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As Choate’s reputation grew, so also did its ability to attract and retain top teachers. The School hired faculty and administrators who in time would become future legends, including Russell Ayres (1916), George Steele (1916), Edward Stengle (1921), Earl Leinbach (1925), and William Shute (1918). No fewer than 23 of the teachers who arrived at Choate in the 1920s stayed for at least three decades, all retiring in the 1950s or ’60s. Filled with confidence, Choate planned an endowment campaign early in 1929 to ensure the preservation of all it had built. But once again world events would have a sweeping effect and test the mettle of Choate and Rosemary Hall alike. The stock market crash of October 1929 wiped out fortunes overnight. Even for those who didn’t lose everything, the Great Depression had arrived, and it was time to reassess every expense, especially big ticket items like boarding school tuition. Both schools would need to travel some rough waters, and once again they’d move on separate courses. Choate postponed its endowment campaign, but not its ambitions. When St. John addressed the alumni in 1930, he made the case for why Choate should remain in the hands of a private corporation for at least a few more years and not yet be signed over to the Foundation. “I’m afraid you would be too good trustees!” he told them. “You might, at this critical juncture, by conservative financing, produce a school deformed. Let us put to the hazard all we have until we have constructed a school plant and campus to match unity, breadth and harmony in Choate’s inner self.” Benefactors undaunted by the Depression continued to fulfill the School’s dreams. New leaders would emerge from the Depression’s grip (see “Second Sons” p. 30). It was in 1930 that Choate acquired land for track and field facilities. In 1932, Choate dedicated the Winter Exercise Building, known in later years as the Worthington Johnson Athletic Center. Scholarships were offered to students whose families faced new financial hardships, and it seemed for a time that Choate might weather the economic crisis. However, signs of struggle emerged, and not only when blues guitarist Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter passed his hat around after performing on campus in 1935. Enrollment dropped and all Choate employees took a 10 percent pay cut. Unable to utilize and maintain all its newly acquired property, Choate sold off houses for a song.
THE SITUATION AT ROSEMARY HALL WAS EVEN MORE CHALLENGING. BY 1935 , the School still owed $168,000
in bond debt. Upgrading facilities was now unthinkable. Everything that didn’t affect teaching or students’ wellbeing had been “cut to the bone” to balance the budget, Ruutz-Rees told alumnae that year. Enrollments were falling, she explained, because the School’s clientele was largely professional class, not the super-rich, and private school was no longer affordable for many. Her model for restoring capacity enrollments was Miss Porter’s School, which had dwindled at one time to a mere three students, but recovered in three years as alumnae rallied to enroll nieces, cousins, and daughters of friends. “Cannot you, loyal, devoted Rosemarians, do for us the same thing as they did for their beloved school?,” she asked at the 1935 gathering to mark Rosemary Hall’s 45th anniversary. “We are in a critical condition, and the outcome depends upon you. We really do not want to close the School… There is, however, that possibility.” For the next three years, Rosemary Hall watched pennies under Ruutz-Rees. Then in 1938, after 48 years at the helm, she and co-headmistress Mary Elizabeth Lowndes handed off the top administrative job. Her hand-picked successor, 45-year-old Eugenia Baker Jessup, Class of 1910, reflected her dream to keep Rosemary Hall in the hands of loyal Rosemarians. As a Rosemarian, Jessup had been editor of the Question Mark (the School’s literary magazine), captain of the field hockey team, and a member of the self-governance committee. In Ruutz-Rees’ view, no one embodied the School’s ideals better than she. Upon graduation from Bryn Mawr, she returned to Greenwich in 1914 and taught for 11 years before taking the reins in 1938. But Rosemary Hall would be only partially in Mrs. Jessup’s control. Ruutz-Rees hadn’t been able to fulfill her long-held goal to hand off the School to the alumnae. Thus it literally remained her school on paper because she was still the largest shareholder in the corporation. Her notion of Rosemary Hall as a family that would forever care for its own took on fresh meaning as the matriarchs, Ruutz-Rees and Lowndes, settled into retirement on campus.
The Mikado playbill and cast, 1932, the first in a Choate tradition of annual Gilbert and Sullivan productions.