Brookline High School - Murivian Yearbook (Brookline, MA)

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Devotion School — 1943 Schoolhouse at Coolidge Corner — 1850 13

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by unit as growth of the town necessitated. Material improvements were not, however, the chief gains made in the administration of Headmaster Akers. Changes for the better in the inner life of the school constituted a far more real and discriminating cause for congratula- tions. Besides the several musical organizations such as boys’ and girls’ glee clubs, mandolin club, life and drum corps, band and orchestra and the more numerous supervised sports of all kinds for both sexes, there were other student enterprises no less valuable, among them, to name only a few, the school paper — the Sagamore — the year-book, later called the Murivian, school drama- tics and the girls’ league. Mr. Akers saw organized sports that came into the school life during the headmastership of Mr. Sanford approach their highest development in his term of serv- ice. They had multiplied among both sexes until the boys had, with the exceptions of polo and wrestling, all the varieties of contests found at Cambridge, including a crew on the Back Bay; and the girls all but one of the varieties of feminine sports practised at Wellesley, in- cluding Lacrosse, archery and horse-back riding. Furth- ermore, Brookline High School graduates, owing to their expert training in their preparatory days, supplied not infrequently captains and star athletes for the foot- ball, baseball and track varsity teams of Harvard, Yale and Pennsylvania and for a score of smaller similiar in- stitutions as well. In June 1930, owing to ill health, the beloved and venerated Mr. Akers resigned from the headmastership of the school and in the following year for the same reason Mr. Gallagher from the superintendency. Mr. Ernest R. Caverly, Headmaster of the Brookline High School for the year 1930-31, whose administrative abil- ty had impressed the school committee, was appointed the successor of the latter and Mr. Wilfred H. Ringer, for ten years successful principal of the Gloucester High School, was picked to take the place of the former. The rapidly expanding high school enrollment had now reached a total of seventeen hundred students and ninety-one teachers. The town rose to the exigencies of the situation by making a prompt appropriation of two hundred eighty-five thousand dollars for the erection of a second unit of the extensive plant for the whole of which the architects had drawn plans. Without delay ground was broken and construction begun to provide additional class rooms and new enlarged laboratories for all branches of science. After the Roberts auditorium was built and there was no longer need for Shailer Hall for desk room and study periods, the question how to make the best use of the old assembly hall became pertinent. This was satis- factorily answered when federal funds became avail- able to remodel and redecorate the old auditorium and transform it into what was probably in respect to spaci- ousness, utility and beauty, the finest high school li- brary in existence. This unfortunately was not long enjoyed, for hardly had it been furnished and put to use before it was involved in a ruinous fire that broke out in the afternoon of September 25, 1936. Before the flames and smoke could be brought under control, the interior of the main building was so seriously dam- aged that the school committee felt that the expendi- ture of a large sum of money in rebuilding a forty-year old out-of-date plant was unsound from an economic point of view. Therefore the grand old building, as firm as the rock of Gibraltar, was with difficulty taken down and the present south and central sections of the quadrangular plant erected. One last unit remains to be built to provide two superimposed gymnasia, additional classrooms and enlarged science laboratories whenever the time is ripe for the completion of the architectural whole. There is no question but that the Brookline High School plant will then be a fitting and practical memo- rial of the generosity of the tax-payers and of their firm belief in the value of the finest educational equipment. The Brookline High School has kept faith with the citizens of the town and justified large expenditures by the quality of its work. This was never better than in the last decade if we may trust the evidence of the scholarship records kept on file in the school office. Brookline graduates not only do remarkably well in the College Board examinations as the results published in the annual school reports reveal , but maintain a good rank in college. That fact is proof that their prepara- tion was thorough, that a broad, firm foundation had been laid by their whole training in the Brookline schools, and that habits of industry and the will to learn had been ingrained. It is yet too soon to appraise the contribution toward winning the second world war that the Brookline High School is making. At present, the endeavor is to main- tain a balance between the demands of the national emergency and the basic needs of education for life in time of normal peaceful conditions. Teachers and stu- dents are adjusting themselves heartily to the exigencies of war, responding to every call for preparedness. The High School buildings have been freely made available for all sorts of courses, not only for the older boys and girls in the junior and senior classes to fit them for em- ployment in national defense industries, but also for hundreds of men and women from metropolitan Bos- ton who are being fitted by the regular manual training instructors to do work assigned to them by federal agencies. The High School is meeting intelligently and in a spirit of fullest cooperation its new obligations imposed by the transition from peace to war without, however, neglecting those things in education that are indispensable for the building of the post-war world. These pages contain in an abbreviated form, material written by Mr. William Snow in connection with the 100 th Anniversary of Brookline High School. 12

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MISS ABEL Sub].: Chemistry Coll.: Middlebury College Syracuse University MISS ANDERSON Subj.: Algebra Coll. : Columbia University MR. BARNES Subj.: English Coll.: Tufts College Harvard Grad. Sch. of Ed. MISS BATES Subj. : Mathematics Coll.: Bates Col. M. I. T. Harvard U. MISS G. ALLEN Subj. : English Coll.: Radcliffe Col. Harvard Grad. Sch. of Ed. MR. ATTICKS Subj.: Commercial Subjects Coll.: First Penn. St. Teachers’ Col. B. U., Zanerian Art Col. MR. BARI LETT Subj.: Biology Coll. : Mass. State U. Harvard University MR. BEAUCHEMIN Subj.: Automobile Mechanics Coll.: Northeastern University MISS N. ALLEN Subj.: Physical Education Coll.: Posse Col., B.U. Sch. of Ed Harvard Grad. Sch. of Ed. MR. BALL Subj.: Physical Education Coll.: Boston University MR. BATES Subj.: Mathematics Coll. Harv. Grad. Sch. of Ed. Dartmouth Col. MR. BECK Subj.: Science and Biology Coll.: Rhode Island Col. of Ed. Columbia Teachers’ College 14