Happy Birthday "Nails"

George Trautman turned 80 on Tuesday, April 16th.  Though George retired as headmaster over a decade ago, he is still an active member of the school community.  He does some work for the Alumni and Development office, and it is not unusual to see George at games or at Sunday brunch.
George first came to Avon in the late '60s as a member of a Visiting Committee completing a ten-year re-accreditation.  He fell in love with the school and hoped he was destined to return.  At that time, he was a member of the faculty at Tabor Academy, where he earned the nickname "Nails."  That nickname must have rung true for Avonians as well when George was hired to succeed Don Pierpont and took over as headmaster in the fall of 1969.

This portrait of George hangs in the Estabrook Board Room

George had scores of signature moments in his nearly three decades at the helm, but one of them came on Day 1, when George famously required long-haired students to get haircuts before they would be allowed to register.  "Nails" might have been one of the nicer things George was called that day!

One thing that always struck me about George was his remarkable instincts for this work.  He always seemed to know what questions would lead directly to the heart of the matter and how to respond once he got there.  At times, it almost seemed as though George had a "sixth sense."
On one such occasion, my wife woke me up in the middle of a late spring night to report odd noises emanating from the Quad.  A senior prank, perhaps?  When we looked out the window, we saw some seniors somehow hoisting a canoe up into one of the big trees near Eagle.  I started to get dressed, pondering exactly what I might say to a group of seniors bent on some sort of canoe-tree mischief, when a second look out the window revealed the canoe being being lowered back to the ground.   What had caused the pranksters to change course?  George was standing just inside Eagle Archway staring intently at the proceedings.  If he said anything, I did not hear it, but the boys were quickly about the business of undoing their handiwork and slinking off the bed.  When I asked George later on how he had known what was going on - had he heard noises from the Quad? - he said he was not sure; he woke up and somehow knew that going for a walk was a good idea.

A Letter

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."

Henry Coons '71

After a few technical issues, I've finally been able to review the  video of my interview with Henry Coons '71.  Henry enrolled in 1968 and has been at school for all but five of the intervening years.  A few stories from his student days: In Henry's first year, the school discovered his roommate was selling drugs.  Since the roommate was off campus at the time, they simply told him not to return.  The roommate wanted his stuff back, though, so Henry agreed to drop it off in Greenwich on his next trip to New York.  When he got on a train with the roommate's duffel bag, Henry realized it was an express train not scheduled to stop in Greenwich.  Uncertain about what to do, Henry tossed the bag out the window as they rolled through Greenwich station and then left a message for his former roommate.  He had no way of knowing whether it had worked until on a subsequent trip to New York he saw a homeless man wandering the tracks outside Greenwich wearing some of the roommate's distinctive clothing!
At the start of his second year, Henry's view from his room in Diogenes afforded him a good view of registration and new headmaster George Trautman enforcing the haircut policy by sending students to the barber before they could move in.   He also remembered doing science labs that involved live rats.  In one lab, Henry's lab partner was the anesthesiologist, while Henry was the perform some sort of rat surgery.  Unfortunately, his lab partner feinted, the rat's ether wore off, and the rat ran off before Henry could finish.  Henry now works in the old science building; no word on whether he has encountered an aged, deformed rat in the hallways.

New Year's Resolution

2012 was not a particularly good year for this project, which fact is reflected in, among other things, the relatively small number of posts to this blog.  To be sure, there were some good moments; I had wonderful interviews with Seth Mendell and Cal Magruder, to name but two; I had a great time listening to the stories of the class of '62 at their dinner, and I continued to work my way through the Avon Weekly News-letter.  I know more about the school's history now than I did a year ago, but I am not much closer to being "finished" than I was at the close of 2011.  (I've said it before; I'll never actually be "finished," or at least the work will not, but I am not much closer to having something worthy of publishing or presenting or uploading or whatever it is we will be doing when I am ready.  My frustration at this pace has caused me to change my approach. 
Heretofore, I have been singularly focused on the Founder's Era; while I continue to think my reasons for that focus are valid, I've decided to move ahead with inquiry into any and all aspects of school history from now on.  I do still have missing pieces to my work on the Founder's Era, but most of the sources I need to consult are far away from Avon at the moment.  Thus, even as I ponder bridging that distance electronically - do Founder's Era alumni "do" Skype? - I have decided to seize the opportunity to work with the sources who are available to me here and now.  There are literally dozens of people on or near campus with a wealth of information and stories to tell.  Indeed, as I write, I am preparing to interview Henry Coons '71, who knew Don Pierpont (briefly) and George Trautman in his student days and worked with/for George Trautman and Ken LaRocque in his faculty days.  Bill Kron, who worked here for more than four decades, still lives nearby and is frequently on campus.  Indeed, there are 11 people on this year's campus phone list who were already here when I arrived over 30 years ago, and there are a few more who had been here and have since returned.
So, beginning with Henry, I will talk to those people and record their stories.  Who knows how much I will have learned a year from now?

Boar's Head

We had what we believe to be the 59th annual Boar's Head Festival on Tuesday last, and it got me thinking about Boar's Heads past.  My first was in 1982, and Chandra Narsipur and I were asked to assist Brad Mason, the director.  Not much has changed since then.  The two biggest changes are an infusion of more music and the "torches."  There were no Riddlers to perform in those days, so Brad himself sang "O Holy Night" at one point.  (Brad was a veteran of Broadway, and his rendition was quite beautiful.)  As for the torches, several years ago we finally stopped tempting fate and replaced the torches with the big Refectory candles.  The effect is not quite the same, but I don't miss the smoke or the potential for unmitigated disaster.  (Bill Kron used to seek me out and shake my hand shortly after the last torch was extinguished...)
My own favorite Boar's Head memory is not from the pageant itself; it is of Seth Mendell recounting the Boar's Head Tale at morning meeting.  Not many people can spin a yarn as Seth can, and his rendition was always one of the highlights of the year.  Now, of course, I am able to enjoy that tradition from the other side, and each year I can't wait to hear "How dry was it?!"
If you have your own Boar's Head Memories, share them using the survey to the right.  Boar's Head has a prominent place in the school's history, and it would be nice to have a few more Boar's Head Tales...

Refectory Supervision

I encountered Jock Davenport '59 at breakfast on Saturday (he was on campus for the meeting of the National Council), and we shared stories about Refectory supervision.  Jock said that when he was in school he heard stories about dinner during the Founder's Era.  Founder's Era students, of course, came to dinner more formally attired than any of their successors.  In Jock's day, the rumor was that the suit required during the Founder's Era was the same as that worn at Eton and that every night there was a shadowy caped figure on the balcony wielding binoculars.  This person was responsible for spotting and reporting any sartorial miscues the boys might have committed.  (This seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened.)
I asked Jock if he was aware of Don Pierpont's exceptional hearing.  It seems Don had an uncanny ability to discern what mischief the boys were up to and cut them off at the pass.  What the students did not know (at the time) was that Don's hearing was extremely good, and he would sit at the head table during meals and eavesdrop on the conversations going on at the nearest row of tables.  Thus it appears possible that Avonians, through the school's early years, could hardly take a meal without being subject to covert observation or eavesdropping!
Actually, breakfast was fertile ground for school history conversation last week.  Earlier in the week, Jonathan Crocker recounted his father's (student in the '28-'29 school year) memory that TPR might burst into a classroom and abscond with all the students for some project dear to her heart.  This is very interesting to me in that it is the first such story I have heard.  The Founder's Era alumni I've met do not remember seeing much of TPR, and I know that she and John Riddled traveled to Europe during the school's first year specifically to be out of the way.  On the other hand, it does sound like TPR ...

Board of Correlation?

A question that remains even after all this time is to what extent did TPR involve herself in the operation of the school.  It is abundantly clear that some people both inside and outside the community were under the impression that TPR was guilty of excessive meddling in the affairs of the school and that her meddling was responsible for the departure of three provosts and two entire faculties, the last of which led to the school's closing in 1944.  The Hartford Courant, after all, listed the "attitude of Mrs. Riddle" in its headline announcing the 1930 faculty departure, and Cal Magruder '46 reports that most of the community thought a conflict between TPR and Brook Stabler had brought about the closing.
Finding actual evidence of TPR's meddling, however, proves to be more elusive.  We do know she went to some lengths to instruct the school's telephone operator as to the correct pronunciation of "Avon," and we do know she insisted on an administrative structure that proved unpopular with both Provosts and candidates for Provost.  [The problem was the existence of a person - first Master of Detail and then Aide to the Provost - with primary responsibility for the non-academic aspects of the school.]  On the other hand, we also know that she and John Wallace Riddle traveled to Europe for most of the school's first year of operation, largely to be out of Provost Froelicher's way, and that TPR was not on campus on a regular basis once the school opened.  Indeed, Cal Magruder remembers meeting her only once during his two years at school.
This is why I am intrigued by a note in the December 3, 1935 issue of the Weekly News-letter about a meeting of the "Board of Correlation" that had take place in the prior week.  The Board had decided to reject the Comptroller's suggestion that community service boys might do clerical work; the Board's thinking was that it was better for the boys, who had been in class all morning, to be outdoors as much as possible in the afternoon and that having boys do clerical work would mean removing them from the helpful work they were already doing.  It seems like a routine and reasonable decision, but I find it intriguing because with its usual thoroughness the Weekly News-letter lists all the members of the Board of Correlation: Mrs. Riddle, Dr. Kammerer, Commander Hunter (Aide), and four other men.  This is the first time I have come across the Board of Correlation, but any committee that includes the Founder (and benefactor) and the two top administrators is necessarily a committee of consequence.