Oak Grove Coburn High School - Oak Leaves Yearbook (Vassalboro, ME)

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THEIR SIMPLE COMMENCEMENT GOXVNS CENTENNIAL POOL MIRRORS THE SENIORS IN

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OAK LEAVES 1949 L fr ',S ' Y ' ,, 7 1- 1+ AL' ' 1 ' . .e Q' I I3.. -p.- -. P - ' 4 l? 0- ' Vs' ,ss 'es vf- f A 'N EL' ', in Huw gf- ' 'f are-5 :P A. infix f Y f K, fl 1 .5 X xi- N1 Q ,N fx -'L -, ff I 4' N Lflx 1 f Ml lui.-41 , .. -iw - 1 f N..-' lbw - ' ri,:5u+i . 'W 3 ' xiii W- P , . WI.. . . J fiff' 1849-1949 When men and their families were pushing westward in the Gold Rush days of '49, five scholarly Quakers were meeting in the spacious old Colonial home of John D. Lang to plan better educational advantages for their child- ren. They selected a hillside among young oaks, and opened a school where their children might enjoy superior educational advantages amid guarded surroundings where character building should go hand in hand with Latin and Science . The teachers were excellent, the school immediately attract- ed patrons from a distance, a dormitory was built, and Oak Grove became a private boarding school in 1857. Friends contributed for its maintenance and endowment and Oak Grove was a flourishing school when the buildings were burned in 1887. Charles M. Bailey of Winthrop promptly built a large new building containing the recitation unit, a suite for the Principals, a wing for boys and a wing for girls. Oak Grove remained a coeducational school for nearly seventy-five years. Among its most noted graduates of those earlier days were Amy Morris Homans who established the first school of Physical Education for women in this country and later became head of the graduate school of Physical Education at Wellesley College, James Leon Williams who never attended any school except Oak Grove and yet became one of the greatest dentists of his day, making inventions for his profession which are still in use, winning distinction as an artist, and Writing several booksg and Rufus M. Jones who is not only a former student but was Principal at Oak Grove until he went to Haverford College in 1893. Oak Grove later went through a period of drepression and rapid changes of Principals having had twenty Principals in its first sixty-nine years. It was a time for young and vigorous Principals with a vision to come to Oak Grove, and refusing the Principalship of two other schools that were much better equipped, endowed and offered twice as large salaries, Robert and Eva Owen came to Oak Grove in 1918. During the first ten years they were laying strong foundations, increasing the acreage from 29 to 300 acres, studying at Harvard or in Europe during the summer, and making a careful survey of educational trends and opportunities. 3

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OAK LEAVES 1949 They were impressed by the number of noted schools such as Andover, Exeter, Groton, Deerfield, Abbot and Emma Willard that had been ex- clusively for girls or for boys since their foundation or had become so in recent years. There was no boarding school for girls in Maine and no Quaker boarding school exclusively for girls in the United States. Oak Grove became a school entirely for girls in 1925 and has grown steadily in prestige and equipment. It draws its students not only from the length and breadth of this country but also from many other countries and today over ten percent of its students come from outside the United States. Among the most generous donors of Oak Grove was Joseph E. Briggs who gave freely during his lifetime and made Oak Grove his residuary legatee. Sturdy and beautiful Briggs Hall which was one of the first school buildings in our country of completely fireproof construction was completed in 1929. In spite of the Depression, an adjoining classroom unit was completed in 1939. The Administration Building was occupied in 1941 and Senior House, which turned the second corner of the Quadrangle, was occupied in 1942. The energy of Oak Grove has not been lavished entirely on buildings and its recent graduates have entered more than fifty of the leading colleges and universities in our country including all of the major colleges for wo- men. The single achievement that probably means most to Principal and Mrs. Owen was the recognition of Oak Grove by the national honor society, Cum Laude, which established a Chapter at Oak Grove in June 1948. The requirements are exacting including the physical equipment of a school, the qualifications of its faculty, and the record of its graduates in college. The proudest and oldest schools for boys in the United States had long had Chapters but only two schools for girls in New England had been recognized for Cum Laude CAbbot and Dana Halll until Oak Grove became the third last year. Among other events of '47-'48 were the awarding of honorary degrees to Mrs. Owen by both Colby College and the University of Maine. Oak Grove will observe its Centennial Commencement on June 11th in the serenity and beauty of the enlarged and redecorated Quaker Meeting House that was built in 1784, and Oak Grove will begin its second century next September. OUR LETTER ROOM The Susan Nichols Pulsifer Letter Room always invites us to browse in the growing library of famous letters or to do our own creative writing, but the room glows when Mrs. Pulsifer herself is here for her course in Letter Writing. We all look forward eagerly to those coveted conferences with her in the Susan Nichols Pulsifer Letter Room, as we talk about our themes and feel the inspiration of her personality. When Mrs. Pulsifer inaugurated the course in Letter Writing at Oak Grove two years ago, our letters illustrated the different types of prose composition. Last year we wrote imaginative letters from any period and between any persons. This year we had an 5