Oakwood School - Quercus Yearbook (Poughkeepsie, NY)

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1932 -'- DRUS - 1932 Barton: Well, all you teachers, psychologists, musicians, and business men will have to eat and that will be my work to help provide you with food. People sort of look clown on farmers, but I think that if l can be a good farmer l will have satisfied myself. Shrimp : Yes, that's my idea. l want to do something creative, and engineering seems to me to satisfy that. l have chosen the elec- trical side of it, but any field of engineering would do, really. I am just more interested in electricity. Walter: I know you fellows will laugh at my ambition, but l do want to be an aviator, Not one of these stunt flyers, but a regular air-mail pilot. l hope to get my training at one of the Army fields and then try for my transport license. Flying's not being creative, I guess, but it is a great service. fVoice heard in halll: Was that the quarter of ? fSecond Voicel: No, the last. General exit. Shrimp and Harold left alone in room. Harold: 'Goshl All those different careersl l wonder how many of them will get where they want to. It would be fun to look into the future and see what really does become of us. Q End of Second Scenel Scene III Scene: Small restaurant in Rome, N. Y. Time, I952. Characters: Nelson Griggs, Beatrice Merritt, Virginia Taylor, Vincent Cochrane. Characters are seated around a small table with coffee cups in front of them. Nelson: Well, Ginnie, the last thing l thought you would be was a farmer's wife-and lVlickey's at that l Ginnie: You should talk-running a steam piano for Barnum and Bailey! l suppose you compose symphonies as a side line? Bee, are you still in the circus ton? Bee: Yes, but live changed my job. l'm walking the tight rope now. Ginnie: What did you do before? Bee: l was the fat lady but I lost so much weight after I got married to Nelson that l had to quit it. Nelson: What gets me is Mickey being a farmer. K Vincent: Well, l never thought l'd be one, but it's a good life. Ginnie: Remember that last year at Oakwood? Twenty years seemed like a long time then but now that we look back, it's not long at all. I-Iow's the old place getting along now? Twcnfy

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1932 T DRUS l1932 ested in. I like just living. The thing I want more than anything else is to find something which gives me a deep satisfaction which failures and disappointments cannot harm. We all want that, I suppose-so I have yet to find my life work. Ginnie-Well I guess we'll all be far apart twenty years from now, but it's so fascinating it seems hard to wait. But then, life is very full after all: looking back in twenty years to this commencement will probably seem very short. fEnd of first scenel Scene II Scene: room in Boys' Barracks. Time: june IS, I932. As the curtain rises, we discover Jim Reagan, George Kuchler, Walter Ham- mond, Nelson Griggs, Shrimp Shaw, Len Paclgham, Frank Dickerson, Vincent Cochrane, Barton VanVliet and Harold Brown. Nelson: Hot Dog! Get a load of this letter from Oberlin I fReads letterl. Your applicatidn for admission has been considered and accepted. Vincent: What are you going to take up there ? Nelson: Music. Some day I want to conduct an orchestra or even com- pose - but that's a long way off. Anyway, I do want to get enough of a musical education to be able to direct a real orchestra. Len: I think I'll 'leave my music for recreation and go into a more practical field. Take banking for instance. One could do a lot of good helping people with their financial affairs. After all money is rather importantg the lack of it certainly is - George: I like the fight of the business world. The feeling of control- ling hundreds or thousands of other people and working to raise their standards of living. What I really want to do is to try to bridge the gap between capital and labor. Jim: I don't believe that you can bridge class gaps that way-by changing material things. I want to help really close those gaps by educating the members of the various classes so that a fuller understanding may be reached. You don't usually expect the son of a teacher to want to be one, but I guess I'm an exception. Vincent: I don't think that it is possible 'to erase inequalities by any means-not even eugenics. I want to try some phase of psychol- ogy. I don't know how l'll use it, but it looks like an appropriate field. Harold: I'm going to take up psychology too. I think that I'll try teach- ing it. I think that I can be most useful there. Nilzcfvrlz

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1932 1 DRUS i 1932 Vincent: When I was down to Yearly Meeting l heard that everything was fine. They have several new buildings including a Dining Hall and a new Girls' dorm. The enrollment is between 150 and 175. lts rating as a boarding school is going up towards the top. Ginnie: Oh yes-l hear that they have large dances every month, too. Ginnie: Some change since we were there-do you remember Dannie Murray? Nelson: Gosh, I hadn't thought of her in agesl Where is she? Ginnie: Didn't you hear? Sheis at Oakwood, teaching-don't laugh- Psychologyl Didn't you see her? Vincent: Yes, I saw her when l was down there. Whereis Dot Alley ? Ginnie: Dot? Oh, she's a professional aviatrix. Sheis down at Roose- velt Field doing stunt flying. Nelson: Reminds me of Waco. Vincent: What's he doing? Nelson: Don't you remember? About eight years ago he tried to reach the moon in a rocket. He got there all right, but since his car knocked a chip off one of the mountains, there wasn't much hope. Bee: Well, he's better off than some of our Seniors. Len Padgham's in jail for embezzlement and Frank Dickerson's one of Chicago's most successful bootleggers. Vincent: Say, there aren't any more criminals in our class, are there ? Bee: No, or at least not yet. Where is jim Reagan? He was going to teach. Ginnie: He was the lucky man. Went to South Africa to sell insurance to the Zulus and found one of the richest diamond mines in the world. Now he's living on the proceeds. Nelson: Barton is our real plutocrat. He is a member of the New York Stock Exchange and one of the most influential of Wall Street brokers. Ginnie: Carrie Bryan has us all in the shade. She's a Dutchess, no less. Married the Duke of Middlebury, in England. Scales wrote me from Paris-she's studying at the Sorbonne-to tell me about it. Bee: Frieda Ham is running for Governor of Kansas on the Socialist ticket. Vincent: Talk about Kansas-and Prohibition. Guess what Helen Clark isl She's a temperance lecturer. Who would have imagined that twenty years ago? T'ZUi'IlfY-0110