Groton School - Grotonian Yearbook (Groton, MA)

Page 31 text:

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

Page 30 text:

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

Page 32 text:

Corp.? CHe couldn't, and didn't, and so, shrewdly, sold the Presidency of the Corp. to Lodgej How could Kissel know the way to catch a fainting Greenough in choir one Sunday morning? He merely stepped back out of the way to give Mally more room for his fade-out. How could half the dormitory not get sick at midnight after a mammouth Hallowe'en feed like that one? What could Key, all alone on the Second Wachusetts, do to stem the tide of Second Monadnocks, fortified by Grosvenor, Lodge, Sibley, and Washburn? Nothing: so Key's team lost the season a few days before the school, team lost to St. Marks at Southboro, 26-20. 4 ,' ' A. You next turned your energies to soccer or touch-tackle, while your historian busied himself preparing such a masterpiece for, his Thanksgiving Day,-,addr-iss that during its delivery in chapel Vreeland passed out cold, but, ieeling the 'Rector's even colder stare, revived instantly, and walked right out onthe whole deplorable situation. The rest of you, deprived of further diversion, felt obligili to continue the pose of lis- tening intently Can art you had quickly learnedj to the end. Less thanione minute after this service deMenocal with his neighbors was off to Boston for a day with his family, a vacation so utterly delightful, he suddenly realized upon his return, that he thereafter visited his family every few weeks for my sister's wedding, sir. You finished off Novemberls events by electing Grosvenor and Key counsellors, and Lawrence, secretary. Soon after the holiday celebrating Mr. Gardner's birthday on December 2nd, things seemed a bit dull to you at Mr. Regan's table, in spite of occasional black clouds billowing up from the toaster as some elite member of High Societyl' forgot his duty. So Prescott tested the effect of cooling Mr. Regan's plate with a chunk of ice, with the result that he stood lone sentry at the window during certain specified hours. Else- where in Hundred House deMenocal and Vreeland were struck with the same experi- mental virus and painted Mr. Moss's patent leather shoes with black lacquer, and initialed the soles. Result: reorganization of personnel of that Shoe Shine Corp. Mean- while the Dramat was about to do three short plays, Laurence Housman's Sister Gold, Barrie's The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, and Murray's The Pipe in the Fields. Washburn and Key having heard the title of this third one, and being experienced along that line, had tried out, and of course were accepted for the cast, Washburn as the spirit of the pipe, interestingly. But the rest of the form were content to experiment with gliders and model planes indoors, though deMenocal's method of passing the time in Mr. Gallien's IA English was to sit on the fioor and play with toy automobiles, outdoors, chief sport for all of you was tracking Mr. Williams on his paper chases. As this first term reached its traditional climax of examinations, Carol Service, and the Rector's reading of The Christmas Carol'l by CHARLES DICKENS, you all stood around the dormitory in helpless wonder, marvelling at the ingenuity of prefects Pifer, Rives, Walker, and Webb, as they re-packed your trunks with all you had brought plus all that arrived by express during the term. The chief excitement in the war news during the term had been the Royal Navy's catching the German Graf Spec on December 13th, off Uruguay. After Christmas vacation you found that Mr. Calhoun of the English Department had been replaced by Mr. Philbrick. In your first noteworthy snow-fighting achieve- ment of January, according to the Weekly, the First Form easily defeated the Second, with a little outside aid, and on Sunday? joined in a battle royal of the First through the Fourth Forms near Mr. Hallowell's house, resulting in some black eyes and very sore arms. ,In other fields of endeavor, y'our. accomplishments included Lawrence's 74 to lead the form on the Time Current Events,TestJ Scarlet fever appeared early in the term, deferring the dance, but the Dran1at's 'fCharley's Auntln the 'Gym Exhibition, Confirmation, and the Band and Glee Club Concert were carried through as planned. In the finals of the new boys fives singles towiament Key was the winner. The Rector ' E T izslh .