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M e r c e r s b u r g m a g a z i n e s u mm e r 2 0 1 3
120 t h Anniversary
William Zimmerman ’67
Zimmerman speaking at the 2009 dedication of the Prentiss-Zimmerman Quadrangle
I grew up on the same street with 14 of my cousins in Mt. Wolf, Pennsylvania, in York County. I was one of the older kids in the group, and a number of us began to look at private schools. From there I ended up at Mercersburg, a place that became my alma mater and the alma mater of my daughter, Jesse ’96, and where I served on and chaired the Board of Regents. I think about my initial reactions to being at Mercersburg—of homesickness and of living in the basement of a dormitory that is no longer there, old ’Eightyeight. Not all my immediate experiences were good. But then I also remember some faculty members who were particularly kind to me, including Earle Grover, Rosamund Bell, Joe Adams, and David Tyson. Even the headmaster, Bill Fowle, was pleasant and welcoming. So eventually, the homesickness went away and Mercersburg really became an important place to me. We had about 550 boys in the school—no girls, of course—and the faculty was dominated by single, white men who lived in the dormitories with us. There were some faculty families, but it was rare. So in that regard, it was dramatically different from what the school is now from a residential standpoint, and I think the school of today is far superior. Imagine all the dining-hall tables that are in Ford Hall today, and imagine squeezing enough tables for 100 more people into the Edwards Room in Keil Hall. We were pretty packed in there. The old gymnasium, where I played basketball in what today is the fitness center, was a bizarre place. There was a track up above it and you couldn’t take shots from certain parts of the floor because you’d throw the ball up and it would hit the track. And the old swimming pool, which was in the area underneath the basketball court, was even more of a dungeon. It was below grade and there were no windows. But some great teams came out of there. The people you met and got to know at Mercersburg were much more important than and overwhelmed any flaws in the way the school, or boarding schools in general back then, were operated. It became pretty apparent that friendships were going to be what got you through. I’m still close friends with a fellow named Tony Trenga ’67, who was the president of our class and has gone on to become a federal judge. He has one of the most extraordinary legal minds in the country and is also, in my opinion, one of the finest and kindest people I’ve ever known. Jim Dresher ’67 and Greg Moller ’67 both turned out to be pretty exceptional businesspeople. Jim is still involved in the building and creation of a group of hotels in the Baltimore area. Jim and Greg, coincidentally, both graduated from Rutgers University, got into the McDonald’s business back in the early 1970s, and did extraordinarily well. When they saw each other at reunions, they used to joke that if one of them ever started to have chest pains, he should immediately call the other guy because they had so many similarities in their lives. Unfortunately, Greg died in the 1980s. He was an incredible guy.