roger so how can I pontificate about big Orson. Other actors play their parts on a stage. This Proteus of many manifestations plays divergent parts in life. Todd boys resent hearing the great man, when making guest appearances on the tube, dream up a boyhood spent in China. Peace, dear lads. This is an entertainer. Fiction is often more fun than is fact. And he did spend at least one summer in the orient. It was with his father the second year he was in Todd. Horty has presents he brought back to her and our files contain a Shanghai letter from him. Enclosed in this was a Sherlock Holmes radio script punched out by the 12-year-old who was even then a compulsive creator. No, he doesn't talk about his school anymore and that bothers you but did we demur in the old 110 days when he was touting Todd as the wonderworking institution of the ages, miraculous and idealistic beyond all possibility and beyond all reality. More, he was putting his money where his mouth was: thousands of dollars into scholarships and raising more funds from friends. Then the blow! The puncture of a dream. As a Todd Trustee and member of the Board he even had to sign the school's death certificate. Trauma! Gone was his anchor to windward, his escape hatch from any tribulation, his sure knowledge of a waiting job in a Woodstock Shangra La should life's buffets ever become unbearable. His Freudian response: Exorcise the entire dream. Deny and expell the whole experience. My theory at least. Far fetched? Maybe. But everyone else in this family is a practising analyst. Don't begrudge this tyro his inning. And I have his heartbroken letter to heighten my hypothesis. I'll not write that book about Orson. It 's too late. I toyed with the idea years ago when I was constantly turning to his Todd School file. This was to supply pictures and material for all those writers doing magazine pieces on our boy wonder. I even wrote a first chapter and used it for that convention speech (with its mad aftermath) I tell of back on page 73. I compared Orson then with his nineteenth century counterpart, Lord Byron, the flamboyant youth who produced Childe Harold's Pilgrimage at the age of 24 and later wrote, " I awoke one morning to find myself famous." Orson's fame came at a like age when he panicked our nation and made headlines around the globe wit h his radio masterpiece, War of the Worlds. Yes, he From a group picture showing the sixth grade, eleven·year-old towering over contemporaries then as now. Rve years later he had passed college exams. &.it Fate (and Oson himself) had other plans. _J ~I _J ~ I _I r - �FAMILY HISTORY had gained Mercury Theater fame earlier but it was this block-buster explosion on the air waves that brought those offers from Hollywood and the chance to produce his cinema masterpiece, Citizen Kane. There are other Welles-Byron similarities. I elaborated on these in my speech but here I'll mention only the obvious ones: each youth had that staggering precocity plus a classic beauty of head and hands mounted above feet, flat and awkward. As for giving you the difficult "truth" about Orson, I've foresworn that attempt. But I'll comment on some untruths that have been built into the legend. These I can refute. But first some further delving into my overall subject, Time and Chance and the lifelong luck of a lad named Roger. You've learned that his few accomplishments were augmented by fortunate association with companions superior in creativity. These included boyhood pals such as Posy Field, college co-workers such as Sampson Raphaelson plus a wife of rare tolerance and understanding. Finally, super helpers on a boarding school faculty ready to forgive the foibles of their leader. It's a long litany of luck. Now an- other example of your grandparents' good fortune: the enrollment in Todd of a fabulous lad who was to further enrich our lives. This foster son has, however, been cursed with ill luck. Take just the story of Citizen Kane. Consider the ironic fact that this film, praised as no other in all cinema history, instead of launching him on a career of fortune and a lifetime of residuals, hung an albatross about his neck as unshakeable as Hester Prinne's embroidery. Orson has been branded with his own scarlet letter, a fantastically unfair F for Failure. Hollywood has short memory for artistry but a long one for box office flops. The tragedy is that this time the box office was never tested; it was never given a chance to produce. The entire industry cowered before the power and the rage of one man. In their fright they formed a conspiracy to have the film destroyed or, failing that, buried in its can. The word went out: "We must appease Hearst or we will all be ruined. We must chip in to pay RKO their costs for the film plus some extra for funeral expenses." The plan worked. The Lord of San Simeon won his fight. And who was responsible for the Hearst anger? Not Orson Welles but Herman J. Mankiewicz. It was the brilliant (and devious) "Mank" that sowed the wind. It was the unsuspecting Welles that reaped the whirlwind. He had outlined to me, years earlier, his plan for a stage play based on the life of an American tycoon who would be a composite of Insull, McCormick and Hearst. He believed his friend, Mank, the experienced film writer (and dedicated alcoholic) was "drying out" in the desert resort at Victorville while adapting this theme for the movies. Even when he read the script and when he shot the picture he considered the character that was Kane to be an amalgam of his original three: One, Sam Insull with his opera house and his millions and his baronial estate and his eventual disgrace. Two, Bertie McCormick with his newspaper empire and his girl-friend, hopelessly inept but faithfully struggling to make it in grand opera. The third ingredient, of course, was Hearst with his newspapers and his San Simeon (shifted to Florida) and his shattered political hopes. But Orson didn't know that Hearst's girl friend (Susan Alexander in the script) was, through Mank's inside knowledge, pointed viciously and squarely at Marion Davies. How could he? He had never been at San Simeon. The Marion that he and the .world knew, from the screen and the pulps, was qmte the opposite. And indeed she was. Marion was a successful movie actress; Susan was depicted a pitiful opera failure. Marion was a moderate drinker; Susan was shown as a lush. Mank had supped often at San Simeon. Night after night, as Hearst's resident wit, he had set that table on a roar. Now he was repaying his host and his hostess with daggers in the back. He was giving to the world intimate details of boredom on that mountaintop. 111 �FAMILY HISTORY These added nothing of substance to the film but pointed a finger unmistakably at Marion. ~~en Pauline Kael who in her New Yorker essay, Raising Kane, spends most of her paragraphs " proving" that Orson is high-handed in his modest claim to coauthorship has this to say : Even though Mankiewicz liked Marion Davies, he was the same Mankiewicz that couldn't resist the disastrous. He skewered her with certain identifying details that were just too good to resist, such as her love of jigsaw puzzles. They were a feat ure of San Simeon; the puzzles, wh ich some· limes look two weeks to complete, were set on tables in the salon, and the guests would work on them before lunch. And when Kane destroys Susan's room in a rage after she leaves him, he turns up a hidden bot tle of booze, which was a vicious touch, coming from Mankiewicz, who had often been the beneficiary of Marion's secret cache. He provided bits that had a special frisson for those in the know. Marion Davies was a spunky, funny, beautiful girl and that's apparent· ly what she was and why Hearst adored her. One can sometimes hurt one's enemies but that's nothing compared to what one can do to one's friends. Right, Pauline, one can hurt one's friends. And when Mank "skewered " his friend, Marion, he used the same nails to crucify his friend, Orson. That friendship was not new. It predated Hollywood, starting when the Mercury had four plays running simultaneously on Broadway and the Welles family, augmented by a daughter, Christopher, had.moved up to Sneden 's Landing on the Hudson. Mank was a frequent guest t hat summer of 1938; Hortense and I were near-permanent ones. With Virginia and Orson, we basked in the glow of an aging tosspot's wit and charm. His unvarying lead-in to hilarious stories of Front Page days in Chicago was "My tongue loosened with wine." Hortense was in New York playing her lifetime hit role of grandmother. I was there playing hookey from Todd and playing at helpfulness around the several theaters. Also around CBS where we were adding sound to our Shakespeare texts as well as broadcasting the weekly, unsponsored low budget Mercury Theater on the Air. My " help',' was indeed minimal but camouflaged with much activity. One memory: manning the CBS johns in our Les Miserables broadcast. I had a " plumber's helper" at the ready and at an arranged signal entered t he booth that had a mike over its bowl and started the suction noises that made a million listeners co-runaways with Jean Valjean in his squidgy fligh t through the sewers of Paris. The next morning Orson handed me a Tauchnitz edition of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds saying "We may adapt this for our Halloween show. Read it and tell me tonight what you think." I was familiar with the Britisher's science fiction sensation, 112 The Time Machine but had never read his story of Martian invasion. My advice that night: "Forget it. It's Sunday Supplement Stuff, good for a picture section in Hearst's American Weekly but on the air it'll bore everyone stiff." Oh well! I never claimed to be bright. On Sunday, October 30, the day before Halloween, I was back in Woodstock. Orson phoned in the morning to say the show was shaping up. It would be done as a newscast and we should listen in. Twelve hours later he phoned again. This time stuttering, trembling, in search of something stable to hang onto in a world that was reeling around him. John Housman tells the story in his book, Run Through . The fo llowing hours were a nightmare. The building was suddenly full of people and dark blue uniforms. Hustled out of the studio, we were locked into a small back office on another floor . Here we sat incommunicado while network employees were busily collecting, destroying, or locking up all scripts and records of the broadcast. Finally the Press was let loose upon us, ravening for horror. How many deaths had we heard of? (Implying they knew of thousands.) What did we know of the fatal stampede in Jersey hall? (Implying it was one of many:) What traffic deaths? (The ditches must be choked with corpses.) The suicides? (Haven't you heard about the one on Riverside Drive?) It is all quite vague in my memory and quite terrible. And quite puzzling was Orson 's phone call at the end of the above. What, I wondered, could have caused all that panic? Sure, the fiction was well dramatized. But it was announced as fiction at the start and again at the end. Trouble was, few were listening at either time. For these reasons: The show started at eight o'clock. But so did Edgar Bergen's the nation's favorite. Orson's first disclaimer was made when most of America was tuned to the banter of Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Sneard. At 8:12 the ventriloquist took time out and introduced a number by his rather so-so songstress. A million dials began to search the air waves. When they reached CBS they stopped. Horrified. Their world was disintegrating. Psychologists have written books on the ensuing panic. John sums it up : By this time the mysterious meteorite had fallen at Grovers Mill in New Jersey, the Martians had begun to show their foul leathery heads above the ground, and the New Jersey State Police were racing to the spot. Within a few minutes people all over the United States were praying, crying, fleeing frantically to escape death from the Martians. Some remembered to rescue loved ones, others telephoned farewells or warnings, hurried to inform neighbors, sought information from newspapers or radio stations, summoned ambulances and police cars. The reaction was strongest in poin ts nearest the tragedy. In Newark , New Jersey, in a single block, more than twenty fa milies rushed out of their houses with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces. Some began �FAMI LY HISTORY moving household furniture. Po lice switchboards were flooded with calls inquiring, "Shall I close my windows?"; Have the police any extra gas masks?", Police found o ne family waiting in the yard with we~ cloths on fa~es contorted with hysteria. T hat broadcast was the tide in the affairs of Broadway's Brutus that, taken at the flood, led on to fortune. Or should I say to misfortune? Since childhood Orson had been a celebrity of sorts but his fame was with theater goers, a small segment of our society. Now his theatrics had reached into the homes of an entire nation; now his name reverberated abroad ; now Hollywood came to his door bringing offers. He held a strong hand and played the cards close to his chest, bidding up the pot until it consisted of more than just money -- an unprecedented total control. It was a sweet pot to rake in but with it came envy and animosity such as t hat snide comment so oft repeated: "There but for the grace of God goes God." Industry, meanwhile, was interested. Offers came in to sponsor the Mercury Theater of the Air. It became t he Camp bell Playhouse and Orson became a soup salesman. We have his albums ·of these shows, 78 rpm acetate cuttings, that he stored in the Todd School vault long years ago. We also have a trunk full of memorabilia letters, drawings, photos, writings - that will go to him when he wants them and will end up, no doubt, in some library where historians can "research" them long after we are gone. Far less important matter has recently been given reverent storage. For instance the American Film Institute, which gave Orson that gala dinner and "life achievement award" last year, now preserves in hallowed sanctuary (the Library of Congress) a short 16mm surrealistic parody produced (with tongue in cheek) on the Todd campus when Orson was nineteen and Virginia was a student in our 1934 Summer Theatre Festival. (See pages 67 and 68.) This bit of midsummer madness called Hearts of Age, is now part of the lnstitute's collection of all the super films Americans" have produced. With that award dinner for Welles went an elaborate program profusely illustrated. In this they pictured fifteen frames enlarged from the campus caper. Nine of these, reduced in size, are shown here. I can also show you t he 12minute opus on a screen if you're interested. Speaking of our own library of films (an inventory is given on pages 81-84) I hope to acauire before I die prints of Kane, Macbeth, Lady from Shanghai, Chimes finally came to light: Our daughter, Joanne, had a girl friend, Frances Garland who helped out that summer of 1934 in t he Opera House and on the campus. Later she became Director of Public Relations in the Greenwich Library in Connecticut. In April of 1970 she wrote to Hascy and Joanne as follows: This is a letter about the long arm of coincidence, and I frankly don't know where to begin. I guess you know I do public relations for this library; but there's no reason on earth for you to know that the Greenwich Library does almost as much business lending out films and showing them as we do books. That's the background. Sometime along about 1960 we received a bequest of a lot of old films from a film buff named William Vance, who had started out in the midwest and came, by the advertising route, to New York. He lived in Riverside and when he died his widow recognized the value of the old prints and gave them to the Library. The next Lhing that happened we got a new Film Director who was as much a film.buff as William Vance. "When he got a chance he sat down and looked at every piece of film in the bequest. What turne.d up was a little ten-minute opus, dated 1934 - silent, under the name " Hearts of Age." The Film Director, being an admirer of Orson Welles, thought he recognized the famous face even under some wild make-up and knowing I once work· ed with the great man in his early days asked if I could shed any light. I was able to identify the setting as Todd. There are a lot of shots of the school bell ringing. Orson does a good deal of running up and down the fire escapes and waving from the roofs. Virginia Nicholson, also hea..ily made up, rocks in a rocking chair on another roof. A gentleman in period costume rushes downstairs in one scene, and I tentatively identified him as Michael Mac· Liammoir, but I could be wrong. A young man who might be Hascy Tarbox pulls the bellrope continuously throughout, but since he is made up in blackface, complete in white wool wig, I certainly can't be sure of that either. ·Then came two pages of questions. Hascy's letter of reply was, typically, hilarious reading. But at Midnight and others that Hortense and I were involved with way back when. As for Hearts of Age maybe I should add here a bit of "scholarship" to help out future researchers. (A skeptic in our Groves of Academe once defined literary scholarship as fi nding out more and more about less and less.) Anyway, here's more on the "mystery" of this film and how, lost for decades, it 113 �FAMI LY HISTORY to get those laughs you'll have to turn to our family members) certain sources for your deeper study. files. Here I bring only boring trivia for future These sources include books, magazine articles and doctoral theses. Candidates for such degrees are newspaper stories. They include the letters, records, now informed that the puller of the bell rope (frame pictures and diaries that are stored in our family in upper right corner) was not Hascy, Orson's stooge "archives." That's a pretentious term for a steel that summer, but another Todd boy, Edgerton Paul, file cabinet (supposedly fireproof) which I'm leavwho played parts with the Mercury Theatre later. ing behind. Later I'll list for you the precious conAnd the "gentleman in the period costume" was tent of those big drawers. I've promised Orson that not, as Frances guessed, Micheal MacLiammoir but he will get, for his own memoirs, his letters, picrather Charles (Blackie) O'Neal, grandfather of tures and early writings. But I'll make xerox copies today's reigning child actress, Tatum O'Neal.Blackie for us. was our Horatio and his wife, Constance Heron, our Some of you will not have easy access to the Ophilia. Frances ends her letter: above. Here's a partial list of Wellesiana available Our film director, harping on "hjstorical importance," in your local library or book store: As a starter makes me feel like a dinosaur but he's very insistent and there's Pauline Kael's The Citizen Kane Book. This I'm certain you'll know the answers. Maybe we should is a thick Bantam paperback which includes her tidy up the loose ends before we both shuffle off. New Yorker essay, .Raising Kane, as well as the So much for trivia. The "Mars" broadcast came shooting script and many illustrations, mostly enat the start of the Mercury's second season. The larged frames from the film. Her misconceptions first (1937-?8) h(\,d been fantasti~. Fo~r hits, bri.ngand unfair statements about Orson are really culled ing rave reviews, were produced in qmck succession from John Houseman's Run Through, a personal by a fledgling repertory company. While Julius memoir which is mostly Welles. John and Orson Caesar (Shakespear's dictator put into Nazi dress) were partners and co-founders of the Mercury and was playing to standees, Marc Blitzstein's pro-union · neither could have produced the amazing organilabor-opera, The Cradle Will Rock, was announced zation without the other. Read Run Through. and rehearsals were started for Dekker's ShoemakBelieve and enjoy the first chapters covering the er's Holiday. When t his opened (making our Chicagohistory of the Mercury. This needed to be told. It's Goodman friends, Chubby Sherman and Whitford been done with a flair by the talented John. His Kane, instant celebrities) a second theater was rentadmiration for and his amazement at his young ed. Forty First Street became known as Mercury associate makes good reading and gives a largely Row. To satisfy the rest of the nation a secondtrue picture. I opined as much in a letter to Virginia company Caesar was sent out on tour. Now Orson, (now Mrs. Pringle) in England when the book came like an earlier youth, sighed for new worlds to out in 1972. Her answer in part: "Yes, but John's conquer. He had brought Elizabethan playwrights . envy of Orson shows through from the beginning to America with new brilliance. He would now bring and his final pages on their quarrel give only America the greatest living dramatist, Shaw. Letters one version." Orson's second wife, Rita Hayworth, went out to the eccentric octogenarian in England. has been equally defensive. So was Virginia's second Heartbreak House, a talky treatise on British mores husband, Charles Lederer, the brilliant film writer, at the start of World War One, opened on April 29th. ne hew of Marion Davies and lifetime recipient _o_! On May 9th, Time Magazine's rrr.=:=::::::::::==:==::==:==:=:~======::;;i ' her largess. With Virginia and Chris, color cover featured the eighty-eight Charlie lived in Miss Davies' palayear old Captain Shotover as portraytial ocean-front "cottage" near ed by the twenty-three year old Actor Santa Monica. Hortense joined Orson. The inside story was headed Th e Wu kly Newsmagazine them in this luxury for months Marvelous Boy and closed with "Shadat a time. Charlie and Orson beow to Shakespeare, Shoemaker to ~ came bosom friends and co-backShaw -- all in one season - might be a ~ ers of Todd's scholarship fund. whole career for most men but for ~ When Chris was in Todd and her Welles it is only Springboard to Sue- ~ two fathers were co-workers in cess. The brightest moon that has ~ Europe they wrote a joint letter risen over Broadway in years, Welles of mock protest to our Board of should feel at home in the sky, for the W Trustees. It is deliciously funny sky is the only limit his ambitions ~ and I considered showing it here. recognize." V To appreciate it fully , however, But enough of the Mercury Thea- ~ one must know the foibles of our tre. This is a family album. I'll try to family and the eccentricities of stay with family facts but I'll list for our school. You '11 find the origiyou (as I have with other famous nal in our files. Orson asked for-.a· - TIME * 114 -_ .... ... . . . ....._...... ,..... ·· .... ~ - �FAMILY HISTORY copy when on the phone recently. We were eulogizing that elfin spirit, Lederer (alas, now dead) and he was recalling a gay and bibulous afternoon spent with his co-daddy composing that lengthy hoax in a Paris cafe. About additional "reference" material on Welles: New books on the man and his work come out con· stantly. Doctoral degrees are now given in " Cinema Studies." Thousands take such courses in college and even in high school. On the street, Joe Camerabug aspires to fame via the movie route. And it's not so wild a dream. Eight millimeter. equipment is now miraculous. Film so fast that Kleig lights are now obsolete. Motor drive and zoom lens are now standard. (Todd School used to rent a 16mm zoom lens for eighty dollars a day.) The dreamers and t he experimenters all deify Welles. So new books about him and his methods proliferate. (Aside to Orson: Why not get rich? Write your own definitive howto-do-it book fo r devotees.) The early biographies which accentuated his boyhood and his youth are mostly out of print now but may be available in your public library. Example: The Fabulous Orson Welles by Peter Noble, published in 1956 by Hutchinson of London. I won't list the many that have followed. In your library's catalogue t hey will be cross-filed under Welles. Magazines were the first to write .._._... biographies. The Saturday Evening Post sent their Pulitzer prize winning ? reporter, Alva J ohnston, to our home ~ '- for a few days and ran a three-part ~"'"' series just before the "Men from r1 Mars" broadcast. The pictures used by t he Post then are the ones that have been picked up and repeated so often since. Example: this Toddboy-on-a-log shot used most recently in that program for the Welles Award Dinner. And the New Yorker, in that summer of '38, ran a "Profile" on the boy-wonder of Broadway. Here's a part of it: by Russell Maloney The drama critics who attended the ~ opening of young Orson Welles' revivaJ of 1Jf. . .• ~ "Heartbreak House" last spring were prac· lk"!:: - -~.._ • ~ ..:.:: For Orson's entire class tically unanimous in acclaiming it as a perfectly timed production. Shaw's gloomy see page 81 -prophecies about the decay of civilization . although written twenty-one years ago, were so pat and applicable to contemporary affairs, they exclaimed, that it was a stroke of genius for tl)e Mercury Theatre to have decided to make them heard one"' again. This is probably no more than the trulh, but it is oevertheless . a thou~1t-provoking fact that, up to the very moment · ·'Heartbreak House" went into rehearsal, Welles had been lean ing toward an alternative production - "Twelft'h Night," co be done in mjd-Victorian costumes, with several scenes laid at a seaside bathing beach. Looking for the essential qualities of a mind poised between " Heartbreak House" and a mid-Victorian "Twelfth Night," the abashed biographer is force d to the conclusion that his subject is one of those characters who have served so many novelists so well-the acto1 whose world lies entirely behind the footlights, fo1 whom the only rcaJities are grease paint and tinsel. It is a simple fact that Welles has never been interested in anything outside the theatre and that he has experimented with everything in it-writing, directing, designing, acting and producing. Although he is physically graceless ·offstage, pudgy and unathletic, his size and booming voice give him an authoritative, if not actually overwhelming, stage presence; and some mysterious source of energy enables him to get along with only two or three hours' sleep a night during rehearsal weeks. It is hardly surprising that Welles is a success. The fact that his is a success at twenty-three may be ascribed to the operations of heredity, progressive education, and the federa l government. Maloney then considers these t hree "operations." He takes up first the matter of heredity: a musical mother also famed for poetry readings and a much traveled father famed for eccentricities. The matter of progressive education is covered with comments on a school named Todd. For the third ingredient, the federal government, he mentions but fails to detail its huge contribution to all of the arts in those Depression Thirties. He didn't need to spell this out. His generation knew. But not yours. So listen my children and you shall learn: F.D.R.'s New Deal spawned its famous " alphabet soup" of projects under the aegis of the NRA or National Recovery Act. There was the CCC, TV A, PWA, dozens more. To the Roosevelt detractors these were " make-work boondoggles. " Noble Hill (who had lifted himself, pridefully, by his bootstraps) joined this chorus condemning the " leaf rakers" and repeating a then-popular local wheeze: "You can't get lost in Chicago; just remember that the moss grows on t he North side of the WPA workers." How unfair! For shame, Noble! WPA under Harry Hopkins was a far, far better thing than leaf raking. The CCC boys drained the Skokie swamp and transformed Chicago's Nort h Shore. More pertinent to our present saga, the artistic talent of a benumbed ~ation was mobilized. Library shelves today are. filled with the books, many excellent, turned out by the Federal Writers' Project. Vide the State Guidebook Series and the American River Series including the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas classic on the Florida Everglades, River of Grass. T hen there was the Federal Artists' Project which filled our public buildings with murals, some mediocre but many stunning. Example: the Thomas Hart Benton masterpiece which can be enjoyed today in the Missouri State Capitol at Jefferson City . (Foot note on F.D.R. - In later years he and Orson, a strangely matched pair, campaigned together and became firm friends. 115 �FAMILY HISTORY After platform speeches one ·night the older man said, "You know Orson, you and I are the two greatest actors alive today." The President: was indulging in light-hearted self deprecation. He might have spoken solemn truth by using the word directar instead of actor. In direction of others lay the genius of each. Plus, of course, those amazing voices.) It was the Negro Theater Project in Harlem that brought Houseman and Welles together and gave Orson his first triumph, the black Macbeth done in Harlem's Lafayette Theater. It was the youmg wife, actually, y.rho suggested that it be done with its Haitian Voodoo flavor. Orson's stunning production, followed by an equally sensational Doctor Faustus built the reputation that allowed Houseman to raise the meager funds which founded the Mercu1ry. Now, skipping some paragraphs, I'll pick up t:he New Yorker Profile again: Orson with his beloved "Dahda," the charming, talented Dr. Bernstein who, in this picture, has just married Edith Mason, world famous prima donna. Just then she was the reigning diva of the Chicago Opera Company. Turning to an old Who's Who, I read that this union took place on October 9, 1929. Which makes the boy you see here fourteen. You also see the entire wedding party (it was a J.P. affair) and we're standing in front of Wallingford Hall, one wing of which was our home then. It was before the era of the Todd farms. (Pictures of Wallingford are on pages 50 and 51.) Orson and Virginia lived with us for weeks in the fall of 1938. His company had opened its second season with "Danton's Death" which ran only 28 performances and then suddenly - amazingly - the entire Mercury folded! Why?' A mixture of reasons: It was exhausting work; Chubby Sherman had quit; it had never made real money. Now the "Mars" broadcast was bringing in tempting offers to woo the partners away from the hazards of repertory. And the powerful Theatre Guiid -bad offered to finance a national tour of "Five Kings." This would be Orson's old Todd-boy dream of a super production combin· ing Shakespeare's chronicle plays into two evenings on. a great revolving stage. This would circle while actors walked from one scene to another: tavern, castle, battlefield. The first evening would center around Falstaff and the roistering Prince Hal who ripens into the noble king with his band-of-brothers speech before the battle of Agincourt. The second evenin91 would carry through the Wars-of-the-Roses to climax with the hunchback Richard III who resolves to play the villian, does so indeed, and dies on Bosworth Field. Orson had conceived the idea as a senior in Todd and produced the second part, He cast himself then as the "foul, bunch·backed toad." When the above picture was taken he was spending five days a week working on his new script (rehearsals would start by Christmas) and flying to New York two days each week for his Campbell Soup broadcasts. 116 Orson often stayed with Dr. Maurice Bernstein, a friend of the family. It was Dr. Bernstein who administered the money left by Orson's mother and, in 1934, after the death of Dick Welles, became his son's legal guardian. This Dr. Bernstein, an orthopedist with cultured tastes, persuaded Dick Welles to enter his son, when the boy was eleven, in the Todd School at Woodstock, Illinois. Orson continued to travel with his father during summer vacations, but he had already. found his vocation. Todd is an expensive preparatory school of considerable antiquity, now run on severely progressive lines. The present headmaster, Roger Hill, a slim, whitehaired, tweed-bearing man, who looks as if he had been cast for his role by a motion-picture director, has never let the traditional preparatory-school curriculum stand in the way of creative work. All the boys spend as much time as they want in the machine shop, the printshop, the bookbindery, or the school theatre. Orson Welles was at Todd from 1926 to 1931. In those five years he completed eight years of academic work and qualified for admission to college, provided the college wasn't too particular about mathematics. Also abetted by the delighted Mr. Hill, he gave himself a thorough course in the fundamentals of the theatre. It is probable that Welles, as a boy, wore more crepe hair and putty noses than most actors do in a lifetime. When he was thirteen, he began directing the Todd Troupers, the school dramatic society. His first big job that year was a production of "Julius Caesar," played in togas but nevertheless embodying many of the ideas he later used for the Mercury's "Caesar." This was the Todd School's entry in the annual Drama League contest for high schools =i1 �and little-theatre groups around Chicago. It didn' t get the prize; the judges explained that, meritorious as the production was, the two lads who played Cassius and Mark Antony were both too mature to be bona-fide students. T his was a severe disappointment for Welles, who had cast himself in these two leading roles to make sure that they were played exactly right. This tale, repeated in every Welles biography, is almost true. He didn't actually direct a Drama ·League Contest play until he had graduated and was on the faculty. But at thirteen he played both Cassius and Antony in our shortened version and both voices made the judges understandably skeptical. They rolled out with the same resonance the world immediately identifies today. Later he won the cup with a Todd Twelfth Night he directed. He also painted the great "book" we traveled with and that opened to form a backdrop for the various scenes: the Seacoast, Orsino's Castle, Olivia's kitchen etc. See picture of this on page 81. Welles directed about eight . productions a year while at Todd, usually playing one of the chief parts. He developed quite a nice touch at scene-painting and even executed a mural for a classroom. All true. He produced student plays in our own theater almost every w:eekend. And his senior project, Five Kings, played to the public as well as to a Todd commencement audience. His original condensation for this (now "historically important") is a marked-up, one-volume Shakespeare which I've saved. There would be no point to a recital of Welles' childish triumphs if he had not turned up in New York a very few years later and repeated some of them as commercial and artistic successes. For instance, his last big job before he graduated from Todd was a melange of Shakespeare's historical plays- edited and directed by Orson Welles, starring Orson Welles. This was the germ of the "Five Kings" chronicle play to be presented by the Mercury this autumn to the Theatre Guild subscribers. Seven years ago, if anybody had told the Guild directors ~hat they were going to buy an interest in a production then being whipped up by a child in a pro- · gressive school, they wouldn't have believed it. Welles, one imagines, would have been gratified but not particularly astonished. After his graduation in 1931, Welles went to study drawing at the Chicago Art Institute. A severe attack of Yes, he spent two weeks at the Art Institute but much of that time he was phoning the Powers Agency hoping for answers to this ad which was running in Variety and Billboard. ORSON WELLES - Stock Characters, Heavies. Juveniles or as cast. Also specialties, .chalk talk or can handle stage. Young, excellen~ appearan~e. qu_1ck sure study. Lots of pep, experience and ability. Close in Chicago early in June and want place in l(OOd stock company for remainder of season. Salary according to late date of opening and business conditions. Photos on request. Address ORSON WELLES. care H.L. Powers, lllinois Theatre, 6.S East Jackson Blvd., Chicago, Ill. hay fever put a stop to this episode, so the youth got some money from his father and set out for a tour of Scotland and Ireland in search of pure air and things to sketch. While wandering about' County Donegal in a donkey cart, painting dubious water colors of ~ the local scenery , he fell in with a t vacationing actor from the Gate Theatre in Dublin. A few weeks later he was passing through Dub- • Jin and went backstage to say hello to his friend. Ile said he was twenty-five, and got away with it. A splendid series of adult roles was awarded him- the Duke in "Jew Suss," Svengali, and the King in " Hamlet"- and he played them to frantic applause from the Gate audiences. He stayed in Ireland until early in 1932, thus effectively scotching Roger l-Wl's plan to send him to Harvard. Maloney 's account is second hand. Micheal MacLiammoir, the great Irish actor, was on the spot and he tells about it in his memoir, All For Hecuba. Micheal was co-founder, with Hilton Edwards of the Gate and his book tells much about the sixt~en­ year-old in Dublin and the nineteen-year-old in Woodstock. (The Irish stars came to Todd for our Theatre Festival that summer of 1934. See more on pages 67 and 77.) Now some excerpts from All For Hecuba: Hilton walked into the scene dock one day and said "Somebody strange has arrived from America; come and see what you think: tall, young, fat. Says he's been with the Theatre Guild in New York. Don't believe a word of it but he's interesting. I think we should give him au audition. Says he's been to Connemara with a donkey. Come and have a look at him." I found, as he had hinted, a very tall young man with a chubby face, full powerful lips and disconcerting Chinese eyes. His hands were very beautifully shaped. The voice, with its brazen transatlantic sonority, was already that of a preacher, a leader, a man of power; it bloomed and boomed its way through the dusty air of the scene dock as though it would crush down walls and rip up the floor. He moved in a leisurely manner from foot to foot and surveyed us with magnifice~t patience as though here was our chance to do something beautiful at last. Were we going to take it? Well, just too bad for us if we let the moment slip. And all this did not come from mere youth but from some agless and inner confidence that no one could blow out. It was unquenchable. That was his secret. He knew that he was precisely what he himself would have chosen to be had God consulted him on the subject at his birth: Whether we and the world felt the same - well, that was for us to decide. You've heard Maloney's account: you've heard MacLiammoir's elaboration. Now listen to Orson on the subject. The first I heard was a cablegram: HAVE JOB AT THE GATE THEATRE AND COURSES IN TRINITY COLLEGE WIRE OBJECTIONS. Then a 28-page letter profusely illustrated. S~me excerpts: There are two big parts in J~w S~ss. One is the George Arlis title role and the other is the half Emil Jannings half Douglas Fairbanks contrast to the Jew, Karl Alexander, th~ Duke. I read the play, decided I had no chance as Suss and though I scarcely dared dream of getting it learned Karl Alexander. My first audition was a bitter failure. I read them a scene and being terribly nervous and anxious to impress I performed a ltind of 117 �-' FAMILY HISTORY for our Shakespeare series and his living for weeks with a Moroccan chieftan holding the wierd title of The Glaoui. All true. But some of his claims make me wonder. Like this one: After his father's death he continued his summer journeys overseas - hiking, cycling, vagabonding with a Todd teacher. He tells now a tale of being in a Munich beer hall one leg-weary evening where he watched, fascinated, a little rabble-rouser with a comic Charlie Chaplin mustache flay the air with gestures and harangue the audience from his podium of a bar stool. Well . .. ? It could be! Orson was in Bavaria the summer of 1930. He was wearing, in fact, the ledeme hosen you've just seen on a log three pages back. And Hitler was then out of jail and had published Mein Kampf and was moving steadily toward dictatorship. Orson kept no journal that summer in Germany but a year later in Ireland he did and I'll bring you an_- excerpt,. The Maloney profile brings · : Orson straight back to Wood. ! stock to collaborate on a play we : called Marching Song. Thus tell, ing nothing about months of pre· ' Dublin adventure on the remote ( Aran Islands and on a Shannon river barge and on his travelswith-a-donkey (ala R.L.S.) aA star is born and he round Galway. He had been almakes a self portrait lowed to leave the Art Institute only after a solemn pact between "Pookles" and his "Dahda." This called for the _continuation of painting and the faithful keeping of a journal. The paintings were all traded for lodgings. The journal I have, at least in part. Travel has ev•~r been Orson's addiction. Also Orson's education .. Man and boy, he's had a fantastic capacity for absorption. From books; from people; from expe1riences. The critics tell us Orson is obsessed with dnath. I tell you that he has a1ways been obsessed wit:h life, with its sensitivities, with its promises. And always an amazing gift for romantic readiness as witness his falling in love with Ireland the day he Btepped ashore. And always the accumulation of bizzare experiences. Some of the tales that writers have scoffed at I can verify. For instance that t rip to Africa t o finish u..l>' the drawings .f 118 Note for family members and for future researchers: Orson's Irish "journal" was partly in book form (see a two-page spread reproduced here) but mostly a matter of letters to Dr. Bernstein in Ravinia. These may be extant, saved by relatives of the dear doctor who is now dead. I have only typewritten copies. Maurice would send the letters to my office for the girls to make multiple typings. These he would distribute to friends such as Ashton Stevens, columnist for Hearst's Chicago American and Dudley Crafts Watson of the Art Institute. I must warn you grandchildren and also any future curator of this material that there are errors in these caused by misreading the boy's scrawl. For instance when ·t1te type reads Irisheer it should read lnisheer, the smallest of the Aran Islands !hat Orson loved and that Synge immortalized for the rest of us in his "Riders to the Sea." And often the type reads Erin when it should be Aran. = ~£ St-11\NNON STOf{Y 1 gc.r.t-- ~ ~ q_ k EJ ac AWh ti.~~~~ ~ w--:k tfi.k wf.. tV>'6.. 1 I have Orson's handwritten diary covering a two-week barge trip on the Shannon. He lived and wrote and painted aboard several commercial carriers which might spend hours or even days in a port. For side trips he had his bicycle, "Ulysses. "He also had his infatuation with everything Irish and his pencil for sketching and his penchant for perceptive prose. I reproduce here his first entry and then his final two pages. He opens his story, as you can see, with exultant expectation: Down the Shannon in a barge! Actually, he was starting up that storied stream, traveling from the southern seaport of Limerick, through all those lovely lakes, to the ancient citadel city of Athlone. By then he has reached the latitude of Dublin and he boards a bus ·to head due East into the bright dawn of his adulthood and his stage career. The penmanship on the next page starts in the middle of a sentence. To understand Orson's little Droll Story of Athlone you'll need his lead-in: The hill of which I have spoken is called the Battery and is crossed by a stone-breasted gully impregnable from vulgar gaze. There I came upon three little boys, their bellies flat upon the grass, peeping furtively over the brink. I tiptoed . .. �FAMILY HISTORY I _Now back to Maloney's biography: Tearing himself away from the doting Irish, he returned to Woodstock, Illinois, in March, 1932. He and .,Roger Hill had long had an idea for a historical plaY about the abolitionist John Brown. Welles worked out a scenario with his schoolmaster and went off to a lake in Wisconsin to spend the summer writing. The result .,was a practically interminable piece called "Marching Song." Welles brought it to New York that autumn and .Jshowed it to all the producers, without success. He seems to have accepted this defeat with an equanimity -that would do credit to one of twice his years. " I am aware that disappointments, it matters not how many, should in no way affect my confidence, but they do," he wrote to Roger Hill, his Boswell. "Today, for example, it was not a shock nor a sense of failure, just .. the realization of a fact, the cementing of a profound conviction. I refer to Ben Boyar's returning the manu.. script. I wasn't even surprised. He said, 'It's a swell show. It makes good reading. It would make a good book. I ... think maybe it's even a good play. But that don't matter. It won't make money. It isn't a commercial piece. At ~least that's what I think. Maybe I'm wrong.' He thanked me for letting him read it, nicely, l thought, repeated "'himself, and said goodbye .... Writing is the line in which Welles has been least successful. "Marching Song" never did get produced. J You've heard Maloney denigrate the writing ability of our boy. So again I must rise for rebuttal. He's right, Marching Song is " interminable." Far too lengthy for stage production on any one evening. Hascy managed to do it with sensational success but he had to cut the four-hour pageant in half. (I show you his drawing and his playbill for the first weekend of that charity affair. Ashton World Premier Stevens and others gave us na-1 ORSON WELLES tional publicity and Welles ido- ,,.,--; laters flew in from both coasts.) My own contribution to writing that play was a first draft of a first act. In other words, just enough to start our tireless boy w..i........,. . .... n......, ......... .. off and, more importantly, send him off. Out of my hair. For it was summer and in that hectic :::..::..w=..i:= season I ceased being a carefree ~ "schoolmaster and became, per- t<.. =:.':'..:::.~- •.. force, a salesman, a recruiter of ~ ?:".!.::-"?-:.'"':.::: tuition-payers (the scholarship ~-::;~::.-:::. boys came easy) for a new year. I. Orson had his own summer pro- a • • u no c 1 u u 1T AL u u F 1T blems connected with hay fever. Dahda's solution for this - .....- - . t .limllf pllfflof ,. 7...... ... :;:.::..::=:._: : AMTWT... T_ . . _ _..,... 00 119 �FAMIL Y HISTORY was a Wisconsin camp on Lake Mercer. In the fall, the play finished and duplicate copies prepared, Harty and I took the author in the School's land-yacht, complete with its chauffer-cook, to New York. There we moved into a suite in the Algonquin suitable for entertaining lucky Broadway Producers who would be offered our opus. I would give Dwight Deere Wiman first chance. He had been my childhood roommate in Todd Seminary and America's most prolific producer during the Depression; now the only one using his own dough which consisted of all that ancestral plow money f ram Moline. When he and others said thanks-but-no-thanks I peered into an empty purse, moved our boy into the cheapest of rooms, to continue sale efforts via pavement pounding, and headed home. Maloney quotes Orson's letter to me about Ben Boyar. He must have kept this for I can't find it in the file. But other letters of comment are there. For instance, Sam Raphaelson's. He writes: "Stick with this boy! He's bound for big things! I damn near ruined my eyes with your dim carbon copy but it was worth it. Any three pages of this script sing. But any twenty fall apart. Tell your star pupil to either turn this into a novel or teach him that stage plays are really tight little miniatures." I show you now the first of many letters from the "co-author" living in a wigwam on an Indian Reservation that summer of 1932. I give a facsimile so you can appreciate the boy's ease of expression. You remember how Shakespeare's fellow actors described this facility when, after his death, they published f~~ 2 I am serious 1•bout t he pine :•rove ancl the wig-warn and les t I accused of extrava~ancc , l e t me 1;111te t he entire ~rrengem1m t is emminently economicul. 'n\e pine g rove , you see, is part of the Meigs estate and the wig- wrun which I have c au se<\ t o be built by squaws and a few anti~uee o f the neuter g ender £or t he l otal reward of twenty- f ive fift y, gold , ia someth ing the Meigs h :1ve been lonr. wanting. So by makin~ the grond ges ture of givln~ i t them for their own [ or a a l o ng a s birch-bark and nish mat shall remain incorporate ( wh ich, I am int ormed i s a 11\11 1 t er o f generations) I fee l ~asy at ac cepting l heir hos pi tality- - mea l s, that is , ~ill delic1oua meals, mld c amping ma terials de-lux. ~ I leave you to imag ine t he charm of this place, the t hrill of an actual lndisn re s ervation , the exce llence of the i s land for work • • • l leave you nlao to refle ct for " bit on f e. te and tha t destiny o f which I have herein spoken when I tell you that paddling elon~ the west bank this morning I cnme ~cro ss a portly old gentleman 1n a mellow panama twiddling his f reckled thumbs in the t oll ferns, a white mon unders ~1nd, who upon closer inspec t ion turned out to be none o t her t h lln Grnndad Ge t ty•-- you wi.ll be furnished with what m·tght be referred to as food for thought. A wig-warn, or, more corre c tly a wi g-i-wham is empahatica lly a thing of the foreet. I t i~ fashioned of wild things , deer skin and bark, soft :naple anc!. basswood. Even the rope in the buhush screening is of na t ive mtmuf acture. And being prima t ive and far removed from the high-pressure world of our civilizat ion, its construc tion is a matter of t i.me-- exac t ly t wo days. So of course I haven ' t worked. The building o f t his ~reat inverted s alad bowl of a house of mine h t18 been too f ascinating a diversion. But t omorrow, tomorrow I sh •ll roll up the proverbi al sleeve am l ay t o. Write me in c are o f J.B . l leig e (God Dless Him) Lac do Flambeau, Wisc. I have been so many c enturi e s f rom J ohn ilrown e t el during t~e past ~elu!nd that I rejoic e in returning t o i t, t o find my ml.nd fre shened on<l en thu siAstic . If thl.ng~ go as promisingl)'. as they begin in . th is Utopia l s hnll prob>1!>ly l foger fo r the #fl.f.'f.i Autumnal turnl.ng of t h o! leaves . Or wha t do yo u t hink ? Dear Skip, I've been oway for three days now and haven't done a lick of work. '"t there! /.:I.I. When l tell you where I am .:ind why and how, you'll understand. Love withou t end ·~ that First Folio edition of his plays: His mind and hand went together and what he thought, he uttered with such easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot on his papers. Just so with Orson. I envy him the facility. No page of mine can ever go to the 1rinter without at least one rewrite. Anyway, here's Lis first report from the land of Hiawatha 't'he story begins wi. th Mr. Meigs and it will persuade you the t there is indeed a desti.ny which sh apes our ends. I met Mr. Meigs at the drinking fountain and there we tolked at some length. He, it appears, :naint ..1.ns 11 swumer est1.1bliehment on Lake Flambe au in the Indian re se rvation. He s a id tha t l>etween Mercer and Flambeau there is no comparison. 'f##/1'~/#/##f.#fi'f. Would I eta~ on the train a few more mlles and give Flambeau a trial. '.!he boye had been wanting to invi t e me 1 ? ? I certainly woul d . At Woodruff a cross-eyed half breed waited to take Cle to my reser.red destina t ion. lt was six-thirty in the morning and he was raving dxunlt. l was glAd t o be able to refuse an eight.en mile drive b::ii!J:l 4 •• • · U :m in hia Model T Ford, very glad • .And at Lac du Flambeau, that delightful capitol of the Oujibway Reserva tion, boasting a main street like an illus tration from somebody's novel of life in the e crly lumbering and Indianfighting days, thare woited, big and l ittle, rosy f a ced and mult idudinous:-- the Meigs. The y drove me over miles of picturesque Chippewah tra ils, t hrough pine forests and past myriad little lakes to their luxurious "lodge, " And here I was given as demoraliz,ling a breakfaat hos evar be~n fed to fl co-dra1tatist. Later there was swi m ~ ing-- the water here is crys tal ancl can be drunk with rclioh -- ond ouoo~o oivalyr iaili'rg, in a onappy oloop that would f11.1~1f. put, l think, the o g tter in your aeaman's eye, ~ fis h kc,ng• Jim caught a muskie, si~t seeing, IndiRn villages oyti\o t or- at and Packard, en d hunt~we went out for deer but brought home a brocc ~f ~amey partr ge. a• But ne ed I go £ur t her? Ne ed I say thRt when it developed that the reservation 11aa as k ind to my tortured nasal p3ssages and bespasmed bronchial tubes ea anywhere tf.f!/#1,,/;f South of Fifty it required only the o pportunity to buy a wig-warn and live in it in a pine grove a million miles from a telephone nn<l another mil lion to t he next, scented nnr\ breezy nnd we l l drained and solitudinoue ,.rd -- wha l ol c aaes rne mo st-- entire t y surrounded by water . Need I add t hat I have dec ided ! o s tay? 120 And here's his wigwam or at least an identical domicile. His own pride and joy which he "caused to be built by squaws and a few antiques of the neuter gender" has been moved from his location (now known to tourists as Orson Welles Point) to the Meigs back yard. The Meigs boys, "big and little, rosy faced and multitudinous" had all three . been in Todd that year of 1931-32 when Orson, back from Ireland, became their drama teacher for the second semester. �FAMILY HISTORY J J After Marching Song I needed a new project to absorb this boy's bubbling energy; to satisfy that constant creative urge. The solution: Write a Shakespeare book. Tell other teachers some of the tricks we used at Todd to make the Elizabethan popular in the classroom as well as on the stage. This would kill two birds: It would keep Orson occupied and it wo!Jld r~juvinate the print shop. "The Todd Press," a comm'e'rcial enterprise established to market my basketball book, was now dormant. But the corporation was intact and could be reactivated. (Did I ever mention that lucky bit of basketball opportunism? No? It's worth this footnote: We had a remarkable success based on a unique and a temporary situation in the second decade of our century. Basketball was new and its popularity soaring. Few trained coaches were available but the demand for them was tremendous. Every highschool principal was forced to delegate someone, if only the math teacher, to move into the gym and develope a team. The novice needed help. He looked around for a manual. I condensed the wisdom of what little had been written on team strategy and our sales were phenomenal. Later, better coaches wrote better books which took over the market.) With a new book, the Todd Press would again be in business. A.E.J. was delighted. His ink-stained gang would now have more to work on than their weekly newspaper; they'd have a thrilling project to bring them some money and much pride. Orson was ecstatic. The idea of a single volume grew into the plan for a series. He started making sketches. "They're wonderful, Orson! Kids will love them. We'll fill the margins of every page." "Do · you really like them?" he came back. "You say we could do three plays? That'll mean scads of drawings. I could work faster off alone somewhere. I've never been to Africa. I hear its wonderful. And I met an important Arab in Paris who invited me to visit him there anytime. They call him The Glowie. What do you think?" "Great with me, Orson. I only hope you can finance it. Dahda says your money is almost run out." He did go of course; we both knew he would. A small freighter to Casablanca via the Azores. Turning to his old letters I find the first one from Africa was written at sea. I had piled new duties on him. He was not only making the drawings but writing the stage directions. Listen to the seventeen-yearold Shakespeare scholar, already a successful teacher, report to his editor. one is "tender" and this one is said "angrily" and this "with a smile?" There are as many interpretations for characters in CAESAR as there are in God's spacious firmament. What nerve I have to pick out one of them and cram it down any child's throat, coloring, perhaps permanently, his whole conception of the play. I wish to high heaven you were here to reassure me. Mainly I just wish you were here. You 'd love it! Everyone from the captain down is a real character and I can't tell you how out-on-the-ocean it seems in a tiny freighter wallowing in the wild Atlantic. Here's a crossing that's rare fun, chasing the plates and the cups around the mess and trying to keep chair and self within the shifting scene of the table. I tried to put some of it into verse: Days now numberless it seems to me We've lolled and wallowed in a lusty sea. Time is a thing that used to be. The order and ascent of days is nothing now; A March-blown ocean mauls our plunging prow, An acreage hysterical for us to plow. Crash in the galley. Crashes are constant now. Shiver the empty "Exermont" from screw to prow. Time is a thing that used to be; The order and ascent of days is nothing now. Today for the first time it is fairly calm. There is only one other passeoger beside myself. The radio won 't work which is another blessing. It's all very Eugene O'Neil and salty. Quite the ctossing of my experience. To shorten the account, I'll return you to Maloney: He was back in Chicago by the summer of 1933. Roger Hill introduced him to Thornton Wilder, who gave him a letter of introduction to Alexander Woollcott, who sent him around to Katharine Cornell. She had been looking for a convincingly young Marchbanks and hired Welles on the spot. This was for her famous tour with "Candida," "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," and "Romeo and Juliet." Welles' other roles were Mercutio and Octavius, the stuttering brother of Elizabeth Barrett. He set off on a thirty-week tour which took in some seventy-five cities. Actually, the Cornell connection didn't come until fall. All that hot summer of 1933 I had kept Orson slaving in, a Chicago Rush street "studio" just large enough for one small bed and one oversize drawing board. There he turned out literally thous' ands of detailed sketches, most of them crumpled and thrown away in angry frustration by a selfcritical young artist. But I saved over twelve hundred and these went to press. An example is the drawing below. This is a reduced-size copy of his heading for the Merchant of Venice Scene in Portia's house where the black Prince of Morocco comes to chose his casket and opens with his mislike-me-not-for-my-complexion speech. You '11 find grotesqueries in my stage directions, repetitions and misfirings. You'll have to do a clean-up job. I'll be relieved when I can get this off and in the mails. The mere presence of Shakespeare's scrip worries me. What right have I to give credulous and believing innocents an inflection for his mighty lines? Who am I to say that this 121 �FAMILY HISTORY Yes, it was meeting Thornton Wilder that led to Orson's first important part on the American stage. We were at one of Hazel Buchbinder's celebrity evenings in her Chicago home. She was a Todd parent and a tireless patron of the arts. Dozens of her gatherings of the great are still vivid in memory. One example: The night after a Segovia concert when a fortunate 1few watched in fascination the great Spaniard trade his tricks on the guitar with another expert, Carl Sandberg. And finish up with folk songs of European peasants balanced by those of American pioneers. On the Wilder evening, the playwright was listening to Orson's Irish experiences and suddenly realized he was tallking to the boy that Katharine Cornell was searchiing for to · play Marchbanks, the sixteen-year-old poE~t in her upcoming production of Shaw's Candida. She had heard of an American youth in Dublin who was a painter-poet-actor but didn't know his name. Alex Wollcott had promised to contact the Gate Theater and find out. Wilder's excited advice to 01rson: " Get on a train tomorrow. I'll phone Alex you're coming. You should be able to get a part in all three of the plays Guthrie McCJintic is casting. '" We rushed him onto the Broadway Limited. Of his daily letters the next week I reproduce one: !w~ JV 'U-v ~ -; :.:_ ~jvjv-v , llll®TE IL AILG®N<Q1UllN 59to65 UJ1&t.J'ortyfourtfa!/trtt1 ~<iA-~~~ v. ~M ~~ tv i·~J v(. C) ' V?. ~ z,v-tf ~ ~t, v.d'/ 1~~~b ~ tv:L~­ /lvvP-v~h~z,1 ~( 6d~{ ~ l~'hh t-~ ~ ~ / h1r. ti1 e-C:L-tve L·t ~ ~~{ /,t- ~ :tv ~! ttJ 1J f;r1, fu.tt~ 1 fJf;,1 ~ ~. rt' ?z-4 4. ~ r~.vtJ w ~ . t;::~,~ ~ , ~ }~~~h ~' '/ ~ ~ ~~. ~),~ l!Vr.,vvt.l.. . w lM ~l.. t lA.4. if -}.~ Ytd:L.. ~ ;Vl ~ ~~ 91t'k- -,,__.,~ 122 · -a'-ll t·"'4 h"' _ ~ Our Shakespeare Texts Four plays were published: Caesar, The Merchant, Twelfth Night, Macbeth. The sound which accompanied them was recorded by Mercury actors onto 78 rpm discs. This was prior to the advent of LP and twenty or more records were required for each play. This meant a disconcerting change every few minutes. The books had an excellent sale running through editions by the Todd Press and by Harpers and finally by McGraw-Hill. But the records were a disappointment. Columbia never made a second pressing. Now Todd Tarbox, one of the grandchildren to whom I've addressed this history (and whose publishing ventures I describe on page 105) wants to print a new edition and transfer the old sound onto 90-minute cassettes. Orson's reaction: "Great. Let's go ahead. It will still stay in the family." But CBS is proving di~ficult, knowing that any sound recorded by Welles has value. I, too, am proving difficult to an impatient printer-grandson. Because even if CBS comes to reasonable terms, I am loath to let Todd reprint the old books or reissue the old sound. This because I see opportunities for tremendous improvement in both. Yes, I'm too old to start on this but Orson isn't. And new sound would be much simpler to turn out now than in the old days of studio frustration when working on wax. Then if an actor made one slip or one stutter, the entire cutting had to be destroyed and a new start made. Today, on tape, mistakes are edited out with ease. Are you listening, Orson ? Then consider this: You now have your own recording equipment. The finest. With a minimum number of actors, hired for only a few days, you could put new sound on these plays. But I want you to do more. I want you to record your commentary. I want your perception and appreciation and enthusiasm for each play recorded. I've heard you thus expound at a hundred rehearsals, amateur and professional. There's a virtuosity involved that should not be lost when you 're gone. Like that chapter Y?U wrote for my intrc;>· ductory pedagogical pages m our texts. We called it On Staging Shakespeare and On Shakespeare's St age. Do you remember your opening sentences? I can never forget them and I'm prone to quote them. Pure poetry. Listen: Shakespeare said everything. Brain to belly, every mood and minute of a m an's season. His language is starlight and fireflies and the sun and moon. He wrote it with tears and blood and beer, and his words march like heartbeats. One more admonition Orson: Consider now your old idea that someday you would turn teacher. Why not now? At least give it a trial? Any university would welcome you. They might suggest a chair of Cinema Studies. But you have so much more to offer. I want you to illuminate the study of Elizabethan Literature. You would spread this light well I �FAMILY HISTORY beyond one campus by the simple procedure of recording your lectures. And your informal rapp sessions with the kids. This would leave behind a rich legacy not only for Academia but for the world. Our friend, Sam Raphaelson, has tried it , is now teaching at Columbia. Says he loves it. Talk to him sometime. Ma Bell makes it easy. End of advice. * * * * * * * Back now to Maloney's biography. He was telling of the eight-month, cross-country tour with Cornell. The tour wound up in the spring of 1934 and Welles hopped right back to Woodstock, where he and Roger Hill had planned to have a "summer theatre festival." This in· volved a coeducational dramatic school on the Todd campus, with the students supporting Welles and other guest stars in public perfor· mances. Welles courteously invited Michael MacLiam· moir and Hilton Edwards, the Gate Theatre founders, to come over here and make guest appearances. These gentlemen, once they recovered from their pardonable surprise at learning his true status, helped him to make a success of a nine-week repertory which included "Trilby," "Tsar Paul," and " Hamlet." Welles, exercising almost incredible self-restraint, allowed Mac· Liammoir to play Hamlet and cast himself in his old role of the King. The Todd Campus was normally deserted in summer. But over the years it was put to sundry and exciting adult uses. Many summers the buildings were turned over to the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker organization so influential in foreign affairs. These zealots for peace would fill Todd with foreign students from American universities. Each week new faculty folk and State Department personnel would arrive to counsel with them. Wonderful new friends. Vivid memories. But no summer was more exciting (and none so hectic) as that of 1934 when fifteen assorted equity actors and twenty assorted "students" moved into our cottages and dormitories. The tuition-payers were a mixed bag including a professor of Drama at Iowa State and a bevy of stage-struck highschool kids. They all slaved mightily night and day and none objected when Whitford Kane failed to show up to direct their "classes." Our literature had promised the former Goodman Director would head our school but at the last minute he was offered a tempting movie contract. I find no summer student records in the file but old playbills list their names in minor roles and categories such .as Lords and Ladies of the Court, Stage Managers, something so they would appear in type if not in lights and thus justify the five hundred dollars they had been charged. Two pages of our HamL t program are reproduced here in miniature. Most of their names appear thereon if you can read them. (Further note on 1~·earts of Age, that " historically important" first Welles film. You learned earlier (page 113) that this was donated to the Greenwich Library by the widow of a film buff, William Vance, and that he was a student in the Todd Summer School of 1934. Looking at the old Hamlet program I see he was cast as Fortinbras and now I remember that he came from Freeport, Illinois, and had been active in Little Theater work there. Vance owned the camera and did the photography. TODD T;f~E~~·~i""~1-iTl\'.\L DRAMATIS PERSONAE o ... ,,.;'l;'\tARK o~ \\t 11, flA:\IJ ..f:T f'Hl:''l/t'J-: OF ut·;X\IAHK M1oh11tl Ma,L1.11n111totl 1•t.At•ll1t"S Kl:'\(; OLD O l?El!'tA ll1!0U.$E J••JL..ONll S, 1.UUU t'HAMU..;Hl.A lN' ftll\cm P.•lw.1r•1-. 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"' •k•, H' t: ..:HTnn·t· \lt"f:P.:"i' OY rn·:'IOMARK T·ROU\ "C'1'10~ :O:oTt-; ~1 tho C'hatl•)I "'•-<•:Ne ·1tA' r /. 1~\"JUJt-::"!'T.. n~tut· :i.tl'~Sf:Xr; ..;1~ l•l ~Alf.I •fl CARL H EXD RI CKSOX t•t• ..-nll"•I llA~ll .t-:T POl,.U~l\'S Rhhat~t t·1.i\YJ-;rts t•fl"' I.ally for 1.h.u1 pro.ht• u n bv "Thill l)f'l"Klut110n l lOl<l\Tlfl t-ICll''.';h TO l.Af:ttTt":-0. !'iO' TU o .. Onw')n "'"''''"' r.nnn~ ANU J.Ar.JF::S f'Ol'RT. ~(ll,fllt:lt!< ~A tum ~ \U-:~~•:'.'l:<:FR!'t ft A NJo;~ ATrf."' bJ1brl ~... ,~-; ("·'••lh\- lJ ''""''"'" \'ir-i:uiu ~ .. l··" Ot-U\" tttU J• "n lhll I~ ti\. Wahl. fo:1mt'r 4•1,,.,r;i.-on_ U ~1111 \l !'· n,... ft l..u ..on It l-1•AA•·l1_ ..~.I~· rlltn f'1w1 ~c-f-~ NE 1o:lllln1lr.' :o-;foo:TT1~<;~ 1n· Mld'lt'.11 .\1111 LJamnmh ~ lo:T'TIXC~ I· \. ..:Cl'Tf:O A~l1 Af'T J•RC>I' lJ ..: ~ICSP.o A.Sil ..:xt-:C-L'TF:u ln' ,;~r)!"(" Sbio,\h '"'lSTl'~"':-t t1\' J.1m•-< l"~•·t.. \· ' TAC•-: :t.l.\'.\;'GF.ftS I llOl'EIU\' .MAR'rt~R t:u:::cTH.tCIANS IA;';haC:~:..'1 ,.:,t;:t-rl••n 1' 1·11 ,Ol1\4r StJttl•r t ri:tnk ~h11ht•·r 1 Act V tableaux just before the bodies start piling up from the envenomed foil and the poisoned cup. Michael Macliammoir, Louise Prussing and Orson at nineteen. 123 �FAMILY HISTORY Yes, the summer was memorable for a few of us. It was also portentous for posterity and portentous for our town. It saved the lovely old Woodstock Opera House from demolition and thereby saved the small city itself from urban blight. Our building has been designated a National Historical Monument. I reported that fact back on page 66 and said that a restoration drive had been started. Since then a half million dollars has been raised. The center of our town, it's Square, was shown to you in George Shealy's drawing. It is now a mecca for Chicago's wealth when searching for rustic charm or a good meal or fine antique stores. I also gave the florid but accurate prose that Orson wrote for our mailing piece. It started out, y ou may remember: Like a wax fl ower under a bell of glass, in the paisley and gingham county of McHenry is Woodstock , grand capital of mid-Victorianism in the Midwest. Towering over a Square full of Civil War monuments, a band stand and a spring house is the edifice in the picture. This very rust ic and rusticated thing is a municipal office building, a public library, a fire department and, wha t is more to our purpose, an honestto-horsehair Opera House. On those pages y ou can also read how other young actors and actresses destined for future fame (Paul Newman, Geraldine Page et . al.) followed Orson in summer stock in our old Opera House. Also turn to page 77 and read how John Clayton, Todd parent and Chicago press agent extraordinary, saved us from financial disaster when we dared to compete with Chicago's great World's Fair, the Century of Progress. John did it through his influence with society editors and his blatant use of snob appeal. It's a sad comment on human nature and tells the story of that summer which I'll not repeat now. I'll just add one final example of mankind's inherent phoniness: He had us rope off some front-and-center seats, designate this section a "dress circle" and charge a premium price. A few wealthy patrons from our Social Register mailing list paid the extra tab for this nonsense but those who nightly filled this section were, to our amazement, local folk. These knew full well that """--~ --~ - ;-- - ~ the cheap sea~s in the balcony ~ , , were the best m the house both . ~ 1 f r-' acoustically and visually. (For ~ · i:..:::~~¥1 intimacy with the actors, the ~ forward ends were literally "stage boxes.") But Woodstock read the Chicago papers and was intoxicated with the society page palaver. So they dug deep in their wallets and deep in their moth balls for faded finery and for one glorious night when they could "sit down front with the swells." Another feature I didn't mention earlier was the nightly after-the-theater parties. On the Hamlet program you saw a boxed announcement just under 4J 124 that "Production Note" by Hilton Edwards. It's hard to read in miniature but this is what it says: A buffet supper with the cast will be served on the campus of the Todd School after the performance . Reservations are necessary and these may be made at the box office any time before the close of the first intermission. Those suppers were gala newsworthy events under flood lights on the patio between Wallingford and Clover Halls. Lasting for hours, most of them turned into nightclub experiences. Our own cast, all exhibitionists, would start things off but usually the ball was carried by visiting celebrity guests. Even the taciturn Thornton Wilder was persuaded to talk. De Wolf Hopper did his Casey at the Bat for us one night, possibly for the last time ever. He died the next year. Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, a harried Hortense was thinking up new inducements to persuade temperament al cooks to stick it out for the season while gulping coffee to fortify herself for gushing " goodnights" to guests before taking up her now-unt il-dawn chores of preserving the virginity of a dozen nubile females placed in her care by trustful mothers. Which brings up the subject of Virginia who came to us certainly nubile and probably a virgin. Maloney covers the entire subject with three succinct sentences: Now, for the first time, love entered this busy life. One of the blondest and most beautiful of the girls at the dramatic school was Virginia Nicolson , the daughter of a well-to-do and socially impeccable Chicago family . Before the summer was over she and Welles were engaged. That Christmas he married her. - - - Virginia became a Todd student because she'd heard of our summer plans through our own girls, Joanne and Bette. All three were five-day-a-week boarders at Miss Hare's University School for girls in Chicago and all were deep into highschool dramatics there. As Mrs. Jack Pringle, Virginia now lives in London and wrote some paragraphs of reminiscence to Richard France recently when he was preparing his book, The Theater of Orson Welles. I was one of twenty prospective students Orson auditioned. He paid special at tention to me because I recited a long passage from "Henry IV" and he promptly thought I knew a lot about Shakespeare. Yes Virginia but you're a big girl now and know full well that if Orson paid special attention to you in your first meeting it was because of your shape, not your Shakespeare. Those "auditions" were preliminary to the extract ion of payment from parents. Anyone who had five -hundred big depression-time dollars also had a child with a talent we were anxious to develope. After your marriage you learned these financial facts of life fast. You recounted some when describing your early days in New York: - I �FAMILY HI S TORY We found a basement room on Riverside Drive for seven dollars a week. It was dark and airless and the bathtub was literally under the mattress. We ate our meals at the Automat. Coffee and bread which we spread with all the free condiments provided. Finally Orson got a radio spot on the March of Time. After the program we found that actors were paid by check which would be mailed later. We literally didn 't have a dime. I approached the producer and asked for an advance. Orson almost died of shame but we got it. It is typical of his optimism that he decided to spend it on a huge meal at Twenty One. That was really an account of their second try at New York. The chronology of their early struggle is this: Right after that hectic summer in Woodstock they were married in New York. Twice. Like our son, Rog, and his girl, Emily, they went through the ritual once for themselves and once for the bride's parents. The Nicolsons were shocked. What would their rich friends say? There must be invitations and announcement formalities. The engraving must designate a suitable address, preferably suburban. Hortense found one for them in New Rochelle where they stayed maybe a month. Orson had a job. He was back with Cornell for her new season. The three plays McClintic had taken on tour the year before would now be shown to Broadway. Brian Aherne had been Cornell's original choice fo r Mercutio and now he was available. Orson had to switch sides in the ancient feud and become the fiery Tybalt. When the run was over he joined the dismal and discouraged hoards of New York actors "at liberty." Thousands were hungry and hopeless in 1935. The couple returned to Woodstock. As a face-saving gesture I gave Orson a " contract." This was a tiny stipend for him to work on a new play which we would jointly own . We bought Virginia a jalopy and rented a country shack for them near Lake Geneva. They both worked to finish up some matters on the Shakespeare books which were just going to press. The next fall prospects in New York had brightened slightly and they decided to give it another try. Here's Virginia's version of their drive and their arrival and their disposal of our jalopy. Her sentences here actually come just before the ones you have already read . In September we bought a car and went to New York. I did the driving as Orson never learned how. It took weeks. We could only get 25 miles an hour. Orson read poetry and Shakespeare's plays aloud to me as we wound our way through the Allegheny mountains in first gear. We arrived at the newly opened Holland Tunnel and were put in the truck lane. It was a Sunday, I remember. We had almost no money, no place to live and no job prospects whatever. We parked the ancient car in a garage in the Waldorf hotel, a fitting end to its life. We found a basement room ... etc. That tale takes Orson out of the womb of Woodstock and into the fin ancial security of a radio star. Such success was inevitable given his voice his dramatic talent and his nation's proclivity back then to huddle nightly around a hetrodyne set. Maloney tells the story t his way: About this time Welles broke into radio broad· casting. From a twenty-dollar engagement that paid a month's rent on a modest place in West Fourteenth Street , he worked up lo the point where he played dozens of roles a week and could afford Lhe house at Sncden's Landing. He played innumerable current-history characters in the radio March of Time, whose officials hailed his rendition of the death of Sir Basil Zaharoff as a truly remarkable characterization. He got engagement after engagement and the problem of getting from one studio to anoiher in time to broadcast became so acute that they used to keep an elevator waiting for him in the R.C.A. Building. He became the Great McCoy. He became the Voice of Chocolate Pudding. Finally he created The Shadow, a highly melodramatic character who becomes invisible and foils criminals over a coast·to-coast network. Our boy had left our home but our parental joys were just beginning. Parental? Well, not exactly. As with Rasey, our other foster son, Orson became more of a younger brother and his love for Hortense developed elemen ts other than motherly. I remember him saying once when he was between wives: "It's my luck that the most desireable woman I've ever met h as to be married to my best friend." That's an appraisal, dear grandchildren, from a connoisseur. It confirms t he one I've been giving you on our beloved matriarch in her seductive youth. Over the decades Orson has repayed in biblical measure (pressed-down-and-running-over) any conceivable debt he ever owed to us or to the Todd School. He's repayed it in treasured companiOnship and in scholarship funds. Hortense, back in the forties, was plagued with a series of operations. Convalescence was usually in California where the weeks would prove equally therapeutic for her devoted nurse, Rita Hayworth, even then a troubled girl. She was sweet and beautifui and trusting but she was also unread and fearful and found life with a super brain difficult. But life, for that poor girl, has always been difficult. Consider: As a child member of " The Dancing Cansinos" she had worked in dingy theaters and on gambling boats hovering off-shore where a demanding father would punish her if, between performances, she failed to catch enough fish for supper. Later she had an even more demanding "father." This was Harry Cohn, the bully of Gower street who put her into red hair and into the tortures of his Columbia lot. Orson, too, was a father figure. But this time, a protective one. He had clout enough to stand up to Cohn and sympathy enough to build up Rita's stage confidence. He even had her singing her own songs. On page 46 I t old of our madness in flying a Piper Cub over the mountain~ to California and Mexico. T he Mexico part was for a joint vacation with the younger couple who had a week off during the shooting of Lady from Shanghai. For this Orson had cast h er in a dramatic role with no dancing and no red hair. You may remember her as Elsa, the elderly yacht owner's wife and seducer of O'Hara, 125 �FAMILY HISTORY the Irish bosun played by Orson. If you've ever seen the picture you'll re~mber at least its frenetic climax in Chinatown and the Funhouse and the pistol duel in the Hall of Mirrors. Hortense and Rita c lown it up in a real Funh~use during the shooting of Lady from Shanghai. Orson makes Rita a blond (and a murderess) in her role as Elsa Bannister in Lady from Shanghai the screech of a whistle that brought three more police on the run. Why? Because his apparel proclaimed the man. Or, rather, proclaimed a sailor boy from the nearby navy base. His arms were cruelly twisted and he was subjected to verbal indignities simply because he was wearing his Lady from Shanghai costume. This was the navy peajacket and T-shirt of Michael O'Hara, the bucko bosun on the Bannister yacht. Orson's anger for the next few days can be imagined. His sputtering was to us, not to the authorities. He had scorned to tell them his name. His indignation was over the fact that young Americans in service could be so demeaned and so brutalized. It took days for his lawyer to persuade him to forget it; that he couldn't possibly win; that any complaint in the courts or in the press would end in the assumption by the public that Welles had once again been involved in a newsworthy drinking escapade. In mitigation of the military police and . their brutal treatment of American boys on a binge ' it should be noted that these amateur lawmen have a tough and thankless job. Thousands of their fellow · servicemen crowd into Tijuana every weekend. Most become drunk. Many become obstreperous. Writing of shared vacations reminds me that two years earlier we had spent weeks with the same couple in Mexico City and Veracruz. It was 1945. Rita's child, Rebecca, and Horty's grandchild, Todd, had just been born and the families were celebrating. Orson at the time was deep into politics and into liberalism. In the fall he had helped F.D.R. gain that fourth term by trouncing Dewey. Now he was writing, even on vacation, three columns a week for 1 the St. Louis Post Dispatch syndicate. A month earlier he had conferred with the ailing president back from Yalta where, with Churchill and Stalin he had roughed out plans for a United Nations' organization. These plans would be expanded in Dumbarton Oaks and consummated in San Francisco and Orson would attend both of the conferences as a reporter. A folder in our Welles file is labled Speeches and contains several he made in those days. One, headed Moral Indebtedness, is a sermon that was reprinted widely in the liberal and the leftish press. The copy I have is the original I typed out for him to read. I don't mean I wrote it. Far from it. It's pure Welles and his original draft had been a sort of an Abe Lincoln back-of-an-envelope penciling on some sheets of hotel stationery. Even my typed version has some last minute changes he penciled in. It begins: I One memory of that vacation is of Orson getting mugged ; at least roughed up by our military police in Tijuana. It was like this: We drove Rita's car to Encenada, a beach resort two hours below the border. Finding the sand was firm enough to land a light plane, I took the bus back to L.A. and brouitht down our little three-place Piper "Supercub." E~er since t he night Orson ran our Essex up the guy wire of a Woodstock electric light pole he has disliked driving a car. But he enjoys controlling a plane once it is air-borne. Of course. Everyone does who has ever tried it. It's simple; it's relaxing; You sorta play God up there among the clouds. So we explored the coast and inspected the international border where "wetbacks" walk dry shod into our promised land. Coming back to Beverly Hills I was in the Cub instead of the car when the fam ily stopped for customs in Tijuana. Only Hortense had anything to declare and she was ushered into a building. When her stay seemed overlong, Orson started in to see if she needed help. He was stopped by a belly punch from an MP night-stick and a growled: "Not here, Buddy! You use the side door." His anger and his insistance on seeing his friend who had used this door set off 126 My part in this free meeting is to say j ust this : To be born free is to be born in debt; to live in free· dom ~ithout fighting slavery is to profiteer. Skipping to the next page, he says: The scaly dinosaurs of reaction will print it in their newspapers that I am a communist. Communists know otherwise. 1 am an overpaid movie producer �[ I I . FAMILY HISTORY with pleasant reasons to rejoice - and I do - in the wholesome practicability of the profit system. I'm all for making money if it means earning it. Bu t surely my right to having more than enough is cancelled if l don' t use that more to help those that have iess. Thjs sense of Humanity's interdependence antidates Karl Marx. l Then he proves his point by quoting the Bible and this brings up a fact in our relationship : Orson was my superior in 'Shakespearean scholar· ship but I was his authority on Hebrew history, at least as delineated in the rolling phrases of the King James version which we both loved. During the years of his political writing -- columns, speeches, broadcasts -- I got constant calls in weird hours of the night asking the location of some Bible passage he partially remembered and wanted to use accurately in illustrating a point. I might not know the answer but I had reference material at hand (mainly a Bible Concordance) to give us chapter and verse. I remember his disappointment once when he asked where he could find the follow-up to the line: "Canst thou cast out Leviathan?" I could tell him this passage came near the·end of the dramatic poem which is the book of Job but I had to point out that its implication was not what he hoped. He was writing a column castigating malefactors. The great beast Leviathan, however, didn't represent malefaction ; it represented the power of God. But my subject was his Chicago Stadium speech made fifteen months before Hitler's end. Here's its close: I would dig deep into his war record of inspirational writings and radio speeches. He was never in uniform. His draft board didn't like his flat feet or his other multiple ailments but he was offered a commission which he turned down. Foolishly, I thought. His rationale: " I'll clean latrines if that will help win the war but I won't wear braid to do magic tricks for soldiers." Then he went to Washington to offer his services as a civilian and wrote back: " I get nowhere. The incompetents are afraid I'll show them up; the good men are afraid I'm irresponsible." Let's get back to family matters: We have a file of our old Christmas cards. Some were drawn by Orson. W ell yes-t~;n9$ look-- or 80 they 8ay. But Merry C'hristmas The architects of an enduring peace must be capable of hope. They must believe in people - jn all the people. God grant them steadfast hope and the rest of us enduring patience for we must not expect from any leadership a readymade millenium in our time. We strive and pray and rue for what will be here when we're gone. Our children's children will be the parents of a truly free people. To these generations sleeping in our loins we send our greeting: Be of good heart our children! The fight is worth it. · The date of t hat meeting -was February 11, 1943. You, Pamela, were born that night while your grandmother, who had promised to babysit with your sister, was sitting instead on a speaker's platform next to Paul Robeson, the actor, orator and singer who shared top billing that night with Orson. The meeting was sponsored by an organization called United Nations Committee to Win the Peace. I was on that platform for no good reason but Hortense had top credentials. She had been active in the several movements back then which were striving for a " just peace" and had been a speaker, along with Norman Thomas, on the stage of the Chicago Opera House. His speech then carried the the same title as his book: War - No Profit, No Glory, No Need. If I should ever write that book on Welles (instead of this family chapter which grows too long) Here's an early one showing a harried Headmaster, his desk piled with Depression-time bills and his artist wife aghast at the youthful melee that surrounds her. While making his drawing he composed a verse. We didn 't use this but I saved it: I'd like to be a dramatist and write a lot of plays; I'd like to be a wastrel and squander all my days; I'd like to be an actor and wear putty on my nose; I'd (Jke to be a playboy and wear expensive clothes; I'd like to be an artist and paint the pretty girls; I'd like to be a wise man and drop some nifty pearls; I'd like to be a genius and have a windsor tie; I'd like to be a poet and send my thoughts on high; I'd like to be a Rajah and I'd love to be a God And I'm grateful that I wasn't born Headmaster here at Todd. 127 �FAMI L V HISTORY 1940 was the year Orson signed off as our Christmas card artist. I'm sure of the date because of a telegram I just found in the file. It comes from Hollywood and reads: YOU SAY YOU WANT FOUR HORSES. I WISH I COULD DRAW ONE. SEND REASONABLE SUGGESTION OR SEE YOUR SON IN LAW. WELLES, NOT REMINGTON. Translation: Earlier he had asked what he should draw this year. I answered sugi~esting he turn our ancient Buick into a yuletide tallyho with me driving four horses from the roof and Harty blowing the horn astern. I remember the details because Hascy did draw this for us and it was a masterpiece. Too bad I can't find a copy to show here but J['l! substitute some other Wellesiana. IThe adult Orson is sientimental birthdavs and holidays. 1about Here's one of his huge fourcolor valentines redluced to a miniature. And below is an Easter greeting to tbte same gal via postcard. And here's one of Orson's own Christmas cards. The date is 1952. His Othello film had won the Grand Prix at Cannes and was now showing in London. His Moor was magnificent and our friends from the Dublin Gate played other leads. MacLiammoir was Iago; Edwards, Brctbantio. This is a ' ~hoto of course with the bunt- "' mg and the snow and the christmas trees added by Orson. Maybe now is the time to bring up th1e touchy subject of why this "son" so devoted\ to his "parents" can also be the father so seemingly indifferent to his children. And maybe the operative word here is seemingly. It's true that Orson has had little adult contact with his oldest daughtur, Christopher, one of that galaxy of our grandchildren to whom I pen this posthumous message. It's possible 128 that the semi estrangement of these two we love may be our own fault. Ours and others. We all goofed back there in the fifties. It was like this: Chrissy was taken from our home when her mother married for the third time and moved to Johannasburg. Now life for our girl became a succession of boarding schools. First these were in South Africa. Later they were in Switzerland and Orson could plan vacations with his daughter in such exciting places as St. Moriti and London. ·I have a letter, Chris, from your adoring father back then singing the praises of your beauty and your brains and how you charmed his co-workers, Laurence Olivier and Danny Kaye. But into this Eden comes the apple. Not the sweet Biblical apple of knowledge but the bitter Greek apple of discord and of gold. Money, we've been told, is the root of all evil. It was the root of this estrangement. Money and misunderstanding. Orson's. Christopher's. Ours. Virginia ordered the visits stopped. Orson petitioned Hortense to intercede in his behalf. Hortense felt powerless and Orson felt deserted. Even in a recent letter I find this sentence: "I've often felt (or imagined) a small damp cloud of disapproval moving occasionally between me and the Florida sun." But enough of explanations. The important thing now is to heal that breach between the two. This will surely happen and we'll die happier if we can live to see it. What I must live to see is the completion of this book. Years have slipped by since I started assembling material. Now the calandar reads June, 1977. It's time for that annual trip North. But a trip to a bindery must come first. Piles of loose printed sheets that now fill a storeroom must become the albums that have been promised to our huge family. i'rinting is complete except for this chapter on Orson which grows overlong. It's difficult to stop because the old files are fat and that book I said I'd never write tries to write itself. Now there's a new folder in the file that's labled "Tallahassee." We went to that town :last week to appear in a "Salute to the Mercury Theatre." This was a video taped talk show forming part of an oral history project being produced by The Charles MacArthur Center for the American Theatre, an organization funded in part by Charlie's rich brother and headed by Helen Hayes. It was staged at Florida State University and the tapes will be available to other students and scholars. They have produced three former programs covering The Yiddish Theatre, Women in the Theatre and The Actors Studio. Their living-history project iS a noble one which will leave a rich heritage for the future. Think what it would ~ean to us today if we could hear and see conversations in the Mermaid - �FAMILY HISTORY .__ - To close this chapter, let's consider that matter of "truth," the elusive quality considered at the start. Talent for entertainment is partly capacity to concoct a tall tale. Hascy and Orson are the family artists here. Each is a fellow of infinite jest; each a Yorick with constant compulsion to set a table on a roar; each blessed at birth with capacity for fabulous fiction. I would trust either with my life but I never believe a word from either when they start to entertain. I'm looking at a yellowed newspaper, a Sunday Supplement with a story on a bearded twenty-six-yearold who has just produced Citizen Kane. Maurice Bernstein is telling a reporter: Tavern when Ben Jonson and his literary companions talked things over with Will Shakespeare after a performance! The Mercury crowd gathered in Tallahassee consisted of a dozen oldtimers. Orson declined his invitation. Was this because we were paid only expenses plus a modest "honorarium" or was it that his disagreements with Houseman have been only partially healed? As for us, we were glad to go. Partly for the "defense" . of our boy on the off chance he would be treated unfairly. But no. Far from it. The affair turned into a tremendous tribute to t}\e man who seemed to sit there enshrined in a ghostly chair next to his oldtime partner and surrounded by his oldtime companions. Tales were mostly of his leadership and mostly they were told with love. A tremendous tribute; more impressive, in my estimation, than the formalized and televised Hollywood bash given to him by the American Film Institute. For the Hills it was a delightful return to youth although now we find we are considered "legendary characters." Yesterday a thank-you letter came from Tallahassee with this postscript: Orson, from childhood, would continually embelish the truth. As an example, his former schoolmaster, now a close friend and co-author, recently spent evenings with him in the Chicago Public Library doing research. The Skipper, as he is known to all, is an impatient man and the elevator operator there is provokingly de· liberate, Probably under order~, he strolls the marble staircase of his rotunda waiting for his huge lift to collect a load. One night, Skipper motioned Orson into the cage, closed the door, and stole the elevator for a ride to the fifth floor book room where the pair vanished into the stacks. That was the end of the actual incident but the last time I heard Orson's story, passengers had been added, One was going to have a baby and she did, between floors, with Skipper acting as midwife. He had to maneuver the cage up and down for an hour because the operator had enlisted the aid of the police. An understandable embellishment of basic truth. That irate black man, shouting deprecations, did come rushing helpful to the Center if you would write a formal letter up those stairs before our frightened eyes and it was touch expressing your approval of the kind of historical documentation we are doing in these "Salutes." A testimonial of and go whether we would reach our lofty hiding place in this nature could be profitably included in the final report to time to avoid him and the constabulary he was invoking. the endowment and might be effective in our getting Another item from the same file is harder to explain: another grant for the continuation of The American Theatre Hentage Series. It was Christmas vacation. Harty and I were returning to I answered with some sentences about the our hotel room after the theater. The clerk handed us a Mermaid Tavern similar to the ones I've just written letter reading: PAL¥&R Hew n Dear Dad. I'll be at Uncle John's office. Call here. Then after mailing I bethought me of a Tavern oa.r..oo /'J me there. They wouldn't let me in. Found r_1 ~tt-.,,. /Ci'a..R " " sketch · Orson had drawn iong years ago for our ;5 1 1 ./ a W in my hat. I've been through the mill Shakespeare books. Here it is along with a para• ~ ~( ~ but my middle name, Watson, found me out. /tJ! //.,.,,, y , Lovingly, your son, Orson, graph from my biography. Bewilderment from Hortense. "Now what in the world Yea, the young man had "arrived." Juat as you or I might have considered we had arrived the moment our work wu de· is that mad boy talking about-?-?-!" To me, no mystery. nounced by Playwright George Bernard Shaw, and eulogized by Orson's penchant for dramatics, on or off stage, is pervaEdito~ W~am Dean Howells. We can think of young Will now u taking his place among that galaxy of wonhies-the brightest sive. He had wanted to get in our room. Maybe to use the ever to shine under any literary typewriter I'm prone to travel with. Said he was our son. firmament-at the round table of the Mermaid. Here in the Was asked for identification. When 0-W was discovered in grandfather of all town club& hii; hat, he could have amended his claim to that of foster (it waa only a few years later son and proved it by a phone call to my office. But that that they were voting formal membership in coffee house would have been too easy. And spoiled all the fun. If you "have the time and the inclination, it would be - groups) foregathered such lights as Marlowe, Beaumont, Fletch· er, Burbage, and "O rare" Ben Jonson. Here mayhap was con· ceived Eve-ry Man !n His Hu· mour and here Burbage argued h ia interpretation of Shylock. Here, it is pleasant to imagine, after a aoul·aat:Ufying venison puty and over a flagon of malmay, were born those enchantingly wistful lines, "Drink to me only with thine eye&-" Here was the age's London center-yea, its world center of wit, wisdom, creation and criticism. Were I granted, by aome gracious genie, the opportunity to spend one hour in any spot and time in hi.story, I ahould choose not the splendor of that evening at Thermopylae, not the hour of the ~ttysburg addre&s, but that gathering at the Mermaid Tavern after the World Premiere of Hamlet. l Let's turn now to the essential truth that was in the boy and is still in the man and is why I told you I would implici~ly trust hi~. We were visiting Orso~ and his preI sent. wife, Paola, m Hollywo~d. He had Just done his movmg portrayal of Darrow m the Leopold-Loeb trial and it was the time of that quiz show frenzy in the fifties. The tragedy of young Van Doren and his complicity in fraud on the Sixty-Four-Thousand-Dollar-Question had not yet surfaced. Orson said he had been proposit ioned to participate. He told them he was no good at answering such factual questions and they told him not to worry; they would see to- it that he was indeed good. His indignation was monumental; he turned them down in anger. I 129 �FAMIL V HISTORY My reaction, I blush to confess, was l~ ~o~le. I said "Of course it's rigged and everyone knows lt s ngged because it's show biz. But you 're a showman so why not?" Orson's response: "I'm ashamed of you, Skipper. People don't know it's show business. They think they're watching a super brain cogitating. It's cunning deception of the gulible. So it's vicious and it's something I won't sink to." * • * • • • • • • What I failed to solve was the problem of that brilliant red gore Orson insisted must gush from his neck during the final stab wounds. "Simple," he said. Max Factor sold a "blood" routinely used in technicolor fights. Then he wrote out these instructions: This liquid could be kept in the armpit of the costume. A tube will lead up to the neck where the stab.s sh°,uld occur..When t~ese start, your actor, like the wlley Scot Vllth hlS baq of air, can eiect the contents by compressing his elbow. The first fracture in our fifty-year friendship was recent and it was minor. It was also inevitable once I agreed Damned if it didn't work, too. But 0 woe! Down to join him in a movie venture. Dead Reckoning is a sea- there in the depths, it came out green! going thriller involving two yachts that meet in mid-ocean There was more. Oh , so much more to tell of with subsequent murder and mayhem. Ever since our boy that weird week. But no more space left for the became famous I had resisted the pitfalls of "partnership." telling. Ask me at the start of some long winter His file is filled with his temptings along this line. One evening. Or get me to screen for you a few of the example is a letter received back in the days when I was turning over Todd responsibilities to Roger G. Orson has out-takes. ********** plans to produce a technicolor Ulysses and proposes that I Two years later an Orson phone call caught up come to Egypt, build boats and direct a second unit filmwith us on the farm at Leaf River. Dead Reckoning ing much of the nautical voyage. He will be ashore doing again. But now I was facing an operation and feeling the Ithaca scenes with Penelope and the suitors. Later he infinitely old. For the first time a firm no was given will join us for the odyssey footage needing the hero him- to the lad we love. The rest was silence ... A letter to self. His letter ends: " Tell Hortense we'll borrow Chrissy his London addre~ came back " Return to sender." and hang our stockings on the pyramids." This meant merely that he was in parts unknown. His recent saga of the sea, Dead Reckoning, was started When a Variety story placed him in Hollywood, I in the Adriatic. He played the villain and cast Lawrence wrote again, enclosing pages of this opus. His answer Harvey and Oja Kodar as co·stars. His first message of was immediate and lengthy. Here are selected paradistress came from Yugoslavia. One of his rented yachts graphs: was no longer available. I must find a duplicate and help But what the hell do you mean by the question "are you still sore him finish up in Miami waters. I tell him there are no at me?" I qobbled up the section on Todd School History before empty horizons near Miami but he and his crew might come goinq to sleep last night and was delighted to see that your hand has lost none of its cunning when there's a pen in it. On thi.! evidence, to the Bahamas. "Send me a picture of the boat you must you are still enjoying a triumphant command of your faculties and duplicate. I'll make copies and circularize yacht brokers." talents. How therefore, since you are not silly in it, did it enter your But his ketch proved to be of weird design impossible to head that I was, or ever could be, "sore" at you. duplicate. "Never mind " he wires, "We'll shoot around You and Hort are parents to a family so numerous that you must lonq ago have qiven up t.ryinq to count us. For the rest of us any discrepencies." and later: You must find something it's much easier. There are just the two of you. I'd count myself somewhere. Absolutely must come with cast. This is wild lucky if I came into your thoughts half a dozen times in a decade cry for help. Even that didn't move me. I was tied tight to but there is scarcely a day when you're out of mine. my own chores of chartering in the Keys. What I finally I leave you with tho assurance that my love, if not the evidence of it is constant as the Northern star and as for you, there is no fell for was his Satanic flattery: I know it's impossible. All Cello~ in the finnarnent. That's God's own sweet truth. I ask is that you pass one of your usual miracles. So I bought miles of film, found a ketch and a camera man Then came the great evening of the Hollywood and arranged a Bahamian rendezvous. He arrived with Oja award. In presenting it George Stevens said: only. Plus costumes for the others. These we would fill Too 'often we me.uure a film only by its bank account. Tonight with local flesh. More accurately, I would fill them. The we measure Orson Welles by his courage and by the intensity of his personal vision. He ha.s combined a mighty will with a child's heart couple departed after a few days leaving me the costumes, to produce for the world a rich leqacy. the camera man and reams of instructions. Orson, it seemed, was committed to a movie in the mountains of And Orson, marching as always to his private Yugoslavia where, with Tito 's army, he was to film the drummer, gave his moving acceptance speech. I have storied resistance of those Partisans in World War II. it preserved on tape for you grandchildren. It inMy problems were more immediate. This film 's climax cludes: is a knife fight under water. Down there the bad guy, This honor I can only accept in the name of all the mavericks. Welles, meets his gory end. Before leaving us, our directorA maverick may go his own way but he doesn't think it's the only star had begun this scene by falling off the ketch and way or ever claim it's the best way except maybe for himself. And sinking beneath the water. Now I must locate a super don't imagine that this raqqle-tagqle qypsy-o is claiminq to be free. It's just that some of the necessities to which I am a slave are swimmer who could fill that huge costume. In Miami, a different from yours. commercial conch diver was found almost big enough and Maverick indeed! Unbranded. Unbrandable. completely dumb enough to believe my assurance that t he dye we must put on his blond hair would soon wear off. Let's not try. 130 - ... -· �] ] ] ] ] ] ] ] ] J ] J ] J ] ~~~~~~~SEA FEVER ~~~~~~~~~~~~~--~~~~~~~~~-s_e_A_F_e_v_e_R [must go down to the Sl'!as again, To the lonely sea and the sky And all that I ask is a tall ship And a star to steer her by. Masefield England 's poet laureate had a boy hood paralleling that of my Canadian father. Each went to sea at sixteen, sailing before-the-mast in Atlantic packets and each shares responsibility for this ancient mariner's sea addiction. Masefield uses my lifelong malady as title for his best known poem. I borrow it from him as title for this chapter. The quatrain above (worn with use but still haunting) headed t he Britisher's collection of verse called Salt Water Ballads which came out when I was seven and came to me when I was crippled and bed-ridden at eight. (See the poor pampered kid pictured on page 59.) Before I left that bed I could spout every one of the sea poet's addictive Jines. Did my own sea fever start t here? Or was it contracted earlier in Michigan from the germs of father envy and father emulatio n? Maybe it's just atavistic yearnings. There's a theory these are latent in all of us from our tidal beginnings. Most of the breed are satisfied by meeting the tide on a vacation's sandy shore but a few feel the primal urge to leave the confines of land and head for the horizon; go off shore alone in the poet's tall ship. Off shore means out of sight of land. Alone means merely a solitary watch ; few of us cruise without a crew. A tall ship is any craft capable of staying at sea with wind for propulsion. The star to steer her by sums up the near-religious ecstasy in the off-shore sailor's noct urnal partnership with God and his universe. Others theorize that man returns to the sea because something is bred into him that requires a figh t, particularly a fight with Nature. This chapter, however, is not to theorize; it is only to itemize; to enumerate for sailing descendants the ships and the trips that have enriched the lives of these ancestors. I'll start with t he end of the story. Then cut back. Pictured here (and on the color cover) is a sunset couple, anchordown in the cockpit of the amazing little "tall ship" that brightened our penultimate years. By actual count Truant II logged over seventy tho usand salty miles in southern waters. Hortense and I sailed many of these, luxuriating with an easterly "trade" on our beam and an auto-pilot at our helm. But most of the long passages to the Bahamas and through the Keys were made by charterers. More on that mercenary aspect later but now let's go back to the beginning. I've told ealflier of childhood sajling on Le1ke Portage and boy hood cruising on Lake Michigan. AJso of youthful motorboat trips between Northern Michigan and Chicago, first with a girl friend and later with a wifE! and infant child. But it was a year later when we acquired our first real cruising "yacht." I had left Ward's. I had agreed to try school work. I was preparing for this by earning a few pedagogy credits. My new job would start at Camp Tosebo. A cruising sail boat, [ reasoned, would enrich that program. If I could buy something cheap and sail it to camp, I co uld prove its wo rth to the King and so get company funds for its operation and rejuvenation. Where am those want-ads from last Sunday's Trib? On Portage Lake with a camp-boy crew .. .. I Left to right: Hor·ty (in her tam). Flora Johnson (with her daughters), Nellie and Noble backed by A.L. and Dolly Gettys 131 �... SEA FEVER bundles of boards unless solidly mallet-caulked.) The only caulking left in Beachcomber was soft mush. Chicago river sewage, actually . It was only calm water and a weekly pump-out that had kept her afloat during the winter. Now our loose bundle was crashing into a head sea; a June "norther" had come up during the night. The first hour we weren't too scared. I remember shouting Kipling to my crew, Roger Bronson and Louie Krug, up forward at the pump. Who hath desired the sea? The immense and contemptuous surges; The shudder, the stumble, the swerve As the star-stabbing bowsprit emerges. But soon that six-inch pump wasn't enough! Water up to the bunks!! One man must get below and toss bucketsfull m to the scuppered cockpit. Exhaustion! At intervals each of us would "rest" at the wheel. To hold our course was suicide. We swung off, put the seas on our quarter and made a three-hour run into Michigan City and onto t he welcome ways of a shipyard. We had learned something of the "gift of grief" Masefield tells us must follow love of ships. Listen: I cannot tell their wonder or make known Magic that will ever thrill me to the bone But.all men praise some beauty, tell some tale, Vent a high mood which makes the rest turn pale, Pour their heart's blood to flourish one green leaf, Follow some Helen for her gift of grief. The bitter battle of that night has been forgotten; the bitter bill from that shipyard lingers in memory. It was the first of a lifetime of such shocks that have dogged our decades. Yard bills are always a multiple of what you expect and often a multiple of what they estimate. You may lessen your physical hazards by limiting your cruising range but no sailor, unless it's a Commodore Morgan ("If you have to ask what it costs, you shouldn't own one.") or an Onassis can escape a monetary Gift of Grief. To..-h o tt.,.,111.. 0~ wr~. GS•"';. ., , .,!lo•• ..1c.ii..·-• 11 I> 132 I had thought to install an auxiliary first thing but that yard bill changed all plans. The summer months were filled with re-rigging and rebuilding (with our labor and Noble's money) and justifying the expense by taking camp-boy cruises to Manitou Island. Docking that 38-foot, five tonner under sail sharpened our skills and may have produced something in the genes that passed down to young Rog' who would later do the same (from pride rather than from necessity) with Todd's 60-foot schooner, Sea Hawk. The second year our old racing craft had power and a few years later was sold for several times what we paid. Horty and I used the money for our first auto trip through New England. We sold the boat at the end of the summer to a Todd boy, Eddie Andre, who had devel oped his own "sea fever" and had an indulgent, widowed mother. Ed turned professional later. He started commercial fishing in the Pacific and when last heard from was operating a wide ranging tuna fleet. He reports no grief but his first boat, Beachcomber, was wrecked that fall on the Wisconsin shore when he foolishly anchored overnight in front of the Andre home near Two Rivers. The mother was relieved and had the boat rebuilt into a beach cottage. -· A generation later ·· another Hill boat on another beach. This sailor and his son grew up summering in "maybe the finest cruising waters in all the world." That extravagant description is a long-ago quote from Herbert Stone, then editor of Yachting Magazine and narrator of cruising experiences in waters as distant and as exotic as Alaska and the South Pacific. The Hill boys' playground, Portage Lake, is at the beginning of this northern wonderland. Chicago yachtsmen need days and miles before they reach beautiful Portage and true cruising country. (Our lake is between Manistee and Frankfort on the map.) When you round "Skillagalee" (Isle aux Ga/ets) you're in the Straits where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron. A stop at Fort Mackinac is a must as is a buggy ride around that island and you should see the "Snows" (Les Che11ea11x Islands) before entering Detour Passage and Canada. Now you are in the fabulous North Channel, an island-dotted sea beckoning you on ninety miles to the narrows at Little Current and its passage into that "sixth Great Lake," Georgian Bay. The granite bluffs of the Cloche Mountains slide past to port and narrow fiords entice you in. The farthest we ever followed this dream was to Parry Sound. There we re.n ted a car to visit Edwin and Kate Embree plus a flock of children and - th eir - summer Iod ge on one o f 0 ntano . 's mynad . 1·n1and lakes. gran dc hildre nm Or you can go the other way; up the St. Mary's to the "Soo," busiest locks in the world, and be lifted eighteen feet into Lake Superior. Ask Joanne about the fog-bound night she was at the wheel and ran us hard aground on Goulai Point, that bulge of Canada that separ· ates Whitefish Bay from the main body of the great Citche Gurnee. Ah, memories! There were still nothing but Hiawatha's descendants up there. All drunk. Hascy will fill you in. He walked all those beach-miles for "help." Hopeless! Finally we remembered Emerson: Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string. We got an hon string of cable and winched ourselves off. - - �" . I SEA FEVER J J ] ] J Another of our ships met a similar end after we sold it. Actually, it was our son's boat. We had mortgaged a farm to loan his group money to buy it. I must tell this tale of Yankee Girl and its eighteen month trip through the tropics with Rog and his wife and his gang. It's an idyllic, happy-ending story of dreams come true. I've begun this chapter, however, with the negative aspect of the sea's frequent ~ "gift of grief" so I'll show you first that proud ship's pitiful end. You see it on the beach at Bimini after a Gulf Stream storm. The picture is from Yachting Magazine. They ran a story on th is wreck and on the colorful history of the schooner. The bones still ·· bleach there in the tropic sun but natives have stripped away all gear and goodies. That broad counter, varnished again, is now the sign in front of The Comp/eat Angler hotel. The entire bow section (Hi Howard's onetime private fo'c'sle) is now preserved in Harcourt Brown's swinging establishment where Adam Powell, Harlem's swinging congressman, long held court. I've tried, with no success, to locate the wheel. I'd give much to have it in the family again. It was a brass-bound beauty and we had taken it off Sea Hawk, young Roger's first love. Here he holds that wheel (along with his new wife) on his new ship. ] ] J ] ' Ii ~ story back into chronologiLet's get our watery cal order. After Beachcomber we bought a 45-foot auxiliary yawl. The only picture at hand of the beamy Iris is this end-of-the-season shot of us both going up the Chicago river. Those masts on deck had been lifted out by a crane at the old Coast Guard station. In those days Waukegan had no haul-out facilities, only miles of coal docks. We would berth our boat there from the end of Camp until late in the Fall. The only winter sailing I've ever done (except in frostbite dinghies) was on December trips down to Chicago. One windy night out of Waukegan we arrived at the river, our rigging and lower sails stiff with ice. Bundled in a parka, I was surprised to find that night-watch held fewer shivers than many midsummer ones in Canada. Today's great shipyard in Waukegan was started by an accident to Iris. This was a gift of grief to me but a gift of greatness to the Larsen family whose generations carry on with a business we started back in 1929. It happened like this: Our Kermath engine needed work and a local shop offered a bargain if I would bring it to their bench. Two weeks later I took a busload of Todd boys over to put it back on its bilge string. But Oh horror of horrors . . .. my ship was sunk!!! (Boy vandals. A seacock was later discovered open.) What to do??? A native suggested I see Old Cap Larsen who ran a little bait and tackle shop near the harbor mouth plus a rowboat renting service. Also he was winter caretaker of the Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company barges that came in for shelter about Christmas each year. "Mebbe I can help ya out" said Cap. "O ur crane pulled a ten-ton truck from twenty feet down last winter." The plan worked. We built a cradle for the hull and I rented a tiny waterfront parcel of land from its owner, The Chicago Bel t Line Railroad. When last I talked to the present Larsen boss, Old Cap's grandson, the corporation was still renting its land but its buildings spread over acres. w~ give up sailing (for a few years) We sold Iris in 1930. From necessity. I was no longer that semi-pro teacher and carefree camp counselor. I was, perforce, a business man in a panic economy . Noble was in California. The stock market had crashed . I had contracted, rashly, for an elaborate swimming pool under glass. We needed every dime we could raise and the boat brought two grand . It was sold to a syndicate of young fellows in Green Bay and was last seen, well cared for, in Sheboygan. We were bringing Roger and Emily's ketch, Yankee Girl JI, home for them after their vacation in northern waters. The mention of Sheboygan gives me an opening to segue into the subject of lumber schooners and my own involvement with them in childhood and youth . They're gone now but still vivid in memory. So turn the page and bear with me: 133 �Portage Lake and its Lumber History An Ancient Lumber Historian Sheboygan is where I met the old captain pictured on the right. "In my youth" is the way he described his pose. He was forty then; he was nearly ninety when we met him, caretaker for the local yacht club. He had dozens of ..._. such photos covering ancient lumber days and ancient lumber hookers. Those pictures, ., plus his memories and his research, had been the basis of the 1947 book, "Great Lakes Sailing Ships." There's a copy Captain Tom Bernsteen,. on our shelves and it's from this Kalmbach Publishing Company volume (out of print now) that I snitch these pictures. Old Torn 's knowledge of the Michigan lumber years was encyclopedic. When I told him I had spent a childhood in the rigging of the famous Isabella B. Sands his eyes lit up. He had been apprentice seaman on that ship. He had worked winters in the logging camp of "Uncle Louie " Sands whose nephew I tell of on page 58. Old Tom sang me a song I had forgotten until Bruce Catton, the Civil War historian, printed its jingle in his recen tly published book on boyhood in Benzonia, Michigan, a village near our summer home. He calls his book "Waiting for the Morning Train." From chapters on the lumber trade I copy this: ---J' One of the biggest companies logging the Manistee River got a bad name because it served baked beans three times a day. The men made up an irreverant song about it, and to th is day there are people around Manistee who can sing it for you, to the tune of " Maryland, My Maryland": Who feeds us beans until we're blue? Louie Sands and Jim McGee. Who thinks that nothing else will do? Louie Sands and Jim McGee. Who feeds us beans three times a day, And gives us very little pay? Who feeds us beans again I say? Louie Sands and Jim McGee. Isabella Sands was Uncle Louie's wife, a reputed beauty, and he named his flagship for her. When Old Tom heard I owned a replica of the schooner, he begged to see it. He was a model-maker himself and later I took it to him for a fifty dollar renovation of the rigging. The day I drove over to pick it up I learned his wife had died the night before. That was circa 1957. Tom, too, must be long gone by now. 134 My childhood was spent on a body of water named when it was ten feet higher than Lake Michigan and when boats and canoes could reach it only by a short "portage" across sand dunes. Before my day it had been lowered to the level of the "Big Lake." A stealthy group, accomplished this engineering feat in a single night. The masked men needed only a little dynamite and a lot of shovels. Once a down-hill trickle had been started, the stream grew to a raging torrent which uprooted trees and tore out a 300-foot channel. The Sands family had hired the lawbreakers and now these lumber barons could expand their Manistee operation to a new schooneraccessible port - Onekama. Soon the federal government was subsidizing Sands and the whole Lake Michigan fleet to the tune of two million. Lumber interests then had all the political clout of railroads earlier and of oil giants now. Uncle Sam, Santa Claus to the rich, developed Portage into a "Harbor of Refuge" for the lumber fleet. Piers were built 500 feet apart so schooners would need no tugs to tack through its channel into shelter from storms. These start in August up in our North Country and many a Michigan night when wind rattled our win· dows a wakeful child-Roger was impatient for the dawn and a rush to a Portage shore for a count of of the hookers that had come in for shelter. My biggest find was a flotilla of fourteen. My biggest thrill was bumming rides on these old beauties: several times over to the slab dock at Onekama; once up past the Manitou Islands and down into deep Traverse Bay to catch Louie Sands' logging railroad back to Manistee. Some pages back I reproduced a long-ago Christmas card that pictured our. h' 1\ . Our model ., .~f. ~h_e Sands . / . ~i.y ··, \' / i' / i ., ~ schooner model and spouted some mock-Masefield poetry. The third stanza stretched the truth. It went: Do I hear your sailors chant, Your peak blocks groan, your bow wash roar? Do I feel that deck aslant Underneath me as of yore? That deck (of the full sized Sands) had indeed been mine as a child but I never knew it aslant; I knew it as a floating museum. Those sounds and those sensations had been mine all right but mine on other old hookers. - 1 �J \ , SEA FEVER j ] ] ] ] ] J IJ LJ IJ The Final Days of my Lumber Luggers Below is the Lucia A. Simpson photographed in 1926 with a deckload of pulpwood out of Petoskey. The picture and the date are from our Kalmbach book. That cargo is probably bound for the paper plant at Manistee. In those years such ships and such loads came regularly to the old Sands dock where his buildings that once turned logs into lumber had started turning cordwood into pulp. I had once known the Simpson well. That was even earlier; in 1916. I was newly wed and working in the Montgomery Ward building that stretched along the Chicago river; the antique ship (built in Manitowoc in 1875) was docked a block away . Its owner-captain was selling off at retail a hold full of potatoes brought down from Beaver Island, the long-ago Mormon stronghold of "King" Strang. Ed Morrissey and I would eat lunch in the captain's deckhouse. A beet and a sandwich for the old Irishman w.as my ticket to renew a lumber-hooker childhood and again thrill to a masthead climb up those fam iliar ratlines. I've put the Simpson picture opposite that of the Sands. This for comparison; this to show the similarity in rigs. Identical. But there's small similarity in the hulls. The Sands has the graceful sheer of the old yacht, America, which so-trounced the British at Cowes in 1851. The hull of the Simpson is, by comparison, little more than a masted scow. ("Sheer" is the longitudinal upward curve of a deck.) IJ 'J IJ 'J IJ IJ IJ I The Simpson burned and sanli in Sturgeon Bay · 1936 Are any of the old fleet left? Could be. In World War One several went to Europe. During the mad Florida building boom of the twenties, many carried lumber to Tampa and Miami. When that bubble burst, they moved on to Cuba. The legend is that some are still alive. I hope so. * * * * * * * * Wanderer - Powerboat Extraordinary After selling Iris we had a decade without a cruising sailboat. Still the family continued to spend weeks afloat each summer. Masefield praises such watery wandering as the vagrant gypsy life. We carried this on in a duplicate of the yacht, Detroit, famous as the first motorboat ever to cross the Atlantic. Tom Day, the skipper, was notorious for his crossings in small sailboats. The Scripps Company commissioned him to design a powerboat to cross using one of their motors and thus prove its reliability . His hull had reserve buoyancy forward to climb seas without pounding and a lifeboat stern to run before them without broaching to. Also Wanderer at Camp Tosebo ~ For close-up - • , see page 63 .......~ that double-end design allowed him to ride out storms on a sea anchor rigged aft. His real problem, of course, was the weight of the fuel necessary; decks were nearly awash as he left New York. Our double of Day's boat came to us from the estate of a deceased Chicago yachtsman. He was a racing sailor but avid for extensive cruising out of his Canadian summer home on St. Joseph Island. For this he had commissioned his duplicate of the Detroit. On his death, Rudder magazine ran a story on his racing record (with wins at Mackinac) and on his history-making power boat. I was intrigued and persuaded the heirs, for tax advantage, to donate the unique vessel to a unique school. Horty and I brought our new boat from Canada to Camp. Wonderful shakedown cruise. Super sex under the open sky. Such is one of the supremes in conjugal sailing. Any pot with both headsail and main can be balanced temporarily for self-steering. But not a power boat. You 're shackled to that wheel. Wanderer, however, was planned for all emergencies. We found a tiller for use in case of steering-cable failure. With ingenuity, spawned of desire, this was cordage-rigged for control from atop that cockpit roof. Voila! We've made many memorable passages through those Straits. That umpteenth honeymoon leads the list. Let others sigh for lost youth. Horty and I will settle for maturity. So much for "stmkpotting" days. Far better than staying ashore. Now let's turn to the finest of all our years afloat: those in Sea Hawk. 135 �-' SEA FEVER Our supership "SEA HAWK" It took Hitler's war and Todd's transition into "Naval Training" to bring our family the nonpareil of )ife afloat. Sure, Todd could have taught those classes in Navigation, including Celestial, ashore. It could have continued teaching Seamanship with small sloops and with Wanderer. But always there had been that hunger for a schooner. Now was my chance. Todd's Board was persuaded to go allout Navy and acquire a "training ship." I found one of John Alden 's famous sixty-footers available. Marvelous. His "sea-kindly" design do minated the off-shore yacht market during the booming twenties and decades thereafter. The great architect's deep-draft hull (available with alternate cabin plans and a choice of sail rigs) kept shipyards busy from coast to coast. In my prejudiced view the schooner rig was his finest and his "cabin plan B" (that of Sea Hawk) his masterpiece. Yes, our overworked galley gal, Hortense, migh t have preferred her cooking facility aft rather than tucked in to that "crew's quarters" up forward. But consider, wife of mine, at what loss of luxury in your living quarters. Aft beside the main com panionway our double stateroom was sybaritic with head and fullsize bathtub!! Bedding down back t here near the cockpit we could, with skylight closed, have privacy fo r connubial pursuits and then, with skylight open, commune with the wind and the stars and t he sea and be privy to everything on deck from the nocturnal conversations of the watch to the rattle of blocks on the traveler . _] The Intimacy of Life Afloat A ship 's activity at sea is continuous. It goes on around-the-clock and it's infinitely fascinating. Sleep is begrudged as waste of beauty. Human relationsh ips are intensified. Facets of personality, hidden ashore, become illuminated. Latent vices and virtues emerge. Virtues, in this primitive life, become essential. I mean those moralities prescribed so stuffily by that shrewd old sinner, Benjamin Franklin. You remember his list: industry, honesty, selfreliance, foresight, prudence ... How I wish I had them all. But I wax pontifical. Enough of philosophy. (I gave my sea-going sermon on page 93.) Now back to my narrative. I I l ' Here's your wonderful grandmother, young at 55, who met the advent ure of sailing (as she now meets the adventure of dying ) with fortitude and with humor, qualities nurtured out there by the wind and the rain and the stars and the sea. Hi Howard eats his lunch on the deck above our stateroom. Down that dark·looking companionway are two other staterooms to starboard. Then comes the main cabin as pictured on the next page. Then galley and crew's quarters in the fo'c'sle. 136 The Yankee-Girl Saga Roles changed during the Sea Hawk era. I was demoted from captain to passenger; a prideful passenger because a son was capable of command at seventeen. Tosebo parents now let him sail their sons, with councilors as crew, to and from Chicago. With Todd classmates, he developed his dream of circling the world under sail. So what? Most any -_ { youngster, put in any floating craft, fi nds such fancy. What counts is turning fantasy in to fact; translating dream into reality. The Yankee Girl Saga starts in Sea Hawk. Let's go back. - �SEA FEVER J J j TI1e Pact of Lake Michigan It is past midnight in the middle of Lake Michigan. Hortense and I are in our "captain's stateroom." Nine Todd seniors (the class of 1944) are in the cockpit. The group has chosen to substitute this cruise for the customary bus trip to Washington. It is June 6. A fresh breeze is on our quarter and the schooner careens down t he swell on a rumb line (198° True) between Grand Haven and Waukegan. The entire class stays on watch and the ,. been underway all night. One hundred and fifty thousand men in LST's and supporting vessels have crossed the channel in heavy weather. They have breached most of the enemy's defenses. Air cover has been complete. Only at Caen has a Panzer division turned our forces back. The long awaited D-Day has come. That was at three o'clock our time. Further bulletins continued. Sleep was out of t he question. We changed course; went into Racine for breakfast and a day of happy slumber at a coal dock. After graduation, the class told me what my cockpit eavesdropping had earlier taught me, the details of their grandious plan. Thousands of dollars had been subscribed; none collected. It would start accumulating soon, they said, and once in hand would cover all expenses of outfitting and living. All they needed was a ship. Could they use Sea Hawk for maybe two years and would I join them for part of the time? I concealed my envy, hid my supercilious smile, lied, and said " I think we can work something out. " I had no faith but great empathy. I, too, had dreamed that improbable dream. I had been heartened, if not helped, by a relative, Uncle Joe. I told of this, I think, back there someplace. Oh yes, on page 43. I'm in college. I've had a few things published. I'm telling this talented and alcoholic editor-uncle my Quixotic South Sea project. Thus: I sounded out my important uncle on the possibility of financing my own dream ship; on my own world cruise; by writing my own book. Mad fantasy. The mellow man didn't even smile. Just ordered up i talk is of financing their planned future afloat. It must be far in the future because a war is on and all are young and service-obligated. But Hitler's star has started down; Rommel is defeated in Africa; ANZAC troops are island-hopping t he Pacific. Most of our group are signed for officer-training which will defer combat for awhile. They decide on a target date for their adventure: 1948. Each will sign a pact o bligating him to contribute $250 a year for fou r years. This will go into a one-way pot with no refunds to any who back out. Optimism oozes. I hear Rog say: " I can persuade the Old Man to let us have Sea Hawk. He'll be a push-over if he's let in on part of t he trip." At 0300 (that's nine in t he morning in London ) the radio (it's been giving us Guy Lombardo) crackles out: Attention! This is the office of the Supreme Allied Command. General Eisenhower announces Normandy landings have another beer, laced it with a shot from his pocket flask and belched up a Why not. Only finance it with magazine articles instead of a book. He'd arrange it with his good friend, Sam McClure. I knew what had loosened the avuncular tongue but I wanted to believe so I did. All this, of course, was pre-Hortense. Soon the lad would turn to other fantasies, feminine based. But these kids were made of sterner stuff. At t he end of a year they had two grand in the bank. I was forced to take· them seriously. I was also forced to disillusion them about their dear love, Sea Hawk. Beautiful she was; comfortable she was; sweet-sailing she was but sound she was not. I had never admitted what I had newly learned about the old gal: her backbone, from stem to horn timber was becoming soft. Still fit for fresh water where a day's sail would bring her to port; unfit for long passages in the Pacific. The cousins, Rog and Ross, were difficult to dissuade. They hired a marine architect to make a survey and estimate a repair. The answer: a sound and suitable ship could be boueht on either the East or the West coast for less 137 �• SEA FEVER • ~ for the cover of a Camp Tosebo catalogue and as the focus for a quotation from the poet of Portland, You remember his song about his city-by-the-sea _ and the haunting lines which end each verse: "A boy's will is the wind's will/ And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." On the right you see the same boy grown up, captain now of a seagoing vessel, his middle-aged parents happily moving aside. Plans for that Round-the-world voyage were indeed formalized during a long night-watch on the deck of Sea Hawk and by a Todd-boy group who were entering manhood, Still, the genesis of the idea was our son's when he was a child, dreaming a child's "long, long thoughts." I posed this picture of him back then, putting him on the same Lake Michigan pierhead that h;id generated my own boyhood dreams of far off horizons. I planned the shot Grade School "Sea Cadets" relax in the main cabin after their ',J ·-.,,' .I ' Morning muster on deck I ' .... I Hauled out at Larsen's in Waukegan . /~ -~ 138 - I ' - �SEA FEVER J ] money. Horty and I said we would mortgage our farm and help them buy. They could sell at the end of their trip Md repay us. So our search began. Rog went to California. I went to New England. Ross was in the Merchant Marine Academy at King's Point. We scouted the nearby yards on Oyster Bay and City Island. We contacted every American broker. A Capital Ship for an Ocean Trip \ J ] Yankee Girl was pu<chased with the gaff rig (left) that had won a Bermuda race. We cut down the canvas and re-rigged her as the staysail schooner below. ] ] ] ] ] ] ] ] ] ] A Grantland Rice photo of the boys leaving Bermuda for Barbados. Emily and Hortense would follow by plane. We found Yankee Girl in Stonington, the seventeenth cent ury harbor on upper Long Island Sound near Mystic. Our friend Irving J ohnson, world's foremost living sailor, was not entirely enthusiastic over our choice. For his own world voyages with students he had chosen a North Sea pilot boat and had a certain prejudice against anything labeled a "yacht." He had been advisor to the boys on t heir project since spending a week in our Woodstock home. We were working then in the Todd Sound Studio making his now famous film lecture "Around the Horn in a Square Rigger". For this we used, as an introduction, some of his fabulous color movies taken on his Yankee voyages and added sound to his 16mm black and white footage taken in his youth (1929) on one of the last square riggers to make that difficult passage. He made it in fierce storms and the New York Times said of our film: "One of great documentaries of all time; living history that can never be duplicated for the last working square rigger has gone to the scrap heap." This is the Peking, largest sailing ship in the world in 1929 and one of the last commercial square riggers to round the horn. Pictures are from Irving's first book which had the same title as our film. On the right is the young author waving to you from a yardarm nearly two hundred feet above the deck. He was on winter leave from his summer job on the yacht Charmain and he had with him one of the earliest 16mm cameras plus thousands of feet of black and white film. For more on this film, I'll save myself some typing by turning to scissors and a paste-pot. Here's a paragraph from the booklet I published for paying customers back when we were in the charter business. Most clients, after signing on the dotted line, would write asking for "a few suggestions" as to how and where they should plan their cruise. Answering about twenty-five such requests a yea.r with no secretary became intolerable. (One learns in retirement that the girls really did all the work.) Anyway, I turned to the printing press; gave full instructions on meeting clients in Miami ; told them where they should order their charts and their Cruising Guide to the Bahamas. Then I published my own Cruising Guide to the Keys because nothing satisfactory was in print. This is still in demand by members of our Coconut Grove Sailing Club. Any· way, here's one paragraph from that publication. It was headed AN EVENING IN OUR HOME. If you are a dedicated sailor, you should find this enjoyable. Ours is a seagoing family of five generations. This started with my Nova Scot ia grandfather and has continued to our grandchildren. Two of these are, at this writing, yachting across the Pacific. My wife, Hortense, enthusiastically joined this clan after shaking off an early fear and aversion. Few women alive today have bounced and cooked their way over as many thousands of miles of ocean. In addition to talk possibilities, our. home has a unique 16mm movie set-up where we project thru a wall onto a sound screen that pulls down out of a beam. This means that showing films involves no trouble beyond choosing a subject and flicking a switch. Irving Johnson left with us some �SEA FEVER of the beautiful films of his brigantine Yankee round-the-world voyages with college studHnts. These were made before he and his charming wife moved to Europe and built their new. cimal· adapted Yankee which has been featured so often of late in National Geographic. Also we could show you the only print in existence (except those at the Mystic Marine Historical Society} of the famous documentary, "Aro und the Horn in a Square Rigger." This was take n by Irving in his youth on one of the last square ri~1gers ever to ro und the Horn. His fantastic shots taken 200 feet above a ship wallowing in an arctic storm are ones that had never been taken before and ones that can never be duplicc1ted. On one yardarm in this howling blizzard WE! see forty men "laying aloft" in a struggle to 1raise (and thus furl) one sail . The reason I happen to have a print of this old black-and -white masterpiece is that I added the sound to it ( lrvii ng's lecture) for the Mystic Museum. This is a frame froim our amazing documentary film. Forty men are stnJggling to furl one sail. Twenty are seen here to starboard. An equal number are to port. That's not the mast you see on the left. That's our sound track, the vibrations of the Johnson vo ice. Read Dana's description in Two-Ye<1rs-Beforethe-Mast of a similar Cape Horn expe1rience. His watch was kept aloft for two hours furliing just one sail. Here's an excerpt from his chapter. The yard over which we lay was cased with ice. It blew a perfect hurricane with allternate blasts of snow, hail and rain. We had to fist the sail with bare hands. No one could trust himself to mittens for if he slipped he was a gone man. We needed every finger ~God had given us. Several times we got the sail up on the yard but it blew away again before we could secure it. Frequently we were obliged to leave off altogether and take to beating a hand upon the sail to keep fingers from free•~ing. Wooden ships and iron men! I've heard my father tell the same tale but his yardarm struggle was off Newfoundland , not Cape Hom. (For a picture of one of the square-rigged ships the young Canadian sailed on turn back to page 61.) * * * * * * What's happened to my story of t he Yankee Girl? I've turned, someway, from the"watE~ry wanderings of the Hills to those of the Johnsons. Maybe 140 r This is a Christmas card from Djakarta. Other greetings and letters over the years are treasured in our files. Irving stayed with Roger and Emily recently when he was lecturing nearby. because I started the tale on an auspicious date, July 4th, 1976. America was cHlebrating her twohundred th birthday. On televiision we watched Operation Sail, that fleet of the world's last squareriggers, all school-ships now, pa1rading through the New York Narrows and up the Hudson. We were tuned to CBS where Walter Oronkite had Irving Johnson to brief us on a thrilling look into our past. This friend is the foremost sailor alive today and I admit to hero-worshippin1g the amazing guy and the fascinating lecturer whos:e youthful enthusiasms bubble out of his advancing years. Mostly I admire his sk ill at his trade in vvhich he combines derring-do with caution. Long ago when I took him sailing on Sea Hawk he rebuk<ed me with these words: "Roger, you must get rid of those portholes in your topsides. Replace them with deadlights. A knock-down with them open could sink your ship." He was right of course and his record of millions of accident-free miles with youthful passengers (and with his infant childrem) is proof of his foresight. Compare his record with those who have followed in his wake. First, there's Mike Burke of Miami who operates his " barefoot cruises" in the Caribbean. He's had a series of disasters starting with the Christmas card ship pictured above. He bought the Yankee after the Johnsons had shifted their operation to Europe and he piled the beautiful b~igantine up on a reef for a total loss. Our friend , Kit Sheldon, had greater tragedy. He had sailed with the Johnsons on an early Yankee voyage. He became - - - �J J ] ] ] ] ] ] SEA FEVER enamored of the gypsy life and persuaded his oilrich father to set him up in a similar business. He found a similar North Sea pilot vessel, married a similar enthusiastic wife and recruited a sim ilar crew of paying youngsters. But he drowned his wife and half his crew!! This because of a knockdown squall in the Gulf of Mexico and his fai lure to have his companionway closed. His ship was on its beam-ends just long enough to fill and sink. With the half dozen youngsters who were not trapped below, he survived in a dinghy until picked up. Grief-stricken, he joined the Peace Corps. But sea fever returned and a few years later his parents invited us to inspect a new schooner and a new crew fitti ng out here in the Merrill-Stevens shipyard. T wo years later we were at a dinner party with his parents when a message came that his sh ip had been burned off Africa! Some were hospitalfaed but no one was drowned. I could go on recounting the sea's gift of grief to the over-confident and to the under-prepared. I could go on recounting examples of the Johnson meticulous care. Irving and Electa have spent a lifetime afloat. Literally. Raising babies, inspiring young folks, entertaining envious stay-at-homes. They have known continuous adventure and repeated hazard. But no tragedy . An amazing record. A million yachtsmen are in their debt. This seagoing family is doubly so. Honeymoon in the Tropics A few pages back I told of that midnight Pactof-Lake-Michigan. To my surprise, each signatory of the document lived up to his committment. No, all of them didn 't hold to the dream and go a-roving. Several, after second thoughts, pulled out and lost their original ante. Wise moves, maybe. Take just George Sensibar: Like others in that prepschool class, he h ad a career waiting for him if he would only hew to an orthodox line. His father's gargant uan engineering projects were world -wide. One example: Chicago's Outer Drive System. He had dredged out of Lake Michigan all of that land now East of Sheridan Road. This old friend , J acob-thegenius, is now dead and his son is President of the great Sensibar Enterprises, Inc. But someone else migh t hold that seat today had George spent his young years cooling a wanderlust. What finally modified the project was the Korean War. Even before this !broke out the group was reduced to eight and they lhad decided to head first for Africa, not the South Seas. This on the advice of the Johnsons. We were fitting out in Mystic, Connecticut. Irving and "Exy"', home from their seventh world trip, would often bring their brigantine into the dock at the Ma:rine Museum's "Restored Seaport." Below on Yan)~ee, gathered around that great swing-table and in front of those curtained bunks for sixteen, we heard this advice: "Most groups like yours find they can't take the tight confinement of a small ship for months on end. Tahit i is filled with bargaiin yachts ab andoned by the disillusioned. They've c:ome down wind; return is difficult. We suggest you go t he other way. Africa is the coming continent. Sail first to Europe. Then if you find you can stand yourselves in close quarters, continue. Or, if wanderlust has been appeased , you have an easy return -- down wind to the Caribbean and up the Gulf Stream for home. " By late August we were ready to sail. Tons of canned food bulged the bilges. A year's supply. The boys had taken a Todd bus to Manhattan and, with Todd credit, filled it at wholesale. Business-like to the end, they gave me a check to repay the School, showed me their paid-up insurance on the ship and then gave me a shock when I saw the bottom line of their ledger. Their funds wern exhausted or nearly so. My anguished cry: "Good God, kids, you can't start out nearly broke!" Their Captain's reply: "Don't worry, Dad. We've planned everything. We 'll earn our dough as we g0i along." I countered with: "Let's talk it over with t he Johnsons. We're both guessin g. They know the answers." Then the verd ict from the brigantine: "We think your old man's right, Rog. Better postpone departure a few months and accumulate some capital. We find expenses al ways exceed expE!ctation and you 're heading for a tough town inde~ed. Bermuda forbids jobs to outsiders. Prices are fantastic. You can't even land without a pilot and an exhorbitant fee. Besides, it's the hurricane season and a postponed start would reduce this hazard. " Sound advice but, fortunately, ignored advice. The older man was the better sailor; the younger marn was the better prophet. His group set sail and thE?ir funds increased as they traveled. They beat the Bermuda bureaucracy and landed jobs ashore. This was necessary because it had been decided (when a Gulf Stream squall broke a back-stay) that all t he standing rigging was questionable and should be replaced. I flew home to buy the wire rope and send it to them. Rog would learn the rigger's trade and Emily would cook . Wally and his wife, Korb , both got jobs on the local news 141 �SEA FEVER paper. Ros.s and Hi signed on as crew to take a yacht to Nova Scotia for repairs. So t he doctrine of we '11-eam-our-dough-as-we-go-along proved feasible despite the doubts of the elders. It carried them through the following year and back to New York. After leaving Bermuda they reverted to their old Lake Michigan racket of charter parties. Emily's college connections were far behind but Bell Captains in the big hotels proved eager agents for arranging day sailing parties or longer charters. For 1'hanksgiving Day Emily flew home while Rog and his crew started South. Destination, Barbados or maybe the Virgins. No, the ship would not go to Europe as planned. A new war had broken out in Korea and Reservists in the group were denied permission to leave the hemisphere. And Ross had to report to his Draft Board! He had not done his time in the " armed services" like the others. His Officer's Training had been in the Merchant Marine. So Roger lost his cousin and the Army gained a scientist who served out his time in a California research laboratory. Overdue in the "Bermuda Triangle" A reasonable time span for the thousand-mile sail South would have been ten days. After two weeks and no word we began to wonder. On board was a powerful war-surplus radio. Why was it silent? Hortense began to worry. This was heightened by my chore just then of editing the Johnson Cape Horn picture. I had taken the moviola machine to our home and the monotonous repetition of sound (to match it to the proper frame) kept blaring out Irving's tale of terror at sea. One line came to the Hortense ear over and over: "The next man who comes into the picture was washed overboard a little later." It was too much. The mother charged into my editing room with "You've got to do something about Roger." I said "Okeh, we'll call the Coast Guard. They have a station at San Juan and they may have picked up a message." So I dial the Chicago station and ask them to contact San Juan. In half an hour they come back: " San Juan reports a very weak signal picked up from Yankee Girl last Tuesday asking for a weather report. To me this brought relief. To Hortense it brought despair and a burst of tears. That "very weak signal " meant, to her, a sick crew in a sinking boat. Then Miami called to say they were headquarters for all the Coast Guard fo rces in the Caribbean and would order out search planes from San Juan if we wished. We did wish and we would come to Miami at once. There we sat for days watching a petty officer, pointer in hand, explain on a great wall chart the area searched so far. When the pointer moved up 142 toward Bermuda my fears began. That night Yankee Girl sailed calmly into St. Thomas. They had come right through that silly damn "search." I should have known all along it was a charade. I've searched ships from the air myself an d know the difficulties. I once looked for, and missed, a sixty-foot schooner on a k nown course from Mackinac to Manistee. Peering out of my Piper Cub I didn 't spot Sea Hawk because my family had decided to pass the Manitous a few miles outside the customary steamer lane. Yet those Coast Guard clowns claimed they had "covered" thousands of square miles each day . Why had the passage been so slow? The crew's answer: "We were becalmed, dead in the water for days." But why, in Heaven's name, had they not used their radio? This from a relieved but now angry mother. Wally's lame excuse: " I have my license but our 'station' hasn 't one as yet. I could get in trouble if I sent out anything but "emergencies." Horty snorts! StilJ, this gal, as we all know, angers easy but cools fast. Soon she is flying South to a son forgiven and to six months of the joyous gypsy life. Weeks were spent in the Virgins exploring and chartering and looking for a cheap haul-out facility now needed fo r a barnacled bottom. In French Martinique, 400 miles away, the great drydock was offered at a bargain rate if the schooner could be there shortly to share space with a Panamanian steamer scheduled in. To accept the bargain meant bypassing all those wonderful islands in the Leeward chain but these could be visited on the way back. And let''S phone Skipper in Woodstock; see if he'll join us fur the run into low latitudes. Foolish question. My thanks to all of you now over the decades. The picture of our home hauled high and dry was snapped after four feet of water had been returned to the dry-dock. Our d raft was nine feet and walking those 12-inch beams with 12 feet of empty air below had been exciting and, in the case of your grandmother, maybe foo lhardy. Yes, everyone lived aboard for the five days we were hauled. - - - �] ] ] ] ] J ] SEA FEVER There was time for exploring, via rented car, all of the large island where Napoleon fou nd his J osephine and where today tourists find black women, bundles on their heads, walking with such dignity and grace. Mt. Pelee still smolders over a deserted city (the capitol now moved to Fort de France) where its eruption in 1902 killed thirty thousand souls. Martinique is the only island this writer was ever to visit in the Lesser Antilles, the lovely chain Columbus discovered in latter voyages and rhapsodized over in his Journals. But my family lingered in each one before returning home. This was over a period of months and via Puerto Rico, Haiti, Great Inagua and Miami. There Hortense left them while the young contingent carried on to New York where they sold their seagoing home to a wealthy Bostonian who put a professional crew aboard to bring it b ack to Miami. That crew maintained it here, Bristol fashion, for years while its owner and his guests made infrequent visits. It was a subseq uent owner who piled it up on that Bimini beach as pictured some pages back. ] ] ] J THE LESSER ANTILLES 1 J J J I ~ ,,stLuci4 CARIBBEAN SEA I !Jsr..Vinunt 0 '1 The bible warns against putting new wine in old bottles. A rumor came back that the beautiful boat was abandoned in Cuba. The sea's Gift of Grief?? We wonder. Todd School Sailing in Florida The War was over and Todd's Naval Training was through and the School bad a new project. We had started that Winter Outpost down on the Keys which meant a new fleet as well as an extra sleeper bus so we could roll forty-eight kids at a time through the night instead of just twenty four. We bought two sloops, six prams and a thirty-foot fish boat. I hesitated to ask my Board for a cruising sailboat but Lady Luck smiled and a wealthy widow gave us a seagoing motor-sailer. Not for love of our project bu t fo r relief from her tax troubles. The sloop would sleep eight and carry twice that number on trips to Key West or Miami. It's shown here (enlarged from a movie frame) in the canal behind our clubhouse. On page 90 there's a picture of that canal with pram crews practicing. The youngest third of the school would go South in January; the middle group in February and the Upperclassmen in March. T hree years after starting this program Todd closed. For reasons, see page 94. Retirement Two Years Spent Afloat With school worries over and that long-dreamedof retirement a reality, we put our farm on the market and started looking fo r a floating home. Our specifications: a boat big enough for us to live on comfortably, cruise in safely and entertain our fam ily adequately. We were aged sixty; too old to handle that large a sailing vessel and too poor to hire the crew it would need. We swallowed our pride and turned to power. After searching the Lakes we fo und a 55-foot Elco in Milwaukee. This was the _, _.t. ;·~ .&rbcidO. ,~· i~o.ui4 150 . ·Carriaccu ,,. /, <}rtnada 0 SOUTH /To~ !\.. ~ AMER.I C A J Trinida4 You know the fate of Yankee Girl. Her song is ended. But what, you ask, happened to that earlier dream ship, Sea Hawk ? We sold it down :he river, literally, to help finance the world t rip. In New Orleans new owners put on new sails and then cleared customs for Panama. And then silence .. ? 143 �SEA FEVER Harley-Davidson heirs who put in two new Chrysler engines and then decided to take up sail. We paid $7 ,500 with only five grand in cash and the rest payable in Florida charters: a week's use down here each year for two years. We found the new engines (gasoline, not diesel) gulped fuel at a shocking gallon a mile! This fact helped us decide to go South via the river instead of through the Erie Canal and down the East Coast. We wanted the help of that five-knot current. Run.ning at night is out. A twelve-volt searchlight (we had the largest) simply won't separate the muddy water from the somber shore. The big barge tows (see one under the bridge) do it with their local knowledge and the tremendous beam from their arc lights. I tried following one but the tug's propellers suck up too many hazards. One waterlogged tree stump banged our bow and then bent a blade on our starboard wheel. After that we anchored at night. Or docked. Once we tied up to a deserted barge that was held to the bank with steel cables. A Life on the Mississippi stormy night. A tornado was wiping out a town a I This has changed surprisingly little since Sam few miles away. Squalls battered us. I was awake Clemens earned a nickname and learned a trade on hourly; into rain gear, checking our lines. So far, so the wild river that can never be tamed. Yes, there good. Like King Lear gone loony out there on his are now beacons with big numbers (indicating mile· heath, I remember shouting in to the gale: Blow age above New Orleans) standing at every bend but wind! Crack your cheeks! I was snug in my statethese tripods must be rebuilt often because they room again when CRUNCH! A sickening scrape wash away like willows. Nothing can end the rushing along our bottom. We 're aground!! Our dock lines current's appetite for eating its banks and changing must have parted. I rush on deck .. We're still fast to its course. To navigate the "Lower Mississippi" our "dock." But our keel is grinding bottom?? The (St. Louis to the Gulf) you buy the Army Engineer's horrid truth dawns -· That barge has broken loose great book of sixty-eight maps, each covering an from the shore!! It's steel mass has swung around average of fifteen convoluted miles. No depths, of and is pinching us against the bank. It will soon course, can be given. A red "channel line" is shown crack our ribs. I grab a fire axe, chop our lines and but this, also, is a sometime thing, changing often. the "dock'' floats away. Up stream is a lighted buoy. M We head for it, check the map to find it's in deep L water and circle it until dawn. FLOOD CONTROL AND NAVIGATION MAPS There were other adventures but mostly there OF T HE MISSISSIPPI RIVER CAIRO. JU.INOIS TO THE G ULF OF ME XICO was boredom. Everyone tells you they would love to sail down the Mississippi. Maybe so. Hortense said the same thing but that experienced sailor and devotee of life afloat got restless after four days. She left us at an airport saying, "I'll meet you in New Orleans." As for me, I would love to sail up the Mississippi. Past northern Illinois. Past Wisconsin. Through Minnesota. Beautiful. I know because I've looked at those lovely bluffs from roads and from our low-flying plane. But below Cairo you see nothing; you look at a thousand miles of levee. You don't even see the towns. At least you miss many j of them. Example: Greenville, Miss. Its fifty thous!L~ ..;--- - :!!.. and inhabitants now live three miles from the river ....., -=l'REl'AAED ANNUALLY U N D ER THE DIRECTION Of" T HE l'RESIDENl; that spawned an early village. To reach the present MISSISSIPPI RI VER COMMISSION. CORI'S Of" ENGINEERS. u.s. AA...V v o city you will run past it and turn back into Lake __Tb _e_ m_a_p_s_ar _ e _p_r_ in_ted_o_n_c_ e _a_yea_r_b _u_t_t_h_e_c_h_an _nel-~ Ferguson which is an ox-bow vestige of Mark ;::::e:. ~ may shift in a month. Revised "steering directions" are available at six stations along the river. Correct· ions may start when you buy your book. The clerk turns to a page and crosses out the red line going to the left of an island. Then he draws in the new channel which now runs to the right. He may turn to another page and say, "This island has been entirely washed away. Just hug the revetment on the left like so." Docks and service facilities are still primitive because each must be on a float of some sort. Few were able to handle our gas needs. We would phone for a tank truck and have it drop down its long hose. 144 Twain's old stream. You will use Map 26. This is two feet long and shows many details of the city. I reproduce here a section of the Index Pages which reduce the large maps to miniatures. This shows you Greenville's present isolation and, lower down, the great river's compulsion to whip around and leave vestigal lakes. Vicksburg is another city the river has deserted. Any boatman today who wants to hone his Civil War history there must run past that city-of-the-seige and turn back up the Yazoo. (Vicks· burg is not shown here; it's down the river on Map 33.) - - - �SEA FEVER Hill would expound on this anomaly of our nearly flat prairie country every time we took the train to Chicago. Going through Des Plaines he would lecture his child, plus any adults who would listen, on the fact that the river there on our right would "meet the Sea" at New Orleans via the Illinois and the Mississippi Rivers. "But," he would then declaim, ''In the next few minutes this train will cross a Continental Divide and we'll see a stream flowing .I ,J [] IJ IJ IJ ,J ] .IJ . I] .IJ .I] L J ] Chicago to St. Louis I'll turn now from Mark Twain's ancient stream to the newly constructed waterway that links New Orleans to the Great Lakes. The Chicago River no longer runs into Lake Michigan. For years it has been running out of that lake using the water Chicago drinks to wash its sewerage away from its door. Other cities, fearing a lowering of lake levels have protested this ''steal" but the Supreme Court awarded in 1929 a limited diversion for the purpose of maintaining a Sanitary and Ship Canal to link the Great Lakes to the Great River. Water won't flow up hill so this reversal of a river meant cutting through a Continental Divide. No, not our country's "great" Divide which passes through Yellowstone but a Divide indeed. Noble to the Sea via the Great Lakes, Niagara Falls and the St. Lawrence. Then that compulsive teacher and addictive orator would expound on the early history of our land and explain how Louis Jolliet and Pere Marquette, when returning from their exploration of the Mississippi (to prove it emptied in the Gulf instead of the Pacific) made a portage with their canoes across this Illinois bulge of land and wrote to their King in Versailles suggesting a waterway be cut through here to link the French mission at Mackinac with a French colony proposed for the mouth of the Mississippi. (For more on Pere Marquette and on Noble's compulsive sermonizing, turn back to page 66. For his "Illinois Divide" see the map below.) So much for the Seventeenth Century. I'll t urn now to modern travel of Les Miserables through the sewers of Chicago. Boaters who have tried this route to the Sea will tell you the first thirty miles out of the Loop are indeed miserable. It isn't so much t he sewerage. You can sorta look the other way. Not, of course, when you're inside those locks with their slimy walls. What really defeats you is the detergent! This pours out of a million home washers to pile up into a foaming navigational menace. Great barge tows are coming at you but all you can see above those bubbles is the superstructure of the tug that pushes them. Yourmisery,however, is short. At Lockport you leave behind your nausea and your trepidation. Treatment plants take over; you depart the Des Plains; you enter the Illinois, a duck hunter's paradise. Sandy Smith was with us and this scorner ·of duck blinds but devotee of duck boats, for stalking the wily birds, knew 145 �-· ... SEA FEVER every bend and backwater. In the town of LaSalle, Hortense and I passed our honeymoon hotel of hallowed memory (see page 40) hut now ou1r interests had broadened enough to include, at Jong last, Starved Rock. That's the Indian shrine that had been our announced destination fo rty years earlier. It was now November of 1957. The Smith family was with us. All except the highschool girls,, Prise and Pam. Roger was an infant; Ricky was a schoolboy who had permission from his Principal to take a month off for some super education in history and geography. Bette, Sandy and their baby left. us at Havana, lllinois , and Hortense drove with them to Chicago to catch that plane to New Orleans. I contin ued South with Rick and a none-toobrigh t adolescent named Tom. He had been '"crew" for the Milwaukee owners who paid him a minimum salary, little more than a berth aboard. He longed to see Florid a and I agreed to take him down and fly him back. Ile had flunked out of college and now spent his days strumming chords, crooning tu nes and dreaming the improbable dream of duplitcating the career of his hero, Elvis Presley. He pra.cticed wiggling his hips down our deck while Rick wiggled our hoaL down "ur river. A question comes to your mmd: If this boy could turn into an instant pilot, what of my opening claim that this river is a wild untamed thing? I spoke truth. The Big Muddy can never be lamed although the new revetments try. It has, however, been marked with buoys and with mileposts. And now it is mapped even though these maps need constant revision. With all thesH new aids a bright boy can manage. To ill11strate the difference between then and now read the river story of America's finest writer. Yes, I said finest writer and I want no back-talk from the class. If you haven't read Life on the Mississippi, you 're excused although pitied. If you haven't read Huckleberry Finn, you 're excommunicated. Anyway, listen now to an artist's description of this riiver in that yesteryear. He is telling of his apprentice· days 146 under Mr. Bixby. He has explained that any licensed pilot of that day, when unemployed, was entitled to free passage and meals aboard any boat on the stream. This so pilots could constantly get new knowledge of their changing river and thus sharpen sk ills in a demanding job. The author continues: We had a fine company of lhcsc river ins pec tor~ along this trip. There were cii.:h1 or 1c11 and 1herc was an abundam,;e or room for them 111 our greut pilot·housc. Two or lhrcc of 1hem wore polished ~ilk h:its. elaborate shirl-lrnnt~. diamond brcastpin~. kid gloves, and patc111·lea1hc1 boots. They were choice 111 their English and bore themselves with a dignity proper to men of solid means and prodi· gious reputation as pilots. I w;.is a cipher in this :iugust company and fe lt subdued, not lo s;iy torpid . I stood in a corner and the 1;1lk I listened lo took 1hc hope all oul 1>f me. One pilot said to another: ..Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up'!., .. , ran it the way one of the boys on the Dia11a told me; Started OUI about lifty yards above the wood-pile on the fahe point. and held on the cabi11 under Plum Point lill I rai~ed the reef quarter less twain 1he11 straightened up fur lhc middle bar lill I got well abreast the old onc·limbed cottonwood in the bend, then go 1 my stern on the collonwood, and head on the low place ah1we Ihe point, and come through a-booming nine :i nd a half." ''Pretty square crossing, •rn 't it?" "Yes, but the upper bar's working down fos1.'' Another pilot spoke up and said: .. I had better water than that, and ran it lower down; started out from th\! false point - mark twain - raised the second reef abreast tJ1e big s11ag in the bend, and had quarter lc~s twain." One of the gorgeous ones rl·marked: ''I don't want to ftnd foul I with your leadsmc11 , but that's a good deal or WLlt Cr for Plum Poinl. ii seems 10 me." Thrre was an approving 1111<1 all around as 1his quiet snub dropped on 1he hoas1er and "set tied .. him. And so thev went on 1alk-1alk-talking. Mean· lime, the thing running in my mind was, " 1 ow, if my ears are aright, I havl' not only to get 1he names of all the towns and •~lands and bends. ;.incl so on, by heart. but I mu~t ..:vcn get up a warm personal acquaintanceship with l'very old snag :ind one-limbed cottonwood and nlhcure wood-pile that ornamenls the banks of th b river for twelve hundred miles. I wish the pih>l 111g business was in Jericho and I had never th1H1i.:li1 ol it." At dusk Mr. Bixby tapp~d the big bell three times (the signal to land ). and the captain emerged from his drawing-room in tl1l' forward end of the "texas." and looked up 1nqu11111gly. Mr. Bixby said: ··we will lay up here all 1111-:ht, captian." "Very well, sir." That was all. The hoal cam\! lo shore and Wil~ tied up for the night. It sel'lll..:u 10 me a fin e tl11ng that lhe pilot coulu do a~ hl· pleased, without asking so grand a captain's p1:rinission. .,_, - ... - - - - ... �] SEA FEVER I .ikt• Mr. Bixby, I haci my own app r<>nlicc on the Iii;! ri \'t' r. the brilliant Le n-year-old Smith lad . llere ] ]f JI you see his " pilot-h ouse." Behind him as he stood at his wheel and po ured over his maps was a couch that converted to a double bed , the one Horty and I used for t wo years. T he opening on the right is where steps ltrnd down to the main cabin pictured below. JI JI JI ] ] Beyond that door are cre w's quarters. Aft , we had t wo dou hie staterooms. I'm standing on steps leading down tu these. So our home afl oat, with beds for ten , was almost as adequate for e ntertaining as is our home ashore today . For our second year, we conceived the idea of chartering. We chang- ed our mi nds later but not until I had printed some prom otional literature. l•'rom th is I reprod uce these interiors. T he original photos are lost so the pictures are poor bu t at leas t they will bring back memories to some of you . But I stray from my subject which was Mark Twain's river. He describes it in 1857. We entered it just one hundred years later. Our fi rst lock, after leaving the Illinois, was at Alton near t he Missouri entrance. This lowered us to the level o f St. Louis and put us nearly two hu ndred fee t below Lake Mich igan. I had some aviation charts aboard and these showed the airport here to be five hundred and eighty feet above sea level. Buying our book of river maps I asked ho w far it was to the next lock . The answer: " Man , if you agoin' sout h you all done wid locks. Goin' St. Paul way, you got plenty ; N'awlins way, you jes let er' ri p." Amazing. No wonder the banks are t orn away. T his stream drops a foo t every two m iles. I've told you that modern river pilots, the barge captains, can have their maps corrected with new "steering directions " in numerous offices of the River Commission . Mark Twain and his Pilot's Associatio n had their own plan for keeping information up to the minute. He tells you about it : From 1he associa1ion·s secre1ary cacti member rc1:eived a package ol blanks properly ruk<l in colunrns headed CROSSINGS, SOUNDI NGS, SHORE FE ATURES, REMA RKS. These blanks were lilled t1p, day by day, as lhe voyage progrcsseu. and de· posited in lhe seve1al wharf·buat boxes. F111 11hlance, as soon as 1he fir~• crnssing ou1 from SI. I 1111is was wmple1cd, the ilems would be en1ere<l upon the hl;ink. under the apprnp1 ialc headings, 1h11 ~ : "St. Louis. inc and a half. S1crn 1111 1:our1housc, head un dcutl 1:011 011woud abovl' woodyard, u111il you raise 1hc rirs1 reef, then pull up square." Then under head of remarks: "Go jus1 oulside the wrecks: !his is impunanl. New snag jus1 where you straighten down: go above- i1." The pilot who dcpu ited 1ha1 blank in 1he Cairo box (after adding 10 it 1hc delails of evc1) crossing all 1he way down fro m SI. Louis} took 011 1 and read h:Jlf a dozen f1csh repurl s ( from upward·bou nd s1camers) concerning 1he river between Cairo and Memphis, pos1ed himself 1horoughly. rc1L11 ned 1hem lo 1hc box , and wcn1 back aboard his hoal again so armed against accidc111 thal he could not possibly ge1 his boa1 inlO 1rouble wilhuut bringing 1hc most in· gen ious carelessness to his aid. Imagine the benefits of' so admirable a sys1em in u piece of river t we Ive or 1hi n een hundred miles long, whose channel was shifling every day! The pilo1 who had formerly been obliged tn put up with seeing a shoal place once or possibly lwicc a monlh. had a hunclre<l sharp eyes Ill walch it Int him now. 11nd bushels of i111cllige111 brain~ 10 tL•ll him how to n rn ii. His i11 forma1io11 aboul ii was s~ l dom 1we111yrour hours old . 147 �-· SEA FEVER Enough of piloting. None of you , probably , will ever steer your boal down this stream. But before 1 leave Mark '!'wain 's river 1 must amend that paragraph on "boredom " four pages back. I said: "Below Cairo you see nothing; you look at a thousand miles of il'V<'<'. '' Yes, t here's little scenery but there 's much, much history. I've gone that route with Todd classes, by bus, several times. Doing it by water brought a new dimension. I am a minor auth ority on our Civil War. My Uncle Joe was a major one (see page 43) and wrote books on the bloody conflict. In childhood I devoured these and thrilled to my grandfather's personal battle recollections. Plus those of the boozy veterans on Woodstock park benches. My interest persisted and bus trips were planned to bring such history to life for other Todd boys years later. They would study what my grandfather called the " War of the Rebellion" by following the career of our Illinois hero, Grant. We would start at his Galena home on the Mississippi and continue to Cairo where he trained his army of volunteers and laid his plans to Win-theWest. Then to the scenes of his successes in Kentucky, his defeats in Tennessee and his triumph at Vicksburg on that weekend that really decided the war. (Lee was defeated the following day at Gettysburg.) OU R VI CKSBURG STAY was alo ngside the old ' 'Sprague" wh ich now houses the local yacht club. This huge paddle.wh eeler established, in 191 7, a world 's record for size o f tow, a raft of sixty barges. For comparison turn back four pages an d see a modern tug pic tured under a bridge. It pushes today's average ~ize to w of fourteen barges. Each of th ese is usually l 75x26 feet and each carries as much grain or coal or oil or chemical as ten railroad cars. A surprising sixteen percent of all freight moving in America today moves on water . Most o f this is on the Mississippi and its tributaries includ· ing the TVA developed Tennessee. Certai n huge cargoes such as space·age boosters can be tran sported in no o th er way. Then our class would turn East to cover Grant 's further successes around Chatanooga. After this our highschool seminar would do a detailed study of Gettysburg and e nd up at Richmond and Appomattox. But now I was in a boat, not a bus, and gaining new insigh ts into that war. For the first time I could follow Farragut and his fabulous fleet. We covered his naval battles from Vicksburg to Port Huron to New Orleans and later ran deep into Mobile Bay to the locale of his Damn the torpedoes; full steam ahead! (The "torpedoes" w.ere floating mines.) 148 That's all for today's history lesson. Back to the fam ily: Hortense joined us at New Orleans; Ricky left us at Pensacola. At Fort Meyers we turned up the broad Caloosahatchee, a jungle stream reminiscent of Kipling's great, grey , green, greasy Limpopo. This leads to Lake Okeechobee from which the St. Lucie Canal took us to the Atlantic, some twenty miles north of Palm Beach. T hus started our two years of great content afloat. Here's our _, -· Christmas card the second year. It's printed greeting read: May you too have Every thing Fine for Fifty-Nine. Our Search for a Place Ashore We've now lived fifteen years in our present home. Finding this private Eden and secluded jungle in the heart of suburbia and short blocks from everything was great luck. Interesting history regarding the place, plus an abstract starting with the Spaniards, will be found in my files. For now I'll tell you only how we stumbled on it . Dorothy Olive was our angel. Our debt to her is huge. We met her as a sister-in-law of Sandy Smith's father, Gene. She and her husband, Jim , had been in Florida only a few years. They had been frequent guests aboard Truant and were anxious for us to buy on the South Side near them. While long docked in Dinner Key, Horty and I had grown weary of looking at houses and leery of all those agents. We moved our floating home to Marathon and our favo rite marina there with that hundred-foot salt-water pool. After months of family guests from the North we got this phone call from South Miami and a breathless Dorothy: " Jump in your car and rush up here. l've found your perfect home. Jim and I tried to buy it three years ago but it was taken off the market. Now an agent's sign is up again." Two hours later we were knocking on our present door. No one home. We peered into windows to see the beamed ceilings and cypress walls. Great. As for the tangled jungle in the back, that was awful. Sidewalks and old curbings ran through. But the possibilities for Hortense and her -· - -· -· �SEA FEVER talents we.re obVious. I drove her to Dorothy's home · ·-· and myself to the agent's office. He said the owner, a divorcee, had left town and forgotte n to leave a key. I asked the price, made a counter offer and was told: "The owner's anxious to sell; she's given me bargaining discretion; if you'll give me a thousand dollars I'll· write you a binding contract." I did and he did. Hortense was pleased. Dorothy was shocked. That night my sleep was troubled. Was the roof, maybe, falling in? Were termites eating away the walls? When finally we could enter we found the place sound and beautiful beyond even our hopes. No, the present guest wing wasn't there nor the plate glass nor the patio nor the ponds nor the landscaping. Still, the home you know is basically the one we bought (after twelve months of discouraging search) with a ten-minute peek through a window. Smaller Boats for Smaller Ventures Our first craft after moving ashore was the little outboard shown here hook- • " ed to our station wagon. 'ere. While looking for just the right sailboat we used this trailable baby to complete our coverage of Florida waters. We knew the Keys and we knew the Bahamas but we didn't know the wonderful half-world of the Everglades, navigable for craft of shallow draft. Look at your Florida map. Its southern tip is two thirds water. From the cypress jungle of Whitewater Bay through Chokoloskee Pass to the old settlement of Everglades and then through the Ten Thousand Islands to the boom development of Naples is ninety miles of exotic cruising. These waters are days away from Miami by sailboat but just hours away for a boat on wheels. Our little cabin had a head, a galley and two bunks with two more in the cockpit. Dorothy and Jim, our house-finders, once joined us from Everglades City to Naples. Such amphibious cruising brought new dreams to old sailors: Why not trail something seaworthy? We could then cruise the Northland waters of our youth in summer and return to trade-wind felicity for winter. In between, maybe explore new waters such as the Chesapeake. Those dreams are possible if you trail a light craft and one with a hinged mast. I goofed because I chose the most seaworthy sloop that could conceivably be towed behind a passenger car. This was a "New Horizons," heaviest built of the MORC (Midget Ocean Racing Class) boats. Sparkman-Stephens had designed a sloop that could safely round the Horn but couldn't safely cross mountains behind a passenger car. Seven thousand pounds was just too much. We trailed it to Racine that first summer and then sailed it to Green Bay before putting it back on wheels for the la:..: time. A family charter heads for the Keys I ma• ] I ] ] ] ] J Once home, I printed literature and we made plans for chartering. This proved surprisingly successful. It w.as also fun _and. it was therapeutic both for aging b~d1es and dwmdlmg bank . balances. During nine wmters we were booked solid and averaged a take of ten grand a season, half of which was profit. • • ~ * * * * * That's our seagoing resume. The song may be silenced but the melody lingers. Now dreams turn to the past instead o f the future. To childhood and to youth and to fresh water. In the files I find a copy of an old Chicago Yacht Club Magazine. It tells of the 1937 Mackinac race, wildest of all those fourhundred-rnilers the club sponsored for nearly a century . Fifty boats started that year; only eight finished; eleven were dismasted. I was skipper of a friend's yawl and we were unscathed except for an accident to a crew member that forced withdrawal. Several Todd boys were in that race. Most of them ended up in Ludington with crippled craft and a memorable beer bash. Harry Nye, International Star Boat Champion (and once a basketball star for this longago coach} was co-skipper of the winning sloop, Rubaiyat. His partner was Hank Rubinkam, most colorful of all the Great Lakes sailors in my genera· tion. Hank always seemed to me a reincarnation of of my brilliant cousin, Jack Rogers. (See his escapades back on page 41.) Both were charm ing, mercurial and alcoholic. Both were in World War One before Amerira was involved. Hank became a Navy flyer and when Todd started its airport he asked for the job o[ manager-instructor. I was tempted but the eccentric was too notorious to put on the facul ty of even an off-beat school. Tales of his skill and of his luck were legion. I'll give you the one, told and retold by Mackinac racers when rounding the reef at Waugoshance Point. That's where you turn the corner from Lake Michigan into the Straits. (See map at the beginning of th is chapter.) Race rules today call for using the steamer lane outside a light which is well off shore. In early days a daring crew could save miles by threading a difficult but possible path through a rocky reef on the inside. Possible only in the daytime and possible then only because of that gin-clear water. But it was night at the time of this story and Hank's reputation as a 149 �SEA FEVER genius at its height. The summer before he had won, for three separate owners, three major races: the Mackinac, the Bermuda and the Transpac to Honolulu. Now he was on Don Prather's Intrepid, thirty miles from another Mackinac finish line and neckand-neck with a rival from Belmont Harbor. (I was miles behind on a sloop from Jackson Park.) Hank announced there was one sure way to win: cut inside the light by threading the passage through the reef. He could do it in the dark by God just as he'd done it often in the daylight. The genius had spoken. Impossible as it seemed and dangerous as it was, no one dared to disagree. Not even Don, t he owner, who was ordered to stand by his wheel and and his compass. Doc was to get out his stop-watch and Hank would go below. He would spread his chart on the cabin floor and with dividers, parallel rule and shouted orders, con the ship through the turns ot' the tortuous short-cut. Kneeling over his chart, he takes command: "What's your head, Don? Still North by East? Head up a few degrees to 345 and hold that for two minutes; maybe a little more if we slow down at all on that new heading. Two minutes up? Okay, fall off to 014 for another minute and a half." Then CLUNK! The sloop hits bottom!! Hearts stop beating on deck but Intrepid rises on a wave and goes on. Hank is unperturbed: "That's that isolated rock with just a fathom over it. I saw it plainly once in the daytime when I was on Witchcraft. Proves we're in the middle of the passage." And so on for the ten minutes that seemed like eternity to the terrified crew on deck. Once Doc let his eye shift from his watch to t he hunched figure in the cabin. Horrors! Hank was taking a swig from his 'flask!! Their eyes met; Hank mumbled "I gotta steady my hand; these dividers keep slipping." I tell this, of course, only as it was later told to me. I recount what was recounted in every after-therace party on every yacht in Mackinac. Intrepid made it safely to deep water and t urned down the Straits with a two-mile lead and a spinnaker run to certain victory. Hank, the genius, had done it again. But the zinger climax.of the story (hard to believe bu t true) is just how this miracle of navigation had been accomplished. While his crew hugged their savjor, Don went below to clean up his cabin. There he discovered that the genius had used his skill and his dividers on a chart of the nearby Les Cheneaux Islands.! ! ..... ? ? I must stop maundering. That Yacht Club magazine started me off. I helped edit the sheet long ago and filled a lot of space with rhyme. The story about Waugoshance reef (near fle aux Galets shoal) recalls one jingle: Now Skmagalee has a mean pedigree And the reef at the Shanks is no joy But sailor beware of that Saugatuck snare By the low moaning saxophone buoy. Translation: Prohibition was the law. The .great 150 dancehall-speakeasy-bordello across the lake was a weekend rendezvous for Chicago sailors. The -same file that holds the magazine with those Mackinac Todd memories contains a copy of a Star Chart Analyzer navigational aid (for star finding) I invented and A.E.J. printed and our Navy used by the thousand turning out those reserve officers (ninety-day-wonders) in the panic period after Pearl Harbor. Rog and Ros5 became better than their teacher at quick sextant sights. They're also better mathematicians but I had a unique childhood experience as a navigator ·and learned to figure latitude from Polaris while still in knee pants. This because newspapers in the early century were constantly headlining the Race to the Pole. You grandchildren knew the same excitement in the Sixties with the Race to the Moon. It was in 1902 that Admiral Peary (wb o final ly won the North Pole contest) was forced to turn back just short of his goal. I asked my father how the great man knew he was close. "By how high he- saw the North Star." Then the compulsive teacher continued: "If Pearyt~e star was right above him, Our Neil nmety degrees from the horizon , Armstrong he'd be there. When you get to of 1909 Michigan you'll see that star forty five degrees high which tells you you're half way between the Equator and the Pole." Finally the Nova Scotia sailor rigged up a simple astrolabe using a protractor with moveable sighting bar attached to a hanging weight. Aiming at a star I could read its vertical angle. The gadget was far from precise but so was the one Columbus used; Ours showed plainly to an interested child the th ree degrees of difference between a sight from our steamer leaving Chicago and one taken the next night in Michigan. * * * * * * As we close this chapter, and this book, Hortense and I are off to renew a yachting youth in the wonderful waters of the Northland. We've rented a cottage near Noble's old Camp. And a sloop to teach new teenagers the old seduction of sea and sail and wind and wave. This time it'll be great-grandchild Jon and his siblings. The whole Reitman tribe will be resorting next door and the Tarboxes, three generations strong, plan some weekends. To compound the Northland nostalgia, the Hill sailors from Racine have chartered a ketch in the straits to return to their youth and once more sleep with t he slap of waves an inch from an ear and hear again, if the wind freshens, the poet's hymn-of-the-hum-of-the-shrouds. ... _ r - -0 ~...... Me ,.,.,,....t•O The Columbus Astrolabe �] ] 'Postscript ] ] ] ] ] . ] J . ] . J 151 �POSTSCRIPT It's July 4th, 1977, one year after our nation's Centennial. As I write, every channel on every television in every American home is giving a replay (mixed with laxative and cat food commercials) of the stirring events that marked the great day twelve months ago. Again we watch that covered wagon train arrive at Valley Forge after its horse-drawn trek from California. Once more those tall ships converge at Sandy Hook from all the seven seas to parade before us up the Hudson. My thoughts go back more ~han a year. They go back a hundred years to the first Centennial held in Philadelphia. No, I wasn't there in 1876. I wasn't even born. But my relatives were there and, as a child, I listened in awe to tales of that great international Fair. America's inventive genius was concentrated in "Machinery Hall " and with my nose pressed against our "stereoscope" I was almost there mingling with the mechanical marvels of young America's inventive genius. I saw that self-binding reaper attached to its steam tractor and the rotary printing press and the typewriter and the telephone. All new. All wonder- If my prose has failed to limn for you life in the early century I'll save a thousand words now and bring you a picture. You see the interior of Todd Seminary's West Cottage in 1906. It's the home of Pretty-Grandma and her husband, Almanza. The right reverend Doctor Rogers will die in a few months. Right after that Golden Wedding in Wallingf~rd . described on page 7. Study the quaint details m the old photo. Note the iron bedstead and the electric ceiling fixture with its extension cord or " drop ligh t" hanging by the window curtain. Below this, and behind a chair, is a kerosene heater. Yes there is a hot-air furnace in the basement but it 152 ful. The exhibit is partially preserved in Philadelphia as a museum. Go there when next you 're in that city. If pressed for time, you should even shorten your stay at Independence Square. I start this postscript on an antique note because some of you, having seen proofs of early pages, say my childhood, as told here, seems sur, prisingly modern with all those automobiles, motor boats and electric lights. Yes, but what different automobiles and electric lights. And these were rare and found only in the cities. The autos were strictly fo r the privileged. Even when I was in college there were few cars for the middle class. Only three of my fraternity brothers had them waiting at home and these were all "Tin Lizzies." (One of these brothersin-the-bond managed to bring his family's Model T to the campus and it became an event. He advertised his gay-blade status by driving up and down John Street with two coconuts tied to the differential bulge and a sign on the bumper: You can't call me Lizzie now.) Ah yes, days of innocent amusement and corny h':Jmor. must .be "banked" at night and often this auxilliary was fned up to fou l the air and keep the water in the pitcher from freezing. That's my sister Carol above the Britannica set. The dark wall~aper ~ typical of the time and the circular-wicked "student lamp" on the table to the right gives far better light for reading than the carbon filament electric bulbs high above. These were rated by "candlepower" with fifteen being standard and thirty maximum. The only brillinnce available from electricity back then came from arc lights such as those which hung over our street intersections. Their incandescence came not from a pale-glowing filament in a vacuum but a bright-glowing vapor between two carbon electrodes. I I �POSTSCR IPT As for our automobile, this was also primitive but less so than the Ford Model T which he made for the masses. Shown here is a 1908 Mitchell. I drove one like it out of its Kenosha factory with no experience and no lessons and with only some initial wobbling. It was my mother's present from Noble because her favorite horse had died. She assumed that if I could handle a motorboat and a buggy and a bicycle I would be competent in this. She was almost right. I had studied the instruction book for weeks • mentally depressing an imaginary clutch pedal hours on end while I shifted an imaginary gear lever through its H pattern. You see the gear lever behind the spare tire. For our air conditioning, the top folded back and the windshield folded down. Those headlights used acetylene gas coming from a tank on the far running board and I lit the lights with a match. No light in back. No battery. I cranked the motor (when I couldn't park on a hill and use gravity) and a magneto f umished the ignition. The car's birthplace in l{enosha has grown into the American Motors plant. I have been fai thful to that first love in my Cynara fashion, off and on over the decades. E~en now I keep an ancient but able American Ambassador standing by for occasional use by house guests in the winter. • • • • • • • • Bu·t enough of antiquities. This postscript is not to tell you more about childhood but something about old age, that bour n from which no traveler returns. Your grandmother and I find the place pretty wonderful. At least so far. Her eyes are dimming and my legs are weakening but there is a balm in Gilead and it's called love. Horty's magnetism and her lifelong compulsion to give has brought more than new friends; it's brought new branches to the family. Now young folks adopt us! I told you, back on page 46, of the seagoing Darlows. Here's a picture of the devoted Donna with her Granny. I haven't mentioned the Seings but I should have so I show now these new grandchildren dining with us on our porch. Many of you, from your visits, know this China doll, Lillia, and her Cam bodian husband, Hong. I - For two pampered years they tended our lives and lived in our guest wing. Lillia cooked gourmet meals while Hong completed graduate studies in engineering. But nothing is forever and he was offered that super job up North. Now the relationship is reduced to letters, phone calls and hoped-for visits. ~-~ . ', .J, ~~ ·~ ~,," ~ And then there are the Browns! A whole new family and a twelve-year relationship that has brought us rich rewards. It all began when failing strength forced Hor· tense to give up her work with the "Dependent Children" in the county home out in Kendall. But Christmas was coming and she asked for the name of a family with a flock of children to whom she might bring presents. We were told of Rosana Brown, just back from the County Hospital with her eighth baby. Since then we've been privileged to help an amazing family move out of debt and out of a slum and into a fine suburban home. The children are brilliant and many have rare talent including Andrew, the latest in our series of Brown yardboys. This lad, like his older brother, J oe, is an artist, and after winning a Florida contest last month was taken with his teacher to New York where he received first prize in the National Highschool Exhibit. This was for bis Head of an African, a pencil study inspired by Alex Haley. 153 �POSTSCRIPT Speaking of Haley : Two of you grandchildren have recently started your own delving into roots. The youngest of you, Roger Gettys II went to Gettysburg. His cousin, Todd Tarbox, went to Nova Scotia. Great! May your tribal investigation increase. May some of you write, someday, our family history in greater detail and in wider scope than the Hill-Rogers outline you find here. Hortense once promised to add the Gettys-Pauley saga but alas, no. Still, she has left you much oral history on tape and I urge you, before it's too late, to question her further in front of a microphone. Old pictures, to go with her story, will be found in our effects. Our retirement has been enriched with new adult friends too numerous to list but ones who have helped on this book must be acknowledged: First. dear Dolly Sutton, the business gal in a wheel chair who has done the typography and the pasteup. An athlete and a drama major in college, she was newly married when an auto accident cancelled early dreams. Under the bludgeoning of Fate she has not winced or cried aloud, just built a new career and now carries on with two adopted children and the mother that we also love. And there's Al Webb, the artist whose lithographs of water birds are famed nationally and to whom I was sent for .help in laying out a color cover. Al would take no pay for his pains, brushing it off with "Just send me a copy when its done and send one also to Livy Sheppard of Super-Type Inc.· who has helped me out." Thus began our friendship with this lay-out artist and his kids and his brilliant wife, Fran, Drama &litor of the Miami Herald. Now about Rogie's trip to Gettysburg and his research there: Grandad (Arthur Lincoln) Gettys who is pictured on page 98 was the adored grandfather of your parents and the grandson of the founder of the famous town. Our Columbia Encyclopedia says "It was named for James Gettys to whom the site was granted by William Penn." (But they must mean it was granted by Penn's successors. The great Quaker who was granted the whole state of Pennsylvania by the Crown died in 1817 .) Roger searched out the grave and you see him here leaning against a monument to your ancestor. Its inscription reads: Gen. James Gettys, Proprietor of Gettysburg. Born Aug. 14, 1759. Died March 13, 1815. That high military rank was news to Hortense. Her father had four eccentric unmarried sisters with an inordinate pride in their name and in their ancestry. One, Cora Gettys, was a writer of history and librarian for the History Seminar at the University of Chicago. She often talked of her grandfather as an "officer" in Washington's army but never as "General." He would have been only thirty years old at Yorktown so probably he got that high rank later. I was disappointed to find no listing for him in the 154 .. ' I .' ' I .' . ' . volumes of the Dictionary of American Biography which contain articles on your other ancestors. One sure place for you to find more on this ancestor and his antecedents would be in the library of Gettysburg College. Good luck. Nova Scotia But there's no sure place to search the antecedents of your great-grandfather Noble Hill. The contrast between Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and Economy, Nova Scotia, couldn't be greater. One is a tourist center and historic shrine visited by thousands each day. The other is a backwater section of a Canadian province attracting scarcely a dozen tourists a decade. These are mostly Longfellow buffs researching the " Evangeline country" and Grande Pre, the deserted village from which the French, including Gabriel and his girl friend, were driven out to resettle in Louisiana. But no one drove the Scots out. Just why so many left Economy is a matter you might want to research. We know why our family left. It was to seek the fortune, which my uncles found, in California. Turning back to page 9 I read: The entire family had left their too stem and rockbound coast, Noble to work his way through college, the rest to follow Greeley's advice. Be· ing sailors, they scorned the new-functioning Union Pacific railroad. The brothers rounded the Hom. The father, mother and sister shipped to Panama, crossed on the narrow-guage rail line and sailed up to San Francisco. . I I • J �POSTSCRIPT ] J ] ~ ] J ] ] ] ] ] The town of Economy is so remote that my description will be meaningless without a map. To spare you a trip to your atlas, look below. The highest tides in the world are in that Bay of Fundy, right? Wrong! They're in the Basin of Minas~ the water just above the VA in the word "Nova." On · the North shore of that basin, where it begins to narrow, you see a slight bulge. That's Economy Point with its town so tiny that if you tally up the quick and the dead, the latter are in the majority. Or so it seemed ten years ago when we drove Wendy Hill and Roger Smith up there. Spoon River! All, all are sleeping on the hill. And half of them bear that name. We made a shamefully short stay for we were on our way to Lunenburg and Halifax (due South of the Minas Basin) where Noble had lived in sailor's boarding houses between his coasting trips to Boston and his ocean voyages to England. Todd's trip North to Noble's boyhood was more recent but equally rushed. He brought back graveyard pictures of many a Hill headstone but no sure knowledge of my grandfather Edward's antecedents. I never knew this shipbuilding father of Noble who is pictured back on page 61. I met his widow but once. It was in the summer of 1910 and she was past ninety but still reading a newspaper and threading a needle without glasses. She talked of her husband's ships and of the "wee kirk on the coast" (see Todd's picture above) where she was married and where her small son learned his catechism and recited his John Knox Confession of Faith. In later life this Bible scholar came to question that Virgin Birth and Resurrection and passed all of his doubts - and part of his scholarship . on to a son. To delve deeper int o Hill roots will prove frustrating because that name is so very common in Britain and America. For instance the Miami directory now lists over fo ur hundred Hills. In contrast, exactly one Gettys. My own interest in roots is appeased by peering back only a few generations. Beyond four or five, genes become so diluted as to be meaningless. Nothing is more boring than that compilation of bare names and dates your D.A.R. friends bring out to document their descent from a Bradford or a Brewster who stepped ashore from the Mayflower. My grandfather Almanza had his printed geneaology linking him to John Rogers, the Catholic priest turned Protestant martyr and burned as a heretic by Bloody Mary in 1655. Where is that list? Probably lost. I haven't seen it since I was a child. It might be in the Hutchins Library in Berea. This brings up the subject of the family memora· bilia filling this Florida home. You survivors, when the funeral baked meats have cooled, will stand aghast at its quantity and its disarray. This week Pope Paul, a fell ow octegenarian, is celebrating his birthday. High on a shoulder-borne throne he tells his "children" he now feels the fragilit; of life (welcome to the club, Paul) and fears God's judgement soon to come. The judgement I fear is yours. And Hascy's. I can hear now that irreverent pal of an elder day sounding off: "Why in Hell couldn't the old coot have organized this mess he leaves to us!!?" I've tried , son. And accomplished a lot. You should have seen it a year ago. As soon as this scrap· book goes to t he binders I'm going to really try. Anyway, you've got an attic, haven't you. So has Melinda. The family letters are already organized. Righ t up to the early efforts of great-grandchildren and clear back to the Noble-Grace courtship corres· pondence of the eighteen-eighties. You'll find even the old envelopes with their ancient postmarks and 2-cent stamps. These now have monetary value. In fact anything with even a tinge of antiquity now seems to assume value. Our bound volumes of Harpers Magazine for the Civil War years are, of course, priceless but the Time and Newsweek issues you'll find covering the national trauma of Water· gate are also valuable today and will become more so every year. About future storage: The many reels of film, which preserve the family's childhood and ~outh as well as the family's creativity, will last for NOVA SCO TIA ~ 0 50 MILES 100 - () RM <:: N 155 �POSTSCR IPT years in their cans but will eventually deteriorate and become brittle. May be they should be copied onto videotape for permanence and easier projection in the future. You will treasure, surely , and preserve, I pray, the irreplaceable sound left to you on discs and reels and cassettes. The lyrics of Love 's Old Sweet Song are overly pessimistic. The dear, dead days are not beyond recall. You can bring them back through the living voices of your children and of your ancestors. One reel, at least, will need explanation. On it I'm reciting poetry for Tom Standish, our brilliant friend, now dead, who spent most of his adult life blind and crippled. As a Todd athlete in English class he heard me spout a lot of Shakespeare. As an adult bibliophile in bed (see page 4) he kept petitioning for a re-play. I stalled and sent him tapes of real Shakespearean readers, Orson and others. But he kept pleading for those classroom memories of boyhood. I compromised by sending him some of my favorites: passages and poems that I use in the stilly night when slumber's chain refuses to bind me. Here Sea poetry vies with the Bard. Of course there's Masefield and Kipling but there's also the almost unknown Nicolson, an unsung poetic genius ranking, in my judgement, with the greatest. I tell of him now because his talent was the envy of my youth and because he is almost part of the family being an uncle of our Christopher. He was the older brother of Leo, Chrissy's grandfather. Do I overprize his memory? You be the judge. Read one of his wonderful sea poems: Let others break sod when the robbins are nesting, And sow for the harvest in valley and plain. My heart of a rover is wild lo be breasting The surge of the surf and the mjght of the mrun, When the tang of lhe Spring like the sting of salt spray Comes to call me and lure me and dare me away, Then it's ho for the ropes and the sails they' ll be testing, I'm off to the sea in the wind and the rain. Let other sing songs of the joys of the byways, The trysts in the gloanUng, the Jays of the lark Let others delight in the throngs on the rughways, The bustle and babble from dawn until dark. The droning of bees and the murmur of crowds, They're drowned in the hymn of the hum of the shrouds, And it's ho for a ship to go booming down my ways, A sloop or a schooner, a brig or a bark. Let others for wealth or for wisdom be sighing, The world it is wide and the ways they are free , And today is today but tomorrow means dying So what shall the money bags matter to me? For it's ho and it's hey and it's hey and it's ho! There are women and wine in the tavern I know But it's oh for the skys where the grey gulls are flying, .I' m over the hills lo the ships und the sea. 156 Those lilting lines were first prin ted in the famous Line-0-Type column of the Chicago Trib. I too had been one of B.L.T. 's contributors. The Dream Ship verses on page 58 first saw print there under the heading Lines to a Lumber Schooner Model. But here was a real poet with a Jack London philosophy and a John Masefield background . Or so I supposed. I had met sailor Masefield · I was mad to meet this man . I made it once befor~ his untimely death. It was at the Tavern Club with his friend (and my childhood pal) " Po" Field. To my amazement I learned that this sweet singer, so seduced by the sea, had never even seen the object of his love. A romantic since birth , his travels had all been in the Realms of Gold. He had been born and raised in Kansas. Now he was writ ing in the dark bowels of a Chicago warehouse where his rich brother Leo was subsid izing him with a sinecure job and a desk where he turned out poems under the pen name King of the Black Isles, a satiric reference to his ow~ black aisles. Several thin volumes of his verse were published in the long ago and I now have the " book finders" who advertise in the Saturday Review all looking for these out-of-print gems. They will pro?ably be fo~nd and will then go to you, Christopher, as will last night's tape of a long phone co_nversation with your grandmother, Lillian. On this she tells of the mixed feelings her staid husband L~o, had for his brilliant but off-beat brother. You' Wlll also get the copy of a letter she sent me. It is from the poet to Leo and is signed "Urban" instead o~ the "J.U. " he used for his books. He is telling of his labo:s on the Canterbury Tales. This work, his masterpiece, has now been republished by Doubleday. Our shelves hold other translations of the Boccaccio-type tales told in Middle English verse but these translations are in prose. Nicolson accomplished the amazing feat of modernizing the Chaucer idiom while retaining his rolling iambic pentameter and even his rhymed couplets. CANTERBURY ·~ T" T 1:' ,-=I r\LL s JN MODERN 'ENGLTSH BY JU.NICOLSON A goigt01li rendering of the Jun, stories or Englands Rabelais. !l!usvuted by ROCKWB-11 KENT �POSTSCRIPT • Who 's Afraid of Thomas Wolf? All of us were afraid of his famous dictum when I closed this memoir back on page 150. That final paragraph (before this postscript) was written when four branches of the family were heading home again to their summer childhood in the woods and waters of the Northland. I wrote in hope but also in fear. (Spinoza, you remember, told us these_ were inseparable.) Hope triumphed. We found a miracle: a Camp Tosebo exactly as old Noble b~ilt i~ _and. as old Noble left it. Under new owners, his spmt, like Caesar at Phillipi, still walks abroad. His mottos still stand over the fireplace and over the entrance arch. The pictures of him swinging t~at axe an.d swinging that scythe (in a high starched collar) still hang on his clubhouse walls. • ] • ] ] Wonderful weeks of nostalgia in old surroundings and with old activities. Once again teaching eager youngsters the seaman's art and the sailor's skill. We had the lakeside cottage built by Noud Kelly, grandson of lumber baron, Patrick Noud. We had the fleet of boats, power and sail. f umished us by Johnny Dexter, son of Todd and of Tosebo and who, like so many of his schoolmates, is now a member of our augmented family. Here he is today with the wife he met long ago when teaching sailing at Camp. She was a resorter whose folks owned a place over at Portage Point, that nighttime rendezvous of every Tosebo counselor since its first tent was pitched. Today they live, most of the year, in that one time "cottage," a winterized home of rare beauty near the channel. The Johnny of 1931 is pictured back on page 115. He's the one in the plus-fours beside Orson on the log and was star actor in the plays Orson directed that senior year. These included his own condensation of Shakespeare's Histories into a single play, Five Kings, which he presented at Commencement. How this was later produced on Broadway is told back on page 117. A New Case of Sea Fever in the Family Il Il Here are two Hill boys back home again. One after fifty years, the other after eighty. Each spent childhood summers beneath these very trees. And here are the Hill girls under those trees fifty years ago. The amazing half century that so altered our planet with wars and atoms and flights to the moon has bypassed this sylvan spot. Our old cottage stands intact and, as you see below, the view down to that lovely lake is utichanged. Our old schooner no longer tugs at her mooring but a little sloop swings in her place. The Dexter speed boat brought thrills to the assorted Reitmans but it was the Dexter sloop that brought ecstacy to our first great-grandchild. Something in the genes? Could be. We only know Jon's star status as a swimmer has paled. Now he longs to be on the water not in it; to be a sailor like his ' ' be ancestors. He'll make it of course but it wont easy learning the sailor's art while living far inland. Yes Rockford has its river but tree-lined banks bla~et all wind . Yes, there's a lake out at the State Park and it boasts a sailing club. But this is for adults who race little sloops needing no crew. Our boy has his own solution: He'll go to Annapoli~. Fine Jon. We know you can make it and maybe we can help you get a seagoing headstart by financing a year or two at Tabor. That's a top prep school with a schooner and a sailing program like Todd in the old days. Long before Todd started its "Naval Training" I could often place an eager boy on a Chicago yacht. Owners would ask me to recommend good workers. Skilled or not, such could rate a summerlong berth aboard a racer or a cruiser moored in one of our harbors. His job started in April with weekends of labor and learning in a shipyard. Lessons in scraping, calking, painting, splicing, overhauling gear. Launching day was the climax with its ride down the river 157 �POSTSCRIPT where masts would be stepped, the rigging tuned, sails bent and an inert hull, now given wings and returned to its element, would become a living thing. The summer might bring cruising in a hooker such as Bill Wahl worked on. Or it might bring racing in a Q boat, smallest craft eligible for the long, wet Mackinac grind. This is what your Uncle Sandy, in his early teens, did for two summers. His station was the foredeck where he earned that reputation as the best light canvas "man" in the fleet. This for his ability to break out a spinnaker, unfouled and pulling, the instant his hard-driving skipper, Fran Byrn, rounded the windward mark. But I've strayed from my subject which was Portage Lake and this summer's Return of the Native. While we were in the Noud cottage, the one next door bulged with the amazing Reitmans: eleven of them plus a nursemaid. And a van to carry the mob to every possible tourist attraction including Mackinac Island. Where Al finds the money and where Melinda finds the strength remains a mystery. When they go broke or she lands in a hospital she can write a best selling book. Remember Cheaper by the Dozen? Good reading but our dozen is more colorful. Literally. Also figuratively. Take the time the dark skinned Bobo was asked by a curious lady: "Ar.e you from an institution?" The poor old gal was completely mystified by the answer: "No, I'm half Jewish." Bobo is five and already a veteran competitor in swimming meets. An IDinois champion, no less. Which reminds me of an incident in the sailing education of'the Reitmans: Our training ship was the little "Sea Gull" sloop provided by the Dexters. This, the most popular of the new lanteen rigged "board boats" is eager to go and a joy to sail but it doesn't forgive mistakes as did a Snipe or a Pram in the old days. Capsizing is common and one learns to easily right the craft which is self bailing. Jon had gained some proficiency at the tiller and taken his sisters out. Now Bobo was his passenger when a careless gybe flipped them over. Of course they had life preservers on and, as they were only a thousand feet from their cottage, Jon told his brother to swim to shore. Bobo did . But only after getting rid of that miserable oversize life jacket. It was holding him back no end. When the Reitmans left for home, the greatgrandparents collapsed. Utter exhaustion. A few days rest in Onekama and then a memory binge to points North. No schooner now to carry us by sea but a rented car took us to old harbors if only by the back door. First to Frankfort with its memories of the wild and stormy night when that carferry missed us by inches. And Point Betsy! It was 1917. We were on our second honeymoon in a tent near the great light tower when a midnight rainstorm 158 picked up tent, canoe, clothes and whimpering puppy to scatter them over a dozen dunes. This was a year after our trip down the Manistee from Grayling to the sawmills. We had loved travel in a canoe. In our Ravenswood apartment we conceived the mad, mad notion of taking one, via Lake Michigan, to Charlexiox. The Thetas had scaeduled a convention there and we would arrive, Indian fashion, to the astonishment of all. We would pick good weather and spend nights on the beach. The first night was great; the second, disaster. We salvaged some of our_~ear and caught the steamer back to Chicago. But now it's on to Manistee! The roaring lumber town of my childhood is mindful of its colorful history and, like Woodstock, taking steps for its preservation. That river is, of course, ageless and the River Street of the early days is being restored . Supermarkets and shopping jungles have been relegated to the edge of town. The buildings all date in the 1870's having been erected right after the fire (1871) which leveled t he town but spared its real wealth; the lumber mills out on Manistee Lake. The street is one of stores, offices and restaurants but it's a street out of the past. It was our shopping center at the tum of the century. When my mother's ulcer acted up, her favorite resting place was Lyman's book store with its connection to _..... ........ ..... ......... the Lyman drug store and soda . ·~~~ fountain. These old stores now , . 1* • .. house the Manistee Historical !!'$~:'"· I ~~ ;,.,ip . . . .. 1~ 4--'.,;.-~:_ ~-:;.,.·,.,,..., Museum specializing in the memory of Manistee's lumber barons. Mainly my own lumber baron, "Uncle Louie" Sands who was kind to me and who lived until I was eleven. (See page 58 and also 134). The Sands carriage and some mill machinery are in the old waterworks building at the edge of town but his office is re-created on the second floor of · the Lyman building complete with his desk and wall cabinets. Pictures of his lumber fleet, especially its flagship, the . Isabella B. Sands, abound. The museum's young head, Steve Harold, teaches at Northwestern Michigan College and is a dedicated historian of the lumber era. He was excited by the fact that I owned a model of Manistee's most famous schooner and pointed out t he obvious: this treasure belongs up there in Louie Sands' restored office. True, Steve, but you'll have to talk to Roger Gettys. IJ!@!!J! -.. ,, " ---~~li lm , ,. Mff\ f , - : l:fiDIBii Above is Louie Sands' "Lower Gang Mill" in 1899. I was only four then but a few years later I came here as a frequent and a fascinated visitor. The logs floating in the foreground will go inside one by one and be clamped to a great "carriage" which runs on tracks that straddle a saw. Several of these, each - - �POSTSCRIPT deck, she is loaded down to the Plimsoll mark. That tug, the John C. Mann, was long a fixture in Manistee. I have ridden on it many times. It will be dropped at the pierhead; the schooner already has steerageway with lowers set and trimmed to a South breeze. This should keep Isabella on this port tack clear to Milwaukee, her probable destination. Below you see our model photographed from the same four-points-on-the-bow angle but now on a starboard tack. To get the picture I took the beauty from its bookcase setting. One of the halyards had parted but reeving a new one through the miniature blocks proved too difficult for these clumsy fingers. I marveled anew at the original workmanship and the later skill of old Captain Bernsteen (see page 134) who re-rigged it for us twenty years ago. Every detail is authentic down to the dead-eyes and lanyards. Will such talent be _ available to you for the overhaul you may need in another twenty years? We can only hope. About that tug: The Mann was a fiXture in · early Manistee. Until 1910 the town, like ocean ports today, required commercial vessels to hire local, licensed help when using its harbor. Even our steamer from Chicago was required to stop outside and toot for a useless tug to give it a "tow" up the river. The Mann was berthed at one of Gus Kitzinger's docks and may have been his property. Anyway, through our friend I was privileged to play deckhand when ever I wished. My mother had many friends in Manistee and we would spend several days there both at the beginning and the end of our summer. 'l'hen it was my joy to ride out on the Mann when the lighthouse keeper sounded his horn to signal that a tow was waiting outside. Hearing this, I would run to the foot of Oak street, jump aboard, sit on the after bitts for the ride down the river and then, if lucky, catch the coiled heaving line. Stronger hands would haul on this to bring aboard the great hawser from the waiting vessel which might be a passenger liner, a steam freighter or an ageing lumber schooner. _ 159 �POSTSCRIPT Noud Kelly, I discovered; is a history buff. His research on early steamers matches mine on early schooners. It's research you can relate to for it extends into your era and even into today. The carferrys still carry their freight trains and their travelers between Milwaukee and Ludington. You grandchildren rode these boats in your childhood. Your parents traveled to the same camp over the same water route but on Gus Kitzinger's boats. In my childhood we boarded our boats in Chicago. Luxurious liners with parlor suites for the wealthy and stables below for their horses and carriages. (I speak of "boats." This is t he Great Lakes term for even giant ore carriers. On salt water all would be "ships.") Much of Kitzinger's fleet, the Pere Marquette Line Steamers, was assembled from salt water. His Virginia came from the Chesapeake when I was a boy; his Nevada from the Pacific in 1921. It had once been owned by Russia and was built as an ice breaker. Generations of· Tosebo boys rode the little ship from Milwaukee to Manistee every June and back again in August. The genial Irish captain, Mike Mason, gave camp boys royal treatment from engine room to bridge and wonderful experiences from stoking a coal furnace to steering a compass course. Ship and captain, called to war against Hitler, went down in the Atlantic in 1942. Final item on Manistee: On your next trip there try the ancient Hotel Chippewa. It was our happy hostelry at the turn of the century and its dining room windows lookPd out on a yard full of huge red wheels and the blacksmith shops of our friend Mr. Overpack. Those windows are now bricked up to bring today's stylish gloom to go with the obligatory huge menus with tassled cords. This spurious swank is probably better than looking across that street now. Those logging wheels and open forges have given way to a yard filled with crumpled cars and a body shop. The picture and caption in the next column is taken from The Lumberman's Legacy, one of the books published by the Manistee Historical Society. 160 The Big Wheels which made summer logging possible were invented by Manistee's Silas C. Overpack, built in his shop and shipped all over the world. They were made entirely by hand, the lever principle being 1ingeniously used to lift and balance the load. Back to Woodstock Our final home-again experience was, of course, Woodstock. 'The heart-warming restorations there leave but one regret: Richard Kimball Todd's home was not preserved. For that tragedy I must assume blame. With t he clarity of hindsight I now see how, when his school closed, I could have saved that historic gem. In 1847 the Princeton preacher with his rich wife came from Philadelphia to Waukegan by water (see page 72) and went inland to build the first "mansion" on the portion of our Middle Border that is now McHenry County. Had my wits been about me the birthplace of your grandfather and childhood ho1me of your parents would now be a shrine. It wc::mld also be the crowning glory of Woodstock's restoration. That ante-bellum beauty was ancient when the Opera House was new. I tell of it back on pages 50 and 51. I'll repeat here the pictures and their captions. , --,.......,..__ Exterior of the bea1utiful home the Princeton preacher, R.K. Todd, built for his bride beforn the Civil War. I mean, of course, the section on the left That long wing and porch on the right was a Noble Hill, boarding school addition. In your day there was a third floor; in my day just an attic wheriour maids lived under slanted ceilings. That port-cochere (covered driveway) seen on the right was my mother's pride, added when I was four or five. & picture on next pane where a surrey waits with a driver to take our dressec up family as soon a1s the camera clicks. �POSTSCRIPT Interior of my birthplace. Originally the R.K. Todd home but now its walnut paneling painted white and my mother's filagree added. I was born in a bedroom at the top of the stairs. Our three ch ildren were born in hospitals but lived their young lives at the top of the same stairs, sliding down the same banister. The electric lights and steam heat were added by Noble. Hortense took out that filagree and put in the fireplace of your memory across the corner showing here a bookcase. ] ii 1 !J But let's accent the positive and talk of what has happened. The start of the story is back on pages 66 to 68 where you '11 find pictures and an account of early events and hopes. I wrote: Our anci.e nt Opera House has been designated a National Historic Landmark. 'This brings no federal money but provides impetus for us to pitch in and finance a restoration. I was thinking in terms of hundreds such as the Todd Troupers would raise in the old days to buy 11 new seating a new curtain, whatever. But now! . .. !I Wealth bey~nd our wildest dreams! With vision, bard work and the establishment of a not-for-profit Woodstock Opera House Inc., enthusiasts have raised hundreds of thousands. This from foundations, federal grants and wealthy donors. The entire building bas been rejuvenated. Gorgeous chandeliers of the period have been designed and hung. Duplicates of original carpeting have been woven ~nd laid . The false ceiling of our day - embossed tin - has been taken down to reveal remnants of intricate stencil work on plaster. Enough was intact to enable artists to produce, with Sistine Chapel patience, an accurate restoration. Best of all, a living theater has been established worthy of the great names of the past. I told earlier of our Todd Theatre Festival that, with II Orson and the Irish actors, drew such crowds from '-11 Chicago. And I told of the now famous natrtes that followed us on that stage. I'll repeat myself: ] We bragged, back in '34, about the venerable names that preceded us on this stage: Joe Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle, Ben Greet in Shakespeare, Bryan giving his Cross of Gold speech. Now our names, so young then, have turned venerable: Welles, MaoLiammoir, Edwards. A new generation of stars followed. 'These came mostly from the Goodman School in Chicago: Paul Newman, Betsy Palmer, Geraldine Page, Shelly Berman. Now these are aging. But youth is eternal. And the Bible puts it best: "Your young men shall see visions. Your old men shall dream dreams." Carry on old Opera House! For us. For all Who will follow. That prayer has been answered. A season or weekend productions is planned by the new directors, Doug Rankin and John Scharres. The first three have been sell-outs. Then there's the old Courthouse and Jail, now a bustling complex of boutiques and dining establishments. Now you ~ can drink your cocktails and toast the past in Eugene Debs ~ " prison cell. (See page 30.) Best news of all for this sentimentalist is the return of the old Spring House - at least an exact duplicate - to our park. How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood. Sam Woodworth said it first and went on to rhapsodize his old oaken bucket, the moss covered bucket that hung by the well. The dear-to-my-heart scene of my childhood was a rust covered cup that hung by a pump where a boy could quench his thirst with nectar from an ironrich spring. "Use your left hand, Roger," my mother would say, "there are fewer germs on the back." I did. And to that sage advice I now attribute my longevity. (In sober truth, everybody had that idea back then so the really enlightened returned to the front.) That pump was still there in 1934 and can be seen in George Shealy's drawing of the beautiful Square and its then-towering elms on page 66. When the building rotted, a bubbler took its place. This brought merely insipid, softened drinks to a deprived citizenry. Memo to the mayor and city fathers: I'll pay for the installation of another antique pump if you 'II connect it to the wonderful water in that old well. I'll also donate, in the name of a mother and her son, a suitably rusted Hill Memorial Cup to hang on a Hill Memorial Chain. Grace Hill Memorial Cup 161 �POSTSCRIPT So much for childhood. This postscript was to bring our story up to date; to tell you about Old Age. Seneca called this the Incurable Disease. Not really . God has at cure for all discomforts; it'.s called Death and thi:s we await with equanimity even anticipation. I won't enlarge on that theme for I gave our persomtl thanatopsis on page 56. Some pages back I promised Hascy I would clean out my files as :soon as this memoir is finished. Then I remembered :some of the folders held notes written to myself when I first started. Did they contain gems deserving oif development here? I found a few but now it's too late. Mostly I found embarrassment. Scrawls that have lost meaning even to me. These must not be passed on for a family's bewilderment. Wastebaskets full have gone to the burning. Also reams of the questionable rhymes that so often ring in my head and call me from slumber to turn them into type. In drowsy euphoria these often seem inspired. Wide awake, they always sound sophomoric. I saved only one from the burning, a result of reading Homer's Ode! I. xi with its famous aphorism Carpe Diem, seize the day. I tried to modernize it. Nicolson did this better in his last stanza, on page 156 and Kenneth Grahame did it best in his masterpiece of fantasy, "Wind in the Willows:" Come young brother, the South wind waits: Take the Adventure! Heed the Call! Now ere the irrevocable moment passes! Then some day long hence when the cup has been drainc~d. sit down with a store of goodly memories for company. With some reluctance but no further apology I give you the jingle that is the Hill version: · Now all of our days from accouchement t o bier (S~me sweetened with laughter, some saddened with tear) Bnng one thought pervasive : It's great to be here. Sure,·Pangloss was phoney; our world's not the best Of possible worlds but still it's our nest So help to improve it and live with a zest. And Carpe the Diem. YE?S , grab it my friend. This day is your moment! Tomorrow's your end! It's time to cliose -this retrospection. Your grandmother's story is missing but she 's left you much oral history of the Gettys tribe on tape. And I've recorded her phone conversations and family chatter. This leaves you the rich legacy of her gurgling laughtier, the music that has filled our home for six decades. The length of that partnership is our one claim to fame. Or at least to distinction. Sixt.Y-two years! What's the formula? This we're constantly asked and if I knew I'd be ,telling it in a best seller, not just a family memoir. Usually I mumble something about Time and Chance. Here Fll speculate that it's oppositeness! Polarity! The magnetic pull of the negative for the positive. Pages back I called ours a Kissme-Kate alliance. That was silly. Sure, there are 162 fights. Otherwise, how dull. But Hort is no shrew and Hill no Petruchio. Jack Sprat and his wife is more like it. Opposites in every respect except a shared appetite for life. Is it this polarity that puts the magic in our lives? Certainly it is the basis for healthy sex. Yang and Yin. The balanced circle. Polarity. The stuff that keeps our planet spinning and our motors humming. Mayb~ it's our secret power. Of course some tolerance helps. Speaking of love, here are the promised clues to that cryptogram inside the back cover of Melinda's watch. She has the timepiece from her grandmother who had it from me at the big bash on the Tarbox farm celebrating our "Fiftieth." (See page 6.) Here is a facsimile of the love message engraved on that 1966 gift. The allusion to Cleopatra is ob· H.H. vious although the "cloyless" quote is 6-10-16 not as well known as the one about TOAN EVER CLEO, TO "infinite variety." Still, you can pro- ACLOYLESS CARIB GIRL SO GAY bably locate it on your ·own book AS WE STILL CAVORT IN shelves. The Carib Girl is more ob- CLOVER ON A GOLDEN WEDDING DAY scure; you11 find her in the Columbus 6-10-66 Journals. These are good reading for R.H. any sailor or any lover of the Caribbean. One is brightened by a delicious anecdote about a native beauty alternately belli~erant and supremely cooperative. The cavorting m clover alludes to a once popular and slightly bawdy parody of the song, Put on your old grey bonnet. In that version the "fields of clover" saw activi_ty other than a "ride to Dover." Now Death beckons to both of us but the time of the meeting is unpredictable. Old Noble gave us a model we might hope to duplicate. At ninety-three, still vigorous but with some secret k1wwledge that the end was at hand, he asked me to fly to California for a visit with the stipulation that I not come later to view a corpse. He had planned. for cremation and a simpl~ ceremony 'Yhen hlS ashes would be returned to his childhood love, the sea. We had a wonderful talk s~outed a lot of our favorite poetry, and parted with a close embrace. It was only the second one I can remember from that man of great reserve. The first came the night after his wife's funeral when I was given a foretaste of my feelings if Hortense dies before me. I was awakened by a tortured soul who clung tight to his son while sobbing out "The world is so big and empty, son." But I grow maudlin. ru close this valediction by repeating a page from last year's Christmas greeting. · * * * * * * Goodbye, my lovelies. It was wonderful. �POSTSCRIPT Even such is Time that takes in trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have And pays us with but earth and dust. • • That's Walter Raleigh's iambic pentameter written 'into his Journal the night before he died. The Elizabethan soldier, sailor and adventurer had cause for pessimism. He was in the Tower awaiting execution . But for the Hills, Time has brought beneficence. It has taken in trust our youth but not our joys. Its first unkindness will be if it postpones earth and dust - our necessary end - too Iong. · 163 I �INDEX Adams, Henry, 3 Addams, Jane, 24 Ahern, Brian, 125 Amer. Missionary Soc., 19, 21 Apartments in Chicago, 39, 44 Aughenbaugh, C.Z., 14-17 Automobiles, Childhood, 7, 24, 51 Aviation, See "Flying." Baldwin, Chauncey, 27 Bahama Islands, 4749, 133 Bardwell, Dick, 70 .Bardwell, Roger, 94 Ba"etts of Wimpole St., 121 Barrymore, John, 118 Basketball, 25, 73 Bennett, Arnold, 39 Benton, Thomas Hart, 115 Bergen, Edgar, 112 Berman, Shelly, 68 Bernstein, Maurice, 116, 129 Blitzstein, Mark, 114 Boats, in childhood, 51, 63, 64 Canoe honeymoon, 44 Tosebo, Camp Powerboat, 46 Beachcomber, Suwanaka Sloop, 131 Iris, 40-ft. Yawl, 133 Wanderer, powered ocean-crosser, 63, 135 Sea Hawk, Alden 60-ft. Schooner, 136-138 Yankee Girl, Wm. Hand 68-ft. Schooner, 132-142 Truant, 55-ft. Elco Powerboat, 143-148 Truant II, 28-ft. MORC sloop, Cover, 140 Berea College, 4-6, 10, 17, 18-24 · Boneyard Babblings, 30, 34, 35, 96, 105 Boone Tavern, 17, 20 Bronson.i Roger, 29 Brown, family, 154 Bryan, Wm. Jennings, 3, 68 Buchbinder, Hazel, 122 Busses, Todd trips in, 77, 90, 92 Campbell, John, 101 Campbell Playhouse, 113 Candida, 121, 122 Casey at the Bat, 123 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 73 Church, Chapel, 16 Christmas cards, 127, 128 Citizen Kane, 111-113 Clark, Thomas Arkle, 29, 32 Clay, Cassius, 19, 23 Cohn, Harry, 12S Corwin,Euphernia,20 Cornell, Katherine, 77, 121, 122, 12S Clayton, John, 77-79, 118 Cradle Will Rock, 114 Craig, Gordon, 118 Darlow, Donna and Rick, 46 Darrow, Clarence, 30, 129 Davies, Marion, 11 1-112 Dead Reckoning, 130 Death, Postponed, SS Thoughts on, S4-S8 . Dekker, Thomas, 20, 114 Debbs, Eugene, 30 Dewey, Melvin, 20 Dewey, Admiral, S2 Depression of 1893, 70 of the l 930's, 97 Devereaux, Ed, 107 Doctor Faustus, 116 Douglas, Marjorie Stoneman, 11 S . Edwards, Hilton, 117, 123-124 Ellis, Barbara, 101 Embree, Catherine, 24, 101, 107 Edwin,22,24,55, 103 Edwina, 107 Elizabeth, 12, 23 Howard, 23 Nellie, 24, 107 Will, 24 Erie Canal, 72 Eshbach, Miss., S, 6, 23 Fa bray, Nanette, 82 Farms, 98-99 Fawcett, Carol, 9, 103 Fear, thoughts on, 62 Feder, Irwin, 106 Fee, Burritt, 21 Edwin, 23 John, G., 19, 21, 24 Laura, 24 Fermi, Enrico, 108 Field, Eugene, 17, 20, 30 Marshall, 5S "Po," 17, 30, 40, Sl, 111 Five Kings, 117 Flying, by amateurs, 46, 102, 12S-126 Airport at Todd School, 74 France, Richard, 124 Gallagher and Sheen, 29 Garland, Frances, 113-114 Gettys, Grandad, 98 Dolly, 104 Mfg. Co., 2 Gilbert, Elizabeth, 21 Golden Weddings, 6, 7 Goldston, Robert, S3, 94 Graduations at Todd, 91 , 103 Grandchildren, Cover, 1, 2, 104-106 Great-grandchildren, 104-107 Graveyards Berea, 23 Gettysburg, 154 Nova Scotia, 1S5 Hamlet, l, 7, 123, 124 Harvey, Lawrence, 130 Hayes, Hel~n, 128 Hayworth, Rita, S6, 69, 114, 12S-126 Heartbreak House, 114-11 S Hearts ofAge, 11 3-114, 123 Hedman, Catherine, 101 - r - 1 �Hendrickson, Carl, 80 Jacques, 101 Nanette, 80 Hill, Bette, Cover, 2, 97, 10 l-l 03 Emily,2,21,94, 102,133, 141 Grace, 3, 8-10, 19, 28, 50, 51, 62, 65, 71 96, 97 . Joanne, Cover, l, 97, 100-101, 103-104 Lester, 17 Nellie, 9, 103, 107 Noble, 3, 5, 9, 15, 16. 23. 39, 49, 59, 62 65, 71,96,97' 162 Roger Gettys, Cover, 2, 53, 63, 66, 94 96, 100, 102, 133, 136-142 157 Roger Gettys II , 2, 106 Wendy, 2, l 06 Hitler, Adolph, 118 Hoke, Joel, 71 , 101 Hoover, Herbert, 97 Hopkins, Harry, 115 Hopper, DeWolf, 124 Horace Odes, 99 Howard, Hi, 133 Hubbard, Elbert, 20, 56 Hull House, 24 Huntley, Chet, 50 Hutchins Library, 2 1 Hutchins, Robert, 24, 55 I Ibsen, Henrick, 57 Illini, college paper, 31, 96 Illio, college yearbook, 29 Insull, Samuel, 111 Jew Suss, 11 7 Johnson, A.E., 17, 79 Johnston, Alva, 115 Johnson, Irving, 139-141 Jonas, Emil, Rene, 98, 102 Judgement of Paris, 87 Julius Caesar, 114, 116, 122 Junkunz, Esther, 36 Kael, Pauline, 112, 114 Kane, Whitford, 77 Kaye, Danny, 128 Kelly,Leo,51,63 Kirkpatrick, Sid, 29 Kitsinger, Gus, 51, 64, 159-160 Ku-Klux Klan, 4 Lady From Shanghai, 125, 126 Lardner, Ring, 36 Lederer, Charlie, 114, 115 Les Miserables, 112 Lester.,:Jenny, 23 Llbraries Berea Carnegie, 19 Berea Hutchins, 19, 21 California Huntington 19 ~cago Newberry, 19, Chicago Public, 129 _ Washington Folger, 19 Lindsey, Vachel, 29 Lloyd, Lola Maverick, 102 London, Jack, 15 Louis, Joe, 24 ~~kow, Charlie, 101 Lumber Schooners, 134-5, 159 Lumber barons, 66, 158-60 Macbeth, 116 Mackinac Island, 132, 149 Maloney, Russell, 115 Manistee, 158-160 Mankiewicz, Herman, 111-112 March, Charlie, 17 Marching Song, 119, 120 Marriages, Hortense-Roger, 40 Bette-Sandy, 10 l Emily-Roger, 102 J oanne-Hascy, 101 Golden, 6, 7 162, Mars broadcast, 73: 112 Masefield, John, 29, 30, 131 Mason, Edith, 116 MacArthur, Charles, 128 MacArthur, Douglas, 97 MacLiarnmoire, Michael, 114, 117, 123. McClintic, Guthrie, 122 McCormick, Bertie, 111 McFadden, Bernar, 50, 72, 73 McGarry, Gordon, 2, Tim, 2, 107, Pamela, 2, 25 McHenry County Fair, 67 Meigs Brothers, 87, 88, 101 , 122 Mencken, H.L., 56, 57 Merchant of Venice, 121, 129 Mermaid Tavern, 129 Mississippi River, 143-148 Montgomery Ward's, 27, 41, 46 Morrissey, Ed, 32, 35, 40, 44 Motorcycle Gal, 26 Movies, Family and Todd, 8 1-84 Murphy, Frances John, 101 Murray, Jim, 94 Myerson, Bess, 24 National Accelerator Lab., 107 Newman, Paul, 68 Nicolsons, Leo, Lillian, 125, J, IJ, 156 Noble, Peter, 115 Nova Scotia, 61 , 154 Qberlin College, 5, 12, 21 O' Neal, Charles and Tatum, 114 Opera House, Woodstock, 67, 77-78, 123;.161 Othello, 128 Olive, Dorothy, Jim, 148 Page, Geraldine, 68 Palmer, Betsey, 68 Paul, Edgerton, 114 Peary, Admiral, 150 Popcorn business, 66 Proverbs, 16 · Priest, Wally and Korb, 133, 141 Prussing, Louise, 123 �Raphaelson, Samson, 30, 40, 44, 111, 120, 123 Ravenswood Apartment, 44 Raymond, William, 2 Red Badge of Courage, 31 Red Park Summer home, 64 Reed, Helen, 101 Reitman, Melinda, See Tarbox Al and Children, Cover, 1, 104, 107 Robeson, Paul, 127 Roosevelt, F.D., 97, 115-116, 126 Eleanor, 24, 55,:82 Teddy, 15 Rogers, Alan, 6, 8, 28, 96 Almanza, 4-7, 11-13, 20-23, 27 ., 15:2 Elizabeth Embree, 4-6, 12-13, 21-24, 72 Grace, See Grace Hill Jack, 19, 28, 41-43, 96 Joe, 6, 21, 43 Lewis, 7 Raphael, 4, 7, 22-23 Will, 7 Roskie, Tony, 63, 89 Barbara, 89, 101 Carol, 89, 103 Kay,89 'Rubinkam, Hank, 149-150 Sailing, See Boats Saxton, Harry, 50 Shakespeare Textbooks, 83, 121-122 129 Sensibar; George, 14i • Seing, Lillia, Hong, 153 Sheean, Vincent, 44 Sherman, Chubby, 114, 116 Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 27 Shoemakers Holiday, 114 Singing Todd Albums, 85, 86 Sn_tiths, Marriage, 101 Bette, See Hill Pamela, Cover, 2, 102, 103, 127 Priscilla, Cover, 2, 102, 103 Rick, Cover, 2, 57 Roger, 2, 103 Sandy,89, 101, 103 Sparling, Jim, 55 Standish. Tom. 4 Steamers, Early, 160 Stevens, Ashton,TIB Stevens, George, Jr., 130 Sunday, Billy, 3 _ Sutton, Dolly, 153 Tallahassee, 128 Taylor, Ross, 8, 9, 103 Carol, 8, 9, 103 Thanatopsis, 54-58 Thomas, Norman, 127 Tarbox, Hascy, 1,58, 68, 73, 101, 103, 107, 129 Hascy ll, 1, 107 Melinda, Cover, 1, 39, 102, 103-105 Joanne, See Hill Todd, Cover, 1, 39, 102, 103-105 Todd, Rev. R.K., 5, 50, 72, 84 Todd School, 3, 13-17, 69-95 Todd Graduations, 91 Todd Theatre Festival, 67, 77:78 Tosebo Camp, 46, 64, 65, 79 ·, .157 Twelfth Night, 81, 117 Vance, William, 113, 123 VanDoren, Charles, 129 Variety.Magazine, 83, 117 Villon, Francois, 29 Watson, Dudley Crafts, 118 Wayland.Academy, 24, 25 Weddings, Hortense-Roger, 40 Bette-Sandy, 101 Emily-Roger, 102· Joanne-Hascv. 101 Golden, 6-7 l 65 Welles, Christopher, 88, 106, 112, 114, 128,130 Orson, 13,53,56,60,67, 69, 73, 75, 81, 83, 86, 90, 110-130 Rita, See Hayworth Richard, 116 Rebecca, 126 Paula, 129 Virginia, 113-114, 116, 125, 126 White, Jirn, 53 Whitman, Walt, 57 Whitney, Dwight, 94, 101 Wilder, Thornton, 121,' 122, 124 Wilson, Robert and Jane, 107-109 Wiman, Dwight Deere, 120 Winsberg, Ted, Trudy, 79 Woodstock Square, 66-68 Wollcott, Alex, 122 w J ~ LJ ~ u ~J ~ -~ _:] ,J u � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource PDF file of a publication named One man's time and chance : a memoir of eighty years, 1895-1975 written by Roger Hill of Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, IL. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource One man's time and chance : a memoir of eighty years, 1895-1975 Subject The topic of the resource Todd School--Woodstock Illinois Description An account of the resource The reminiscences of Roger Hill, former headmaster for the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock Illinois. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Roger Hill, 1895-1990 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Roger Hill Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roger Hill Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 163 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm Language A language of the resource en-US Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. CONTENTS These rambling recollections follow little sequence and double back on themselves continually. You will need the index at the end if you use the album for reference. In general, the material covered is: Childhood and the John Rogers ancestry 1-24 College and married life in Chicago 25-68 Early pedagogy and the Todd School 69-95 Children and their marriages 96-102 Grandchildren and great-grandchildren 103 -116 A distinguished cousin, Robert Wilson 107 -109 A foster son, Orson Welles 110-130 Sea Fever, a family under sail 130-150 Postscript and Index 151 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1977 1900s Orson Welles Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/b2d6960ac531cb672cc446eac58e8e98.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=EgcEKF9Cx8icSWGZXab2d3YV%7ET22s%7E8jJ6VJIGExzfK8cfd8ispN2s5gIVg7%7EAZ3HP27H9QkNdG9iFGoAKT1byqPE0rNLhFsNrjMsHlAOquRrB4kkqPS9Ni8GhAw0zyPbEuoAELnvNj5lwJlyML0LVyA98l7D7N8VmZcOUUBNxy1FZvdPtxefDwdbJ4jN4C3xqBGXOgccU66NyLFfaFyJdEVXImwo2jGg4tYpeIpyfX5C65FxImkkHN7fFfVnq8h8gdPu1e3XktJKm4HfGvShAq-Z0jFJVMxK7yeiKsSGCsSWojHmBq0s-G7IiDBOKBX69bg90giydMrFU1kM0pgdg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d595f7b471edd165af1abc52e71c0fe5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1920s black and white of a very young Orson Welles acting on stage with another Todd School for Boys student. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Orson Welles Acting on the Rogers Hall Stage at Todd School Description An account of the resource A young Orson Welles acting on the Rogers Hall Stage at the Todd School for Boys. This photo was most likely taken in the mid to late 1920s, The famous actor and director, Orson Welles, is the best-known Todd School graduate. He started at Todd School in 1926 and graduated in 1931 at age 15. In the summer of 1934, he returned to produce the Todd Theatre Festival of Shakespearean plays at the Opera House. Welles’ first known film, Hearts of Age, was filmed in Woodstock. The building seen in the film is Wallingford Hall on the school campus. The Todd School bell used in the film now resides in front of the Woodstock Presbyterian Church, and the gravestone is in the Calvary Cemetery on Jackson Street. Welles is perhaps best known for directing and starring in Citizen Kane. In another of his movies, The Stranger, set in a boys’ boarding school, Welles paid homage by including subtle references to Todd School. Welles was a frequent visitor to the school after graduating, and would eventually serve on the Todd School board and his daughter, Christopher, attended the school. Welles remained friends with Roger Hill, Todd School Headmaster, and the two men collaborated on the Everybody’s Shakespeare. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 192X Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Orson Welles Students Todd School Todd Troupers https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/29d5cdc4859bea8154c70def4fdb93df.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=RbdKYGj3Fvo4u6i89%7EIXKJ9TPAUmbTsC1aE55%7EIeeetMQcgadayoRQu7iu-Kw0FYs5NdvPpYx90fGD24r42a1g9K8Or7sdusaTE9e-7o7qf9tJD6jSmW9CxyzdkqJJWRFxyJQPt6djFHGuNJr8M3tipXZ%7EAcmzbToMzeX1A0sZDESiRfY0gSOHV1gMnCIdxO7PkX0aQ0cMXR78nXZDd6aK%7EX-yljbE4CufYiqBmTH71Idfr37gq9p9UdWmB%7EneS33DOriJHpKYb%7EBeTQL4hr5zsgGVpnahFbbrSlgbTPDmkBCZD6Gmlr-vlSzGVXw91jwoQdhTcxzlUi66LSYI%7Eh6A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 02e935fd4fb5efac7143031e59acc546 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa late 1920s early 1930s black and white photograph of Orson Welles sitting at a table studying with other students and an adult at the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Orson Welles and Other Todd School Students Studying with Roger Hill Description An account of the resource Orson Welles, seated with chin resting on hand, and fellow students posing for a publicity photograph used in Todd School promotions. Headmaster Roger ill is seated to the far right. The famous actor and director, Orson Welles, is the best-known Todd School graduate. He started at Todd School in 1926 and graduated in 1931 at age 15. In the summer of 1934, he returned to produce the Todd Theatre Festival of Shakespearean plays at the Opera House. Welles’ first known film, Hearts of Age, was filmed in Woodstock. The building seen in the film is Wallingford Hall on the school campus. The Todd School bell used in the film now resides in front of the Woodstock Presbyterian Church, and the gravestone is in the Calvary Cemetery on Jackson Street. Welles is perhaps best known for directing and starring in Citizen Kane. In another of his movies, The Stranger, set in a boys’ boarding school, Welles paid homage by including subtle references to Todd School. Welles was a frequent visitor to the school after graduating, and would eventually serve on the Todd School board and his daughter, Christopher, attended the school. Welles remained friends with Roger Hill, Todd School Headmaster, and the two men collaborated on the Everybody’s Shakespeare. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students, including Orson Welles, with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> Orson Welles Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/d738e967688b95ed10650fba282ab5cf.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=sdihZta3QQl1%7EJhM8M3mLva8585FnNk3wZxPIM6y0vQJ63kWiX2wm0yvtYxRAV5-B2D67y6HDivc3JKPZSdWYMtGawNd51FsO%7EaS1U2DPXayiKR9AoOnA8Azg4mThUqfxsg1PPMHyNHuELBx1A0ZRUc9nwc0-9BBZIm2l9udEvB0ARdV3WU-UR7rkNVTgHfprjCRBAnYBRgNfT-0PgEGfeqM1ex5qa9cxAlzDqMyYr7-vD2JXiKiAVVoAOd4RtaiepjwKvPaLvOWI2-yajEXPEgQWQmXKbj4FPKR%7Ee-MucWgeMufUz0j31a3vo52v1dfFzGLqgXwYBjoBvUK08JBrw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 52b4ba025c806b9060f7e5b51d38bc98 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white closeup blurry photograph of a young student at the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. On the photo is writte "Orson Welles". Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Orson Welles at Todd School for Boys Description An account of the resource Discovered in an album of photographs from the Diane Treese Collection donated to the Woodstock Public Library. The name on the photograph indicates that it is of Welles, but it is impossible to confirm. The photograph is with other ones from the time period that Orson Welles attended Todd. The famous actor and director, Orson Welles, is the best-known Todd School graduate. He started at Todd School in 1926 and graduated in 1931 at age 15. In the summer of 1934, he returned to produce the Todd Theatre Festival of Shakespearean plays at the Opera House. Welles’ first known film, Hearts of Age, was filmed in Woodstock. The building seen in the film is Wallingford Hall on the school campus. The Todd School bell used in the film now resides in front of the Woodstock Presbyterian Church, and the gravestone is in the Calvary Cemetery on Jackson Street. Welles is perhaps best known for directing and starring in Citizen Kane. In another of his movies, The Stranger, set in a boys’ boarding school, Welles paid homage by including subtle references to Todd School. Welles was a frequent visitor to the school after graduating, and would eventually serve on the Todd School board and his daughter, Christopher, attended the school. Welles remained friends with Roger Hill, Todd School Headmaster, and the two men collaborated on the Everybody’s Shakespeare. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students, including Orson Welles, with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Diane Treese Collection Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Orson Welles Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/10dcda7be8708c05e4781ee4311be1c1.tif?Expires=1777507200&Signature=uNbRynR1bGd5sTlgpbHYafokfO6gk3h6nozh0-ap12eE5qTXODwxecf0kHUnEeSJWgCbN%7Eu9m2dDG2k86P1mV5nu%7ELGCJ3cMHV4xe3pfOR1BzyPJTu2YaVcdbIVt%7EISbEy9rFLm2uljgT2mqKWZpsaNVRFrRMaV%7ElwZLJVYdW7J2LoTOuZTVvV5NK0kXJufV1MMqb7G1lQYvq8Knz0qXVFg-7BzOhWTUuvU0W079D8V7UhZEGH8Hz0TIUKR0DgHmueWJgJc3Mbe71S0XhcVQe89VnaWnQ%7EvAEKwm3wFF7o5q4mZ%7EyHcbNehoj3OCwZLyRJC17xednKuR-2O4XPBcAg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 41170081c3d5e0af2a1b40f4aba5c9e7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1930 black and white photograph of Orson Welles in front of a microphone with two younger Todd School Students who are holding what appears to be a script. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Orson Welles returns to direct Todd Troupers Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930~ Description An account of the resource The famous actor and director, Orson Welles, is the best-known Todd School graduate. He started at Todd School in 1926 and graduated in 1931 at age 15. In the summer of 1934, he returned to produce the Todd Theatre Festival of Shakespearean plays at the Opera House. Welles’ first known film, Hearts of Age, was filmed in Woodstock. The building seen in the film is Wallingford Hall on the school campus. The Todd School bell used in the film now resides in front of the Woodstock Presbyterian Church, and the gravestone is in the Calvary Cemetery on Jackson Street. Welles is perhaps best known for directing and starring in Citizen Kane. In another of his movies, The Stranger, set in a boys’ boarding school, Welles paid homage by including subtle references to Todd School. Welles was a frequent visitor to the school after graduating, and would eventually serve on the Todd School board and his daughter, Christopher, attended the school. Welles remained friends with Roger Hill, Todd School Headmaster, and the two men collaborated on the Everybody’s Shakespeare. Orson Welles Todd School Todd Troupers https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/82ebb579662cc353030f1afe392a31e1.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=iq8Vu6wk-Jg26lMpr6kH6IEyjZAChdUgUjPj1VAp%7ElhaTajybwxuELDFfelAWznlcn4BZWEVF4e6dzxOSEx0J05sFN78QDfq6OSSpF7yVklRfdsBWbDgVvlwAEachik36WtzwQH4jHWMk%7E2LmAZFW34SS8E2IO03K5ku0-5l0icFr%7EJ3IoSi52T87xN4wsP%7Eie1rZhCmXXX7WTC1YjWWIJsJ0sdR%7E%7EaboI6TPgA9HjAaZyRW9dk6YQFbksStKciGAraJ82OgTrKJG3Gvrx-jyQho9FtaC1aCmnqtYYLNdwcU9UkB2zpI4YfOUj7fKcRC5MQpgDFbruYdtykJ-SVa-A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM cae7fc417a3971d907557c84d2f9ce2e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Color scans of 1934 playbills for the Todd School for Boys Theatre Festival at the Woodstock Opera House, Woodstock, Illinois. The first playbill is for the play Tribly which was staged by Orson Welles. The second playbill is for the play Hamlet. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Playbill - The Todd Theatre Festival of 1934 Description An account of the resource When the traveling theatre circuits disappeared in the early 20th century, the Woodstock Opera House became the site for the Chicago-area's first, however short-lived, summer stock theatre - The Todd Theatre Festival of 1934. The six-week summer theatre festival was organized by Todd School’s headmaster Roger Hill and Orson Welles (a 1931 graduate of Todd School). Three plays were presented at the Woodstock Opera House — Trilby, Hamlet and Tsar Paul — featuring Welles, Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir of Dublin's Gate Theatre, Louise Prussing, Charles O'Neal and Constance Heron. The stage of the Woodstock Opera House was dedicated to Welles in 2013, and the Woodstock Opera House hosted an 80th anniversary celebration of the Todd Theatre Festival. The famous actor and director, Orson Welles, is the best-known Todd School graduate. He started at Todd School in 1926 and graduated in 1931 at age 15. In the summer of 1934, he returned to produce the Todd Theatre Festival of Shakespearean plays at the Opera House. Welles’ first known film, Hearts of Age, was filmed in Woodstock. The building seen in the film is Wallingford Hall on the school campus. The Todd School bell used in the film now resides in front of the Woodstock Presbyterian Church, and the gravestone is in the Calvary Cemetery on Jackson Street. Welles is perhaps best known for directing and starring in Citizen Kane. In another of his movies, The Stranger, set in a boys’ boarding school, Welles paid homage by including subtle references to Todd School. Welles was a frequent visitor to the school after graduating, and would eventually serve on the Todd School board and his daughter, Christopher, attended the school. Welles remained friends with Roger Hill, Todd School Headmaster, and the two men collaborated on the Everybody’s Shakespeare. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1934 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Opera House Orson Welles Todd School Todd Theatre Festival https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/a76de79b6093f20bc9b7bdb7396ed023.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=MgOMCN7Mpsqo4Zcsl8qgF4r3C4iHMvkxp4Wp8bT8ATpWthV2%7EEgh3NewMhX21FWXK9o-MdNkoogDR0YMcJp3%7EDpyxSKXKXqrFsRnIriTWR16Tp0EJcp8Vv6SGjRgoM7W-AfHHQQLhp-swIjzXDvM%7EFSsC8XvIV8EvJb10rpKKE86Hi39HZr-JBB23xVP-b6W52CeDeifm7Vdze5jvJSKZ2P%7E5bb6QBMf2j-NyapmJKIqw7quoJAJeR0Giu6WVrzGDoNsHZP8BolroRE7mvkGDvPu7Y4BVdZA0Ax8bRSsO1sWhZKm87ivxu5hP72rnvwrz65-q9jzn1KK9dXddkwJQA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 46b9d625a6f795b293bfe89ceacd7a05 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white illustration of Reverend Richard Kimball Todd founder the school that in 1848 would come to be known as the Todd School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Reverend Richard Kimball Todd (1814-1894) - Todd School Description An account of the resource Reverend Todd founded the school that would come to be known as the Todd School for Boys in 1848. Reverend Todd, a graduate of Princeton, came from Vermont to be the first pastor of Woodstock’s Presbyterian Church. He was also the county superintendent of schools from 1849 to 1855. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1800s Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/f7e580bcb25ae66c135dd482b285d2cc.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=cJJs7kMMT3fn0PaSC0anOmjVvO9mpTgPoH2SSVssWk1wlN8nfDMyom7gO8y0lI7vx0yD8j74cN8geUsHD3vR--feKXMaOIcrBONNyMo9yGBc00kfNiatHcS15D6EodgI%7EaLvwlZUOlXi2HBMoq3vyB7kE2KlgpRt8FXSHLUnLYlMRNZIbfnWSIMYnjcZUe%7EeSXplXc-Yo7ysoKlrujqy65mhbDL2lz7rMIHFXNhFGQ1ukiOTRwByasVg9RReH1fc0LkDTLp5RDoNpE3uQHvIrd5LutbqXx-ZN-Nn8GvbCs6PWIoazx-SCu9axeiBEBY4f25whtXSoBXNNYHHNk9NhQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4f5e824d2b3a7d435602d83d7d78aa7e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Roger and Hortense Hill - Todd School Description An account of the resource Noble Hill’s son Roger “Skipper” Hill joined the school faculty in 1921 and became headmaster when his father retired in 1928. Skipper believed in enriching student life and learning outside of the classroom. Skipper expanded the drama & music and agriculture and animal husbandry programs as well as starting an aviation program, which included building an airport on the land that is now Marian Central Catholic High School. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/0facfe164bfd567039dae82ee4bb7dd4.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=L9-Auyj3cl1tx8gApdi%7EqttyGfCsWx2RlBE2J5TGWrNxCrs2fkAHcGKppM1NLdP7iIVGzuXXYKT1Z2In0%7EuiY9EhAWGpcFbjhxipeXtVqI8Ph4p7dW1twJ4ZmM%7Epbt4K2uH1tqvnA3Oy5ZGc8umbJlnAkpswbxSIDxnUlDkNU%7Ej-KUPTevRPsPiy2sOw0reLO-wGF4stGQTd6bvTWAOZi6gq4EF%7Eyv2sQLpmBx932VZST7MHXaQfcnyj0PDmccW8VcenURgJe7DK4L21PSZnrZxW5TvLCNnrfPXP3yWApPGdJ1fta-79Z8cO6Z7m7rfTJlyC274gjZXEEWs3qwRM7w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c109f015497107432b0b5ca16136863d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of a two story brick building known as Rogers Hall on the campus of the Tood School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rogers Hall - Todd School Description An account of the resource Built in 1910 and named in honor of Noble Hill's wife's family name, Rogers. The facility included wood, print, and machine shops, classrooms, a library, science laboratories and a 180 seat theater. Rogers Hall is one of the few remaining buildings from the Todd School Campus and is located at 730 N Seminary Ave, Woodstock, IL. It is currently (2021) being used as an apartment building. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. 1900s Buildings Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/b268d2256fbf0cfab0c58dc4f5af848a.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=ql6i-yVzlObwAQDAfMBJC-RtypJ8%7EfL77Flnn65Mp8qy0BXb7edIK1tIB7-c20P1653tRhiNEewpKK42DzXjNnmueDZIBA5hrdIE9Qxp1xFCKhjZPanmH1OBzPSWzuaWaRy7q7fi-TjgXSAkF2Xy9B-ZxssxirAkXdlxcwDFZacYaPzGtqi03neooh04pnLQUuHAv%7EuKQ8nOUPZOge9LGr6imOTwKEMjM87o2cPAiK-gGGRmkjUh4Fk3AUnszVwnsixQK7p86WG-6Nn2WxSIrBob5P-ld0rOctAEkWLwn22Dv2uFU3Tk7fFq9jzDJbNnxEx1Y4KovfiB62We0WFIIQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 077ccca8aa93d434785957d25ba81992 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1930 black and white photograph of two students standing in an field at the Todd School for Boys. The student in the foreground is possibly Orson Welles but has not been confirmed. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Student at Todd School for Boys (Possibly Orson Welles), circa 1930 Description An account of the resource The boy in the photograph bears a likeness to Orson Welles. There are no names on the photograph to confirm who the students are in the photograph. The photograph is with other ones from the time period that Orson Welles attended Todd. The famous actor and director, Orson Welles, is the best-known Todd School graduate. He started at Todd School in 1926 and graduated in 1931 at age 15. In the summer of 1934, he returned to produce the Todd Theatre Festival of Shakespearean plays at the Opera House. Welles’ first known film, Hearts of Age, was filmed in Woodstock. The building seen in the film is Wallingford Hall on the school campus. The Todd School bell used in the film now resides in front of the Woodstock Presbyterian Church, and the gravestone is in the Calvary Cemetery on Jackson Street. Welles is perhaps best known for directing and starring in Citizen Kane. In another of his movies, The Stranger, set in a boys’ boarding school, Welles paid homage by including subtle references to Todd School. Welles was a frequent visitor to the school after graduating, and would eventually serve on the Todd School board and his daughter, Christopher, attended the school. Welles remained friends with Roger Hill, Todd School Headmaster, and the two men collaborated on the Everybody’s Shakespeare. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students, including Orson Welles, with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Diane Treese Collection Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930~ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Orson Welles Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/90fa0a27981835105e1df412c65dc099.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=F8kyDYTzaiFibFiblnGpgU2cbJdBjTanfJSFJNwZX28BeHyTatFrDmSqNVVGZ-qsRBHdBvdx00o8ydgS8cE7uiaGP6p5GuXbLypeLyvF958kbyDAMMtzJsI7oEtHrajhNjVEUvcfunrPC5JWdsOBrncHV4lKH%7EBt7vOELI4hQ%7EDntwIGFV8Y7IJD2gnHSwmpPOxPvO9HZXTMNzE87iUXrBJg8ZWMVgKn8SEbu3L9o7%7EYVX1gdxGLKML87C4Nv1tJudS7okazLAD2SD2DI%7EYOXogxsSpLh9U0AajfmkC-LUNSOx0acUikEh44tap3kBK-xQCOsUyO6599tfGy%7E7fvsQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM cc481dd5a716698b06010849cb1ebd07 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1940 black and white photography of student parents in front of a trailer coach on the campus of the Todd School for Boys campus located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Student Parents in Front of Todd School's Travel Coach "Big Bertha" Description An account of the resource Circa 1940s. Coach Roskie is on the far left. Affectionately known as “Big Bertha,” the Todd School sleeper buses provided a complete traveling home/school, were used to take students to educational sites throughout North America and to transport students to the Todd winter home in Florida. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Anthony C. Roskie grew up in Rockford, Illinois and attended Rockford High School. After graduating from Lake Forest College outside of Chicago in 1929, he took a position as a coach and teacher at Todd School for Boys, eventually serving as its athletic director. Following his years at Todd and Woodstock Community High School, Roskie became a founder of McHenry County College. Roskie was voted Woodstock Citizen of the Year in 1971. Eleven years later, a pavilion at Woodstock City Park was named in his honor. He died in 1995 at the age of 89. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Caryl Roskie Lemanski Collection Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 194X 1900s Big Bertha Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/dbd9054438080e6e474a776875597cc6.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=KBSiDmdXnGoILhxponSQTTbuXMPrwx8pgBvkKPNmSwWl4HqzPFaZFl95RhmZ2eQMD3VK2cLewT4FwYjd2K4KPRfFUBZzCZfypyd1Q5sljNORH7z8pdOTnE-teCByd3oNgTofabi0sMHz8Y4Hde6H01VB1OWdZI7rGw2-1IrrlKbGxXtAtdEY5cxOCWbvDWG-NwSK1NDNzICqueoQmEqcs397enQWJB-4rMgO3SIYJrMbdkdDPvwPsqSKpdBlUIRKnbNdGY6YVksoXkXC69F7v5vLR92eMlUlC10aLrdIni0cC-Hg9agU-A0bwA1SEy6IQW9vSfqurKjXbQL5bNGvcQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 8added156b8e0bb1cc24c3f0add32fac Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Students & Noble Hill in Front of Grace Hall - Todd School Description An account of the resource Students and Headmaster Noble Hill in front of Todd School's Grace Hall. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Noble Hill took charge of the school from Referend Todd in 1888, and purchased the school from Todd in 1892. Noble Hill was responsible for turning the school into a widely renowned institution, and also made extensive renovations to the campus. In 1928, he retired as headmaster and turned the school over to his son, Roger. Grace Hall was built in 1920-1921, the brick building provided accommodations for twenty-four students and six faculty members. It also housed the school's sound studio, laboratory, and photography dark room. Grace Hall was named in memory of Noble Hill's first wife, Grace Rogers Hill, who died in 1914. After Todd School closed in 1954, the building was purchased by the Woodstock Children's Home, later the Woodstock Christian Life Services. The building was torn down in 2010 to allow for the expansion of the WCLS campus. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Buildings Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/c746db5ddb19b56318b38fc05a61a019.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=eJPVCr4WGv0-cgP26Z2paNm7L2hiB9yDcivLg8qCDFtK5kFMl62YFfvthV7u41HZXf3KsFm3L87-%7EOX-7ixrBSD97zUDvyfJnLrKmO1Jf9Ft2w4xuYhFgLDsNIPlHUFtSAJVw4fLjZ0av4PuHTHYt9sEMO0kF-wgr9ZCFwV7tWxsVLracaM1kAo5ACHKuBmK%7EAx5X1sA3BGyNBpqE3fEf0THoRQ3hvw7EWuhOREV941uUT4FG-DLxPc5yAvW9m3jk41I4wLaZp-Vl2oYCTwHOtkfll1F7c87zjPWwlmolseHF-pYYBMlCKxkMbs7ZJwGXIEXgerG88XaEzNxnh153Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 884a1ee18a36df7caa583647132f5737 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1930 black and white photograph of a small group of Tood School for Boys students. The students are dressed in suits with ties and are in front of a hedge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Students at Todd School for Boys, circa 1930 Description An account of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Diane Treese Collection Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930~ 1900s Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/e72df31bf144c6f367814ca12bd962a7.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=CaHQXG0r8AJZXaNvujau4bZnlR8zGZ3eURv1Gi79dG63NBVnG4tJBp8cA9sw8eeVfn5oGHKStIy8gTK5SG6Hshe96PC%7E64x8yZgH5qvUIPbF4lPGpNwn6UXI2drI3GYl4fJcRhv58MFp%7E8SgLJbdTivYWE5MLU9BJIpyryG1Bmp9Xr1CkzmDCiYJIZgFdVO%7EFLMu-R2KSmkGo7PnKh9zw3uX80bt9IuN5LVRueM7672JZZ2AkGEbRdMLo9TdEx1Xz0GqIDY2jOTC4WNTcGbqfLvIsgvIx4fMWlo6uw%7ED192PGhu6aN6Q7Xi3Vvzu7XciNfoLozNHsIv-aTvcA8-AAw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 63db7f45bdf9e600cba68976d59014f6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1930 black and white photograph of two students on the campus of the Todd School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. The student on the right is possibly Orson Welles, but has not been confirmed. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Students from Todd School for Boys, circa 1930 Description An account of the resource The boy on the right is possibly Orson Welles. The famous actor and director, Orson Welles, is the best-known Todd School graduate. He started at Todd School in 1926 and graduated in 1931 at age 15. In the summer of 1934, he returned to produce the Todd Theatre Festival of Shakespearean plays at the Opera House. Welles’ first known film, Hearts of Age, was filmed in Woodstock. The building seen in the film is Wallingford Hall on the school campus. The Todd School bell used in the film now resides in front of the Woodstock Presbyterian Church, and the gravestone is in the Calvary Cemetery on Jackson Street. Welles is perhaps best known for directing and starring in Citizen Kane. In another of his movies, The Stranger, set in a boys’ boarding school, Welles paid homage by including subtle references to Todd School. Welles was a frequent visitor to the school after graduating, and would eventually serve on the Todd School board and his daughter, Christopher, attended the school. Welles remained friends with Roger Hill, Todd School Headmaster, and the two men collaborated on the Everybody’s Shakespeare. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students, including Orson Welles, with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930~ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Orson Welles Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/28a9f0c03dd653d08eabc153a3cc3115.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=ubBq2usTOX5RPBpiDl5OTwvv-870lQ5Zw5aP9uSSIs381kbnsXSBmuyRjfk2fKKGK6qUTHhcxbq9-l4Lxwhrrc94OKxTOr8PT-0dx-bDNuSAz2MN70jbfsq0KYrMeKOdwl6rKCqFvySK87CKk2UTnYNkcITosg8DrZZjtc7PErhULgwrO4r8sbCdGx5hb0rsGtzxHv%7E7Wq-3JU881Tg-YGbZPATX-TWKT5zrGKnzbyjm2hPflNVTS9cyfjrIV6I8Olm4kpI4dYUVroY5Xs94A9W%7EqLDOxqK2mRErGetCBqRchDzSNo0q-ysjsrD0bNsrCRELctQQreKYJPPF5Rq1yA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c06ac48d9acff495d24ef27d037eec23 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of several students and a faculty member of the Todd School for Boys sitting and posing on horses. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Students on Horses with Coach Roskie, 1937 Description An account of the resource The Todd School curriculum included horseback riding. The stable in the background was built by Todd students in 1930, under the direction of instructor A.E. Johnson. Coach Roskie is the fourth person from the left in this photograph. A Todd promotional brochure describes the experience as “Horsemanship at Todd is of the wild and wooly variety. Blue jeans rather than jodhpurs are in.“ The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Anthony C. Roskie grew up in Rockford, Illinois and attended Rockford High School. After graduating from Lake Forest College outside of Chicago in 1929, he took a position as a coach and teacher at Todd School for Boys, eventually serving as its athletic director. Following his years at Todd and Woodstock Community High School, Roskie became a founder of McHenry County College. Roskie was voted Woodstock Citizen of the Year in 1971. Eleven years later, a pavilion at Woodstock City Park was named in his honor. He died in 1995 at the age of 89. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1937 1900s Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/71af20f734d12d2230eda43e236a3110.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=BivCyyIlYkNOFHBchM3ksNP0%7EkdBay1b6dCBkAMqWcs26WMAH5G5unQQgP94cAW%7E1mFJ2Otw84sbmCZitqmDFeYk93g5R5izVGP6I1VO4nPt0I6YTdU5PNyOCaz83g-MLVro8LvBEzfmYcWq80GdhkDgjRzdh2-98N6DNb87r0AoW4xx5Te7iCBJKZMJK1F-%7EJlnZf2u4jhI-txdZDE798TGGHXSQE3KHJq-PJF1AUNWWA91fXvT9Q01KeDCi4pmNereAtCs%7EUTW9wO0nLUlUPlPmntL9Ja-ozgwDvqQ30gDskHpT8Vk0ySnkhgXpUjE-YZZBtpNsbAgxSwfILsDDQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f28de4db77e1c67d8bdb83b3727b10f4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1930 black and white photograph of several students on the steps of a building on the campus of the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Students on the Steps of Grace Hall, Todd School for Boys, circa 1930 Subject The topic of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Grace Hall Built in 1920-1921, the brick building provided accommodations for twenty-four students and six faculty members. It also housed the school's sound studio, laboratory, and photography dark room. Grace Hall was named in memory of Noble Hill's first wife, Grace Rogers Hill, who died in 1914. After Todd School closed in 1954, the building was purchased by the Woodstock Children's Home, later the Woodstock Christian Life Services. The building was torn down in 2010 to allow for the expansion of the WCLS campus. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Diane Treese Collection Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Buildings Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/ca984074bc102cd5b416a13ff1fb8f9e.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=JYmCUdj1x-cSyIGJv8IKLfSwrGQuu3Z-2W1GZHfG2CUm-mObYQ6p%7EYfcjO4q3Zh6U5MDcqzb1diNH-fclM56Zh-Qrqk6I7xP-6ujVaYI%7E715uYxW5GDWsIUBmMq0HW8Us6qx72RStarqiOCgFyryIGb1mu7qsfVo80sG5BXS-Db-4s6FdOxSH-7Ki5IlM38bUO%7EIyrnP0JvQ0Ol1V2jx0xYYtjlsj37S-KmJ3Z70TmpeyLLptjLL9lYz-RzaQ%7Ec45gy1%7EgpIkBS3nA2r4GFyZ-WWlxxGnyivv%7E4RxnQwpafw9c4oNc8tfVtPk%7E-%7E5-wT8LQB52DrPUx26A99obVdBw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 534dda10a20f218ca60f3f346efde61b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of students swimming in the Todd School for Boys indoor swimming pool. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Swimming Pool - Todd School Description An account of the resource Todd School's indoor, sixty-foot swimming pool was built alongside Wallingford Hall in 1930. The heated building also served as a greenhouse and students used it to grow flowers and tomatoes in the winter months. The palm tree mural was painted by Hortense Hill, Roger Hill's wife. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> Swimming Pools Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/b4541fe239e043edd1f4aeddc90e66bd.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=vd88QaHVvWXaYwfPubQB5-vmR3C8itcg9X0uWZueUpIRXWDP6Mdr8Bp%7EOKh752sRD%7Evpp0qFQrurpR-XJcG16OtZkA1p5Gp7dX3b%7E6LHj3CD77obsa7R2Gxz2aojxQUbFBSXxDqdf5g%7EhQp4PIv%7Eu0DIQmGv0eRedKm-4LqexsebJ8YFa-J8Pvpu7yHbmeBVTGfkForfBH4hHWrdWc%7Edy3808kFnCcgsxX%7Egj0pNh7joOnn6KCvIZF7astP9XivUmA7dQT%7E6kvfprCPZk2TV-htYldGGIyQs%7EhiwkOCaDJK1lvVWUE27xaTbVe13gXqRJpKTp5gK%7E-y1R-uJjDeRww__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ac2a9aae83e9d66e2c91683b37d55928 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of Todd School for Boys students about to dive into the Todd School indoor pool. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Swimming Pool Race - Todd School Description An account of the resource Todd School's indoor, sixty-foot swimming pool was built alongside Wallingford Hall in 1930. The heated building also served as a greenhouse and students used it to grow flowers and tomatoes in the winter months. The palm tree mural was painted by Hortense Hill, Roger Hill's wife. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Students Swimming Pools Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/4fc9038b32de4c431d7f2a7cb78b2e35.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=MEtXvUdL5W4hhcQ2YQl-9yLfxfQy6HPyTXwnVQZASjauR0Fk9mmEZ8I2vhu5XFwHldispA1Wp2ovHabGOGpWA0jm8OE0aEfLJgTpktMOoITdU7EtJjeqwdH3GwoE225BCdMjvZPqIRLe3-4cB9sCChqvlSeHiJYASg9qayhrpV7AXXGbDQwUr%7EcdtXrSXa4upPQMpb9iEXogPW6tXahufL2sOvxXd5JS9rnShpj3JKh2CgdUvlxRcpB10vxwmBDvt%7Enoeow0uJJbP40UuXyM5xqt3HTo%7EXgAPcSiK0iSkkIwMU8hHVvPqiq4WdO2TCl-9evOophdIRUyoyMkxkrNkA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b925180f100868f7530af25d9fa5d108 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of students and faculty of Todd School for Boys posing with instruments. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School "Bach to Boogie Band" Description An account of the resource Music Director Carl Hendrickson joined the Todd School faculty in 1926 after an early career as a violin prodigy and vaudeville performer. A composer as well as violinist, Hendrickson was responsible for many of the arrangements performed by Todd School choral and instrumental groups. The school had a sound studio in the basement of Grace Hall where Todd students recorded their own albums. The school’s Bach to Boogie jazz band performed nationally on stage and on radio. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Bands Music Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/774121f767d11d4d3935aadc54f18f73.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=QzoWXf2D3-K1qtQUQbd-1CDWIvL1bXAr3jJ1Hz%7EfGec2KD7ioWfWQrJt0lznEqJiufFTX9WsUmj1N7U91ZytcrMmd69%7EDvSUBVyf%7ED573ZL8v%7EbUAMmOWb%7E1cZe-YW0lNTyE0FfUjKWGW8fF2SBtP9WOSqtjS0pB%7ETrGDwpruxq4M1zDypFgTuOF%7E1mhTp1R7kYbEWugdH0UAADLSsIcmaWKQZpmo9xIRvOoJu7lQeOZKlGamJLpFpPhG5JlGMSVDn9Mnu6xHTCR9qHa6jiUr-MGjbPjMgiI1aVF9kgDlPwa5j1wIn3DBZDhdhn1m-7mQUAVpXXE93zCLilNAhtC-w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7ebdd890068794797d564eefe7dfe0af Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1922 black and white photograph of a basketball team for the Todd School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Basketball Team "Reds" First Team, 1922 Description An account of the resource When a boy enrolled at Todd School he became either a "Red" or a "White", and remained on that team for his entire time at Todd. These designations were used for all athletic events. There were 1, 2, 3 and sometimes up to six teams. These teams were referred to as First, Second, etc. At first Todd students only played each other in tournaments, but in 1919 interschool games were permitted. Source: Development of the Todd School, 1937 The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1922 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Sports Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/444401292f9afc55c24895df19fca00e.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=qZZ3iSXC-eplQmOf9f505kSjl1LqBrvQxOZJJFgU334TXCILaFrMwgd-Jpqvbje7FS6dTkWdWHCkxwIfQvcTE%7EJ7ScSu-4eZOkbmvHB2%7E2tidh0gUNbpuv2KcR4eKJW2G%7EHOJPLbubRxj%7EZhC7tK%7ETuCAmM1rc59oNYsa1VCSFr3Rv0yoyWayJXwuibFbkEB9ryVY8zpbq5lB6tHX0DAmuc-UDttE0dnpw4SXtCTk9fRDqYkgtZ1iphtWhVrOFAZpiCy1w8CBDOhEBc1Ll-0pP6qSxn5lT4-vguZyzNAONHxO8EkNoMz55X8LKeGc9NbdCjBBRj4Hqxy8RCE93Rxmg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 449ab65a58167b270d932d351ae16bba Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1922 black and white photograph of a basketball team for the Todd School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Basketball Team "Whites" First Team, 1922 Subject The topic of the resource When a boy enrolled at Todd School he became either a "Red" or a "White", and remained on that team for his entire time at Todd. These designations were used for all athletic events. There were 1, 2, 3 and sometimes up to six teams. These teams were referred to as First, Second, etc. At first Todd students only played each other in tournaments, but in 1919 interschool games were permitted. Source: Development of the Todd School, 1937 The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1922 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Sports Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/0290c129c67efd5f1c504da352210d06.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=PjikHd5aQMp8et%7ES7U2hMHBWOOZm5H4VO4s%7EKqShByj-jq0t0X%7EaOrIoeF4QbWEJMyyEHcN5U-%7EShMvVwwqGCeXnwYQpeZL%7Escb-MKKc-Hic6SimoMTthBGAU5XQu7QlxNvXsmj4I5O1YIRV1SORMlara-tqBhVBgIGaYEFMznVn8Mb9tDc943SAzzfDrAbkq5vZGqbPFXvH2IM9YyMAu-cKNdOPMbVImD5zNzOAsFFQhHT1bHpv54iwMXUQ6KLhFZaAx7mRml%7EA1W2wCZTjVtWHme6GN3a2IGQqVLRs7ccHD53KatBMC0OymMu9-ruUmAtcQJxHzXhzOuuRUyh5ag__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 03f3493ef37559165e7b4d774c1f9a30 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1922 black and white photograph of a basketball team and coach for the Todd School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Basketball Team with Coach R.E. Hill, 1922 Description An account of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1922 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Sports Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/e073d5b54d5c51092ae662c6abc40916.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=NuD61p0FEv6B6bW4ZUoP8FLvlQSUsy15BIAX6JDHaheL58QaqQKwLq6LF5GabxF8Qqj-SETnE5zSiv29T4QZhWZxp4msJ-6chfWc-RQvmHfGl9xMLaYAmt0nd3wdV3woDJeBG%7Epm2Ag1Sum6tzAjcWrmtqk1l9-xJUS6kjNSRgJ%7EDAT71blnwzFnvRDHviL4IY9DtMT0hiK6IAE7opmWthNkLb9%7EjUwr3t3NwkWKkQHZPf5KDoqoF83VFl%7ETrswKy0YauUmPnNaI8FCKALVEUT9d08ZQuUpKMxFP57lz4jav1AAQmxwR8CKijjtO%7ErS3PWqjQykFHpPEsBbuueZDEQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7d491d9b14a4738fb4b6a5acd22b2e3c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1922 black and white photograph of a basketball team for the Todd School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Basketball Team, 1922 Description An account of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1922 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Basketball Sports Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/93c513861162a03276497de3c7997238.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=fkDwRv-hQAtzfXBGJQ-ts-kZ0r1x1BqyMVA-BDCe3BxnjCoX%7EVTnhS32xy0nQMhH7%7EbJcHanR%7E32Ia9Ovt1iIv%7E%7Er7TxeBqtcarx8Ss-nZzQmksAwP9sIrQu89O6isY1va%7E4C4lvrsYYWe6TSd3tiaj1MmanFVuas1bl9q7z%7E3DWxqSzEXhKK5vZtiNsXdrp2ullEq2qSVXE1o5elRITizSUwVohUJzk7n6q0Jt%7EOd0L65pnmYyoPrinhEhn56uJdvvi8luSfLOzXuHPOvsyiYnq-0h1LQzpTEPRpKZPL-8iiOPpaYtX%7EK7xZ8fv8xDCGCnJ01VXjeh0kQZNBUpsFg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 364e511988c0b3fbde4e42b646dd4fc8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of Todd School for Boys students in a passenger trailer hitched to an automoible. The photograph was taken on the Todd School campus in front of a two story brick building. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Bus in Front of Rogers Hall Description An account of the resource Affectionately known as “Big Bertha,” the Todd School sleeper buses provided a complete traveling home/school, were used to take students to educational sites throughout North America and to transport students to the Todd winter home in Florida. The bus pictured here, a Curtiss Aerocar, is one of the earliest buses used by Todd School. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Big Bertha Buildings Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/a12466cecb38bfe8424badf023585d85.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=OqbZaizzE6cANp56aMCVVYrLxw2wAqme1CD5O2w8TrjiCt0nk5oZHRgIQRqevP1KS2F%7EXoTkYs9%7EygqiBadsljDIdLiRnQTwWRM6Hye5QStjdTYh4Q64wFOyFdX3F2KcUj1WZDKizWYl70tuntxov0xnDbRGG2LUIhHW8u0Xs2Eb3X8piXsPFqmxjV8u3sjWHTS8AziTUTFyqKAVAOd8ZCUyxLQLBVr-cUZruEkufO7slXWUlXcjWrt-dYaZPYcZZ3bxPX8A0Ospxnjf6WOB7woMNuFRhn6WPLgRlPyRJgBCPS9H8UZO-5OE4PEMspFB4gC1sby0E5O0jLPvThD3Dw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 8ec8b8b980f24f5d50b1b1759a433fb5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1922 black and white photograph of Todd School for Boys students posing in costume on a stage for a Christmas pageant. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Christmas Pageant, circa 1922 Description An account of the resource Christmas pageant being performed on the Todd School's Rogers Hall stage. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bob & Diana Treese Collection Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1922~ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Drama Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/2bfc750e3c08ddf9460e587d0a963346.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=X9QRoex7KKAUrEjyrvklQ%7EUStEuxFwjyLQuV3ITeAj7FGkng26p%7EzynN6FDSOK2NQMqh1Q8XOPqXe9MiHm0EvK2qbgz2h1Lu1K%7ErnMF%7EBBv3vVwMiPJrGux5dw-DTAtbP6vqRCztx%7EpIMZUAWKhQEz9pGnIaW-0ur5FRGVv0EXxydtTpf1pyat7boQ6zyg0RuX78QbWgX%7EnOD329sjq-cYuqFRPqbPWkm-LIRxIlt8r02cCSWsfEv6i2kcLCLd0UY3Ru0aWnww58Y4qapuABe%7E-Cq8ys5LT82KmkTnMNTBIP%7EEiIeww4uPeOdBwEVM20fF40JBM6wUCa2hdTne3DKQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM a8c680fc7a1b7add0bdf01f32c06aab0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1920 black and white photograph of a football team for the Todd School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Football Team, circa 1920 Description An account of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1920~ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Sports Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/aee7ce780888cd493306a8cfdd7324cd.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=IggUmMSTP2vle9vvIWO8IXRitkclTePGjWbdMQv0oDPUPQXtK%7EhsQMIczk1USI872o%7EIWZTJ49Y-%7Ed2D3-oaF0nx03gQDKKt06VC4d7QoY8KH4FM4sOBFDBzsmL9Qe4lOdnZ%7E7ZziQZN-kGSFBtHc9is1C5sL5zElrgzaC6Z2LG6FeHcYI6kA5x73XaGkF7hyi9nnW5mrQfuSYUZeKzHfnknDUUfN%7Eit8RtDcwqEWD8HPXmxgU9dNB4QSip3LMn1ZuMJtGtqF8QB4qIDDmYYzNkjuf00JSH-BFpQMoQNIMkr2Ex-A-RNLu9%7EvVNXty%7E5N4EHRu-RRK3iJHWsJWZo4g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 0707d8a163b1ed2069bae4251a0e74b6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1920 black and white photograph of a football team for the Todd School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Football Team, circa 1920 Description An account of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1920~ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Sports Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/79cd2c5355d0a8ba2fbde3f9dd98a9ad.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=NxIQHbP50JYXZ%7EDSO-fLJwI7458s5QQoJM%7E2FGEKJyb4P5FOcLqA-nPjnwww8pnnAgVoBS6WPTuk2BeJMivQwGQ2Oe9U3XxdwGFxVzSd7Zm8XBs3zP5bEca09mFpZnqvkclSpCzDqQp-V-yhBr95Oh0hJyJ-YIY7R3rvKBdzUxT%7EBIO7V8AMPFZo8gSHRyNYLti8RUQVLQpNdaTvK9XOgcmGpISaN0pf6YISynJIPTaHB8fTbk91ODjZDod7tTfsxztrJ0xv9x68jUhtvfZa996RR1E8RasXgFuF0whMsk5eJbnHPgNPGoqwitYJ2369cCtI63bMUd3ZjvaCLkA5Dw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2bb1146543cfbdf248940ed225f49f41 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of students practicing archery on the campus of the Tood School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School for Boys Archery Description An account of the resource Todd students practicing archery; in the background is Rogers Hall and the toboggan slide. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rogers Hall Built in 1910 and named in honor of Noble Hill's wife's family name, Rogers. The facility included wood, print, and machine shops, classrooms, a library, science laboratories and a 180 seat theater. Rogers Hall is one of the few remaining buildings from the Todd School Campus and is located at 730 N Seminary Ave, Woodstock, IL. It is currently (2021) being used as an apartment building. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bob & Diana Treese Collection Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Sports Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/76b1ee2a4d5df2d9f9eb6b5aa313674b.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=rZA26652fB-v5Y251StFIWAQ3tA7DhB3r5tPc7F56rDBAoiBGgKPSupQzbqR5aVlceWi8VuPwb6Cfw2-aUb6O8f%7Eq-ci%7EfBUWyxdB%7Ew%7Eb5W9JsqWJh6MA6mb9XwMfrrm8vUYC612LSqVOG5D2F8PfRvhrnnziMKkrta1OIp0B7lpUVH89qtgVTSz-A18k9XsVANjn3jIdA8UER3%7E3f6b2mivHNgihRzFVpPt4p4pZwJ6YZnsd7BJa0s9C%7EvaYz1oWcbJI6sY7YUTbh8AdB8A54aeStdSn0C6Luf0gA7bK3pbXNwEMrEQC3XUhgzjEPOv7P7S1uvhDQdjcdLMqN3cLQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e2fd84a91f035f824a4beef91d4bf888 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1930 black and white photograph of two Todd School for Boys students riding horses in front of a brick building. https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/e53183775add98e15281a0ca5e5105f8.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=LVKP0jgF0NB5w7xFeit7wYXoKX1b6eSK1e52gkCWGaBb9BTMSiNjipBVaR5ApaG3iuNoRxposjMmBfQB0QknPptRYBpO0wmYb4sZBkyTefWl1Csf4BWA-ZTZVsoILDOTMtLytBroJh4rILQCKg4Z1BV5kJfBNZIMuf3Ed3XXlaxMkq%7EPErdmUFysYagpx4zMD9fpX5VzxQWdfEbOE8T9o4AviADzMAiJNkjZ27VZTK1jRtNOu7Tpj5Z%7EEyw%7EjtKISzp8-rR2X-dNYCwimUyeSel6maDtLiBGaxS6ohXVsNNXZW09wb0E-7oIhqfaRuar91X94KC12sYrWqIOKaQufQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c8e007b5b967147052a78ae8e379b504 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1930 black and white photograph of two Todd School for Boys students riding horses in front of a brick building. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School for Boys Horseback Riding, circa 1930 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Diane Treese Collection Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930~ Description An account of the resource The Todd School curriculum included horseback riding. The stable in the background was built by Todd students in 1930, under the direction of instructor A.E. Johnson. Coach Roskie is the fourth person from the left in this photograph. A Todd promotional brochure describes the experience as “Horsemanship at Todd is of the wild and wooly variety. Blue jeans rather than jodhpurs are in. And a manure shovel handle has a familiar feel to the many devotees of this activity which is tied to our agriculture and animal husbandry work.“ The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. 1900s Buildings Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/5eb213b2d814c2bc2088636edd52e8de.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=mpQEAR630Np4T6ZOtl-lYyGVJbajMfth29k8EaFds6X7GUaoiGHGR2IqLJwXmlLdm00wP33BQmR%7ER-elCv24Uyp1xSnPHxEz0%7E72-bi9s4XONzneuP57XzXZecpUtokVFQ1NFPGC%7E2ONU4m5Jbk1qEw0ZgslyBxmMJ1fcPx8TrRvocSKRbvD4vXqEu56IFhcaWgSxNf1kRTcKBtlsczjMVVUD943FGuwVlDCqi3e9SaNTw3TEWmTiiUyc2AsWk8LuUGZxKs2y7IuJ1Qvd6yDFl-xwSd-RTaOWLLfabKoSiLb6B3T8nS-xYzekBBpy3QWuKLd-JbBL4flJHEwcRQfvw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 8ec19a7fd943c9337400d9128804c78a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of students and a facultry member tending a garden on the campus of the Tood School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Gardens Description An account of the resource Todd students tending the gardens. Agriculture and animal husbandry were included as part of the Todd curriculum. In addition to small vegetable gardens on the main campus, the school had a large tract of land for crops next to the school’s airport. Marian Central Catholic High School is located on the site of the airport and farmland. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Caryl Roskie Lemanski Collection 1900s Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/06b329afb9cfea9b74e4aea3a49dd97a.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=BxAWNrYqWHj5pEe8Qw595VMXcbdWNZBUeH2Cl5Z1BwcsE8LI9UH3ziu-woBfLBvgLhyC1s9iXYYTdwvNPwdI26sObAK3cehEuTL3v1eBtPsfWd19Oxna9z2jlPqtz7HRbRRJ9LfWV6ygMmAK3iK2vXYUfdqVZo03PV5QxFtS41NQLveaoLO9Mr-L-jdVVxf%7EbgAHzuLNcLDqIwHEqwb1H%7EmgTY2gXnav1qDar6B5qoQBgWn%7Exl-ylu0C1EA33F0tGDviutU1ISk0LCZePjs%7EZ7yWcLuKlaiBRapynXiykcaQS9fRkucnECCuSs9bH4tGFXzNqRJ6dClOSlrKl0PetQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4dd34918f963727eb7f7b4cce21a2c26 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1937 black and white photographs of the Todd School for Boys Gymnasium building before and after remodeling. Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Gymnasium - Before and After Remodeling Description An account of the resource The Todd School Gymnasium building was built in 1894 and originally was used as a barn. Once renovated, the gymnasium included a 70-foot basketball court, bowling alley, gymnastics equipment and balcony seating. In addition to the indoor facilities, the Todd School campus had a football field, baseball diamond, a running track, three tennis courts, skating pond, and playground equipment for the younger students. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Recorder (Todd School Newspaper) - October 11, 1937 Issue Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Buildings Sports Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/316cb45c556cfcc8e32a1be1fb4e9b7d.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=gsgP3yZkUxm6ZJnyoj0BGTgbdJJrd3oOyKZEC42IyYPEjFkpg-th7gWoB2489B7u494vQUlmtVAZ6uyIIMSFO9ypqQl4LVQ9iKwGp1VxjpckFjhgiyVOZcH8ZN0xFMUpp9xcuCwESxr-8Z0BBd9fa3qQMGYxVDWocpCYNgXkb12xWt38j86fVXWJgU98MKbzbG%7E5SQB8pIRB4%7EQ0FR-a5u3HT46RhX2JOUiiVlXgAX%7EcoF%7EOz-yTxFYbvKiNGSImlZoQWxUB6h4wlTxxzW9USKUgCX1pP%7ESf0VUAz9arSpg-jRa1v3bACQi6whn5v7yiS1FgGy%7EIgIgh8FfOyZYwwQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 5c95acf1073ec412fa3a66e3e27b229b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of students reading scripts and talking into microphones in a sound studio located on the campus of the Todd School for Boys located in Woodstock, Illinois. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Sound Studio Description An account of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Drama Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/2cee5b23df59ae303e94189265cb8326.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=q2uxNhPhK7rcvTM3ofTIzsSTIhXHCWkGdeGIgP1kxd3h-WfaGZQkRW0y7x2T7tfqcuLB5wBXpS72C9bmMtTiOnWSvYexr3IOuRNe9Co3RbB6-UTL2wA7y-JmCDPbY99BYg6MDO94RIdRWV4XQAJOZSUd5ihM5gLMVCPfs9MNK7BI-rK4vO%7EZ35i7z6HK9oi4D%7EpJrCb8CouPAQQyD0oBRuTbnLkj6MwLrWnMuuBbGo9am4VGCuNedxnFpDa3Avf9pe0i2Jb5dYzWFHcFRCnImm%7EE-S%7ExaANKYgiQrzm3Qz98QZ6XPP3%7ELQmPv84yCqF3yNETUZBhLATz4xsTM9FsbA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 63bdbfef63c695bd35347673ba73f721 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1930 black and white photograph of students and faculty of Todd School for Boys posing on and around a stagecoach and two teams of horses. https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/efde53f0b68e4c71ece1d82c938f0e02.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=P0CE0WaJBPOi3-KlyyAtdGwCmVRW9gKahB09jLkPQPn7AaNpa5W0kafoRMSDbJgSZMEugftw6hYigbqWqHNWcQhMUOoeyQwqhOsA-diG4NWhLCaaOf%7Ectc2C2O3UYJR%7E3oUN0UJndIsVuGqkvg8SJLXkPbZiUTl5qXlNBPNSlJAyZwvZ8ynvuSGpQqM2Q%7E7eh9%7EzDh8loMvj7FewLaWQXeh-GRPFN0XQYFNsA37Z0CdgY-1WfgJa8la%7E10iTB2rZQgn-RrzmoJBozVMFkWf%7ElydHX88u9hODdey-kcOUiP1EmlE3K0k2t%7EQWPVbYouptkCzAKpx3xYijiJZJYHMJ6w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 924fcaaf6ed8632ac2dc3a2037fe51de Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circa 1930 black and white photograph of students of Todd School for Boys posing on and around a stagecoach. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Stagecoach, circa 1930 Description An account of the resource Circa 1930 - The Todd stagecoaches were built by students in the Todd School, under the instruction of A.E. Johnson in the ‘manual shop’ and were used in a western movie that the students filmed on campus. The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930~ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Drama Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/48e07802b4c8044660510b0ea414fa94.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=IsZZfIW0-ICNmLO8g1PPLskxcDHAAfKX042PVNw48dgKQ%7EshjuDneMbPyDRuC7wjDRWUosS3EEvWpUTX7YRq-5vO2MlhLSDs5qYjau68pokyt0pjR05V-WA%7ENA1JRKTUK03I2ugkNduIW1wZN-mBQdElDbqPC%7Eye6YCGsaJYZ2lmzf9notWkDV0hrCxpxCr2DCqXvU3CEqwy-HlGnPjtrKXWsF7mu0LG82mS4UshrM1DSTibWdnN1K2Zr0z9hKfKL5TjhvzemGCNdVfL4mgWlZOMSwxH5uQNkgeNzvOTqvGjeL3bDVRUf4Fm4dM6rrRbfm12G4yoB59WBKidssK6tQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 611dd5fa9007af966f006e633e9760f0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of Todd School for Boys students climbing a tree. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Students in a Tree Description An account of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Students Todd School https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/49722/archive/files/dec143986edd081dbe2f5bf91e61ad3b.jpg?Expires=1777507200&Signature=f5K3275IwVwKQSD2VSmBnzv01CVRi1WjHCU%7EKk5kcz%7ECQ731ntuVF8FxwvzJdxNJEZ9oI3S6vod7gVJK%7EUbO5K2RfyP5lfCuudoqF7i-WDjqBlkSdqHWtPkwY7rzN8hg7Z806K8sh%7E4srArLb7QdsFAMvBTn1yTH2KTHOTqKQjlrvhLgXjIb0JZTPOlJQKP7DUgmE1xXEIxT7qs8l0eBPLadVrckN5v70ffqRF0TPjId0u2fiOVHWOOI3iF3tdwxjzj3t8l3qtKUGtodu%7EPUZwdhjHUsU55j36cTdNl8zflBbeNEfiPx8CmuVdSaIx9%7EVIxfxrJykyjHc93ZREecGA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM eeca074b208a945daa9fba27d88a73ac Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black and white photograph of Todd School for Boys students posing with bicycles. In the background is a playground and a few two story houses. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Todd School Students on a Bike Outing Description An account of the resource The Todd School for Boys (1848–1954) was an independent school located in Woodstock, Illinois founded by Reverend Richard Kimball Todd, a Presbyterian pastor. Under the guidance of Headmaster Noble Hill in the 1920s and Hill’s son Roger in the 1930s, it became known as a progressive school that provided students with a creative educational environment that emphasized practical experience over traditional academics. The main Todd School Campus was located on the northeast corner of the Rt. 47 (Seminary Ave) and Rt. 120 (McHenry Ave.) junction. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-NC/1.0/">NO COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY</a></p> 1900s Students Todd School