Brookline High School - Murivian Yearbook (Brookline, MA)

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Wilfred H. Ringer, Headmaster TO THE GRADUATES OF 1939 We figure to ourselves The thing we like; and then we build it up, As chance will have it, on the rock or sand.” The great purpose of your high school has not been so much to aid you to achieve scholastic attainment as to develop your character and efficiency as individuals. All else has been subordinated to these ideals that your usefulness may rest on a secure foundation. A place for industry and effort, here has been the shop in which each could sharpen the tools with which to continue his education through the days that must follow. Your school could not add to the number of tools in your mental workshop. Rather, the object has been to edge them — to train for skill and value in their use. How well you will account for these tools will be determined by your courage, your energy, your personality, your moral purpose. This school has offered the opportunities. The price the world will pay is determined not so much by the school as by yourselves. Success must be thought out, fought or wrought out . There is no other way. May the years to come give you all an abundance of good fortune and happiness. 12

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Faculty

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Miss Mary W. Sawyer Dean of Girls During the last four years in Brookline High School you have certainly become accus- tomed to changes! As freshmen or sophomores you knew the old building with its spacious corridors, you browsed among the books in the Shailer Hall Library, you treasured imperish- able memories of Class Day with its seemingly endless ranks of students marching down the broad steps beneath the tower. Then on a September afternoon the unbelievable happened, and you watched with hundreds of others as the dignified old building was ruined by the leaping flames. Three days later you were adapting yourselves to classes in every corner of the remaining buildings and carrying on as usual. For two years you watched and waited and worked while the old building was torn down and the beautiful new structures were erected on the site. Through it all you have done whatever was demanded of you by the changing condi- tions. The emergency, long continued as it was, tested you and showed you to yourselves. So it will be in the years that lie ahead. Can you meet every situation squarely and rise above difficulties? Can you trust yourselves to live at your best? Are you going out into the com- munity to stand for something worth while” and to carry your share of responsibility? These are troubled and uncertain times which demand the best from every one of us. May you so live, day by day, that those around you may be glad that their lives have touched yours even for a brief moment.” We have every confidence that you will carry on in the same spirit with which you met the emergency in the Brookline High School. My best wishes to you all ! 13