Word: groton
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Peabody has made no bones about Groton's being a school for the upper class. Among this class Groton found early favor. To it went Higginsons, Whitneys, Harrimans. Rogerses, Morgans. Theodore Roosevelt sent three sons and some plain words: "I was glad to hear the Rector when he asked you to be careful not to turn out snobs. Now there are in our civic and our social life very much worse creatures than snobs but none more contemptible...
However snobbish Groton may seem to outsiders, it is both democratic and in some respects Spartan within. Boys still wash up in tin basins at long soapstone sinks where hot water taps are few. Neither boys nor masters enter the infirmary without a faint feeling of shame. Endicott Peabody at Cambridge was a great oarsman, and exercise at Groton is "almost a sacrament." The Rector permits tennis and golf but he encourages the rough team sports. Until rivals raised too loud a clamor, he and many masters played on the school teams...
...Groton is an inbred school. When a son s born to an old Grotonian, the happy news is wired to the Rector, who enters the child on the list of favored applicants. Result is that out of a student body permanently fixed at 180 boys, 94 are sons of alumni. Brighter than these are apt to be the ten boys admitted each year by competitive examination. Groton's scholastic standing is high, partly because it drills for College Board Examinations...
...three men who founded Groton, Billings ("Mr. B.") and Gardner ("Mr. G.") are dead. Endicott Peabody at 78 is as quick of wit and pink of cheek as a man of 60. Every boy and master knows that the Rector misses nothing, that his word is law. Dr. Peabody still coaches one of the intramural crews, still rides horseback. Sometimes Mrs. Peabody rides with him. A handsome, fragile lady, in black velvet dog collar and pearls, the Rector's wife has been a Peabody all her life and the Groton colors, red, white & black, were the colors...
...Groton celebrated its 25th anniversary. Among such alumni as Joseph Clark Grew, Bronson Cutting, Robert Rutherford McCormick, Payne Whitney, George & Richard Whitney, W. Averell Harriman, Warren Delano Robbins, Ellery Sedgwick and Percy Haughton, the favorite subject of speculation was "who will succeed the Rector?" Last year the school was 50 years old. Its alumni had grown to include Arthur Train, Sumner Welles, E. Roland Harriman, F. Trubee Davison, Dean Acheson, Junius S. & Henry S. Morgan, Oliver LaFarge. Again the favorite subject of speculation was "who will succeed the Rector...