Aspiration and Perseverance — The History of Avon Old Farms School

the characters in the novel by their real names , student and faculty alike . Reaction to the novel included the apoplectic on the part of Instructor in Printing Max Stein , on the faculty from 1933 to 1944, the staff of Old Farms convalescent Hospital from 1945 to 1947, and once again at the School 1980-81. The reactions also included the philosophic and the amused, according to one's perception of the War , Avon Old Farms , and private school education in general. Yet, even Yates concluded "If my father had lived , I would certainly have thanked him for paying my way through Dorset Academy ... I mig ht have even told him-and this would have been only a slight exaggeration-that in ways still important to me it was a good school. It saw me through the worst of my adolescence, as few other schools would have done , and it taught me the rudiments of my trade . I learned to write by working on the Dorset Chronicle (in real life The Avonian, as the student newspaper was called in that era) making terrible mistakes in print that hardly anybody ever noticed . Couldn't that be called a lucky apprenticeship? And is there no further good to be said of the school, or of my time in it ? Or of me?"

The happier and far more famous literary note of the era concerns John Gillespie Magee , Jr. , Class of 1940. Ang lo-American by birth , a Rug by student marooned in America after the British entry into the War, he was unable to get a visa to return to England for his sixth-form year. Staying with relatives in Pittsburgh, who heard of Avon through the many Avon-Pittsburgh connections, he enrolled at Avon to complete his secondary education, won a full scholarship to Yale , which he declined for the duration, and surprised all who knew him by converting from pacifism and joining the Royal Canadian Air Force shortly after graduation from Avon . He published a slim volume of his poems under Max Stein's direction on the School's Washington Hoe Press while a student, of which perhaps the best remembered is A Prayer. While training in England , shortly before his death in December 194 1, Magee sent to his parents, then in Washington, D .C. the sonnet later entitled "High Flight ," which was published in the Sunday bulletin of St. John 's Church there , (thereby voiding any possible copyright royalties for the future.) The poem became immediately popular throughout the free world and may be found on the walls of the Air Force Academies in many nations . In 1942, after his death , Magee himself was the subject of a biography by Hermann Hagedorn , with its title, Sunward I've Climbed, taken from the sonnet. In 1980 , Avon Old Farms ran a contest for a new musical setting that could be sung either by massed unison voices or by mixed choir. That contest, which drew 69 entries, disclosed that six published musical settings had already been written and performed. The winning entry, reproduced in the appendix, was by Master Sergeant John Edward Turner , Director of the Band at, fittingly enough, the United States Air Force Academy.

Appearing in print shortly after his 1940 g raduation was Alexander Sturm, with twO books published by Scribners' "for children of all ages," not only written but also illustrated by Sturm: The Problem Fox, and From Ambush to Zigzag.

Veritably , Avon Old Farms had literary talent of national and international appeal!

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