Dearest of Geniuses - Part III

An interesting question that comes up is how to present TPR's eccentricities.  Twice during the Founder's Era, the Provost and entire faculty resigned - the second resulted in the school's closing in 1944.  A third time (in between) a Provost threatened to resign and take the whole faculty with him.  Sandra Katz clearly suggests that "the school's historian" (Gordon Clark Ramsey - his book is next on my list) is firmly in the camp that says TPR was too meddlesome and unpredictable and that she hired people to run the school and then would not let them do it, ultimately driving them away.  Katz, though she makes it clear that TPR was not about to yield one iota of the authority that comes with founding, designing, and fully funding a school, submits that these famous departures say more about the Provosts than about the founder.  One of them was a secret drunk whose wife was burying his empty liquor bottles off campus lest they be seen in his trash, and another was altogether too friendly with women other than his wife (who, in turn, got to know the music teacher better than she should have).  In both cases, TPR allowed the Provost to escape with his reputation at least partially intact - at a cost of considerable damage to her own.  Katz does not deny that TPR was eccentric, but she presents her as more victim than villain in the various power struggles of the Founder's Era.
Ramsey's Aspiration and Perseverance may present these things in a different light, and TPR's cousin Brooks Emeny wrote a piece called Theodate Pope Riddle and the Founding of Avon Old Farms School in the mid-70s.  I am hoping I'll have access to that through the library, the archives, or perhaps Hill-Stead.  I am also hoping, of course, to interview as many alumni of the Founder's Era as I can.  Would that I could interview Dad and Grampa.  If I am not mistaken, Grampa arrived as part of the gang hired to replace the first faculty that departed en masse, and he was a member of the second!  I would love to know how he felt about all this, but if he ever committed those thoughts to paper, I have yet to run across it.
School is back in session - it is a busy season filled with the Toys for Tots drive and Boar's Head preparation.  I won't get to devote much time or energy to this project for a few weeks, and therefore I may not post anything.  On the other hand, this is fun stuff...

Dearest of Geniuses - Part II

So the Lusitania story, as related by Sandra Katz, includes waking up in a ship or boat called the Julia and being taken to "a third rate hotel" in Ireland.  Nothing there to suggest inspiration for the school's architecture.  Oh well; it is a good story.
One question that presents itself is how to refer to Theodate in the book itself.  Dearest of Geniuses calls her "Theo" throughout, as did most of her family and friends.  As a little girl, she was called Effie; workers on the school site referred to her as "Miss Theodate," though not to her face.  Through all of my years at Avon, she has been referred to almost exclusively as "Mrs. Riddle," which is the name I used in the last post.  She was not "Mrs. Riddle," though, until she was almost fifty.  She had decided to design and build the school as a tribute to her late father long before she married John Wallace Riddle.  Nonetheless, "Mrs. Riddle" is the early favorite; "Theo" works for a biography, but this is the history of her school, not her life, and I suspect that precious few people associated with the school ever called her anything other than "Mrs. Riddle."  At this point, at least, calling her anything else sounds - feels - inappropriately informal.  (In this blog, though, I will frequently resort to using "TPR," which is what I am using in my notes.)
It is interesting also to read that TPR thought of the school as "The Avon School" (and/or "Avon College") for a time before adding "Old Farms" because this section of town had been known as Old Farms for more than a century.  Grampa's Cum Laude Society certificate is on the wall of the study on Islesboro, and it says "The Avon School."  I have forgotten the year, but it would have to have been after 1930.  So that name - the Avon School - stuck to some degree.  Of course, it was "Avon" with the short "a" - pronounced as the English would pronounce it.  That, too, survived for some time; I remember our Islesboro neighbor Mrs. Sperry, whose husband taught science during the Founder's Era, saying "I am so glad you're at Avon," and using the short "a."

Dearest of Geniuses - Part I

By way of beginning my research on the Founder's Era, I am reading Dearest of Geniuses, Sandra Katz' biography of Theodate Pope Riddle.  To this point (I am seven chapters in and have reached 1914), I have learned a few interesting tidbits.  I didn't know Mrs. Riddle had had several commissions prior to building the school, one of which, Dormer House, looks very much like the school.  This matters primarily in that it seems to belie the old yarn that AOF looks as it does in tribute to Mrs. Riddle's surviving the sinking of the Lusitania.  Indeed, Katz suggests it was during a 1910 visit to England that TPR was inspired by the architecture of the Cotswolds; if that is the case, it cannot be that she awoke from a post-Lusitania coma in a small red sandstone village in the Cotswolds and then built the school as an homage to that village and her survival.
I am looking forward to reading the section on the Lusitania episode, and I am wondering what other Avon myths this book debunks.  (It is not entirely fair to characterize the school-looks-like-where-she-woke-up story as an "Avon myth" in the sense that I do not believe anyone actually thinks it is true; it IS a great story...)

Welcome

Welcome to Semblance of Permanence.  I am setting up this blog primarily because I have recently agreed to write a history of Avon Old Farms School.  I was approached with the idea by The History Press, and Ken LaRocque, the headmaster, has expressed enthusiasm for the idea, so I have reason to hope/believe the project will go forward.
The title Semblance of Permanence refers to a quotation from Theodate Pope Riddle, the school's founder who saw her school as, among other things, an oasis where the love of tradition would be fostered.  A Semblance of Permanence is also the working title of the book, if a book of which not one word has yet been written can even have a title. 
The idea of this blog is to reflect on and write about the project and perhaps to tell some stories that will not make it into the book.  I do not, though, suffer from many delusions about the entertainment value of the rantings of a harried history teacher in the throes of a book project.  The purpose of the blog is also to learn about blogging itself and the technologies associated therewith - in the hope and expectation that I might be able to apply what I learn to my teaching.
So welcome to the blog.  There will probably be long stretches of postless time (during school), and there will probably also be posts that do not relate directly to the book project.  If you have found your way here, you are probably related to me, or you know me really well, or at least you have a strong interest in the school and its history.  Whatever the case is, I hope you enjoy.