Indonesian and Burmese, and his Yale friends were pushing him to take a corporate job or work for the State Department. With his mother, he visited Headmaster Paul Cruikshank in June, and on July 7 he penned him a letter: “I have finally decided,” he wrote, “after feeling my way in the business world for a while…that it is in teaching in which I will be able to utilize my training and education and be completely happy.”
student, I knew him—and was terrified of him—as the dean of students. He was famously gruff and cantankerous. Once our midnight CPT4 two-on-two soccer tournament awoke a teacher, and we were called into his office first thing the next morning. When we went in, his glasses were propped up on his forehead, the cigarette dangled from his lip, and he squinted through the smoke. He began growling like some large, angry dog, and
Oscie was the touchstone. He was the grounding force during a time when all worlds seem to collide. As we tried to adjust to life away from home, Chief’s office was always open and warm. He laid out consequences to provide us options as we began to test our boundaries, and those of Taft. He forced us to toe the line with dignity, grace, and good decision making. He always remembered that high schoolers needed to eat burgers at the Chef, and that we needed a big, ugly, comfortable couch to hang out on (even if the dog wouldn’t make room). Most importantly, Oscie taught us the importance of taking care of those you love, and love him we did.
Never comfortable with public praise, it was a reluctant Don Oscarson who allowed the Jigger Shop to be named in his honor; this photograph with Elena Ford ’84 hangs at the entrance.
—Libby Seibert ’92
A month later Cruikshank wrote him back, offering him a one-year appointment, teaching remedial English. Oscie moved in and never left. And for 50 years he was so many things to so many people. My memories are vivid, stretching back to 1976. As a 48
Taft Bulletin Winter 2004
he got louder and louder, and we shrank in the corner under the withering blast of his voice. And then at the end, he stopped. We waited, trembling. He said, “Boys, that sounds like it was pretty fun. But don’t let me see you in here again.” He didn’t.