Episcopal High School - Whispers Yearbook (Alexandria, VA)

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GRIGSBY CAVE SHACKELFORD T has been learned with deep regret that continuing ill health will necessitate the resignation of Grigsby Cave Shackelford at the close of the present session. For some time now it has been known that his physi- cal condition was poor and that he has kept his shoulder to the wheel only because of his great loyalty to the school and his un-N willingness to leave during the critical war years. These lines attempt to express the heartfelt sympathy of his many friends and admirers and some measure of appreciation of what he has meant to them. Mr. Shackelford graduated from the University of Virginia in 1905 with its high- l est academic degree and joined the corps of l masters at the high school in 1906, soon -- -- l thereafter assuming duties as head of the mathematics department. Along with the others of that old guard of masters which have kept the Episcopal High School a vital and unique force in American secondary school education, he ranks as a great teacher of boys, both inside and outside the classroom. Al- though a capable and conscientious disciplinarian, his chary charges considered it no idle rumor that in study hall his ever-present green eye-shade was a blind or mask, behind which his keen eyes were constantly probing and assessing their actions and intentions-his reputation for fairness was universal and his pleas for leniency provided more than one offender with another chance to make good. It is in the setting of his classroom that Shack is best remembered by the boys of the past 40 years who survived the preceding echelons of arithmetic and algebra to sit at his feet in 4th, 5th, 6th, or Qavis raraj 7th math. He was a source of real inspiration to those who could or would be inspired, and many a pupil inclined to regard math as a necessary evil found, to borrow from the surprised observation of one of them, that under Shack's tutelege he was even beginning to, like the darn stuff! He continually strove to impress on his classes the greater efficiency of applying straight thinking to math prob- lems, as opposed to reliance on the Hckle Molock of Memorization and that he was successful to a high degree is attested by the esteem in which our math depart- ment is held by those institutions where his students have subsequently matriculated. It is fondly remembered by old boys how he would sketch a Euclidean figure on the blackboard, place his ear close to it and exhort it to talk to him, and then, after a masterful exposition of its secrets, turn to his classes and plead, in sonorous and convincing tones, Isn't it easy, boys? Needless to say this conviction did not always extend throughout the length and breadth of the class membership but it usually enabled all but the nether- l7l

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father won distinction as a public readerf After graduation from Emory and Henry College, he travelled with his father assisting him in his readings and lectures and, upon his father's death, he carried on his father's work alone. In 1893 he visited the High School to give a reading, and so impressed was the school's headmaster, Mr. Blackford, that he was asked to stay on at the High School to take charge of the Department of English and Elocution. ln 1899 he received the degree of Master of Elocution from the National School of Oratory in Philadelphia. ' a Biographical details are apt to be barren when it comes to revealing a man's inner essence, his essential juices. Nowhere among such bare bones of his life is it written that Willoughby Reade built with his own hands a tennis court where the Fairfax Literary Society now stands. and that he could, and did, stand with his back to a tennis net on that court, set the regulaion height, and spring backwards over it: or that believing that a capacious chest expansion was even more important to oratory than either hand supine or hand prone, he exhorted his students to labor at pulleys and lift dumb-bells to give them more powerful lungs. No mere Who's Who Will tell that, during the Sabbatical year he took in 1922-23. he lived for a while in the house of The Christus of the Oberammergau Passion Play and wrote a story about that Play which he read to High School boys from time to time: or that .during the sabbatical he attended Cambridge for two months, and thereafter thought of himself as a Cambridge Boy and celebrated the victories Cambridge won in her annual boat race against Oxford with, joyous acclaim, although he was some three thousand miles distant from the-scene of those victories. During his absence his son, born and schooled at The High School, took his place: then reached teaching greatness himself as President of The Georgia College for Women at Valdosta, Georgia. Nor can any cut and dried biographical data bring forth the depth of Willoughby Reade's feeling forthe land of his birth, or tell how in 1914, when he was fortyenine and England's Old Contemptibles were standing toe to toe to slug it out with the Kaiser's hordes in Flanders, he underwent a rigorous physical examination: after which he betook himself to the British Embassy in Washington to offer his services. When that offer was declined, with mention of his nearness to the half-century span, he was indignant and said, The doctor assures me l'm just as good as a man of thirty. . Nor was that doctor far wrong. Then as now, so faras the things of the spirit, mind and heart are concerned, Willoughby Reade could make that claim. And last of all, no array of biographical material would include mention of an apocryphal small boy who, when hearing his parents say, Willoughby Reade is a silver-tongued orator , watched the Reade mouth closely hoping to see that solid silver tongue for himself. To High School boys, new and old, it is unnecessary to say that tongue IS solid silver, and so generations of High School boys will remember it, no matter how much it may look like a tongue of flesh and blood. Beyond the horizon's rim of things that are, Into a day of grander, nobler things to be. . . . Centennial Ode. By Pete Martin-EHS, '17 151

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most regions thereof to glimpse some light where before had reigned Stygian darkness. Although no athlete himself and not engager in coaching activities. Shack maintained a devoted interest in this important branch of school life, and his figure was a familiar one, even to the youngest rat , as he paced slowly along the playing lields or perched somewhat precariously on his equally familiar cane- seat to watch the practice sessions. The warmth of his personality and the integrity of his character, along with his outstanding professional qualities, will long be cherished and preserved as part of the rich legacy left us by this beloved teacher. R, P. T. l3l