Hopkins School - Per Annos Yearbook (New Haven, CT)

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The Senior Class dedicates Per Annos 1974 to F. Allen Sherk with respect, affection, and gratitude for twenty one years of leadership and service F. Allen Sherk was born in Amherst, Massachusetts on September 19, 1913. Soon after his family moved to Derby, Connecticut, where he started his elementary school education. His parents, the Reverend and Mrs. Elgin Sherk, were sent to Teheran, Iran and remained there several years during which time their eldest son completed his elementary education. The family re- turned to the States to live in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, where Mr. Sherk attended Lakewood High School and graduated in 1931. He spent a post-gradu- ate year at Western Reserve Academy, then went on to study at Yale, and graduated in the class of 1936. As an undergraduate, Mr. Sherk was a member of the Varsity Track Team. The following year was spent working part time at Foote School, and studying for a Master's in American History. During the academic year of 1937-1938, Mr. Sherk was a dormitory master, a history teacher and a track coach at Milton Academy in Milton, Massachu- setts. On june 15, 1938, Mr. Sherk married the former Margaret Bostwick Bradley, whom he had met while she was working at Foote School as an apprentice teacher. They remained at Milton Academy until 1942, when they returned to New Haven with son Truman, born the previous year, when Mr. Sherk was offered a job at General Electric Company in Bridgeport, work- ing first as an engineer in the Radar Section and then as a supervisor in the Electronics Section. In 1945, Mr. and Mrs. Sherk returned to Milton with their son and daughter Susan, born in 1943. The Sherks lived in a dormitory, where he was the housemaster along with his other duties as history teacher and track coach. Allen Sherk had two careers at Milton Academy. The first started as he arrived in the middle thirties, unmarried, to teach the sixth grade in the Lower School and to do dormi- ' tory duty and coach in the Boys' School. The two lady teachers who started here the same year are still present and remember Allen as attractive, firm but friendly, and imaginative in dealing withthe young. They were to find him a little less attractive when they heard about one Polly Bradley, who was to become Mrs. Sherk. As World War ll started, Allen left to do his share in the war effort. When the war came to an end, Cyril H. jones had been appointed Headmaster and was quick to urge Allen to con- sider returning to Milton as a Housemaster and teacher of history in the Boys' School. After careful thought and con- sultation with Polly, Allen returned in September, 1944. The job of Housemaster at Milton was a key one in those days, as it is today, for the school was run more like an Eng- lish school than most American ones. The Housemaster was responsible for the welfare of his students and was their chief adviser. Allen took to the job and soon won the respect of more seasoned men who worked under him. Polly added a warmth which brought out the best in Allen and the rest of us with whom he worked. While Polly supervisd the running of the Housemaster's quarters, helped by a fine nanny to care for Truie and Su- sie, Allen went about the business of accomplishing what Mr. jones had foreseen he could do. As an intellectual, Allen guided the members of the history department from rather old-fashioned methods of teaching to what has be- come fashionable in all schools - more concepts and few- er dates. As a reward for his tactful and skillful handling of colleagues, Allen was made chairman of the history depart- 3

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ment, which was never better than when he ran it. As in the dormitory, Allen could look to the future, taking great care to train men to do their assigned duties well. More importantly, he trained them to do his own job, showing a selflessness not always evident in professional life. The traits so clearly seen in the dormitory and classroom were carried to the athletic fields, as Allen turned track from a dumping spot for disappointed baseball players to a major sport. This second career lasted for nine years. What a sad day it was for all of us when Hopkins Grammar called Allen to its Headmastership. We rejoiced for Hopkins, but we were very sorry for ourselves. The gratitude of the administra- tion, however, for all Allen had done was only strength- ened when we realized that he had trained replacements for Housemaster, department chairman, and track coach. All are still active in the school in one way or another. Before some careless reader sits down to write a letter of condolence to Polly, the writer will say that Allen is now as alive as when he came to Milton and when he left it. Re- tirement for him will not be a rest - it will be a new chal- lenge, and he will meet it with characteristic vigor. john G. Pocock In 1953, the family settled permanently in New Ha- ven, when Mr. Sherk became the one hundred and second headmaster of Hopkins Grammar School. Five years later their daughter Ellen was born. In the spring of 1953 the many, many friends of George Lovell met in the Taft Hotel ballroom to salute his innova- tive years at Hopkins - rejuvenating the then 292-year old school and creating the new-type country day school on Forest Road. On that occasion we were introduced to the incoming Headmaster - with mixed emotions. When it came his turn to speak, Allen Sherk won our affection and respect and hopes by making plain that he had done his homework in the weeks preceding his arrival in New Haven. He reviewed Dr. Lovell's vision and drive in utilizing the school spirit of the alumni-trustees and abiding respect 4 and affection felt by New Haven people for the nearly three-century old school with its romantic origin in Colo- nial days, pledged to the breeding up of hopeful youths. Mr. Sherk's presentation of this familiar story revived our realization of the significance of our history, and he won our faith and approval of him, the newcomer who under- stood and would uphold the traditions of our school. Mr. Sherk seems never to have lost that vision, and his ef- forts have been unremitting like those of Athenian youths who were pledged to leave their city not less but greater. This all means to us, the young and not-so-young, new school or old school, that we respect Al Sherk's achieve- ments and feel grateful for what he has done here on the hill: Lovell Hall with auditorium, dining room, stage and music room, improved athletic fields, the Learning Cen- ter, and most recently - girls. Helen H. Barton A Hello, I'm your new neighbor, Allen Sherk, the strang- er announced as we peered through the screen door on that spring evening in 1953. Of course, we knew from the grapevine that he was to be the new Headmaster, but any significant impression of the dimensions of the man were conspicuously absent from that source. As I recall, it was not long into the summer before his strengths were appar- ent as evening bull sessions about the school unfolded. Many stalwarts from that vintage class of '54 participated in these get acquainted visits, so that by fall Sherk and Hop- kins were off and running at a fast pace. I particularly remember one unruly study hall period in the late fall monitored by Peter Bluett, that gentle target of Ken Raynor's jokes, teacher of Spanish, and an unmitigated optimist about the behavior of young men. In uncharacter- istic despair he challenged the group to quiet down or, in spite of his conviction that my brother and I had conspired with Mr. Sherk to run the school, he would take the puni- tive action of sending the Lindskog twin down to Mr. Sherk's office. That, he concluded, would start a revolu- tion around this place. With hindsight it is clear, and others sensed it then, that a revolution was indeed already taking place at Hopkins and that it had nothing to do with the proximity of the Sherk and Lindskog residences. Rather, it was the vigor and vision of the new Headmaster, who would accelerate Hopkins from its mid-century plateau to new levels of achievement. Twenty years later, Allen Sherk has made an important mark on many of us. Some of his accomplishments are highly visible: the new buildings, the merged school, the outstanding faculty. Others are less prominent but of no lesser stature. From close at hand, I have watched him nur- ture a moribund alumni association back to active partici- pation in the life of the school. And as a new trustee in 1970, I learned of the confidence which that group placed in his judgement and the high esteem in which these peo- ple held him. As the minutes of their meetings will reflect, the Trustees are in no sense a rubber stamp committee. Over the years in the heat of deliberation and evaluation of his position and recommendations, they developed a high regard for his professional judgement, standards of excel- lence, and economical financial management. This sense of trust and esteem seems to me to be the capstone to all that Allen Sherk has done for and meant to Hopkins. Carl W. Lindskog