Groton School - Grotonian Yearbook (Groton, MA)

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THE PREFECTS Hack How: Schieffelin, Lodge, Prescott Front Row: Low, Key, Dwight, Wood .WI'1'ssi'ng: Romig TIMOTHY J. R. BARNES JOHN R. E. BOOKER SAMUEL A. CANN R. ELLIS CARTER JACOB P. B. FOLKESTONE MALCOLM W. GREENOUGH I94 . Ex -f26 MARTIN HUNTER GERALD M. B. SELOUS CHARLES G. WASHBURN JASON F. WHITNEY THOMAS S. WILLIAMS MARK H. WILLIAMSON

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FREDERICK DALZIEL VREELAND New York, N. Y. JOHN ERNEST LYONS WOOD Oxford, England Royal Artlllery New College, Oxford 25 THOMAS HENRY WEST, IV Hopedale, Mass. U. S. N. R. Harvard I

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FORM HISTORY As the August days of 1939 hurried you nearer to First Form year at Groton, your futureAboth immediate and distant-was to be disturbed by changes more drastic and awesome than even you were imagining. On the way home from vacation places you stopped anywhere for gasoline Cuiill her up D, your papers and magazines were splashed with advertisements suggesting that you use long-distance telephones more, that this or that be bought for more motoring comfort, that you patronize this hotel, or take that steamship line for your trip around the world. Your parents were, however, uneasy about more than the problem of preparing you to go away to school. While you were dreading those final dentist appointments, Germany and Russia, each with two million men under arms, completed in Moscow a non-aggression pact, signed by Ribbentrop and Molotov. As you had your blue suit Qwith long trouserslj fitted, statesmen in all the capitals of Europe fearfully awaited Hitler's next move. Before your shiny new patent-leather shoes and funny white shirts with stiff collars arrived from the store, the nervous tension in the world news had crowded off the front page the sports item that Australia's Davis Cup team had followed its triumph over Jugoslavia on the Longwood courts in Chestnut Hill by defeating our own Riggs, Parker, Kramer, and Hunt in the finals at Haverford. On Friday, September first, you prepared to enjoy Labor Day weekend with the help of the newest records: Glenn Miller's Baby Me and Stairway to the Stars. But before you left for the movies that night to see Spencer Tracy in his new Stanley and Livingstone, the radio said Germany had bombed and invaded Poland. Saturday, September second, you went to see Judy Garland in f'The Wizard of Oz while Prime Minister Chamberlain prepared to broad- cast on Sunday morning that Great Britain was at war with Germany. In the next two weeks while your last name-tapes were sewed on and trunks sent off, Poland was being crushed, though Warsaw desperately held out until the morn- ing you arrived, Tuesday, September 19th, to greet the Rector and Mrs. Peabody. All that you had so far seen of the war was the new coat of dingy gray paint hurriedly slapped on both the Queen M ary and N ormandie as they lay at their Hudson River piers, having brought home record crowds of Americans scurrying from the War bursting all over Europe. Five of the thirty-one new boys entering with you were just off the boats, but none in the First Form list, which read: Booker, Brown, Carter, Curtis, deMenocal, Greenough, Grosvenor, Key, Kissel, Lawrence, Lodge, MacShane, Prescott, Sibley, Simpkins, Vreeland, Washburn, Whitney, Williams. Only seven of these nineteen were to be present on Prize Day of distant June, 1945. And of the faculty list, absent on the same day would be the Rector, and Messrs Regan, Lynes, Moore, Howes, Nelson, Williams, Call, Hallowell, Whitney, Robertson, Nichols, Iglehart, Sullivan and Calhoun. After meeting the Peabodys, you were ushered by enormous men called Sixth- Formers to a dormitory in charge of a Mr. Gallien, who little realized he at that moment should have begun taking notes, with specific references,'l for writing a Form History. You thereafter were subjected nightly, by your dorm-master, in what had been glow- ingly described to your parents as a happy half-hour of relaxation before going to bed, to a gruelling series of lectures on your worst blunders of that day plus t to attempt to cope with the next. Wild-eyed, you rushed through a bewildering succ ssion of days, until the School Birthday on October 15th brought the first respite. In a mass departure for the Nashua you found moist, cooling forms of recreation, followed in the evening by one of Miss Cram's never-to-be-forgotten banquets. Next day the pace of school life was resumed 5 confusion was inevitable in the ensuing weeks. For example, how could Booker know that Mr. Wright was not a clothes-salesman? How could Sibley be expected to locate two pairs of faculty shoes lost in the complex organization of the Shoe-Shine 4l27l