Holyoke High School - Annual Yearbook (Holyoke, MA)

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Throughout his remarkably active life, Mr. Keyes held many positions of distinction in teacher organizations, notably the presidency of the American Institute of Instruc- tion, the oldest educational association in America, and the presidency of the National Council of Education, the leading division of the National Education Association. Mr. Keyes was considered by many school administrators to be one of the foremost public speakers in the field of education in America. His varied and comprehensive talks were delivered at teacher institutes, conventions, and summer sessions. Tests of True Teachingv, Life and Growth for the Teacher , Adaptation of Industrial Training to Present School Methods are examples of the subjects he selected. I-Ie was associated with such leaders in this Held as the late Dr. G. Stanley Hall of Clark University, Doctors Thorndike and Strayer of Columbia, Dr. David Starr Jordan of California, Dr. Judd of Chicago, and the late President Eliot of Harvard. On April 12, 1881, Charles Henry Keyes married Nellie Elmira Brown, a teacher in Excelsior, Minnesota. They had two daughters and four sons. Surviving Mr. Keyes are his Widow and daughters, Mrs. Maud V. CKeyesj Decker, Mrs. Helen B. CKeyesj Wright, and sons Dr. Harold B., George T., and Clarence E.

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CHARLES HENRY KEYES was born in Bridgeport, Wisconsin on September 6, 1858. His father, Henry Keyes, a railroad master mechanic and engineer, was the youngest son of a Vermont farmer who felt the call of the new west and moved to what was then frontier country in Western New York State. As a young man, Henry Keyes moved west again to help in the construction of railroads in Wisconsin. Charles Henry Keyes grew up in the town of Prairie du Chien, attended the country schools, the local academy, and St. John's College, conducted by the Christian Brothers, a teaching order of the Roman Catholic Church, being graduated A.B. in 1879. He taught country schools in Pepin and River Falls, Wfisconsin, and in the River Falls Normal School. In 1886 he was elected superintendent of schools in Jamesville, Wisconsin. While in Jamesville in 1888, Mr. Keyes was admitted to the bar and to practice in the supreme court in 1889. After a year in the practice of law, he accepted the superintend- ency of schools in Riverside, California. The presidency of Throop Polytechnic Institute at Pasadena was offered him in 1892. This office he filled most ably until 1906. From 1896 to 1897, Mr. Keyes did graduate work at the University of California, declining the superintendency of schools in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Coming east to attend the National Education Association convention in Buffalo in the sum- mer of 1897, he was tendered the principalship of the Holyoke High School by Mr. Preston B. Search, superintendent of the Holyoke schools, who had been super- intendent of the Los Angeles Public Schools. Plans for a new high school building had already been accepted when Mr. Keyes came to Holyoke. Supervision of its construction and equipment, a task for which he was peculiarly fitted, was one of his interesting duties during his first year in New England. After two years, described by an associate as exceedingly profitable for both scholar and teacher, Mr. Keyes went to the superintendency at Hartford, Connecticut where he remained until 1910. From 1910 to 1912, he did graduate work at Co- lumbia University, receiving his Doctor of Philosophy degree in June 1912. In August 1912, he took up his duties as President of Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York, a position he held until his death on January 16, 1925.

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WINFRED CHANDLER AKERS. With the turn of the century, Holyoke High School came under the guidance of Mr. Winfred Chandler Akers. The School Committee in its quest for an able leader turned to the eastern part of the state. Mr. Akers had a proven record as administrator and disciplin- arian in the schools of Quincy, Providence, Rhode Island, and Somerville. He accepted the call to Holyoke in 1899 and served in the office of Prin- cipal until 1903. Mr. Akers was born in Andover, Maine, on Wash- ington's birthday, 186 S . After preparatory courses at Maine Wesleyan Seminary and Kent's Hill School, he taught for four years before entering college, a custom quite the order of the day. He chose Wesleyan University at Middletown, Connecticut, for his Alma Mater. There he was graduated in 1893 with the degree of A.B. After four years in Holyoke, Mr. Akers accepted an invitation to the principalship in New Britain, Connecticut. Ten years later he went to Brookline High School, Where he remained until his retirement in June 1930. In February 1937 Mr. Akers died at his country home in Holden, Massachusetts.