letters premature departure from the class of 1969. While this looked like an academic dismissal, we saw it as the weeding out of a dissident voice, the silencing of a student by a faculty member. Mr. Hays’ self-servingly narrow vision of the past overlooks the fact that, at least in this case, he was part of the problem, not the solution. Discere et Vivere! Steve Pollock ’69
San Francisco, California To the Editor: The troubled spring of 1968 and the issues of race at Mount Hermon were brought only into hazy focus by Michael Hays’ letter in the Fall/Winter issue of NMH Magazine. I was the roommate of “Souljoy,” the founder of Mount Hermon’s Afro-American Society and the student now lionized by Mr. Hays. Souljoy’s angry voice taught me lessons of tolerance, respect, and the price of privilege, and by the time of Dr. King’s assassination, the rising tide of black awareness was shaking our relatively sleepy campus. But let’s not get too revisionist and self-congratulatory at the expense of a competing perspective. While “Iron Mike” may take comfort in recalling how he and Mr. Davis brought black and white consensus to a troubled faculty meeting, it was the same Mr. Hays who denied academic credit for Souljoy’s book review of Soul on Ice because he deemed Eldridge Cleaver to be an “inappropriate author,” whatever that means. The result: a failing grade and Souljoy’s
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To the Editor: Thank you for printing the recipe for the famous Bishop’s Bread that was enjoyed so much back in the day. I thought you might like the recipe for Mrs. Smith’s Swedish coffee cake, too. Mrs. Smith was the housemother at the faculty house back when I stayed there on weekends when I would visit my fiancé, Charles Hume ’51. He taught Bible and Ancient History. He also coached lacrosse and swimming, and was advisor to the camera club. He taught from 1958–1960. We married in June of 1960 just before he started at his first parish as pastor in Southampton. Anyway, we gals always enjoyed Mrs. Smith’s Sunday morning coffee cake and so has my family ever since.
• Add egg/milk mixture to dry ingredients and beat 3 minutes. • Add 1 tablespoon of melted butter and mix well. • Pour into a greased and floured 9-inch square pan. • Pour additional melted butter over the top and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. • Bake about 30 minutes at 400 degrees. • Serve warm with butter. To the Editor: The sculpture on the first page of the NMH calendar recalls for me one of the best teachers I had at the school. “Mac” MacAlister Coleman, who created this welded steel, threesided version of the algebraic formula, taught studio art and art history/appreciation in a Recitation Hall classroom with views of the great lawn and towering elm trees before Dutch Elm disease got them. Mac literally opened my eyes and I’ve been engaged in visual work ever since. As a landscape architect, I recently designed bases and settings for two different sculptures that were unusual projects for me, but they reminded me of Mac. He introduced some of us to his
Quaker faith when the Vietnam War was urgently on our minds. His studio on campus at the barns was a magical place to visit, with the heavy sheets of steel he worked with (he had some of the biggest forearms I’ve ever seen). Mac went on to teach for many years at Endicott College and lived in Manchester-by-theSea with his wonderful wife, Peggy, who taught Russian at Northfield. I visited and did a little work with him there, many years ago. As far as I know, they are still active in that area. When Mac did the NMH sculpture, he was in a threesided phase, and I recall him working on female figurative pieces in plaster and carved wood. I had one of these plaster studies for many years in my studio in Orange, Massachusetts. Mac also had a gift for a turn of phrase and a sly, dry humor. Perhaps the sculpture is a good symbolic memorial to Recitation Hall, and the thousands of hours of inspiring thoughts shared within its rooms with beautiful views. Channing Harris ’72
Hamden, Connecticut
Patricia (Johnston) Hume
Naples, Maine Mrs. Smith’s Swedish Coffee Cake • Sift together 1½ cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and a pinch of salt. • Place 1 egg in a 1-cup measure and add milk to make 1 cup.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? NMH Magazine welcomes correspondence from readers. Letters and emails may be edited for length, clarity, and grammar, and should pertain to content in the magazine. Reach us at: NMH Magazine, One Lamplighter Way, Mount Hermon, MA 01354; and at nmhmagazine@nmhschool.org.