Bowdoin College - Bugle Yearbook (Brunswick, ME)

Page 30 text:

EDWARD GRAY BUXTON field, Maine. Oct. 30, 1906. Business or profession: Assistant in Classics, Bowdoin, 1928-1929. Teacher at Wassoo- keag School, 1929-1937. Teacher at Gunnery, 1937- Service Record: Served with American National Red Cross in Labrador, The Azores, and Greenland for 24 months. Residence: The Gunnery School. Washington, Conn. Community interests: Vice-president Lions Club, Presiding Officer of Volunteer Fire Dept., Volunteer Ambulance Driver, Member local dramatic club. Married: 1940, divorced 1950. Children: Joanna Libby, born June 2, 1941. With no sense of false modesty, let it be said that the efforts of this graduate of Bowdoin in the class of 1928 have not produced any results which have affected the course of mankind. In the best tradition of a Bowdoin classics major, a deep and quite comfortable rut has been worn down and occupied by this aging stripling from 'the poorest class that Bowdoin has admitted in many years' fWere we really that bad'?D. This rut was begun in the fall of 1928 when this misguided individual served his apprenticeship in teaching as an assistant in the classics department of his alma mater. Upon the discovery that the burdens of teaching were not too onerous at that level, a decision was reached to embrace this type of work to procure the funds necessary to keep the body and the not too discerning mind supplied with the fundamentals of living. With high and noble purpose, the embryo teacher, with the disregard of callow youth for chances of accumulating filthy lucre, emerged from his 26 Place and date of birth: Fort Fair-

Page 29 text:

Institution. This position I held until I resigned during my senior year. By then I had met my present wife and I found her company more desirable than school activities. We were married in the afternoon of the day of my last examination. I had promised that I would not get married while in Law School, thus I lived up to the agreement I had made with my parents. We promptly set up housekeeping in the home where we now live. What fun we had in planning and buying the furniture. Today our living- room is arranged exactly as we planned it then though a little worse for wear through the intervening years, caused by two active children, Diane, our oldest and Sturges, our son, to say nothing of their friends and our own dogs and cats. Life in any New England Town can be interesting and ours is no exception. By degrees I began venturing into Masonry and civic activities. From being out one night a month, as I so con- siderately informed Natalie, I now find that I am fortunate if I am home one night a week-a far cry from law school days. My activity as a lawyer is very insignificant, perhaps, when com- pared with some of you. But, such as it is, that I have done. I enjoy life in the country, walking to the office in the morning, saying hello to my friends and participating in sidewalk philosophy. I will never blaze my name upon the walls of fame, but I have a home, a wife, and two children. God is kind. 25

Page 31 text:

chrysalis and started spreading his subjunctives and participles before the admiring gaze of those poor pupils of the Wassookeag School in Dexter, Maine, who were the first to be subjected to this torture, and for eight years or until the spring of 1937, this personality was inflicted upon the very patient student body of that institution, both summer and winter. The summers were more delightful, for then teaching could become subliminal and the more interesting duties of the direction of sports could be taken up. After eight years at the prementioned institution, one rut was exchanged for another at the Gunnery School in Washington, Connecticut. Here again the pattern was followed, and the pupils were inflicted, one way or another, in the classroom or on the baseball field. Also, a marriage was contracted here in the spring of 1940 which lasted till the spring of 1950. To this marriage a daughter, Joanna by name, was born, the one and only child. From here a departure was made to serve two years with the Red Cross in Labrador, the Azores, and Greenland in true polar bear style. To this place was made the return and the rut became deeper and more formfitting. The outstanding event in the un- eventful life of this teacher and coach was the winning of the champion- ship of the Connecticut Preparatory School League the first two years that the school was in the league, particularly as Gunnery is the smallest school to have a baseball team in the league. Now as middle age spread, thinning locks, and bifocals indicate, a certain deterioration is exacting its toll and each hookslide becomes more diflicult to do. By the way, the disregard for money still exists, not from choice but from necessity. However, upon reflection, in twenty-five years there has been stored up a wealth of interesting experiences and no small number of friends. Ah then, the old rut isn't so bad after all and if I follow it back it will lead me straight to Bowdoin, Dean Nixon, and Tommy Means. See you at our fiftieth! 27