If you don’t mind, I’ll pass the prospect of your candidacy, with resume, around to my fellow heads in Seven Schools and keep an eye out for openings elsewhere in New England. Please convey my warmest regards to your mother and father.
Faithfully,
John Greeve
2 December
REMARKS TO THE SCHOOL
Welcome back. You look to me well fed and rested—at least you boys do. The faculty, if you’ll observe closely, looks pale and wan. I am sure this is due to their feverish grading of your exams. Believe me, taking them for four of five hours bears no relation to the tedium and stress of grading them for forty. It’s a wonder we do it. Incidentally, for those of you changing classes or sections this term, do collect your exams and other first-term work today, if possible. Today, remember, is the first day of the winter term, not the last day of the fall term.
It’s important to make each day count, considering that there are only 19 shopping days and 17 schools days till Christmas. This odd, inconvenient wedge of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is always, for some reason, the best time of year. I don’t quite know why that is so.
The most obvious answer is that it resonates with old, cozy childhood associations with the holidays, visions of free time, skiing, and loot. But it is more than that, because actual school life is fun, too. It might have something to do with the opening of winter sports: the first basketball game, wrestling and swim meets. And the upper form play is always somehow especially galvanizing for falling when it does. At least one good, authoritative snowfall usually helps, too. There is of course our last night’s Candle Sing, but that’s just the capstone, the recognition of what feels so good. I’d like to think the spirit comes a little from the Christmas drives, from that glorious theme of giving things away that is so hard to summon up during the other months. Whatever it is, it’s wonderful, and I hope that each of you can find a way to play a part in it.
On a more somber note: Seniors! Contrary to all pernicious rumor and false tradition, the academic year is not over. College admissions officers do not read all but the last two columns of your transcripts. Do not slump. I repeat, do not. No matter how far you think you have come, no matter how great the sophistication, it is as easy as sloth to turn stupid again overnight, just as in some sort of academic fairy tale. I have personally seen it happen hundreds of times. So be warned, seniors—models, leaders, examples to others, etc.
And to the rest of you, good morning.
2 December
MEMO to Arnold Lieber
Maintenance
Arnold,
I am afraid it is time for the Christmas tree again. This year, for a novelty, let’s not make war about this. We need a full-sized, at least 15’ spruce for the commons. The boys will trim if you and Andy will haul out the ornaments. Please do not ask me about aluminum trees, and please do not remind me of how many aluminum trees we could have purchased for the price of the last dozen real ones. We could save even more if we put up no tree. In my opinion, an aluminum tree is not a tree. They don’t smell right.
Merry Christmas,
J.O.G.
3 December
Ms. Camilla Lang
Editor, The Home Forum Page
The Christian Science Monitor
1 Norway Street
Boston, Massachusetts
Dear Mrs. Lang,
I enclose for your consideration, I hope not too late, a short Christmas poem.
I am not sure if you require background information from those who submit unsolicited material, but, for whatever interest it may provide, I am a schoolmaster who has written occasional poems, essays, and reviews for magazines.
My good wishes,
John O. Greeve
THIS CHRISTMAS
For it to be true,
And for us to know it,
Wouldn’t it occur in the cold,
In a near absence of light,
Eclipsed, perhaps, by a festival
Of carols and all our gaudy hopes—
Like this?
4 December
Mr. William G. Truax
President, Fiduciary Trust Company
P.O. Box 121
New Haven, Connecticut
Dear Bill,
Thanks for your prompt and frank appraisal of my “Wells: Ten Years . . .” draft. I am sorry it did not appeal, but I guess I knew it wouldn’t.
I am afraid the problem—or maybe my problem—lies in the nature of the assignment. You and the board would like those of us in the ranks to look to the immediate and long-range future of the school and to imagine, when all is said and done, what we would like to buy. What you want, at its nub, is a guideline for raising money. Right?
Well, Bill, you know what to raise money for, and you’ve always known it: faculty salaries, scholarships, maintenance of facilities, and expansion of facilities. A comfortable retirement plan would make a hit. More books in the library is more desirable than otherwise. An enclosed practice space would be dandy. Enough scholarship money to enable us to admit boys according to sheer merit and personal promise would be a dream. I don’t think we need a formal plan to make these obvious points. Our predecessors managed to build up quite a coherent and effective Wells without, to my knowledge, the aid of a formal plan. I am serious about that futurist fallacy I wrote you about. There are no future criteria on which to shape the future; all criteria are in the past and the present.
I know I sent you “rhetoric,” and maybe it needs revising or even scrapping, but it does cover what Wells is up to and what it will be up to in the future—unless it ceases to be a school. What do you mean by “hard data”? Questionnaires? Would you really like to know what percentage of the parents or faculty or students preferred improvement to plant over an increased remuneration for staff or increased financial aid? Which preference would be right?
Do you make long-range plans at the bank? What are they based on, expert forecasts of the economy?
We can do better than that because, unlike the economy, which is an amoral aggregate of individual choices about where to lay down money, school is directed by unchanging moral imperatives. School is always in the business of passing on the best of the culture to emerging new members. It is always preserving what is established and testing what is new and promising. The process requires adults who know both about the culture and how children learn. The process requires space and facilities. Up to a limited point, money buys better people and better facilities; beyond that point, there are only marginal improvements and often diminishing returns. Wells, through the largesse of its past boards and alumni, is pretty damned near the point. And I hope we are in the same relative position in a hundred years.
So what’s next? For starters, I’ll pare down my rhetoric. Then how about my submitting a weighted ranking of capital expenditures necessary before the decade is out, then a similar list of expenditures desired? Would those data be “hard” enough? In the old days didn’t people give and bequeath money to schools out of simple gratitude and affection? Or was there some hard data back then of which I am unaware?
I shall revise and resubmit tirelessly until you are well pleased.
With humble obedience,
John
5 December
REMARKS TO THE SCHOOL
I must precede these luncheon announcements with some very sad news. As some of you may already have heard, this morning during the third class, there was an accident in the pool, in which a fourth former, David Lewandowski, was killed. This is still such a surprise and shock to us that it is hard to tell you much about it. Three boys, including one with Senior Lifesaving, decided to take a swim through the midmorning break. David, while swimming in the diving end, may have had a convulsion. Whatever happened, his friends were unable to take hold of him in the water, and by the time Mr. Kreble was called to the scene, David was unconscious. Mr. Kreble and Doug Froehling applied resuscitation techniques until an ambulance arrived, which took David
to Three Counties Clinic, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
I have just talked to both Mr. and Mrs. Lewandowski, who are on their way to school and should arrive early this evening. Those of you who knew David may want to talk with them after dinner. I know that would be an immeasurable comfort to them. Right now they are simply numb with hurt and loss.
Tomorrow morning’s chapel will be a formal one in David’s memory. The goal for the time being is to do all we can to support David’s friends here and the Lewandowskis.
5 December
DEPOSITION
To Wells Village Police Department
Wells, Connecticut
This morning, December 5, shortly after the beginning of the third class (approximately 10:05 a.m.) three boys, David Lewandowski, Doug Froehling, and Mark Tepler, were dismissed from their geometry class for causing some sort of disturbance in the classroom. They were not told to report anywhere in particular, and, since school break follows third class, they felt they would have time for a swim. Free swimming in the pool is permitted if an athletic department member approves and if one of the swimmers has passed Senior Lifesaving. In this case, Froehling has passed Senior Lifesaving. When the boys arrived in the pool office complex, Mr. Kreble, who usually gives the permissions, was out. The boys claim some confusion about permission being necessary. They cited other times they had been swimming without faculty supervision or permission and presumed it was allowed.
At approximately 10:25, as the boys report it, Froehling was swimming laps in one of the racing lanes in the shallow end, Tepler was sitting on the pool edge of the deep end, and Lewandowski was diving off the low board. As Lewandowski surfaced from one of his dives, he began thrashing about in the water. Tepler noticed this first, but paid little attention, as he assumed it was only energetic fooling around. When the thrashing persisted for what Tepler estimates might have been a minute or two, he began shouting to Lewandowski asking if he were all right. Lewandowski was by this time “out of control,” in Tepler’s opinion, and was periodically going under. Tepler, who is not a strong swimmer, swam out to Lewandowski and tried to hook his arm around Lewandowski’s waist and haul him to the side of the pool. At this, Tepler said, Lewandowski locked an arm around Tepler’s neck and pulled him under. Tepler managed to get free and shouted to Froehling, a strong swimmer, to help. Froehling did not hear the shouts at first, but after a short delay made his way to the deep end and tried to fasten an arm under Lewandowski’s chin so as to drag him backwards to safety. At this Lewandowski pitched over and, as with Tepler, the movement forced Froehling under. As Froehling attempted to work himself back up to the surface, he caught an elbow on the side of one eye and was momentarily dazed. Deciding he could not bring Lewandowski immediately to safety, he told Tepler to find Jack Kreble and a rope or a ladder or a pole.
Tepler thinks it may have been a little after 10:30 when he ran from the pool to find Kreble. Froehling meanwhile made repeated dives below Lewandowski and attempted to boost him up to the surface so he could breathe. Feeling this was futile, he swam to the side, got out, and picked up a long wooden bench from against a wall and placed it in the pool. This he used as a prod to nudge Lewandowski into the shallow racing lanes.
At this point, about 10:35, Kreble entered with Tepler. Kreble entered the water and they were able to remove Lewandowski, who was now unconscious, without difficulty. Feeling a pulse, but detecting no respiration, Froehling and Kreble began to apply two-man cardiopulmonary resuscitation. At this point they realized that Lewandowski had swallowed his tongue. They had some difficulty opening his jaw to correct this and, after that, further difficulties in extricating the tongue. When this had been done, cardiopulmonary resuscitation was resumed until an ambulance arrived, a few minutes after 11:00, to take the boy to Three Counties Clinic. At 11:30 we were called and notified that the boy had not revived and was dead on arrival.
The school had been made aware by the boy’s parents that he had been taking anti-seizure medication daily as a precaution against the recurrence of a single seizure his parents reported during the past summer. His teachers, dormitory master, and his coaches were all aware of the boy’s condition. Both the boy’s physician and our resident physician had advised against contact sports, but had allowed others under appropriate supervision. There had been no other evidence of a seizure this fall or winter. Tepler, who is one of Lewandowski’s roommates, said Lewandowski had told him about his medication and had told him once that he really didn’t need to take it. In light of the date of the boy’s most recent prescription, the number of pills remaining in the prescription bottle suggests he probably did not take the medication regularly.
I have had a chance to question the boy’s other roommate and his teachers intensively and am convinced that no other drug or substance had been taken by Lewandowski prior to the accident.
John O. Greeve 12/5/19-
6 December
REMARKS TO THE SCHOOL
In Memoriam, David Lewandowski
Boys, ladies and gentlemen of the faculty, Mr. and Mrs. Lewandowski:
It is too soon and too sad to try to put yesterday’s tragedy into perspective. What we feel now is a numbing sense of loss. There is undoubtedly some great scheme into which the death by drowning of an able, energetic, sixteen-year-old boy fits, but if so, it is a design perhaps far too magnificent and terrifying for us to comprehend.
What we must all work to keep in mind is that our grief and dread today are not for David but for ourselves. David’s fear and discomfort were brief and are now past. Ours, especially today, continues. A death among us, especially of one so young, makes us question bitterly the loss of so much promise. Anyone who knew David Lewandowski knows that his promise was considerable. The deeper dread, though, is of the loss of our own promise and vitality; we have had a stark reminder that our own are not infinite, nor guaranteed, nor safe. David’s fatality confirms our mortality, and we don’t really want the news.
Difficult, as it is, we have got to avert our musings from his fatality to his vitality, for it is in this, not in his passing, that David had something to teach us. Consider David for a moment. He was a new fourth former this year, but there was not, I’ll wager, a boy in his form who didn’t know him well by Thanksgiving. Rarely does a boy take to Wells—and Wells to a new boy—so quickly and so surely. As one housemaster in Hallowell put it, “He was so easy to like.” Easy because he was so indomitably high-spirited. No one who has spoken of him to me in the last twenty-four hours has done so without remarking on his laughter, how quickly it would come, how infectious it was, how it was always occasioned by the unexpected or by the lunacy of school life, never, apparently, by the shortcomings of others or at their expense.
David was also a risk-taker, a volunteer. On the campus twenty-four hours this past September, he volunteered to become varsity football manager. He did this because he wanted to help out and because he wanted desperately to be close to football. It is characteristic of him that practically none of you was aware that he was forbidden, on doctor’s orders, to play contact sports. His name also appears, I notice, first among the fourth-form volunteers for the Christmas food and clothing drive. He was not yet, as it happens, a first-rate student—in fact, was a little daunted by Wells the first term. But he was not one to let a set-back get him down. Mr. Shire tells me he requested tutors on his own and was in the process of finding his feet scholastically. I am certain he would have done so. His kind always do.
So, in Auden’s words, “What instruments we have agree”: David Lewandowski was a good boy. And what we came to know this fall, the Lewandowskis have known for much longer. David did, and does, them glorious credit as parents. It is for them, as well as for ourselves, that we so wholeheartedly appreciate and honor David here this morning. Mr. and Mrs. Lewandowski, to you go all our love and support. We cannot lighten your grief, only share it. We must acknowledge together that this grief could not have been had David not been the boy he was.
Let’s remember and honor that.
Thank you, and good morning.
6 December
Mrs. Florence Armbruster
Mathematics
Florence,
I must ask that with respect to future disciplinary measures you observe the following policy without fail: if you dismiss a boy from class for misconduct, make sure he reports somewhere, either to me or to Phil Upjohn. We are both well used to receiving such miscreants. If you wish to do the follow-up yourself, ask the boy to wait in our offices until you are free. In the event that either of us is otherwise occupied, Marge Pearse will know what to do with the offender.
This is by no means a suggestion that you have been negligent or are in some way responsible for the Lewandowski boy’s accident. There is no blame to assign there.
I would appreciate your cooperation on the disciplinary matter. The wrong kind of boy finds it a treat to be dismissed early from class if there are no other consequences beyond the dismissal. Thanks.
J.O.G.
9 December
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Greeve
14 Bingham Drive
Tarrytown, New York
Dear Val and Frank,
This is not a Christmas card. I regret to say it is the opposite of a Christmas card. “He who has the steerage of my course” has for some reason determined to wreck what is traditionally the most lovely passage of the school year, the between-holidays month, when the illusion of good will and anticipated comfort hangs cozily over the old quad like weather. Advent.
Not so this year, I’m afraid. Meg was taken back to the clinic today by ambulance after a night of terrible pain and, late this morning, a very bad hemorrhage. I can’t even think about it. She is so miserable and tired and so angry. What an affront this disease is. I am thoroughly convinced that, almost from the time it was diagnosed, this cancer’s treatment has served only to aggravate it; cancer may have been prolonged, but Meg has not been. Until now, except for one afternoon years ago on a cruise, I have never seen Meg nauseated the way these drugs have nauseated her. Not until this have I ever seen Meg close herself to others—out of sheer exhaustion, embarrassment, and pain. Meg could never stand to be such bad company as she feels this disease and its “treatment” have made her. Meg was not made to lose her hair and her appetite and her color. She wants to die but rails at the cowardliness of doing it herself. She is not likely to live past Christmas, and I hope to God she is spared the hell of another bout like last night’s.
The Headmasters Papers Page 10