More On Francis Froelicher

David Lavender's (author of They Wrote Their Own Histories - Fountain Valley School's First 70 Years) chapter on Francis Froelicher's tenure as headmaster at FVS is an interesting read for a student of Avon's history.  As I mentioned in the last post, I (perhaps unfairly) got the sense that one was meant to conclude that Froelicher's views on education were too progressive for TPR, and that is part of why he left Avon so quickly and abruptly.  Of course, a historian of FVS would have no further interest in TPR or in the school Froelicher left behind, but Lavender describes an FVS that was, under Froelicher, if anything less progressive in its approach than Avon Old Farms in the same era.  He does not describe the academic program in great detail, except to report the one person connected to both schools wrote to another "they are re-creating Avon out West."  In some ways, though, the schools were very different; FVS students'  rooms were cleaned by maids, and servants, rather than other students waited on them in the refectory (yes, they did call it that).  Indeed, FVS students did not have a work program, or formal "chores," until World War II decimated the work force available to them in Colorado Springs.  This despite the fact that there was a working ranch associated with the school.  Throughout that period, the student council at FVS sought ways to be relevant, while at Avon the council actually governed, levying taxes and making and enforcing rules.
On the other hand, there were some interesting parallels in Froelicher's tenures at the two schools.  He was at FVS for ten times as long as he was at Avon, of course, but there, too, he was able to run the school secure in the knowledge that any deficit would be covered by a single benefactor.  As at Avon, the benefactor was a woman, but at FVS she had neither founded the school nor designed its buildings.  He also left FVS abruptly, "resigning" in December of 1950 and not returning when Christmas vacation ended.  Lavender reports that there are no minutes from the board meetings that led to Froelicher's dismissal (and when Lanvender undertook his history, only two members of that board remained alive), but complaints included the deficits and lax discipline at school.  For Avonians, the most telling sentence reads: "Some were aware that he may have had a drinking problem."  Lavender goes on to say that one of the two surviving board members "insists that the problem had absolutely nothing to do with his resignation."
Whether or not his drinking cost Francis Froelicher his job at FVS, as it had his job at Avon, the fact remains that he guided the school from its opening through its first twenty years, which years included the Second World War.  His views on education and his vision for his school inspired TPR and Betty Hare (of FVS) to believe in him and six members of the faculty (a majority) to follow him from Avon, Connecticut to Colorado Springs, Colorado.  When Froelicher died ten years after leaving FVS, C. Dwight Perry, senior master who had become interim head when Froelicher departed, said of him: "In his colleagues he demanded intellectual curiosity and honesty; from them he got admiration and loyalty.  He loved books and mountains, music and poetry.  He was attracted to plain people and great minds.  He gave short shrift to superficial thinking and to social sham."

Francis Froelicher, Avon, and Fountain Valley School

I have decided to read a few other schools' histories this summer so as to get a better sense of the genre.  I am starting with They Wrote Their Own Histories - Fountain Valley School's First 70 Years because I have it on hand and because Fountain Valley's first headmaster and a substantial percentage of its first faculty had come from Avon.  Only about a third of the way through the first chapter, which describes the founding of the school and the tenure of Francis Froelicher, its first headmaster (and Avon's first provost), I have again encountered the FVS version of Froelicher's departure from Avon.  You might remember from my April '11 post Put 'Em in the Stocks that the author of They Wrote Their Own Histories, David Lavender, suggests that Froelicher and TPR parted ways over her insistence that pillory stocks be erected on campus for the purpose of punishing recalcitrant boys!  Lavender also describes Avon as "one of the strangest (schools) ever established," and tells of Froelicher's  progressive views on education in such a way as to allow the reader to conclude TPR did not share them.  In reviewing the earlier post, I realize I did not spend a great deal of time debunking this ridiculous story, but I did mention the explanation TPR's biographer Sandra Katz gives for Froelicher's departure, namely that his heavy drinking was interfering with his work.  I will not explore that much further here, except to say that the record makes clear that TPR's approach to education was at least as progressive as Froelicher's, so that while pillory stocks would have fit in well with TPR's Cotswold village, they would not fit at all with her philosophy of education.  (It is interesting to note that when Froelicher was forced out by FVS's board after 20 years, his being too lenient with bad boys was among the complaints.  There is no mention of the board's wanting to erect stocks on campus.)
They Wrote Their Own Histories does make clear, though, that Avon paid a price for the TPR-Frolicher rift.  Of course, the primary price came in the mass resignation of the faculty in 1930, six of whom followed Froelicher to Fountain Valley.  Beyond that, FVS's first student body of 57 students included 20 who had transferred from Avon.  Perhaps most important: two of FVS's most significant early benefactors, Elizabeth Sage Hare, who, according to Lavender "alone deserves credit for the School's founding," and Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms, whose father was Mark Hanna, the underwriter of late 19th century Republican politicians, were Avon parents who sided with Froelicher when the split came (Hare going so far as to withdraw her son from Avon and board him with the Froelichers while he attended Gilman in Baltimore).  Hare and Simms were extremely generous to FVS in its early years; it seems reasonable to assume they would have been similarly generous to Avon had they not been disenchanted by Froelicher's departure.
Of course, assuming Sandra Katz is correct as to why Froelicher left Avon, these losses seem somewhat unavoidable.  One could argue various people - whether students, faculty, or potential benefactors - would have been more understanding if TPR had let the truth be known, but it is not hard to appreciate why she chose not to do so.  Even if she had been willing to see Froelicher's reputation in ruins, she could hardly have wanted the publicity that would come with acknowledging a lush had been at the helm of her fledgling school.