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...