Word: avon
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Your fairly accurate account of Mrs. Riddle and Avon Old Farms [TIME, March 22] repeats a myth, unjust to the memory of a headmaster of the school who suffered for ten years under her devastating domination, and ended broken in health and mind. His name was not selected from the telephone directory; he was suggested for the position by the dean of a theological seminary in New York...
...Avon, wrote Mrs. Riddle firmly, "was founded for the sons of the gentry. ... It is difficult, if not impossible, for Avon to develop [honor and culture] in a boy, if he has not been trained in early years." She expected the well-born youngsters to wear black ties and dark jackets by night, Brooks Brothers grey flannels by day, play no interscholastic sport except polo, learn fly-casting and the manly art of self-defense...
...directory, looking for likely sounding names among the clergy. When Brooks Brothers was unable to supply grey flannels because of wartime shortages, the clergyman-provost told the boys to wear what they pleased. Mrs. Riddle was outraged, and the provost resigned. Shortly after, in 1944, Founder Riddle shut down Avon and turned over the property to President Roosevelt, a family friend, for use as an Army school for the blind. Its purposely crooked brick walls, sagging stone stairs and mazelike character made it a natural for sightless veterans learning to "braille along...
...laid down for them. Then they hit on Pierpont. The new head, a University of Richmond graduate (he flunked out of Johns Hopkins), was a headmaster of the lower form at a Baltimore school, later bossed a World War II Navy school. The first time he saw Avon Old Farms, he said, "I felt as if I had walked into the middle of a Charles Addams cartoon...
Pierpont was willing to comply with the minor provisions of Avon's code, such as fly-casting and a school uniform (now modified, at night, to a dark jacket), so long as he didn't have to be too literal about the major ones. Particularly, he doesn't believe, as Mrs. Riddle did, that there is one class privileged to produce gentlemen. He is as anxious to turn out gentlemen as she was, but believes that they can be made, not necessarily prenatally. Without Mrs. Riddle to make up its $25,000 a year losses, Avon will...