Hoosac School - Owl Yearbook (Hoosick, NY)

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Father Joel Miller The science of Biology deals with life. As a church school, what better guide could we have found to show us the miracle of life than a priest, and what more capable and wiser priest could we have found than Father Miller? Coming to us in the middle of the year. Father Miller faced the difficult problem of picking up a course begun and organized by another teacher and making something valuable out of it through the means which he found at hand. Father Miller faced the problem and overcame it triumphantly. Biology, under the auspices of the benevolent Father Miller, became not just the science of organic life, but, rather, the tidy explica- tion of the life with which each of us is confronted. Mr. John B. Longstaff, Jr. The class of 1966 is not the first graduating class of Hoosac School fortunate enough to have the opportunity presented by the creation of a year- book of thanking Mr. Longstaff for the many hours he has devoted to the betterment of the minds and spirits of us, his students, but it does have the un- fortunate distinction of being the last class to do so. The versatile Mr. Longstaff, after five years of near-brilliant explication of the diverse fields of Eng- lish, Mathematics and History to the boys of Hoosac School, has now left Hoosac School for what we all hope will be greener pastures. The lessons Mr. Longstaff taught us about man and his condition will remain with us for as long as we continue to think. Mr. William A. Reifsnyder With Mr. Reifsnyder, English Composition was not an academic course but an enlightening ex- perience. From this excitingly literate man we learn- ed as much in six weeks as we learned in our other courses in a year, not because of the material in the course itself, but because of the material in the man. A musician at heart, Mr. Reifsnyder brought a sense of tone and of rhythm to our English classes from which we could not fail to gain great insight into the fundamental tone and rhythm of life as we will be called upon to live it. In the things that count, in all of the decisions we shall be called up- on to make in the next very important years of our lives, we shall be constantly thanking Mr. Reifsnyder, who taught us the means for valid judgement. 12

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Mr. Theodore Geers Mathematics, they say, can be a rather un- inspiring subject, but then, they never learned math from Mr. Geers. Mr. Geers is one of those rare people with the ability to talk and act at seven o'clock in the morning as if he had already been awake and alive several hours previously. Forty-five minutes later, the quick give-and-take, the rib-tickling repartee ingeniously interjected at the proper moments to lighten the atmosphere of gloomy mathematical formulae insist that we too be as awake and alive as we can possibly be, un- til, much to our surprise, we really are awake and learning. To all of those who have never seen or felt the joys of learning and using mathematics, we of the senior class strongly recommend one of Mr. Geer's classes. No Picture Father Philip Lewis For a long time he was just the very erudite man who appeared from time to time to share a meal with us or explain the difficulties in resolving the problem of our relations with God, then, one day, Father Lewis appeared with a briefcase and a carefully prepared lecture in the History IV class- room. Then we knew that the man was a teacher, and a very good teacher at that. We learned many more things about Father Lewis as the year wore on: we learned that he was a man conscientious, dedi- cated and sincere, we learned that he was a man full of thought and ideas. The reputation of the Hoosac History Department rested with Father Lewis when he joined our classes in late March of this year and he upheld it nobly. Mr. Lawrence Horne This year the Hoosac School enlarged its Science Department with the addition to the faculty of the highly competent and determined Mr. Horne. Aside from what amounted to an obsession with Chemistry, Mr. Horne was soon discovered to have an ardent interest in skiing and the desire to estab- lish something previously unknown at Hoosac School: a skiing team. Although, as was to be ex- pected, the new team could not immediately com- pete with the larger schools, we have great hopes for it in future years. The loss of Mr. Horne to the Hoosac faculty will be a loss difficult to sustain. 11

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Mrs. Peggy Ward There are times when each of us, during the school year, needs and appreciates an interested and considerate listener. Mrs. Ward came to us two years ago as a school nurse, but, since then, because of her seemingly illimitable compassion, she has won a firmer place in our hearts than a mere nurse of our physical ailments could ever have hoped to achieve. An ebullient, always entertaining woman when the occasion demands, Mrs. Ward has managed to amuse us as well as to comfort us. We came to Hoosac School for the things we have acquired in our classrooms, but without the inestim- able sympathy Mrs. Ward had for us and our more serious problems, school would indeed have been much more difficult. We of the graduating class of 1966 thank you, Mrs. Ward. Mr. Pierre Van Quickenborne Should the conversation ever turn upon the topic of Belgium in the presence of a member of the graduating class of 1966, he should be able to add some rather pertinent comments, if he has ever, in the past two years, had the opportunity to talk with that arch-patriot, Mr. Van Quickenborne. Mr. Van Quickenborne, our eternally smiling, ex- ceedingly tolerant French master, has worked with us and for us these past two years determinedly at- tempting to instill in our hearts a respect and under- standing for the cultural temper which is called French. Decidedly pro-Belgian, Mr. Van Quicken- borne may well change his mind should he find much else in this country of ours quite so satis- factory as a certain olive-green mustang. The class of 1966 extends its warmest best wishes to Mr. Van Quickenborne and hopes that he will find our coun- try a permanent home. No Picture Mr. John J. Wells Mr. Wells came to us this year directly from Ohio Wesleyan University, where he had majored in Latin, Greek and English. Although most of the members of the graduating class have not been very much in contact with him, information received from what we have considered reliable sources inform us that he enjoys reading, eating anyplace other than the Hoosac dining room, and spending money he doesn't have. Within the near future he hopes to re- turn to school for his Master's degree in Classical Languages. 13