Beaver Country Day School - Senior Yearbook (Brookline, MA)

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Ellen Wyzanski as Prince Charming and Cherry Whitney as Cinderella. THIRD GRADE In this period of our lives, the watchword was watching birds. Armed with binoculars we set out for the unknown, unexplored regions behind the tennis courts. We sighted bald eagles, cormorants, great blue herons and snowy egrets (or sea gulls to the less imaginative). Gail Binncy, who was an extremely sharpeyed bird-watcher, discovered an owl perched on top of a rotten oak tree. The owl remained in the same position on all successive visits. (It must have been petrified . .. wood) Clare Dana playing the fairy' godmother in the sixth grade performance of Cinderella. FOURTH GRADE Overheard at P.T.A. meeting: I don’t know what these teachers are thinking of— allowing children to play with fire. Why my daughter tells me they are experimenting with air pressure, but I fail to sec why they have to light bonfires under gasoline cans! Why my daughter cells me that the classroom was transformed into a blazing inferno!” A weak-willed defense for progressive education was then proffered. Our next step took us from the fires of the upper world, to the fires of the underworld. On the stage in Bradly Hall, surrounded by Plutonian caverns, we produced Orpheus and liurydice. Karen O'Keeffe and Sherry Atkinson made particularly convincing underworld Furies—braids, braces, and all. The social season started with a smash. It seems everybody who was anybody (in other words, everybody) gave birthday parties. We pitied girls with summer birthdays— all those presents down the drain. It was so exhausting— carrying on all that small talk, pinning tails on all those donkeys, drinking innumerable glasses of tomato juice, all the time awaiting the cake and ice cream. We left the fourth grade wiser in the ways of the world. FIFTH GRADE This year had its ups and downs. Marcia and Dodi, the inseparables joined us, the former wielding a formidable baseball bat, the latter wielding a not-so-formidablc tablespoon. (How prophetic!) We as a group learned the technique of giving excuses for unfinished homework. All our family dogs at that time possessed razor-sharp teeth and a ravenous craving for fifth grade homework papers. However, as we fabricated excuses, hinting darkly of sick aunts and mothers who emptied wastebaskets, Mrs. Peebles gravely began her march to the corner. There, with calm deliberation, she removed the time worn imaginary violin from its case, tuned it, and launched into the soaring strains of The Humiliation Waltz. If the shoe fir, wc wore it. To Hades with Dick and Jane! Foreign influence now pervaded our literature as wc met Jean and Marie LeFevrc a la gare. We followed their checkered careers through le salon, la cuisine, la sallc a manger, and ultimately dans la chambre a couchcr. The studio, the hockey field and the boiler room were regaled with the foreign flavor of Sur la Pont d'Avignon and Frcre Jacques . At the end of the year, Dodi played hostess to the entire class at her farm in Southboro. The day was dreary and overcast. Undaunted, on hand and knee, wc supplicated the sun god and, true to our call the sun broke through the clouds. (However, nobody went swimming anyway—the ice was too thick!) SIXTH GRADE Life is real, life is earnest. For years we had heard lurid reports of Mr. Laughland’s violence—tales of chalk and erasers hurtling through the air at recalcitrant students. So with trembling knees and quivering hearts, wc anticipated his wrath. The fateful day didn't dawn until the year was half over. Mr. Laughland was reading Grammar Made Fun. Penny Sawyer and Ann Strek were reading True Confessions. This was a situation conducive to violence. The next day, Mr. Laughland was reading Grammar Made Fun; Penny and Strek were reading Grammar Made Fun also. Wc employed the invaluable precepts of our language training in writing our first long paper. Wc madly cut pictures from the National Geographic Magazine, and gathered our vast knowledge from the World Book Encyclopedia . .. Ix ng papers were fun in those days. There were other distractions from the academic; The Splinter reported: Last Thursday the school enjoyed a talented performance of Pinafore ably directed by Mr. Laughland. and performed by the sixth grade. Gail Binncy did a really superb job as the Admiral, Ellen Wyzanski was a wonderful captain, and Cherry Whitney, as Josephine sang very sweetly. The audience was very enthusiastic, and a good time was had by all.” Need wc say more? 67

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FROM THESE ROOTS THE LOWER SCHOOL NURSERY But Mommy, I don’t want to go to school . . Inevitably, there it was. All we saw at first was a pile of bricks behind which the Little Red School house stood—our home away from home for the next two years. However, there were redeeming features; the sandbox, the sled shed, the apparatus .. . also less redeeming features; Mrs. Hcgemann’s office and the ever occupied corner. Already the developing personalities were becoming evident. Clare Dana discovered the opposite sex and decided to set up housekeeping in the sand castle which Barbie Ray and Pam Horst were alternately construsting and destroying. Miss G)ffin, our singing teacher, was not always happy KINDERGARTEN Hurry up Mommy, I can't wait!” We were club women at last. The club to which anyone who was anyone (in other words, everyone) belonged was the sled society. Our clubhouse was located underneath the Little Red Schoolhouc. One by one. Cherry Whitney, Holly Rubel, and the aforementioned personalities crawled solemnly on their stomachs through the hole in the foundation which led to the inner sanctum. Seated on broken sleds, we pledged our brotherhood. TRANSITION Where's my peanubutter sanwich, Mum? I wanna go to school now!” Tragedy struck in Transition—the boys did not return. Frustrated, as we tried to adjust to this terrible turn of events, we resorted to scraping the dirt from the with our personalities, and the sand didn't help the piano cither. However, the strains of Drill Ye Tarriers, Drill could still be heard on the hockey field, in the boiler room, and in the studio. At the end of Nursery School we had all matured considerably. Our distraught mothers read: Barbie is curious and at the exploratory age in her play activity ... Dough, finger paint and water play all interest Pam for short periods . . . “Dramatic play in the doll corner seems to be Clare's favorite activity . . With such talent our teachers were strangely unrclcctant to send us through the sliding doors to Kindergarten. Here comes the bride. All dressed in purple Stepped on a turtle And down came her girdle. Our lusty tunc shocked (we hoped) the unenlightened of the hockey field, the boiler room, and the studio. The teachers tried to cultivate our innate domesticity. We sewed ric-rac on the Kindergarten curtains, and Cherry was the chief ric-rackcr, or ric rac wrecker, depending on the point of view. cracks in the floor during rest. We struggled through our A B C's to the tunc of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star , all of course in preparation for College Boards which were to be taken eleven years hence. 66 A second grade birthday party. FIRST GRADE Grade one brought all sorts of lovely things including Ellen Wyzanski who had to get up at 5:33 A.M. to walk across the street (Now she gets up at 8:37 A M.). Upon arriving at school. Miss Jones offered us our mid-morning snack—crackers and juice— but we preferred paste and lined paper, which added the development of sophisticated taste to our growing intellects. Now we were in our advanced course of elementary reading. SECOND GRADE This year Dick, Jane, Mother, Father, Spot and Baby entered the class. Spot ran, Jane went, (she is probably still going) and Dick played, ad infinitum. The year progressed and soon winter was upon us—an endless train of mittens and leggings. Saralyn, our newest member, struggled with her undersized boots muttering, Never since the day I was bone . . ' In red-faced frustration, others of us lost our Northern Composure also.

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THE JUNIOR WING SEVENTH In English class we painfully learned an inviolate formula: begin each composition with an introductory sentence and conclude it with a one sentence summary. Thus, true to our teaching, we begin. In this passage we will discuss the events of our seventh grade year. This year our class doubled in size and we were divided into two homerooms. The talents of this new half enlivened our existence. We greeted Paul of the Paint Pot, Athletic Pinkerton and her swinging blues, and Dupcc (or is it Doopy?) and her popular piano. The seventh grade was another year for clubs and, hoping to evade the grim reality (which our new members had only partially dispelled) we formed the fainting club. None of us actually fainted, but Sue Tucker came the closest—she got red in the face and dizzy and staggered most convincingly, engendering envy in unsuccessful bystanders. One of the joys of Mr. Hatch's English class was a weekly lesson in etymology. We were graded not only on our choice of vocabulary but, worse still, on our neatness! Sue Lockwood daily received the highest marks with her neat printing which many attempted, but few achieved. Judy Broggini astounded our adolescent minds by resolving to write a self-illustrated novel. However, as Beaver preyed on her ambitions, she changed her mind and aspired to be a mouseketecr. Oh well, Keats changed his mind about his profession too. Sue Mueller shone in math class and out-added, subtracted and multiplied her fumbling fellow classmates. Mary Ann sat behind her in class to aid and abet her (mostly abet). Math class proved to be Mary Ann's Waterloo. Oh well, there have been many fine people who have failed math—Mrs. Pope for example, and anyway no one can pass out crackers and milk like Mary Ann. GRADE Several months after school had begun, the truant officer caught up with Sue Mcljy and she decided she might just as well follow the crowd to school. But it was all too much for her and she was absent periodically, much to the envy of everyone else. Clothes and boys were ever a burning issue. We discovered that Wendy I.utkins had reached unheard of heights of maturity in the possession of her very own clothes allowance. She later confessed that she never bought pajamas or socks anymore, but preferred to spend her riches on such things as Lanz dresses and heels. BOYS—oh yes! Who could forget? Joan Tweedy and Rhoda Hcnkels have joined us from co-ed schools (lucky ones) and bemoaned the lack of targets for their fluttering eyelashes, and feminine wiles. Weightier matters than boys and clothes occupied our minds occasionally. We accomplished great things in class meetings (at the moment we fail to recollect these matters, but we are sure they were great). This was the first year we payed dues, and dues, and dues—25 each month. We notice that there has been significant inflation since, for we now pay 60t Ann Tullis was the collector of this internal revenue and she still is. We staged two dramatic triumphs, a Christmas pageant in which Mary Ladd sang Silent Night in her role as the Virgin Mary, and later in the year we gave a lighter production of Trial by Jury, which Mrs. Tonks patiently directed. True to form we must remember our seventh grade formula, and so in conclusion we state that we have tried to give an unbiased account, concealing no pertinent facts, of life in that year of grace 1954-1955. GRADE EIGHT It seemed that we couldn't keep our feet on solid ground this year, and we were in hot water most of the time. In fact, our theme song was: Don't get me in hot water My face gets awful red 'Cause when I get in trouble I'm spanked and sent to bed. Various fishy personalities were represented in the un- derwater domains of our original play Coral Reef Capers. We gave a WHALE of a performance and only regretted that our authentic Fishes (Vicki and Ellen) came a year too late. Jane O'Neil played the part of a sea horse, the Cassanova of the coral reef, and Melinda Fuller played the blackguard of the chain gang. Meanwhile, Diana Horn sat in the wings knitting a seven foot sweater and waited for the ships to come in. Overheard in Danish gym class: Gay El well: Perry, how did you ever . . . Perry Bagg: It's a simple matter of persistence. We must, we must ... If you don't believe me, ask Rupert. As-always, getting accustomed to school was a difficult process. Toni Caldwell for example, never got used to the fact that there were parking lots instead of hitching posts in front of Beaver. Wendy Wakeman too, was frustrated in her attempt to conduct a varsity sailing regatta in the swimming pool. This year we all coveted sophistication and threw away our Mary Janes and smocked dresses. Instead, the standard outfit consisted of loafers, knee socks, straight skirts. Shetland sweaters, button-down shirts, and pony tails for the former pig-tail crowd. Oh, that was a year of rugged individualism! Diana Horn and Marcia Norcrost enjoying an eighth grade dance. The chain Kang in Coral Reef Capers