Groton School - Grotonian Yearbook (Groton, MA)

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someone moving in or out. In Mr. Strachan's dormitory, Distler, Means, Spencer, Stackpole, Grant and W. G Loring organized nocturnal baseball games. Needless to say, you never enjoyed self-government in your dormitory life. In the dining room, you came under the eternally vigilant rule of Mr. Regan. You learned to call Miss Cram's appetizing dishes by their correct names and to use such words as please pass for 'tsling, and 'fmay I have for shoot me. You learned to pass things first to the master or to spend meal after meal watching the squirrels. In fact, so anxious did you become to satisfy the master's every wish that on one occasion Semler, when asked facetiously by Mr. Noble to inform the Rector that it was time to ring the bell, leapt up from his place and would have delivered the message if an amazed Mr. Noble had not restrained him. The First Form Room, where your historian attempted to hold sway, was also the scene of much wild activity. It was there as much as anywhere that you earned the distinction of being Hthe noisiest First Form in years. The A division of First Form Math, which met there, frequently offered the occasion for civil war as you fought for black-board space. Ten of you would go to the board, and immediately boundaries would be drawn followed by ingenious attempts to alter them and extend them in such a way that the fellow at the end of the board would be writing on the wall. One such episode ended in a near riot, and your historian barely escaped with his life. It seems that Grant had staked out for himself three feet of board space which he was willing to defend with his life. His neighbor, feeling that there had been an unequal distribution of the board, proceeded to erase Grant's boundary and redraw it to his own satisfaction. Grant, who was willing to defend his boundary with his life, did so. Seizing an eraser from the hand of his neighbor, he erased the new boundary and was in the process of re-establishing the old one when he was told that he was out of order and must sit down. Thereupon Grant was overcome by the tragedy of the situation and flung himself on his desk with much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, interspersed with cries of revenge at all who tried to intervene. -E261

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FORM HISTORY Your Form History begins, as all Form Histories begin, with your arrival at Groton, 32 strong, on September 20, 1938. It ends, or rather this chapter of it ends, as few Form Histories have ended before it, recording the fact that eleven of you had to leave before the end of your Sixth Form year to serve in the forces of your country. Like the hurricane which descended on the School the day after you arrived, the march of events in the outside world was swift and inexorable. Munich, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, thc Blitz, Selective Service, Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Stalingrad, Africa, Sicily, round the clock bombing are only words that suggest the tide of events that ebbed and flowed on every continent while you passed from the First to the Sixth Forms. Your six years at Groton were war-filled years in which the ideals of Christian civilization were sorely tried in a confused and suffering world. First Form Year There were 32 of you when you began in 1938. As you came to know each other, you discovered that 13 came from New York State, eight from Massachusetts, three from Pennsylvania, two each from Connecticut and Illinois, one each from New Jersey, Mary- land, Canada, and one from 'way down south in Tennessee. You discovered things about each other apart from the geographical location of each other's homes. You dis- covered that Grant aspired to be boss of the First Form and that it was no mean job to dislodge him, as Spencer and Scott both discovered in the Hundred House basement shortly after the year began. You discovered that Key, the boy from Canada, had a remarkable aptitude for being sent out of class, an aptitude he was to exercise in almost all of his subjects for four years. There were many actors in your form who performed expertly both on and off the stage. Martin, the first to gain recognition, took the part of Viola in Twelfth N ight. In the Choir, Gray and Kerrigan took turns fainting at the eleven o'cloek service on Sundays. So accustomed did you all become to Gray Hkeeling over, that on one occasion Amory, who stood beside him, seeing that the inevitable was going to happen, merely stepped forward far enough for Gray to hit the floor with a thud behind him, and continued singing as if nothing had happened. You discovered that Wetmore liked to draw comic strips during evening period and that W. E. Loring could outlast any of you in an argument, especially if it was about baseball. Of course the greatest excitement of the term came the second night when the hurricane blew down trees and branches all over the School grounds and otherwise iso- lated the School. You cheered when classes were called off for a day and you were turned out to clear up debris, but you protested the following day when only the upper school was allowed to do clean-up work. However, you did your share in the afternoons in place of club football, which was postponed a week. Most of you played on the Thi1'd Club teams, but Grant, Coogan, W. C. Loring and Means made the Second Monadnocks, and Gray and Amory made the Second Wachusetts. The Monadnocks under Mr. Thomas were overwhelmingly successful and allowed Mr. Moss's Wachusetts only two victories. Your first year of dormitory life was one of almost continuous commotion. The inhabitants of the Annex became known as the eternal Okies -there was always 4251

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Some extraordinary essays were written in the First Form Room that year. One by Martin was entitled Sum Malus Puer and was a form of penance for having done a dreadful thing. I did it, so the essay goes, by holding a book up i11 front of the one I was reading .... Already I hear Lucifer snarling, 'Deceivers are the worst kind of invertebrates there are. Throw them into the fiery furnace' When I think of this, my meagre courage leaves and I'm ready to ask forgiveness .... Adieuf' Another by Gray grew out of an unfortunate experience of reading the encyclopedia during morning school. When asked to write an essay on what he had read, he wrote, I read all about geraniums and Germany, the gila lizard and the ginger plant, giraffes, girl scouts, glaciers, gladiatorial combat, gladiolus and the University of Glascow, gliders, globe fish, gloves, glucose, glue, glycerin, gnats, goiters .... Gray rather distinguished himself as a writer that year. His answer to the Rector's test question, What was last Sunday's sermon about? has become one of the classic Sacred Studies papers in recent years. It was a rather long paper, very neatly written, and went something like this: I always like it when Mr. Williams preaches in Chapel. I like the sound of his voice and the way it goes up and down. But more than that I like the way he sways back and forth in the pulpit .... I don't know what the sermon was about. But not all was play. A lot of woi'k was done. On Prize Day it was announced that Erhart and Sheerin had ranked first and second respectively in the Form. Grant received the woodworking prize. Shortly after the St. Mark's game, Gray was elected Secretary of the Form and Scott and Erhart Councillors. This marked the formal beginning of your participation in school affairs, which was to grow as the years went by. It was typical of you that you went out for everything. When the Band was organized, Ch. Brown and Grant became charter members. Sheerin, Scott, Amory, Millet, Grant, Sprague and Means joined the Fife, Drum and Bugle Corps. - You organized your own activities, too. When the Spring Term opened in a spell of bad weather which postponed baseball, you engaged in cops and robbers with great enthusiasm. The initial announcement of this game at roll call brought down the house and you were very sensitive about it, but it did not dampen your enthusiasm for chasing each other over the grounds every afternoon. The ladder box behind Hundred House became a favorite hiding place and so did the grating around the basement windows of the Chapel. The latter hide-out was particularly maddening to the cops, because you could be seen behind it but not tagged through it, as Spencer discovered in great anguish. When baseball did get under way, almost all of you except Goodyear, who was already showing his pitching prowess on the First Clubs, were on the Third Clubs. You named the two teams after the coaches-the Mossites and the Moorons. The games, which were played on the campus, combined violent debate, mayhem, and a little base- ball. Most of the debating was carried on by Erhart and W. E. Loring, while the rest of you engaged in the mayhem and the baseball. Erhart and Loring were rival first basemen-although feuding would describe the relationship better. Each one fol- lowed the other around like a hawk waiting for him to strike out or commit an error, and then the argument began. During the course of the season, Kerrigan and West were carried from the field in a semi-conscious state. Somehow Kerrigan was hit over the head with a bat. West was knocked out by a wild pitch from Martin. The final game was almost unbelievable. Everybody got a hit. The pitching staff, Davison, Martin, f27l