Reminiscences from the Class of 1952

From  Carol Stanwood

• I remember Mrs. Sturley reading "1066 and All That" to our class and then having an English history test competition. I won — as I had an English mother who really knew her English History.

• I remember Mr. White who taught Science , some History classes and wood working shop. I remember his getting very mad at someone who was misbehaving in 5th grade and throwing  a desk. He often got very upset.

• I remember Mrs Cowles, our music teacher,  and our playing Mozart's "Toy Symphony" with the New Haven Symphony.

• I remember a Connecticut Governor's race during our 8th grade year and the song that went with the candidate. "Oh, we all want John Lodge in for governor, the old one has to leave.  Oh, we all want John Lodge in for governor, and no one else will grieve."

• I remember Mrs. Hitchcock teaching us about political rhetoric, and teaching us to analyze what we were being told and to think for ourselves. She said we were not to just mimic what our parents thought but to think on our own.

From Lee Gailllard

•  I absolutely loved my two years at Foote in 7th and 8th grades.

• I never 'got' why the sign changed when it crossed the equals sign ... but then the way Mrs. Sturley gently led us all through it, I finally saw the light and then absolutely loved algebra. And she was a pioneer in figuring out 'where people were' and largely guiding us individually at our own respective paces.

• Drawing maps was fun, so Mrs. Paul's geography class was enjoyable. Mrs. Hitchcock (Hitchie) was great. Projected that tough-as-nails image, but you could see the twinkle in her eye. She was ready to strangle me because in our free weekend compositions I always wrote about airplanes. She was a patient woman...

• I remember recess in the winter when we all went across the street to that long field with the wire mesh fence around it and built huge snow forts. In the spring we had recess on the asphalt in front of the school.  Monique Lauren always managed to do  better at the improvised high jump contests than any of the boys!

• The plays were great fun.  I was terrified of saying my lines in front of an audience.  Doing the same Christmas plays each year was wonderful: you kept going back to see how the next group did it, remembering how your year was. Sort of like Greek tragedy ... when you already knew the story. And when four of us sang "I sing of a maid..." down in front of the stage--I loved that music, and the fact that Larry Kingsbury, one of us, wrote the music absolutely blew my mind.

• I think we did "Ivanhoe" in the spring of  our eighth grade year. Stephanie played Rowena, Paola played Rebecca and I had to do a sword fight with those wooden swords with dastardly "Brion de Bois  Guilbert."  I loved the sound of that name and still remember it.

• At Foote I could learn at my own pace and have more time to read for pleasure, and not spend every waking minute cramming. Learning became fun instead of a chore. My Foote 50th reunion was at that time the ONLY school or college reunion I had gone to.

From Paola

• I remember sledding down the "Divinity School" hill, across the street from school during the winter months — and in the spring the great girl soft ball games, played on the land where the Foote School now sits.

• I remember music being great fun and I still can remember all the folk songs we learned and the Christmas carols we sang.

• I remember learning  so much English history from Mrs. Sturley — and it remains with me today,  especially the battle of Hastings, 1066. I am amazed what we were exposed to and taught as elementary students when that is compared to what students are taught and exposed to today.  We were fortunate.  At Foote's there was the feeling that we all could do well and with a little more effort we could all achieve our dreams. Above all, at Foote's I remember learning to "dream" of a happy and good future, as long as I worked to the best of my ability.

• I remember Mrs. Hitchcock teaching us to use one word instead of three  - if it had the same meaning. To this day, whenever someone says, " all of a sudden" I remember Mrs. Hitchcock saying it should be  "suddenly."

• I remember disliking having my mother as the French teacher for eight years and as "home room" teacher for one year.  She never gave me an "A"  — and only when I was in college did she confess that I, as well as my older sister, —  deserved "As." She did not want to give the impression that she was showing "favoritism" to her own children.

• It's been fun hearing from all the others. Please do keep in touch and I sincerely hope we can meet before the 60th.  Not a lot of specific memories, but a lot of good, warm feelings.

From Diana Vilas

• Kindergarten:

– I remember learning French from Madame Orifice by dancing holding hands and dancing in a circle and  singing French songs, one of which I think required putting imaginary flowers or some such into imaginary baskets. The song had the parts of our body in French and whoever was next in line got to pick the next body part, say it in French, and point to it.

• First grade:

– I can still visualize the alphabet written across the black board.

– I remember the air raid drills and having to go sit under the tables as we practiced what do if there was an actual air raid. And then I remember  the  paper boy sanding on the corner of Canner and Autumn Streets  in he late afternoon shouting "Extra, Extra, Read all about it" announcing the War had ended.

• Second grade:

– I remember Mrs. Ellis, and the way the room was set up.  I always loved music, and still remember the songs and can still picture the screens whenever I hear a hint of the tune.

• Third grade:

– I think we had art by then, and I still have a small pottery dish I made in that class, George Finch got Scarlet Fever that year and I remember the big orange quarantine sign with a black X on it that was put on their front door on Canner Street.

• Fourth grade:

– Mrs. Denoyan was our home room teacher. I remember wood working shop that Mr. White taught. I still have a lamp and a cat door stop that I made in that class.  As a class, we were pretty hard on our teachers in 4th grade.  We gave both of them a hard time

• Fifth Grade:

• I remember Mrs Corbiere, our fifth grade teacher, who taught geography, spelling of the states, and arithmetic. Her classroom was downstairs.  She always read the states in the same order: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire Massachusetts Connecticut Rhode Island etc. and she read them faster than I could write.  I memorized them in order, and would start writing them down as soon as she would begin her spelling test. In that way I could get ahead of her before she got going too fast for me.  One day she noticed that I had a list on my paper as she was beginning, and she accused me of cheating. Mrs. Sturley let me explain what I was doing and that I was not cheating.

• Sixth grade:

– Mr. Hawks was our 6th grade homeroom teacher.

– I remember starting to have chills and a temperature of 102. I was in bed at home for 2 weeks before I collapsed for the first time confirming the suspicions of polio, and was then sent to the hospital. They let me out of the hospital the day before Christmas and now I had leg braces and canes.

The days were very lonely but for the twice daily physical therapy and the visits from Mme. Orifice, who came to tutor me in French once a week, and Mr. hawks came over and tutored me for everything else.  By mid-spring they let me go up to the school for the recess, so I could see my friends, but not till the last month did I get permission to stay for the second half of the morning. That first half day back, I was nervous, as I climbed the stairs to the class room.  Larry Kingsbury was there, and I didn't now how I would be received. When I came in the room he was perfect. He didn't treat me like a freak, he just casually said "gee Diana you sound like trollycar coming up the stairs!

• Seventh grade:

– I remember Mrs. Paul was our 7th grade teacher, Mrs. Hitchcock came in to teach us English. I still know the first 100 lines of an awful lot of poetry!  One day Mrs. Hitchcock was giving us WHAT FOR, about our being disruptive during her class. She tapped her foot and read us the riot act having just said, "now I am not going to mention any names. " I don't know just what Stanton Morris did, but she whirled around and pointed straight at him and said loudly "Stanton Morris, you're one! " I thought she was going to go after me next, as I had just passed a note to Lee Gaillard.

•  Eighth Grade:

–  I remember I loved the Christmas play, and still have a tape my father made, with Lee Gaillard saying" I God, whom all the world hath wrought, Heaven and earth and all of naught, I see my people in deed and thought are foully set in sin Man that I made I will destroy ...  The first Church in Riverside, CT puts on "Noya's Fludde" every 4 years and the text is the same. I remember the day they took the pictures of us all on the playground jungle gym. That photograph was put on all our hand-made diplomas. It was a wonderful time and education and perhaps my all time favorite was the May-pole and the Scottish country dancing  that we called "May Day."

From Stephanie

• First grade with Mrs. Beech was a nightmare! Do you all remember those reading cards with a stack of words which we were to match to the card and then put the ones we knew in a stack? I remember sitting next to you, Harald, and you told me lots of the words which I put in my "I know these" stack, but when Mrs. Beech came around to check I couldn't remember any of them!!

• Perhaps one of the best was the day that "scary" Ms. Corbiere sailed into the basement of our 5th grade classroom an hour late for school because she had failed to change her clock to daylight savings time! We all loved that!

• My fondest memory is of my classmates. I can actually remember where each of us sat each year! As in the TV series — you were my "Band of Brothers" (and sisters) — bonded in adversity, but triumphant at the end! I even remember that Jeremy and I share the same birthday.

From Serafina

• When I remember my days at the Foote School, the overall feeling is that we learned to PLAY at the Foote school!

• Whether the PLAY included the Maypole ("all the birds sing up in the trees, now the spring is coooom-ing"), the Christmas Play ("and I, the prophet Isaiah hath seen many sweet things whereon this day we may make mirth") or the playground ( that somewhat cramped asphalt island in front of the school where we threw balls and ran around).  These specific places and times are only the surface of what sank deep into my psyche. There was a sense of time that expanded infinitely outward into a world where it felt safe to play and imagine the parts and the roles that were possible.

• I remember the school presenting very little thought of competition and very little about winning and losing. I think the freedom I am describing was the result of some powerful women who were guiding us — Mrs Sturley, Mrs. Paul, Madame Oreffice, and above all Mrs. Hitchcock.

• I remember memorizing Shakespeare and other poets and reciting them in front of Mrs. Hitchcock's class?  What a fabulous kind of play that was.  These women were great goddess figures for me, archetypes, with huge authority over our lives at the school.  It was they who made play into such an expansive and potential thing. In retrospect, they gave us the boundaries and the good manners and rules, but not too much arbitrary punishment.

• Maybe I never played like that again in schools.  All that fluidity and fun went away.  I loved it at Foote and I felt torn apart when my father insisted on taking us all to Washington to live after 7th grade.

From Nancy

• The first grade room had a coat closet that was attached to the room. The teacher, Mrs. Beach, called it a "Cloak Room."  She was forever putting me in it. I think I spent half my first grade year in her "Cloak Room."  I remember, even at that early age, thinking I was very funny — but she never did — and she responded to my humor by putting me in her "Cloak Room."

• I remember Mrs. Hitchcock bringing wonderful speakers to our Foote School assemblies. She would always tell the speaker not to talk down to us as we were very smart. She would also lecture us on things like our civic duties and the importance of the League of Women Voters. She loved Mrs. Roosevelt and I always saw a slight resemblance.

• I remember the huge flip board that held Mrs. Sturley's English songs that she loved so much and wanted us all to know and sing.  She had a long wooden pointer that she used to help us follow the words — and when the page was finished - she would flip it over and continue.

• I remember climbing the Canner Street hill to play sports on what was then an open field and is now the land on which the Foote School sits. I loved playing sports but never liked walking that hill — it always seemed so steep.

From Larry Kingsbury

• I think our first grade teacher, Mrs. Beech, would have been a highly successful warden in a women's prison. The coat closet was a place where you were sent to if you needed to be disciplined. It was large closet with a door that was attached and part of the first grade room.                                                 

• I remember having to go to the bathroom and she would not let me out of the classroom  to go — which then resulted in a puddle on the floor. That was not a good day for Mrs. Beach or for me.

• Mrs. Beach would have taken the credit for teaching me to read — but sadly that was not so. The Irish maids at home spent hours teaching me that if it was "dog" on page two then the same word would still be "dog" on page six.  That is how my reading really started — home schooling.

• Mrs. Ellis, who taught second grade, and who I liked very much, provided a definite time of relief. I learned a valuable lesson about cheating that year.  I remember taking an arithmetic test and as I went to sharpen my pencil - I looked at a person's paper on the way back to my seat and saw a different answer than mine on one of the questions. I changed my answer on my sheet.  The other person received an "X" on the question and therefore so did I. I remember this so distinctly and it was a really valuable lesson on cheating.

• I remember going to the lunch room and seeing Mrs. Corbiere every day having her peanut butter nab crackers that came in a package - this was obviously a delight.  And I remember Mrs. Oreffice, Paola's mom, coming into the classroom and I instinctively knew that I was in the midst of a no-nonsense person. I behaved myself and I believe I picked up quite a bit of French.

• I dreaded sports  but I loved the  arts — especially  music.  I remember getting a trumpet-looking instrument that actually was a harmonica and proudly playing it in Woolsey Hall. Mrs. Nahum, Jeremy's mom, was a big influence on my appreciation of music.  Speaking of Jeremy, I was so jealous of him because he could drive a car — who cared if it was only up and down his driveway.  He actually drove up and down, up and down, etc.

• Mrs. Hitchcock loved us all and took us in her arms as her children. Years later when I was on the faculty at the Hamden Hall Day School she came to visit.  She saw me and came up and said, "I always knew you would do well.". You can't get much better than that.

• Mrs. Sturley was so proper and yet she, too, loved and cared for us. My grades were dismal when I graduated. My parents went up to her and expressed their concern over their son.  She turned to my parents and commented, "with his smile he will do just fine."  This seems simplistic, and yet, how many people are smiling at each other in this day and age.

• Diana dear, you were an education all by yourself. Your polio struck me hard and was the first real contact with human limitations and suffering. I broke my leg, but I knew I would heal — but you with those heavy braces from your polio — what would be the outcome?  One day running the course of a child, the next, the restraints.

• Mr. White has to be mentioned because it is part of our history. Teacher, shop teacher, Cub Scout leader. He even tutored me at his home. But I do remember him throwing a pair of pliers at someone in class. My first contact with rage.  I learned that Mr. White had committed suicide at his home. There were the good times with Mr. White, but I never had a notion of his tortured soul.

• I had a mad crush on Susie Jackson — even had a date with her. Both of us sitting in the back seat of a car with my sister driving.  That was the date.

• I still love Foote.  And thank you, Nancy, for welcoming me into your home during the Foote days. You and your family treated me like family.  Although I lived in a house — it was your place where I found what it was like to be in a home with a loving family.