WRA Women: A History

WRA WOMEN

THROUGH THE YEARS

W

estern Reserve Academy was established on February 7, 1826, as the Western Reserve College and Preparatory School and the first “hero” of co-education was the 4th President of Western Reserve College, Carroll Cutler, who first admitted young women to the old college and the preparatory school in 1872.

The college section moved north to Cleveland in 1882 and became Western Reserve University, later merging with the Case Institute of Technology to become Case Western Reserve University. The school closed in 1903 because of bankruptcy.

In 1916, however, the school reopened with the support of James Ellsworth, a former student and Hudson resident who had returned after becoming wealthy in the coal industry

Caroll Cutler

In a statement from Harlan N. Wood to James W. Ellsworth dated 1923 in a letter regarding the problem of young women at this school he said: “An important objection to the presence of boarding girls is that we are not properly equipped to take care of them. North Hall (a Girls dorm in the early ‘20’s) makes a comfortable home for them but there is not sufficient privacy. To remedy this, in part, we have adopted a rule this year that boys must not use the walk past North Hall in going downtown after dinner.... I am not unmindful that the girl situation has been handled this year better than it has heretofore, but in the face of improvement I still feel that boarding girls are a handicap”.

The school administration and the trustees agreed that Western Reserve Academy could only become a “great school” as a school for young men only, so the last young women graduated or left the school in June, 1925.

After a 47-year hiatus when WRA was a boys-only school, girls returned in the fall of 1972 when 45 young women enrolled as students. Marie Fiedler, Corinne “Corky” Davis, Anne Chapman, and Christine Breuker were among the first women teachers to be added to the faculty when girls First class of four-year female returned in 1972. graduates As the result of adding females to the mix of students, Western Reserve Academy Board of Trustees got its first woman to serve on the Board when Frances Prindle Taft was elected in the fall of 1973. She served until 1980.

1976 was the first graduating class of 4-year women students.

September 26, 2019, Suzanne Walker Buck became the first female Head of School for WRA. Suzanne Walker Buck