New Andover

Last week at Andover, Phillips Academy's shrewd Headmaster Claude M. Fuess (rhymes with "geese") adopted a collegiate custom by staging his school's first Alumni Day. To Andover's 162-year-old campus, glorious in sunshine and brilliant autumn foliage, came 175 old Andover boys. Oldest were a pair of survivors from the class of '79.

They found still on the campus "the Colonel" (Horace M. Poynter), oldtime Latin teacher, and "Georgie" (George Walker Hinman), a Greek and Latin tutor who once bit a pencil in two when a pupil failed to conjugate amare. Missing was "Zeus" (Allen Rogers Brenner), famed old Greek teacher, many another familiar face. The old boys found other changes. In ten years a revolution had taken place.

Where once they carried water into rough wooden dormitories, they gaped at 100 modern brick buildings, an art museum, a 50,000-volume library (named for Alumnus Oliver Wendell Holmes), a new infirmary, an archeological museum, a carillon tower, a forest sanctuary. "Where," grumped Edgar B. Sherrill, '98, "is the Deanery?" "There it is, sir," replied great-nephew Arthur Miles Sherrill Jr., 13, pointing to an imposing new brick-and-concrete commons.

Andover's old boys were not sure whether they altogether approved their school's transformation, were reassured when they learned that much of it had been contributed by an old boy they knew well, the late Thomas Cochran, who arrived at the school with 50-c-, worked his way through, eventually became a Morgan partner. Headmaster Fuess hastened to add that the school "really has not changed in spirit," told his proudest news: that last year 213 of the school's 700-odd boys had scholarships, that the captains of seven Andover teams are working their way through. Said he: "When you alumni come upon a brilliant boy in a small town high school, tell him what we have to offer. We want more candidates for our scholarships. . . . This is a great democratic school. . . ."

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