Recently, archivist Carol Ketcham sent over a copy of a letter TPR sent to Gilman Ordway '44 in December of 1945. She was pleased to have had a letter from Ordway, then a student at Yale, and pleased to learn he was rooming with Eddie Custer '43. TPR clearly knew the boys; she knew that Eddie had served in India during the war and that he wrote poetry, and she knew Gilman was a writer as well (he has a neat story in the '44 yearbook).
She filled Ordway in on the activities of the Army on campus, especially the improvements such as the sprinkler system and the new pool, and she went on to express her hope that Avon would one day re-open as a school. "Your letter," she wrote, "and the letters from other Avon boys, telling me you stand ready to support the school, cheer my heart."
It comes as no surprise that alumni supported the idea of re-opening the school. It did, after all, re-open in 1948, something that could not have happened without a great deal of suport from alumni. Neither is it a surprise that TPR knew and took an active interest in some recent alumni. While she was not a constant presence on campus during the Founder's Era, she was here from time to time, and every alumnus of the period I have met can recount at least one story of meeting Mrs. Riddle. TPR was fond of the quotation "by their fruits ye shall know them," and she said more than once that the school was her life. In that context, one can only imagine how she felt about the school's closing (too distraught to attend Commencement in '44, she sat in her car on Dio circle) and how fervently she would have looked for signs that a re-opening would "take."
