Butch Leavitt

A wonderful interview this morning and afternoon with Frank "Butch" Leavitt '52, alumnus, science teacher, Director of Admissions - even "faculty brat."  That last title is not true in the strictest sense, but Frank and his family lived on campus starting in the summer of '47, before the school re-opened.  When it did re-open, Frank's parents were among the few non-school families allowed to remain, so he had the experience of living on campus before enrolling and then being a student whose parents were right there.  Sounds like the faculty brat experience to me.  When the school re-opened, Frank's family moved to third floor of an Elephant annex, somehow getting his mother's Baby Grand Piano up there; the main hallway did not have rooms yet - Wlbur Durfee and crew would see to that - so there were music classes in what is now Elephant 3 using Mrs. Leavitt's piano.  Frank also reminisced about crew at Avon.  He was a student before interscholastic athletics were officially allowed, so he was coxswain for the Diogenes 1st boat (and the bow oar on Dio's 2nd boat), but their coach managed to arrange for Avon boys to race other schools from time to time.  Frank recalled that another alumnus once could not remember whether they had won a particular race, but Frank knew they had won - he remembers getting thrown in!  [Crew tradition calls for the winning crew to throw their coxswain into the water after the race.]

 Frank, who had gone on to Dartmouth, was just settling in to a career in geology when he returned to Avon to attend the funeral of General Caldwell, who had been very influential in Frank's years as a student.  After the funeral, Don Pierpont invited Frank to chat in the garden behind Don's house and asked if he would like to come and teach.  There were a number of reasons for Frank to say yes, a prime one being that his good friend Seth Mendell '52 would be teaching history at Avon, but he had been enjoying his geological work...  One wonders just how many careers took a sudden and unexpected turn in Don Pierpont's garden; if I am not mistaken, Sid Clark, too, was won over in that spot.
It was great to see Frank and spend some time with him; his passion for the school is as strong as it ever was.

Rationing

We spent the last few days on Islesboro, at the summer home of Founder's Era history teacher John S. Custer, a.k.a. "Grampa."  (We also had occasion to walk by science teacher Holland Sperry's house on our way down to the cove.)  I had hoped to come across some resource that would help with this project - a notebook labelled "My Thoughts About Working at Avon" would have been about right.  No such luck, but we did have fun going through massive photo albums and scrap books.  This image fell out of one of them - certainly a familiar scene for Avonians who have been in the Quad houses or the corner classrooms.

I learned that Grampa had been a tennis "ace" in his day, that he was teaching at the University of Wisconsin while earning his PhD, and that he taught at Lawrence College in Wisconsin, where my mother would later enroll.  I also confirmed that when he left Avon in 1944 he became Acting Headmaster at The Gunnery.  The stroll down memory lane also reminded me of a story involving Grampa, Avon, and Islesboro.  It seems that during World War II those in charge of gas rationing would make exceptions for people with long commutes.  So Grampa went to the Rationing Board and announced that he lived at Islesboro, Maine and worked at Avon, Connecticut and thus would need some extra gas.  When they stopped laughing, he added that he only needed to commute once a year, so if he could have the gas necessary for that trip in June and again in August, he would not require any other gas during the year.  It worked!

The Political Process

In the Founder's Era, the student government was very active.  Indeed, the student government levied taxes on the students, and, as you might expect, said taxes were frequently a topic of discussion at Town Meetings.  In the February, '35 Town Meeting, one enterprising student asked why the faculty was not also taxed (it turns out the students lacked the authority to tax the faculty).  Next came a question about a luxury tax on victrolas and crystal sets, with one student pointing out that crystal sets did not use electricity as radios did.  This led to a discussion of the purpose of the taxes and the uses to which the collected funds were put.  The Avon Weekly News-letter's account of the discussion concludes as follows: “It further came out in the discussion that some of the radio license fees was used for restocking the streams on the estate with fish, which prompted Grisom Bettle to spout the following surprising bit: ‘What if the boys with radios and crystal sets don’t like to eat fish?‘  Frankly, no one knew."