Lawrenceville School - Olla Podrida Yearbook (Lawrenceville, NJ)

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lla ibuiltiha There has been no year in a generation in which the School's effectiveness in training boys for life has been so sharply tested. It is fortunate that we have been able to take our hrst steps toward meeting the present crisis while we were still at peace, for some of our experiments were bound to be mistakes, and those who chart new courses find it hard to keep the direction firm and straight. Our most serious and fundamental concern here has been to give you what you needed, physically, mentally, and spiritually, for life in a world that seems to have gone to pieces. It is inconceivable that we have done it with success. The next few years will bring you into situations for which you will have no precedent in experience, here or else- where. You will make mistakes, find yourselves on the brink of disillusion and despair. But for those very reasons a strong man will find good work to do, good causes to promote, good ends to serve, and finally can make a place for himself on solid ground. It is the faith of schools that they may make boys ready to wield the weapons of manhood, however hard the Hght. I hope you may find that Lawrenceville has strengthened your hands and your hearts, that from our common life you have absorbed, perhaps unconsciously, a toughening of your fibre. I hope we have put you more in possession of yourselves, that you are more your own men than when you came here. Knowing the sort of future that lies immediately before you, it is hard to say good-bye and see you go. We shall watch your progress with deep concern, for we have had a hand in making you. Our love and our faith go with you. UFight the good fight with all thy mightlu ALLAN V. HEELY Head Master Ten

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QTQEIIH i,BuUtiDa HEAD MASTEIFS MESSAGE O speak to the graduating class in cold type is a risky business. What I have had to say to you orally you have quickly forgotten, with no opportunity to note its imperfections or irrelevancies. Some of you, indeed, have cultivated the technique of not listening to it at all, while preserving outwardly an air of rapt attention. The printed word, however, pauses, permits itself to be examined a second time. The pitfalls of this valedictory are, therefore, acute. So I serve notice that this essay in farewell is struck off because Editor Stovall, at some risk of perjury, declared he really wanted it, and because it is pleasant to retrieve from memory my moments with a company of friends. You and I have faced each other countless times in conference and chapel, and it would be curiously interesting to know what, on those public occasions, we have been thinking of each other. I hasten to say that my own reflections have been largely complimentary, I have expended nervous energy, to be sure, in the attempt to glare into more seemly bearing the gum-chewers, the chatters, and the more con- spicuously sleepyg and in so doing, I am told, have at times sent shudders up the spines of innocent and attentive neighbors. But this was just routine police work, resented by none. I have to thank you more than once for bearing with dull lecturers and long-distance preachers, whom you have treated with a courtesy which they did not deserve, but which made me proud of you. But it is, of course, in your moments of relaxation that I remember you with keenest pleasure. Altman, Ashley, Barrie, and Peters have done much to give me a just perception of the California climate, which they assure me is seldom what it seems. Boydis addiction to afternoon tea has won my admiration, and so has Singer's, who has been my strong ally in a preference for iced tea over hot, it has been stimulat- ing to match quips with Norris, to admire the exploits of that perennial valedictorian, Murchison. I have benefited more than once from Maynard's kindly advice on the management of the School. I have shared with Cunningham the embarrassment of public laryngitis, I have been lost in wonder at the dictatorial efficiency of Patrick at meetings of Pipe and Quill. Low's acting and Strasenburgh's running and Wise's poetry I shall not forget. And these are only random citations from the long and creditable volume which contains your Fifth Form annals. As you must now know, the tone of the School is set by the Fifth Form. It is due, therefore, to your general orderliness and responsiveness that we old hands have been saying that this has been a smooth, pretty untroublesome year. That you have helped to make it so is partly the result of the landslide vote you gave to Bob Wilson for the presidency and to your good judgment in selecting your other officers and directors. I recall fewer emergency conferences with Wilson than with any of his predecessorsg and such crises and civil disturbances as every school year gives rise to have been handled promptly and with no noticeable damage to the general life. Since I could not possibly have gotten along without them, I give my deep thanks now to all the members of the Fifth Form Council. Nine

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