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From left to right:

Frank Reid Henry Griffin Peter Murray Bill Kegley Bernard Hammonds Walter Hopp Verne Priest John Betti Ernie Dahm

PREFACE

Bill Kegley has been continuously employed at Avon Old Farms

since August 4, 1924. He is the one person who has been involved with

all the phases of the School, including the construction under the watchful

eye of Mrs. Riddle, the headmasterships of Froelicher, Kammerer and

Stabler, the Army interlude in the mid '40's when the School was used as

a rehabilitation hospital for blind soldiers, the re-opening of the School in

1949 under Don Pierpont and presently, the headmastership of George

Trautman.

It has been my intent over the past four years to chronicle

the history of Avon old Farms in serial fashion in various issues of the

Avonian. The articles, entitled "Kegley Notes", are the result of dis­

cussions I have had with Bill about the different phases of the School.

I have endeavored to preserve the flavor of the various events and stories

just as he remembers them. Beyond the eight articles bound in this

volume, I anticipate many more discussions with Bill Kegley and subsequent

articles in the Avonian.

Seth Mendell

Director of Alumni Affairs

Avon Old Farms

Avon, Connecticut

April 30, 1974

KEGLEY NOTES

Mrs. Riddle was born in Salem, Ohio, the daughter of Alfred Atmore

and Ada (Brooks) Pope. As a young girl she attended Miss Porter's School

in Farmington and fell in love with the green Connecticut hills and country­

side. After graduating from Miss Porter's she spent a year traveling in Europe.

From childhood, Mrs. Riddle has been fascinated by the grace and beauty

of architectural forms. At the early age of fourteen she designed, with the

help of Sanford White, an internationally famous architect of the time, a home for her parents in Farmington. After its construction in 1900, the

family home was known, as it is today, as Hillstead.

Returning from Europe, she decided to make a career of architecture

and spent the next three years gaining practical experience working as an apprentice to some of the leading architects in the United States.

In 1912 Mrs. Riddle opened an office in Farmington, and a year later

an office in New York City. At this time she designed the Westover School

in Middlebury, Connecticut. The American Architect published pictures of

the buildings with the caption, "The work is beautifully designed and beau­

tifully planned . . . The details are very refined and scholarly, and the pro­

portions of the architecture are exceedingly well sustained throughout." The

Westover School was followed by the designing of several private homes in

New York and Connecticut, and the Hop Brook School in Naugatuck, Connecticut.

As early as 1913 she conceived the idea of founding a boys' school m

memory of her father. Between 1914 and 1917 she instructed her agent to

purchase 2,750 acres of abandoned farm land along a ridge above the Farm­

ington valley in the towns of Avon and Farmington. However, Mrs. Riddle's

plans to build a boys' school were interrupted by World War I, and her

marriage to the Honorable John Wallace Riddle.

In May of 1915 Mrs. Riddle was aboard the British Cunard passenger liner "Lusitania," which was torpedoed twice by a German submarine and

sunk off the Southern coast of Ireland. The great ship, listing heavily to port, sunk in eighteen minutes. of the 1,950 passengers and crew on board,

1,198 were lost ! Mrs. Riddle, a life jacket strapped to her waist, following

the lead of a companion, jumped from "B" deck into the water just as the

ship rolled over and slipped beneath the surface.

Struggling in the cold, swirling water, she realized in a wave of panic

that she was being swept between the decks of the ship. Blinded, gagging,

buffeted by debris in the water, she tried to fight her way from beneath

Mrs. Riddle at early age designs Hillstead

1912 she designs Westover School

1917 purchases 2,700 acres of abandoned land

the decks to the surface.

A blow on the head knocked her unconscious. Moments later, Mrs. Riddle

opened her eyes to find herself floating in the midst of hundreds of frantic,

screaming, shouting humans. Her life jacket had brought her to the surface!

Again she lost consciousness. The second time she opened her eyes there

were only a few people around her, clinging to bits of debris in the water.

She managed to clutch an oar from one of the boats.

Still suffering from the blow on her head, she lapsed into unconsciOUS­

ness for the third time. When she awoke, Mrs. Riddle found herself in the

captain's cabin of the rescue ship "Julia". She was the last survivor to be

picked up by the ship, and actually because of her unconscious state, had

been placed on deck with the dead. However, a traveling companion, also

a survivor, recognized her and frantically enlisted the help of two of the

crew. After several hours of artificial respiration and massage, Mrs. Riddle

began to breathe normally and eventually to regain consciousness. The

following day from Queenstown, on the Irish coast, she cabled her mother

in Farmington of her safety.

On May 6, 1916 she married the Honorable John wallace Riddle, a

graduate of Harvard and the Columbia Law School. Mr. Riddle had dis­

tinguished himself in the diplomatic service. In 1903 he served in Egypt,

1905 and 1906 he served as Envoy extraordinary and Minister plenipotentiary

to Romania and Serbia. On the eve of World War I, he was the United

States Ambassador to Russia. At the time of his marriage to Theodate

Pope Atmore, he was assigned to the staff of the Military Intelligence Branch

of the War College in Washington. In 1921 he and Mrs. Riddle journeyed

to South America to fill the post of U.S. Ambassador to Argentina.

Shortly after their arrival in Buenos Aires, Mrs. Riddle had to return to

the United States. She had designed the Roosevelt House in New York City

for the Woman's Roosevelt Memorial Association, and as the construction

neared completion, certain alterations became necessary, requiring her presence

in New York. It was on this return trip that Mrs. Riddle suffered her second

unpleasant experience at sea. Due to some mechanical defect in the steering

mechanism the ship nearly capsized. As a result of this experience, her doc­

tor recommended that she not return to Argentina.

It was during this period of separation from her husband that she

finalized her plans for the boys' preparatory school in the Farmington

valley she had started eight years before. In 1922, ground was broken and

the railroad station was the first building to be constructed.

Mrs. Riddle died August 30, 1946. She was a member of the American

Institute of Architects, National Institute of Social Sciences, the Mediaeval

Academy of America, The Society for the Preservation of New England

Antiquities, Honorary Member of the Architectural Club of New Haven and

the Sociedad Central De Arquitectos of Buenos Aires. In 1927 she was

awarded the Robinson Memorial Medal for excellence in architecture. In

1940, a silver medal and diploma were awarded her at the fifth Pan-American

Congress of Architects in Montevideo.

Mr. Kegley first came to Avon Old Farms, August 4, 1924. At that

time there were 325 workmen busily erecting the school buildings. The

water tower and what is now the chapel, then the carpenter shop, were the

only completed buildings. The foundations for the quadrangle buildings were

in, and the quadrangle itself was piled high with fifteen feet of sand from

the excavations.

During the winter months, from mid-November until March, all work

stopped, due to the condition of the roads. Mr. Kegley recalls that the

Town of Avon had no money, equipment or men to keep up the Town

roads. There was no pavement and the roads being dirt were deeply rutted

and impassable much of the time due to snow and mud. The workmen

came from all the surrounding towns: Simsbury, Farmington, Unionville,

Collinsville, to name a few, and from as far as Manchester and Torrington.

This work force came each day in trucks, what today we would call a "car

pool." In each town there would be several workmen owning trucks, and

they brought laborers to Avon Old Farms in the morning and took them

home at night. Consequently, in the winter months with the Town roads

impassable, work on the school buildings stopped.

In the spring of 1925 the quadrangle was a beehive of activity. One

hundred and twenty quarrymen and stonecutters were cutting and dressing

stone. After the stone had been hauled from the quarry, stone masons were

building the arches and walls of the four quadrangle buildings; and carpenters

were setting the timbers to support the floors and the roof. What Mr.

Kegley called "Old Timers" were hewing the great beams for the ceilings and

rafters with adz and broad ax, right in the quadrangle. Altogether, 550 men

were employed during the summer of 1925. With the rafters in place, split

1922 railroad sta­tion first building erected

Mr. Kegley arrives at Avon Old Farms

Winter

Spring 1925 quadrangle takes shape

1926 Powerhouse completed

saplings were nailed across them to hold the slate for the roofs. The slate

was wired to the saplings and set in cement. Mr. Kegley pointed out that

the roofs on the quadrangle buildings were put on by local workmen who

had learned the art from a group of Cockney workers Mrs. Riddle had

brought from England to put the slate roof on the railroad station in 1922.

Of the buildings in the quadrangle, Eagle, Pelican and Elephant were

finished before Diogenes. The Diogenes tower was the last structure to be

completed in the quadrangle. Originally the buildings were to be of brick

like the water tower and the chapel, with stone used only for the archways,

doorways and window lintels and sills. When the quarrymen found such a

great quantity of stone so close to the school, Mrs. Riddle decided to use

stone entirely. The quarry, now a pond, was on the left as you approached

the school from the Town of Avon. The quarry was ninety-three feet deep

and Mr. Kegley explained that a pump run by a gasoline engine (the engine

is still in the powerhouse), had to be started every morning at four o'clock

to pump the water out, so work could begin at eight. The stone cuttings

and debris from the quarry were used to pave several roads up through the

woods to the quadrangle over which trucks as well as horse and oxen drawn

wagons carried the stones for the buildings. Also, much of this small rock

was used to pave the Avon Town roads leading to the school, - especially

the one across the flats which was a real mud bath.

Mrs. Riddle was in evidence at the school everyday, staying, Mr. Kegley recalls, anywhere from two to eight hours. The activity must have been

fascinating to watch; the quadrangle with its piles of sand, great tree trunks

being drawn in by horse and oxen to be hewn into beams, stone masons working up on the scaffoldings and great booms sticking up above the tree tops hoisting the rafters into place and lifting up the slate for the roofs.

The ring of the stonecutter's chisel, the sound of the carpenter's adz and

hammer, the creak of the winch and boom, the sputter of the early com­

bustion engine, the grunts and snorts of the draft animals and the shouts of

the workmen all must have echoed through the woods.

The powerhouse was completed in 1926 to supply the quadrangle with

electricity and heat. The following year the school opened with fifty boys.

The refectory was not yet complete, and meals were served in what was the

old gym above the kitchen and what is now the Barnes Lecture Gallery.

The food was sent up to the dining room by a dumb waiter that still exists

by the back door of the kitchen.

The opening of the school in the fall of 1927 was actually brought

about by the Town of Avon. During the years of construction, Mrs. Riddle

was not required to pay town property taxes on the school property. How­

ever, in 1926, the Town of Avon was desperate for money, and First Select­

man Joseph Alsop summoned Mrs. Riddle to court on the grounds that the

school was not tax exempt until it was in operation as a school. The case,

handled out of court, was decided in favor of the Town of Avon and Mrs.

Riddle, in order to avoid payment of taxes, opened the school quickly m

the fall of 1927.

On the advice of Dr. Elliott, president of Harvard University, Mrs. Riddle

engaged Mr. Stephen Cabot of St. George's School in Rhode Island to organ­

ize a faculty and select the first group of students for Avon Old Farms. Mr.

Francis Mitchell Froelicher from a country day school outside of Philadelphia,

was selected as headmaster. Mr. Froelicher was known for his progressive

views on education. (His nephew, Chuck Froelicher, was on the Avon faculty

in 1948 when Don Pierpont reopened the school, and IS currently the head­master of Denver Academy in Denver, Colorado.)

The school opened with fifty boys in six forms (7-12 grades.) In

place of sports the boys worked in shifts on the Hillstead Farm, under the

careful direction of farmer Dorsey. Bill Kegley recalls how groups of boys were driven to Farmington after classes in the afternoon to do the evening

chores around the farm. They spent the night at the farm with Mrs.

Dorsey clucking over them like a mother hen. She fed them supper, made

sure they did their school work before going to bed and got them up in the

morning for breakfast. After the morning chores, they were driven back to

Avon in time for classes.

The only construction on the campus during 1927 was the completion

of the refectory. Contrary to the many stories about Mrs. Riddle and the

razing and rebuilding of the refectory roof to suit her, it was not the re­

fectory roof that was rebuilt but the roof over the Barnes Gallery (the old gym above the kitchen). It was rebuilt not because she did not like it, but because it leaked. Bill explained that the original roof was put on with

wooden shingles and in the winter it leaked so badly that in the spring the

shingles were replaced with tile.

Another event in 1927 was the purchasing of the Towpath Lodge by

Mrs. Riddle. The Lodge, built of white stucco and wooden beams with a

tile roof is on the right after you pass through the school entrance gate on

School Open 1927

Mr. Froelicher first headmaster

Boys work at H illstead Farm

1929 Change in the Adminis­tration

Spring 1930 Dr. Kammerer becomes 2nd Head Master

Old Farms Road coming from the Town of Avon. At the time the school

was being constructed, the Lodge belonged to Sherman Eddy, superintendent

of the Ensign Bickford Company in Avon.

Mr. Eddy lived in Avon center, and used the Lodge in the summer and

fall as a country house. The surrounding grounds on both sides of the road

were filled with hundreds of flowering plants and shrubs, and the small pond

south of the building was stocked with trout. On Sunday afternoons Bill

tells of the countless sightseers from Hartford and nearby towns who came

to see the colorful gardens and the carefully manicured lawns.

At times, Mr. Eddy rented Towpath Lodge for church and insurance

company gatherings. The ground floor was set up with several cooking

stoves and eating areas with tables and benches so groups of picnickers

could prepare their food and eat. Upstairs there was a hardwood dance

floor with a loft at one end for the orchestra. Bill well remembers how on

numerous summer evenings the music and laughter from the dance floor

could clearly be heard in the school quadrangle.

Mrs. Riddle was not happy at all with what she called a "dance hall"

so close to the school she was building. She was concerned that the aca­

demic atmosphere of Avon Old Farms would be affected by these raucous

gatherings. Consequently she instructed her agent to purchase the entire

property from Sherman Eddy. The transaction was eventually made at a considerable price, while Mrs. Riddle was travelling abroad. When she re­turned in the spring of 1928 Towpath Lodge was converted into a stable for the school's polo ponies and riding horses.

September 1929 saw a change in the administration at Avon old Farms. Mr. Francis Mitchell Froelicher, headmaster since 1927, left to become head­

master of the Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Several members of the Avon faculty left with Mr. Froelicher and joined

him at the Fountain Valley School: Mr. Brown (Math), Mr. Perry (French),

Mr. Kitson (Music) and Mr. Langdon.

With the fall opening of school all but underway when Mr. Froelicher

left, Mr. Cherry, the academic Dean, became the acting headmaster of Avon

Old Farms until the Board of Directors could appoint a new headmaster. It

was not until the following spring that the Reverend Percy Gamble Kammerer

of Christ Church Cathedral in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was selected to head

Avon Old Farms. Dr. Kammerer took up residence on the Avon campus

March 28, 1930.

Avon Old Farms School graduated its first class in 1930. Unfortunately,

Bill has not been able to locate a picture of this first graduating class. How­ever, he has unearthed pictures of the student body and class of 1932 and

the student body and class of 1934. He has done a fantastic job of naming practically every boy in these two pictures. I don't see how he does it

after almost forty years!

Bill told me the other day about the Sunday afternoon teas that Mrs.

Riddle used to give over at Hillstead in Farmington. She used to invite a

class over at a time, the freshmen one week, the sophomores the next and

so on. When it came time for the seniors to be guests for Sunday tea, Mrs.

Riddle would include some girls from Miss Porter's to brighten up the after­noon.

The teas were very proper and the Avon boys, dressed in striped pants,

dark double-breasted jackets and black bow ties, were transported to Farm­

ington in school cars. The tea was served by Mrs. Riddle's two butlers.

Earnest and Alexis. It might be possible on a sunny spring afternoon to

slip out to the lawn for a short stroll with one of the girls before the cars

returned to carry the boys back to Avon.

Also on the weekends were the polo games played down on the school's

polo field just north of the old Tillotson farm house or what is now Merrit's

farm. When the field was not being used for polo an old Scotsman by the

name of Findley would graze his sheep on it. But on weekends polo teams would arrive, ponies and all, from schools such as Lawrenceville and Exeter. Avon had eighteen polo ponies stabled on Old Farms Road in the old Tow­path Lodge. Mr.]. S. Iverson, estate manager of the school's property, coached Avon's polo team.

Mrs. Riddle's original plan for the Avon campus called for the com­

pletion of three quadrangles. However, as you may recall from an earlier

"Kegley Notes", she was forced to halt construction and open the school

quickly in 1927. The only construction to take place after this date was

the completion of the refectory.

The Village Green quadrangle, partially formed by the refectory and

bank (now the library), was to have been completed with a gate house, a

guest house, a chapel and cloisters. On the site now occupied by the gym

or Pierpont Activities Center there was to have been a large library over­

looking the Farmington Valley and Avon Mountain.

First class at Avon graduates

Mrs. Riddle hosts Sunday teas at Hill­stead

Polo at Avon

Avon campus to have three quadrangles

Library

Chapel

1944 Campus leased to U.S. Army

1949 Don Pierpont opens the school as fourth headmaster

Infirmary

The third quadrangle (the foundations are actually in the ground) ·/Vas

to have been between the power house and the existing quadrangle of Diog­

enes, Pelican, Eagle and Elephant dormitories.

Bill explained that Mrs. Riddle fully intended to finish construction of

the campus, and in the meantime, made temporary arrangements. Chapel

was held in the large room (now two classrooms) to the left, as you enter

the quadrangle through Diogenes archway. Services were held here from

1927 until 1940.

With no new construction on the campus, the headmaster, Mr. Brooke

Stabler, who replaced Dr. Kammerer, purchased in 1940 from the Wykeham

Rise School in Washington, Connecticut, a Hodgson Portable Chapel. The

Wykeham Rise School was closing and Mr. Stabler was able, through friends ,

to obtain the structure at a nominal price. This building, dismantled piece

by piece by members of the Avon old Farms ground crew, under the direc­

tion of the school's mechanic, was loaded and trucked from Washington to

Avon.

The chapel was reassembled on the eXlstmg foundations between the

power house and Elephant dormitory. It was used for religious services and school meetings from 1940 until 1944, when Mrs. Riddle closed the school

and leased the campus to the United States Army for use as a rehabilitation

center for the blind.

Shortly after Mr. Pierpont reopened the school in 1949, he had the

carpenter's shop at the entrance of the school next to the water tower

renovated as a chapel. It was, and still is called the Chapel of Jesus Christ

the Carpenter.

The vacated portable chapel from Wykeham Rise School, which since

1956 has faced the newall-weather tennis courts behind Elephant dormitory,

was turned into an art studio. In 1962 the art studio was moved down to

quarters in the upper garage and Bill Kegley moved his emporium from the

power house to the Hodgson portable, where it is now.

Bill went on to say that the infirmary was another 'temporary' building

to be built on the Avon campus. When the school opened in 1927, the

infirmary was located in the master's apartment on the west end of Diogenes

dormitory, where the Cochranes lived for a number of years, and the Billings

live now. In 1932 it was moved to the second floor of Elephant on the

south end. The shower room at that end of the corridor was equipped with

a stove and used as a kitchen for the infirmary.

Mrs. Riddle, insisted all the floors in the dorms be waxed several times

a year with a mixture of carnauba and bees wax. The carnauba wax came in

solid blocks and had to be melted before the bees wax could be added.

The mixture then had to be applied hot to the floors with burlap. Once

hardened, according to Bill, it could be polished to a high sheen.

On one such occasion a janitor was melting the carnauba wax on the

stove in the infirmary kitchen. He left the pot on the hot burner and went

on about his work elsewhere. The wax began to boil in the pot and

bubbled over onto the hot coils filling the entire south end of Elephant

dormitory with thick acrid smoke before the negligent janitor returned. Bill

said that everything had to be sent out to be cleaned and the ceilings in

the immediate area had to be redone.

Because of the 'fire' Mrs. Riddle decided to move the infirmary out of

Elephant dorm. Consequently, at this time in the early thirties, a temporary building was constructed as an infirmary on the existing foundations across

from the powerhouse. There has been since that time speculation about a permanent infirmary building in a different location. However, the temporary

building erected under the direction of Mrs. Riddle is still in use today.

One last note, Bill first set up his emporium in Elephant dormitory in

the double room off the foyer on the second floor. After the infirmary

moved out, due to the 'fire', he moved down the hall to those vacated

quarters. When the Army left, and the school reopened in the late forties,

he set up shop in the classroom to the left in Diogenes archway - the one

that had been used for chapel services. From here it was down to the

powerhouse, as mentioned earlier, and then to its present location in the

Hodgson portable.

Verne Priest came to Avon Old Farms in 1923. Mrs. Riddle, having

purchased 3,000 acres of woodland in Avon and Farmington, was in search

of someone to manage the forests. She contacted Professor Woolsey, the

head of the Forestry Department at Yale, who recommended a guide in the

Maine woods by the name of Priest.

Mrs. Riddle contacted Horace Priest, who was Verne's father, and in

1923 the Priest family moved into the old Judd house on Old Farms Road

across from Beaver Pond. Verne and his brother, Irving, worked with their

Verne Priest arrives at Old Farms in 1923.

Verne supervises construc­tion of two log cabins

Community Service and Cabin Suppers

father in the woods. After the death of his father, in the mid-twenties,

Mrs. Riddle appointed Verne Head Forester of the school's woodlands.

In 1927, or soon thereafter, Verne went to Maine to obtain logs for

the construction of two cabins on the school's property. One was to be

a three family dwelling to house school employees and the other a single

cabin for Verne and his growing family. Verne supervised the building of

the cabins which were located on the north end of the property not far

from Lower Walton.

Until his death m 1957, every boy who attended Avon Old Farms

knew Verne Priest.

Bill recalls how Verne had charge of the Community Service and five

afternoons a week took groups of boys into the woods to work.

Verne is best remembered for his camp suppers both down at Lower

Walton and at the Nimrod Cabin by Beaver Pond. The suppers were well

attended, not only because Verne was an excellent cook, but because they

liked to listen to his incredible stories about his father and life in the

Maine woods. As a spinner of yarns, he was unsurpassed.

Daniel North, class of '37, wrote down some of Verne's more memorable

stories in the 1937 Winged Beaver.

As anyone who attended Avon Old Farms knows, Mrs. Riddle closed

the school in June of 1944 and turned the buildings and 200 acres of land

over to the United States Army to be used as a rehabilitation hospital for blind soldiers.

Mrs. Riddle had reached this decision in the spring of 1944 after a

clash with the Provost, Mr. Brook Stabler. Mr. Stabler, who had held the

position of Provost since 1940, had sought to gain a free hand in the

administration of the school to meet the changing mood of youth under the

impact of World War II. However, Mrs. Riddle was unyielding in her deter­

mination that all aspects of student life, dress, athletics, discipline, follow

the Deed of Trust to the letter. Consequently, Mr. Stabler tended his

resignation and Mrs. Riddle, still distraught over the recent loss of her

husband, Mr. John Riddle, announced the closing of the school.

As early as April 1944, Mrs. Riddle had been in contact with the U.S.

Army in Washington concerning the use of the school as a rehabilitation

hospital. The Trinity College campus in Hartford and parts of the Yale

campus in New Haven were at that time being used by the Army to re­

habilitate soldiers and she was greatly pleased when the Army expressed a

definite interest in the use of Avon Old Farms.

Immediately following commencement exercises in early June, the fIrst

Army detachment under the command of Colonel Frederic Thorne, MC, one

of the Army's outstanding ophthalmologists, arrived on the campus. The

maintenance department was taken over by the Post Engineers at Bradley

Field and only Ernie Dahm, the electrician, and Bill Kegley remained from

the previous staff. Kegley was transferred from his emporium duties to the

fire department under the direction of the Post Engineers at Bradley Field.

A certain Mr. Wick was to be Mrs. Riddle's liaison while the Army was on

campus. However, much to the displeasure of the officers in charge, when she

visited the campus it was Kegley that showed her around so she could see

what was happening. Miss Elizabeth McCarthy, Mrs. Riddle's personal

secretary, maintained the school's ' HIes and records in a small ofHce just off

the Dean's classroom or Lounge during the Army's stay.

Col. Thorne established his headquarters in what is now the library and

complete with switchboard and public address system, it became the nerve center of the old Farms Convalescent Hospital. The military detachment

numbered over 200 with an officer cadre of fourteen. The enlisted men

lived on the third floors of the dormitories and the ofHcers lived in the

quadrangle apartments. The blind soldiers, referred to as trainees, occupied

the single rooms on the second floor of the four dormitories and beds were also placed in the "old gym" over the kitchen.

The trainees were sent to Old Farms from Valley Forge Hospital, the

Army's processing center for the blind in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. The

training period lasted from ten to twelve weeks for each group of trainees.

The actual training was done by civilians from the local area including

Hartford, about 175 of them who commuted every day. The blind trainees,

approximately 200 to 225 in each group, were taught to care for themselves.

i.e., dress, eat, climb stairs, and many activities such as reading braille, typing,

gardening, music, weaving, printing and other skills requiring manual dexterity

and co-ordination. The Training Division was located in the Dean's House

and the training was conducted in the quadrangle classrooms. The Red Cross

Unit was stationed in the Headmaster's house.

The Army Engineers made a number of changes and additions to the

K egley transferred from Maintenance to Fire Dept.

Miss McCarthy

Enlisted men live in the dormitories

Army engineers make changes and additions to school

Public fund drive for swimming pool

school. For the prevention of fire an extensive sprinkler system was installed

throughout the dormitories and other buildings on the campus. Also , doors

were cut through into the quadrangle apartments from each of the floors in

the dormitories to give each hall two possible exits in case of fire. To im­

prove the water supply, nine new wells were drilled on the athletic field.

The old wells had been located down from the power house and even

though they were deep, 350 to 500 feet, the water from them turned

reddish in the summer months. Down by the garage, which was used as

the post motor pool, a chicken house with a connecting green house was

built for the purpose of training soldiers in those areas. In the circle in

front of Diogenes Tower an eighty foot flag pole of Douglas fir, shipped all the way from Washington, was erected. After the Army left and the school

reopened in the late forties, the pole was cut down as it was felt by some

that it detracted from the beauty of the buildings.

In the Refectory several changes were made to accommodate the post personnel. The long oak tables and benches were removed and regulation

square Army mess tables, six feet on a side, were used. For direct access

to the kitchen, a doorway was cut through from the Refectory proper

rather than having to go around through the foyer at the rear. In the

front half of the Refectory, the area by the head table, a large oak dance

floor was put down for the post dances.

Another addition to the campus was the construction of the swimming

pool. When the Old Farms Convalescent Hospital was first in operation, the

trainees were bussed into the Hartford YMCA to swim as part of their

recreational program. A certain Mr. Johnson, feeling that the blind soldiers

should have a pool of their own championed their cause. A public fund

drive was held. People were asked to contribute only a dollar, but public

sentiment was so strongly behind the project, that in no time the goal of

$75,000 was reached and potential donors were asked over the radio not to

send any more money.

The pool was erected on the site Mrs. Riddle had proposed for the

school library and the completion of the Village Green quadrangle. However,

she agreed to the site as the pool was to be only a temporary structure to

be torn down when the Army left. Consequently, the building housing the pool was built of cinder block, but as there was no money when the Army left, it remained standing until 1964 when the cinder block construction was

removed and the pool was incorporated into the Pierpont Gymnasium.

Mrs. Riddle did not live to see the Army leave the school in 1947, as

she passed away in August of the previous year. The Army left in Septem­

ber of 1947, too late for the school to reopen for the academic year. The

only surviving member of the Board of Directors was Professor Henry Perkins,

whose decision it was to reopen the school. After a lengthy search, Don

Pierpont of Columbia University was appointed Provost. Under his able

direction, a faculty was selected, and a student body assembled. To meet

immediate expenses, the quadrangle apartments were temporarily rented to

tow nspeople.

In September 1948, Avon Old Farms was officially reopened and the

second phase in the life of the school, referred to as the "new school" was

underway.

Kegley Notes to be Continued -

Fall 1947 quadrangle apartments rented to towns­people

William J. Kegley and the school he serves.

> •

50 years