USA > Vermont > Windham County > Rockingham > History of the town of Rockingham, Vermont, including the villages of Bellows Falls, Saxtons River, Rockingham, Cambridgeport and Bartonsville, 1907-1957 with family genealogies > Part 21
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in 1923, went to Notre Dame that same year. At B.F. he played fullback for three years and was on the baseball team but he really excelled in football, rated, in his senior year as the outstanding star in football circles. At Notre Dame not too much was heard from him until, as a senior, Knute Rockne gave him his big chance at Southern California where so many Notre Dame men were laid up from injuries that O'Connor was called in to help out. There were 105,000 people in the stands and Rockne's team hadn't a chance-until the opposi- tion receiving the ball and putting a perfect play through the Californian's left flank with every blocker getting his man, a large hole was opened and O'Connor, seeing his chance, went right through it for 80 yards and a touchdown. He scored again and his name went all over the country as the New Eng- land boy who upset world football and his name is still mentioned when football is talked-the boy who didn't know the meaning of the word "quit." He is now a dentist in East Orange, N. J.
In 1944 Bellows Falls won the state football championship defeating Springfield, 75-0. That was the year when four local boys were named on the All-State team, Claude Dexter, Paul Aumand, John Kennedy and Robert Gillis with "Pop" Cassidy of Bellows Falls chosen as "coach of the year." In 1947 Bill Crotty, at 16, won trophies as Vermont Junior Closed Tennis Champion. In 1949 his cousin Paul Crotty was the All-Vermont end for the second year. In 1953 two local boys were on the Vermont squad for the Maple Sugar Bowl between Vermont and New Hampshire, Paul Clarey and Dick Whitcomb. The B.F.H.S. Tennis Team was undefeated in 9 contests in '52-'53 consisting of players Charles Bashaw, Thomas Bolles, William Narkiewicz, William Martin, John Tyrell, Arthur Bolles, Paul Clarey and Larry Shufeldt with Richard Sprague as coach. Other teams that have made their alma mater famous were the 1927 basketball team, picked as the fastest in the state; the 1904 football men, undefeated in their regular schedule and chosen as the best in the state; the 1908 baseball team, one of the best to come out of the school in a day when they had to practice on Nims Field in North Walpole as well as play their games there, dressing behind a big rock on the field; the 1916 football team which won the Clover League Championship after being undefeated in six games. In the field of science, Fred Jancewicz, aged 16, won one of the first prizes at the Vermont State Science Fair in Burlington in 1956. He entered a minia- ture calculator for high speed addition and counting. This was designed and constructed by the student and was built to demonstrate the application of electronic computing machines used in industry. This prize entitled the winner to take part in the National Science Fair held in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the next week at which he was co-sponsored by the Bellows Falls Times and the Brattleboro Reformer together with Alfred
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Dunklee of Brattleboro High School. These boys were among three representing Vermont at the Fair.
In 1953 a new honor society came into existence when the Jessie Judd Chapter of the National Honor Society was estab- blished through the efforts of the Class of 1948. Thirty-two students were on the first honor roll with Miss Catherine Wilcox, Latin teacher, as chairman of the committee designated to choose the eligible students. Each member is entitled to wear a pin depicting their honor. Members of the first committee were Miss Wilcox; Hilton C. Holland, Principal; Paul F. Davis, science and mathematics teacher; Henry B. Osborn, assistant principal emeritus; Miss Elizabeth Hunt, guidance director and Miss Catherine Santamaria, faculty treasurer and commercial teacher. Students are chosen on a basis of high averages, conspicuous leadership, intellectual achievements, loyalty to high ideals and nobility of character. In 1955, Roger Miller, member of the Society, received a scholarship for four years to Middlebury College. Each spring for many years a student art exhibition has been held in the gymnasium and with it, work by the adult education classes. While no more do seniors travel to Washington, D. C. or New York, there are occasional breaks in the school monotony such as the trip by members of the Sampler Board, annual senior publication, who, in 1954, went to New York that spring to a Conference of the Columbia Scholastic Press Assn. at Columbia University. With their English teacher, they also took in such sights as the RCA build- ing, the skating at Rockefeller Center, Times Square and the United Nations.
In 1912 the town voted to sell the Old High School building which had contained the fifth and sixth grades for many years, to the St. Charles Church for a Parochial School, a plan which the church has been working on for nine years. It was not, however, purchased until March, 1922, by the Burlington diocese for $15,000 and three years later was damaged by fire to the extent of $5,000. In this building was started the first private kindergarten in town in 1891 by Miss Mary S. Dascomb, which ran for many years. The year 1936 was a bad year for every- thing including the schools which went entirely out of funds and teachers could not be paid until after town meeting when more money was appropriated. In 1939 an unusual event took place when a mother and daughter, Mrs. Bertha Batchelder and Miss Phyllis Batchelder, graduated together. After discussing the 8-week system of vacation for ten years, the school board voted in favor of it in 1931. For several years a Driver Training Course has been added to the curriculum as an optional subject, a popular course which makes for safer and better automobile driving among the youth of today. Each spring the school takes part in the State Music Festival in Burlington. Miss Priscilla Bedell, head of the Music Department in. B.F.H.S.,
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is also president of the Vermont Music Directors' Association. In 1955 Miss Patricia Millette won $100 scholarship at the festival.
At the 1948 Alumni meeting, a placque was presented to the school by the classes of 1944, '45, '46 and '47 with the names of thirteen high school members who made the supreme sacri- fice during World War II. These honored dead are as follows: Raymond Oscar Metcalf, '33; Bertrand Stearns Roby, '36; Robert Hamlin Roby, '38; Edward Michael Naski, '37; Donald Joseph Shaughnessey, '37; Gordon Graham, '38; Anthony Joseph Lewkowgi, '39; Stephen Andrew Woynar, '39; Lloyd Edward Fairbrother, '41; Raymond Robert Massucco, '41; William Thomas Burrows, Jr., '43; Robert Charles Huntoon, '43; Lawrence Everett Gray, '44.
Honor students of B.F.H.S. in 1956 were Patricia Kinsley, Mary Belczak, Ruey Brodine, Nancy Foster, Patricia Millette, Patricia Gallagher, Elizabeth Fox, Duncan Stewart, Michael Dunn and Roger Miller.
One of 25 boys selected to represent the Green Mountain State in the annual Shrine-Sponsored Maple Sugar Bowl gridiron classic between Vermont and New Hampshire was Frederick Joseph Waryas, co-captain of the B.F.H.S. 1955 eleven. The 1956 Shrine game was played August 25 at Manchester, N. H. in the athletic stadium, proceeds going to aid crippled children in Shriners' Hospitals in Montreal, Canada and Springfield, Mass. In 1951 B.F.H.S. took third place in Southern Vermont District Track Meet at Brattleboro with a total of 27 points. At the same Meet, Rutland won over Springfield taking second place.
In 1916 a Teacher Training Course, under state supervision, was introduced into the school system, either as a post graduate course or, until 1918, instead of the senior year. This did away with the old custom of senior girls who took certain exams which, if passed, allowed them to teach in a rural school the next year. The first class had ten graduates including five post graduates and five seniors. The second class had four- teen graduates and in 1918 six seniors and one "p. g." The last year of the course there was only one student and it was discontinued. The first teacher was Miss Luella Sexsmith assisted by Miss Edith Tollerton. Later teachers were Miss Annie Snyder and Miss Mary E. Rowe. 13
TEACHERS IN BELLOWS FALLS SCHOOLS
Like many small schools, B.F.H.S. has had a number of well-loved teachers who worked patiently with students for the best years of their lives-sometimes of both teachers and pupils. Chief among these was Prof. Allison E. Tuttle, familiarly known as "Pop", "Pa" and "Prof." He came to Bellows Falls as 13 See Addendum
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principal after 25 years of teaching in Massachusetts where he had built up a reputation for discipline, a reputation which he maintained for twenty years in Bellows Falls and which, com- bined with his belief in fair play, clean coaching and sportsman- ship, made him respected, beloved and decently feared by all. And if his temper flared up occasionally, it was that his patience was tried to the limit. His physical strength was enormous and more than one recalcitrant youth was tossed out of chapel by his coat collar or lifted precipitately, desk and all, and ejected from the Main Room. Until he retired in 1924 and went to live in Melvin Village, N. H., his hand guided the destinies of hundreds of boys and girls who have him to thank for the shaping of their lives.
Prof. Tuttle was always anxious for this graduates to go on to higher education if possible and 27% of them always did. He believed fiercely that music was necessary to the well-being of the soul and that daily chapel never hurt anyone of any race or creed and each morning the Assembly Hall rocked, on the down stroke of his baton, to Largo and Santa Lucia and familiar hymns as well as the Lord's Prayer in a day when less stress was laid upon separation of church and state. He early. instilled a love of good music into his students with single and double quartets, male, female and mixed. Each winter for many years, a light opera was presented by the school, under his direction, which included such classics as Gilbert and Sulli- van's Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, H. M. S. Pinafore besides the Rose Maid and Bibi. This was the only music in the high school curriculum.
Among the subjects which Prof. Tuttle taught were fresh- man Latin and sophomore geometry and seldom was anyone brave enough to appear in his class in the Main Room-with most of the high school watching-unless they were sure of theorems or conjugations. One scowl over the top of his spectacles, congealed the blood in the sturdiest veins and sent the fear of God into the hearts of the most recalcitrant. Forty years ago there were few of the "extra curricular" activities of today and perhaps more time was spent on the rudimentary virtues of the old-fashioned three R's. And even then the high school building was deemed too small for the students.
During his retirement and at the age of 86 when most men have retired for good, "Pa" Tuttle again took up the cudgels of teaching to fill the vacancy caused by the call into service in W. W. II of the Latin teacher in Farmington, N. H., the town in which Mr. Tuttle grew up. He was not a man to rest comfortably on his laurels for his New Hampshire town had already sent him to the legislature as representative. From the founding of the High School until 1933, there were 1,546 students graduated and of these, 669 received their diplomas from the hand of Prof. Tuttle.
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Miss Jessie Judd came to B.F.H.S. in 1897 when her pompa- dour was a sandy-red instead of grey as today. A semi-invalid, she lives today at the Bellows Falls Inn, still interested in the doings of her school and her old pupils. She came here from Smith College to teach Latin, Greek and mathematical subjects and became assistant principal under Mr. Tuttle in 1913 and principal in 1935 until her voluntary retirement in 1943 after 46 years in this school, another teacher deeply loved and re- spected. She first taught in the Old High School, now the Parcchial School, and was vice principal there. Of all the teachers who have come and gone through the halls of B.F.H.S. Mr. Tuttle and Miss Judd remain in the hearts of the alumni who received so much of their preparation for life at their hands. It was due to their high standards together with those of the rest of the staff, that the school held its top rating for many years. They have both now passed to their reward.
In 1926 Miss Judd received the American Teachers' Award for 30-year service and with Miss Rena Bush who won the American Youth Award at the same time, attended the Sesqui- centennial at Philadelphia that year. Like Mr. Tuttle, she be- lieved in college for all those of college material and a good half of them followed her precepts. In 1940, with Miss Cath- erine Wilcox who also taught Latin for 18 years, retiring in 1954, Miss Judd was awarded membership in the Vermont Chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma, a national organization for women prominent in educational work. She was president of the Ver- mont Educational Association in 1932. For many years Fred L. "Speedy" Daye taught chemistry and physics until he was replaced by Henry Munsell in 1920.
Miss Alice Helen Jackson, another long-term teacher, came at the beginning of the century and taught music for 30 years to several generations of children in elementary schools who learned to make a round "O" with their mouths, to sing Old Dog Tray and Old Black Joe. Her jolly, buxom figure was always enhanced by an assortment of beads, brooches and rings and often much of the music period was taken up with her humorous stories of which she was a fountainhead. Effusive, dramatic, she was a friend to all children and like Mr. Tuttle, literally drew music from arid souls. Although she never married, she adopted a daughter who died, in her teens, of diphtheria. Miss Jackson attended the old St. Agnes Hall from the age of eight to seventeen and studied music at Smith College.
Miss Jackson was conspicuous for many years for her horse and buggy in which she drove to both village and rural schools and she won the respectful cognomen of "the woman who can't be stopped" as she urged her steed through the West River Valley to the eight district schools comprising her territory in that region. She ended her work in the local schools in 1927 and from then until 1940 she was music supervisor at Leland
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and Gray Seminary in Townshend, Vt. Born in the house where she died, at 69 Atkinson St., her energy was boundless, her devotion to her work sincere and she coached many high school and elementary musicals and glee clubs. She was in- strumental in instigating bird study among the school children also. Her music was mostly a matter of pitch pipe and voice in 1910 (it might be called acapello today) when she was thrilled "to have the use of a piano in one of our second grades," as she said. She led the choirs of probably every Protestant church in town and died on May Day, 1942 at the age of 73, stricken while directing choir practice at the Baptist Church. Music was first carried into the rural schools in 1914 but art work was still a product of the regular teacher's imagination and efforts.
Other music teachers have been as follows: Mary Isabelle Cassidy, 1926-1927; Ida Whitcher, 1927-1928; Mildred Scott, 1928-1929; Lucile Guyer, 1929-1930; Grace Axelson, 1930-1933; Corinne Lake, 1933-1934; Marion Moses, 1934-1935; Emily Stewart, 1935-1942; Martha Smith, 1942-1944; Priscilla Bedell, 1944 -. Miss Bedell was awarded a fellowship by the John Whitney Foundation of New York City for the academic year of 1955-1956, at Yale College. The first member of the B.F.H.S. faculty to be selected for this award was Miss Virginia Brown, member of the English staff, who spent 1953-1954 at Yale under the same Foundation. In 1954 Prin. Holland was chosen as one of five educators to decide the allotment of thou- sands of dollars in scholarships by serving on the National Scholarship Board.
The first art teacher in town was Miss Mary Baker who lived behind the present new Elementary School on George St. and whose father was a lawyer and the tin peddler whose cart was always awaited anxiously by young and old. She was a graduate of an art and penmanship school in Columbus, Ohio and was hired in 1897 as an "experiment." But the experi- ment lasted until she was married in 1920 to Ned Ray of North- field, Vt. Mrs. Ray who still lives in Northfield, says that she saw three different phases of penmanship during her regime as teacher of both art and chirography, the latter almost a lost art in the schools today. Slanted writing changed suddenly, soon after she took up her duties, to the new and popular system of vertical penmanship although many parents objected to it, she says, including Steve Cray whose sons Eugene and Charles were struggling with the new copy books. About 1907 the new Palmer Method arrived and everyone made another change- over and went to swinging across the paper with the whole arm, no finger movement. Miss Baker's original ideas in art work appeared in the Ladies' Home Journal and other magazines. She illustrated The Old Rockingham Meetinghouse and The First Church in Rockingham by L. S. Hayes with marginal pen and ink sketches. School art, at that time, concerned itself
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mostly with still life and geometrical figures with "a new center of interest" developed by her. Mr. John Murphy is the present art teacher, coming here in 1947. During his leave of absence in 1954-1955, Mrs. Alice Hawks substituted for him. Other art teachers were Maud E. Devereaux, 1921-1922; Laura M. Lewis, 1922-1923; Arlie S. Britell, 1923-1925; Carli Reddout, 1925-1926; Mary Cassidy, 1926-1928; Emily Ford, 1928-1933; no art, 1933-1936; Emily Ford Leonard, 1936-1946; Steve Belaski, 1946-1947. Art and music are optional studies in high school today and until about thirty years ago, there was no art in high school.
Until 1927 there was no regular physical education in the local schools. Instructors were as follows, listing instructors for both boys and girls: Albert Claridge, Esther Peterson, 1927-1929; Roy Stacey, Ila Fox, 1929-1930; Roy Stacey, Marjorie Abel, 1930-1933; no physical education, 1933- 1934; John Petroski, boys and girls, 1934-1937; Shermon Fogg, Harriet Newell, 1938-1939; Lyman Abbott, Harriet Newell, 1940-1941; Lyman Abbott, Elena Hippolitus, 1941-1942; Leo Hayes, Elena Hippolitus, 1942-1943; George C. Cassidy, Doro- thy Jones (who is still here), 1943-1945; Arthur Schneider, 1945-1947; Lawrence Hadley, 1947 -.
Over the years the record of Rockingham schools has done credit to town and school. The oldest alumnus of B.F.H.S. when she died in 1944 at the age of 89, was Miss Agnes Elmen- dorf, one of the earliest elementary teachers in town. A niece of Edward Henry Green who married Hetty Howland, later "the wizard of Wall Street," she attended St. Agnes' Hall and graduated from B.F.H.S. in 1874, teaching afterward in local schools for 25 years after which she was secretary to the rector of the St. Augustine School for colored children in Raleigh, N. C. until her resignation in 1930. She returned to Bellows Falls and lived at the Manor until her death. It was said of her that "her's was a life of service to others, a service which gave her joy to render."
Elementary teachers who have given many years of their life to their work in local schools include Miss Kathryn Petty and Miss Lula Whitcomb each of whom taught at the Wells Street School for 39 years in the second and third and fourth grades, respectively. Both retired in 1946. Other elementary teachers on the honor roll are Miss Josephine Conway who has been with us for 16 years; Miss Elizabeth FitzSimonds for 29 years and Miss Mildred Cilley for 24 years. Miss Anna Hen- nessey, English teacher in the junior high school, has probably served longer than any other teacher today.
In 1955 Principal Holland was instrumental in having a placque hung in the hall near the auditorium, listing the high school teachers who had served the school for a period of more than 15 years. These include Prof. Tuttle, 20 years; Miss
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Judd, 45 years; Miss Santamaria, 18 years; Miss Wilcox, 17 years; Norman Golding, 23 years; Walter Olbrych, 24 years; Miss Delta Collins, 35 years and Henry Osborne, 20 years. Dan Brown, a B.F.H.S. graduate, has been on duty as custodian for more than 25 years.
Among local graduates whose teaching has taken them to unusual places is Miss Dorothy Hay who in 1919, was one of three teachers chosen in the United States to teach for a year in Belgium under the Fulbright Scholarship and the U. S. Govern- ment. A graduate of Middlebury College and with a Master's. Degree from Columbia, she studied also at the Sorbonne in Paris. A teacher of French in Utica, N. Y., she received a year's leave of absence, going to the Lycee Emile Jacqumain, Parc Leopold, Brussells.
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OF BELLOWS FALLS HIGH SCHOOL
The letter heads of the B.F.H.S. Alumni Association list it as the most active alumni association in New England. Dat- ing back to "Pa" Tuttle and the year 1905, during his second year here as principal, the present organization originated from his idea that it could be something more than the scattered remnants of individual classes. Fred Babbitt came to the fore to help with a mass meeting that year and the Alumni Association was organized on a larger scale than ever before. It functioned enthusiastically for several years then slumped.
In 1915 someone attempted to ascertain the officers of the association for the previous two years, with no luck-and no records. No one knew who was president, least of all the presi- dent! After much scouting around, it turned out to be John C. "Jack" Hennessey. But it wasn't until 1920 that things began to hum again when J. Edward Leene, president of the class of 1910, went into conference with Prof. Tuttle and they decided that something must be done-or bury a corpse. (Members of the Class of 1910 claim it to be the best class ever graduated and certainly it is still one of the most active.) The 1910 class rallied around Leene and the result was a huge Field Day with 400 people present including 259 graduates. There was baseball at the Playground under Ed Leene and tennis and a picnic with class reunions as thick as warts on a toad and a dance in the Armory at night during which the Class of 1910 rallied under their banner and shouted their class song, written by Vera Mason (Spaulding) now Mrs. Elbert Arnold, both of the Class of '10. This appeared to be in the nature of a war cry. J. C. Hennessey, the "lost" President, called the meeting to order with Ruel Thayer as Secretary and Selah D. Harriman, Treasurer. who announced $45.26 in the association funds with the last meeting held in 1913. New officers were elected with J. Edward Leene, President; Wilfred Leach, Vice President;
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Edith Frost, Second Vice President; Louis McGreen, Secretary and Dr. E. E. Trask, Treasurer. The Executive Committee consisted of Mrs. G. H. Thompson, Preston H. Hadley, Margaret Barrett and Louise Fifield. Pep talks were given by H. D. Ryder, a former principal and Prof. Tuttle. Preston Hadley moved a rising vote of thanks to Leene as chief instigator of the reunion. The 1910 class had 22 members present, the largest representation with the exception of the graduating class with 36 members. Alumni meetings were held regularly at the Armory and the Playground until 1925 when reunions were held at Barber Park with a baseball game between the old grads and the school but no one seems to know who won, records being destroyed in the high school fire of that year. But there were picnics, stunts and dancing in the Pavilion and the Alumni Association was back to stay although the Park was on its way out.
In 1923 the Association presented Miss Judd with a purse of $500 in regard for her 26 years of service to the school. The next year "Pa" Tuttle's turn came when Rodney Roundy, '95, presented him with a purse and cane on his last Alumni day as principal of the school. At this meeting it was suggested that a committee be appointed to arrange for an Alumni Song but not until 1930 was one forthcoming when Frances Stock- weil Lovell, '15, came up with The Purple and the White, sung to the tune of America, the Beautiful. In 1935 Miss Judd was made an Honorary Member of the Association and in 1943 she was presented with a $100 War Bond. In 1948 the '27 class presented her with a placque for her work from 1898-1943 which was placed beside the stairway in the front hall of the high school. Other Honorary members include Stephen Belaski, Miss Alice Jackson and Miss Agnes Elmendorf. Mrs. Lucia Massucco presented a check for $25 to the Association in 1945 in memory of her son, Raymond, killed in W. W. II. A service flag was presented to the high school by the Association. The silver cup engraved with the numerals of the classes with the highest percentage of members present at each Alumni meet- ing was destroyed in the fire of 1925 and in 1932 a new one was purchased. A placque is presented each year to the grad- uate coming the longest distance to the annual meeting.
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