Boar's Head

Tradition holds that the Boar's Head festival (Avon Old Farms edition) began during the Pierpont era, but, when I came across this picture last summer, I began to wonder whether the Founder's era also featured Boar's Head.  The picture is from the thirties and this youth would fit in well at a medieval feast.  On the other hand, the Avon Weekly News-letter, which leaves no stone unturned in describing life at school in the mid-thirties, makes no mention of Boar's Head.  So I spoke to Carol Ketcham, the school archivist, who was able to confirm that the first Boar's Head took place in the mid-fifties.  This youth might have been having his picture taken before a church pageant or perhaps a theater production in the refectory, but he was not headed for Boar's Head.
Aspiration and Perseverance, the history by Gordon Clark Ramsey, has the notes from the 1964 Boar's Head, and it looks as though very little has changed in the last 45 years.  We still start with the Jester yelling "Make Way!" and finish - after St. George has vanquished the dragon - by singing "Auld Lang Syne." Most of the things in between - including many of the Jester's lines and songs we sing - remain unchanged.  One thing that has changed is the musical entertainment.  In 1964, and into the 80s, Brad Mason, a veteran of Broadway who held a variety of teaching and administrative posts (including directing Boar's Head), sang "O Holy Night" as a solo.   Now, of course, we have the Riddlers, who offer a couple of musical interludes.  Nonetheless, it is clear that any of the 1964 cast members would have been able to play his role again in 2011 without much of an adjustment.

Footsteps - a personal aside

Yet another reminder this morning that I am following in my grandfather's footsteps.  I am in Virginia for a meeting of the College Board's Academic Advisory Council, and this morning V.P. Jim Montoya spoke briefly about the Board's history.  I had not looked it up, but I had been wondering when the College Board came to be; the Avon Weekly News-letter makes frequent references to Grandpa's consulting on College Entrance Exams.  I had wondered if Grandpa was working with the College Board (the full name of the Board is the College Entrance Examination Board), but I did not know whether it existed in those days.  Jim's brief history tells me that it did, and I am now relatively sure that this - my service to the College Board - is yet another way in which I am following in Grandpa's footsteps.
Of course, there are plenty of things to remind me of the family legacy at school; every visit to Brown Auditorium takes me by a picture of Dad, and the old board room, where I attend meetings at least weekly, contains a photo of Grandpa entertaining several students near the fireplace in his house in Diogenes (now the Lampe residence).  Still, I sometimes get an odd, not-exactly-deja-vu feeling when I discover another one of these connections.  If papers in his Islesboro study are any indication, Grandpa was a big Abe Lincoln fan - another thing we have in common.  I did not really know Grandpa, but I think of him as a taciturn man in the style of Calvin Coolidge; perhaps that is how I come by my dynamic social style.
So there is a bowtie-wearing Custer in the history department at Avon Old Farms, and he does quite a bit of volunteer work with the College Board?  The more things change, the more they stay the same.