Wolfeboro Camp School June 23, 2015

Short reading at opening faculty meeting, Wolfeboro Camp School, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Tuesday, June 23, 2015. Ed Cooper, Head of School.

I’ve been retired for 14 years, so I have to find ways to stay in touch with kids and schools. One way is through you guys. Another is through grandchildren, especially athletes. I’m going to start with a couple of soccer poems (I’m guessing we have some soccer people here).

GOALKEEPERS

Packs of four-year olds

Chase the soccer ball around the field.

No one wants to play in goal,

And those who do gaze at dandelions

With other defenders

Similarly disinclined,

Feet planted on the end line

Hoping the game will not come their way.

Those who come to love the game

See in time a chance to do

What someone has to do,

Face down attackers,

Take on and share burdens,

Leap, dive, roll,

And, learning life’s geometry,

Come out to cut down the angle.

The motif of the athlete dying young is as old as literature itself. Yet one is always surprised at the extent of its reach.

FOR PHILIP AT FIFTEEN

The life of a friend, a teammate

Ended

Suddenly, inexplicably:

You honored him by playing hard,

By standing for him

In the chancel,

All of you, your uniforms

Still damp from trying,

As if you did not already know

Of the fragileness of life.

42 years in NAIS schools will give you a lense through which you look at everything, things close at hand and others in the distant past. This is a piece about Golden Pines, a term I use to describe both a place and a time in people’s lives.

THE SYMPHONY BUS

We like to jest that Golden Pines

Is rather like a school,

New residents—freshmen—

Compare over hors d’oeuvres

Places lived, who knew whom,

Where and when.

The higher-ups must deal, not with

The disaffected parents of their charges

But with their young.

So this evening, sitting on the bus

At the symphony hall,

I thought of the frantic French Club chaperone,

Searching the streets of Montreal.

A friend of ours, early in the onset

Of something or other,

Had gone out the wrong door and

Wandered into the dangerous night

Of an unknown city.

Anxious minutes until they found him.

I told myself:

Well, he is eight or nine years older than we are:

Maybe just five.

Then a look back in time—keep in mind these are things that happened 65 years ago.

MIKE FREEDMAN AT WINTERCROFT SCHOOL:

PENNSYLVANIA 1950

1.

At our little grade school,

Progressive—wooden bungalows,

Open air, dim light in winter,

Blankets brought from home—

Mike Freedman and I were the jesters:

Instead of learning our Latin conjugations

We devised a synthetic tongue

We called Reboshkan

And began an epic on Der Fertz,

Garbage Man of Rheims in the Time of Charlemagne.

Tom Carlisle, our wise headmaster,

Cut us some slack,

Allowed us to perform at lunch

Parodies set to tunes

We sang in Music class—

“It was from Tom Carlisle’s big beer party

We were seeing Nellie home.”

Mr. Carlisle let us have a baseball team.

To put nine on the field

We had to use fifth graders,

Even girls. Gerry pitched and I caught.

Mike didn’t play.

He did earn a doctorate, I think.

It did not come to us until much later

How much we owed Tom Carlisle.

2.

I wonder from time to time

What became of Mike—

Went off to boarding school

After eighth grade,

Wound up, we heard or imagined,

A professor of something somewhere.

He was our age but seemed older,

With a vast and profane knowledge.

Gerry and I marveled, were puzzled

At the information he possessed

About girls, about private parts.

Gerry died some years ago

Of those cigarettes we shared

In the sad back alleys

Of those young Rust Belt days.

Without success I’ve looked for Mike

On the Internet, curious

With that urge that comes

Of being almost 80

To learn how things turned out,

A baroque quartet

Come back around,

A resolving, a tying off.

Some of you may remember the poem I’ve read at the Greenwood festival, that ends with the lines:

I tell the dark-haired boy

You have written a poem;

That makes you a poet.

I tell the kids that not everyone believes that, but I hope they do. And I hope you do, too, that in your work here this summer you will continue to find and nurture talent and success in young people who had not thought it possible, and that, as always, great kindness will come of it. Thank you.

Wolfeboro Opening Faculty Meeting June 24, 2014

Short reading at opening faculty meeting, Wolfeboro Camp School, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Tuesday, June 24, 2014. Ed Cooper, Head of School.

I read this first piece at a faculty meeting at my old school, a day school in North Carolina, and realized that it might make more sense to a bunch of boarding school guys.

FACULTY KIDS

I tracked them down

On their school’s website,

Both of them teachers,

Their little girl growing up

In a boarding school dormitory,

As I had done, seventy years ago.

I wonder if people ask her

If this is really their home,

If they go somewhere else

When school is out.

There will be older girls

For her to idolize:

The three-point shooter,

The lead in the musical,

And others to make fun of her,

Unaware, teachers’ kids always on display.

She will have friends in town

But not be quite one of them.

In time she will come to terms with it,

Perhaps some Easter weekend years from now,

When her child is looking at schools,

And, like Frost’s mud-time men,

See there must be a place

Somewhere

That we should call home.

I want to read a Rust Pond piece, partly because it gives me a chance to hold up my new book After Labor Day. The picture on the cover is our cottage, which you’ll see when you go…

KAYAKING AROUND THE POND

Quiet pond morning in July,

Kayak gliding alongside the past:

A pine tree, now bare, reaches out

Over the shallow bay;

Julys ago our girls

Stood here to pose, then bravely splash

Into the warm, yellow-sand lake, ankle deep.

On the hill we used to climb

The craggy overlook socked in,

Growth of dense green years.

Just as well:

The view we loved now shows

Other hills laid bare for condos.

I paddle home

Against a fresh breeze;

Shoulders that have seen seventy summers

Pull against water heavy with time,

Past the cottages of my father’s friends.

I don’t see anyone here of the right age, but you might keep this approach in mind at the point when you are…

APPROACHING RETIREMENT

Where he teaches

Pewter cups have replaced the gold watch.

The head of school considers them

A classy touch

But people smirk and roll their eyes,

Which he used to think unfair

Until recently.

And so he ponders:

I may decline the cup.

The years are mine:

I will not risk entrusting them

To summary or tribute.

I will slip away, like the old baseball man,

In the bottom of the fifth,

In a game that doesn’t matter,

One man out,

No one on base.

If you were at this meeting last June, and the Literary Festival, then this will be the third time you have heard this last piece. I want to read it again because I hope it speaks to the work you will be doing here this summer. It is in memory of George Greenwood:

IN THE FACULTY GROVE

Benches have been arranged,

A kind of tabernacle;

August light filters through

New Hampshire pines and oaks

As if through stained glass.

We have gathered for a reading

And note the absence of

Fathers and mentors,

Teachers and friends,

How they would have urged on

These young people, seeking after

Poetry, in words new to them.

I tell the dark-haired boy:

You have written a poem;

That makes you a poet.

In your work here this summer, may you continue to find and nurture the poets of the future, the artists, inventors, leaders in business and government, and may great kindness come of it. Thanks very much.

Wolfeboro Opening Faculty meeting June 25, 2013

On June 25, 2013, I did a brief reading for the opening faculty meeting of the 104th session of the Wolfeboro Summer Boarding School, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Ed Cooper, Head of School.

 CLOSING UP THE COTTAGE OCTOBER 2012

I ascribe human attributes,

To our cottage on the pond,

And why not:

Four generations of

Idiosyncratic postures,

Favorite chairs,

The smiles of grandsons

Around each corner,

In every splash off the dock,

Scent of decades of pine rooms,

My father’s shaving brush,

Memories in other artifacts

We did not buy.

So when we leave,

Packing up board games

Along with Beth’s shy grin,

We ease out onto the lane,

Regret visceral

Until about the Massachusetts line.

The cottage, at first forlorn,

Has figured out what’s going on,

Recognizes the red kayak,

An intruder in the guest room,

But, relaxing under its cover of

Newspaper, moth balls,

Frayed bedspreads,

Like an old bear we know,

Dozes off for the winter.

First Place, Spring 2013 Contest

Poetry Society of New Hampshire

LAST WEEK OF JUNE

Yellow pollen no longer lies thick

Upon the surface of the pond

But lingers suspended like Kool-Aid;

Tiny cones falling, their seed spilled,

No need to stain the deck until they stop.

Thermometer dangles in the water,

Says 71 this morning.

Here is what it means:

Not long until the Congregational Church

Swells with harmonies of pride

(Patriot dream, beyond the years),

Not long until our grandson

Bursts the silence of a July morning

With a cannonball off the end of the dock.

A couple of school poems. The title, "The Headmaster" is not a current usage and tells you this is not about someone any of you has ever known. But you may have run across someone like this in your travels...

THE HEADMASTER

He knew all the students,

Would call them by name,

Walking across the quad

Between ivied classes,

Tried to say to each

Something cheerful, personal:

Good game last night, Phil,

Or: Liked your op-ed piece.

He went to their concerts,

Their debates and swimming meets.

He thought they liked him.

It came to him later,

When he was working somewhere else,

That his best love

Had gone into the spam folders

Of their adolescent hearts.

Let me close with something more upbeat, which in fact bears upon your work here this summer. Last August I was privileged to participate in the Greenwood Literary Festival, a wonderful experience, and wrote the following piece, which appeared in last summer's edition of The Rust Ponder.

IN THE FACULTY GROVE

In memory of George Greenwood

Benches have been arranged,

A kind of tabernacle;

New Hampshire pines and oaks

Filter August light

As if through stained glass.

We have gathered for a reading

And note the absence of

Fathers and mentors,

Teachers and friends,

How they would have urged on

These young people, seeking after

Poetry, in words new to them.

I tell the dark-haired boy:

You have written a poem;

That makes you a poet.

Some of you may remember that last June I read a poem by Howard Nemerov titled "September, the First Day of School," which ends with the words: "But may great kindness come of it in the end." For your work here this summer, I wish you much success, that you will come upon new poets, and that great kindness will come of it. Thank you.

Greenwood Festival August 2012

The Wolfeboro Summer Boarding School holds an annual  Poetry and Prose Festival, in memory of George Greenwood, beloved English teacher at Wolfeboro and at The Episcopal Academy in Pennsylvania. On the occasion of the August 2012 festival, I wrote the poem below:

IN THE FACULTY GROVE

In memory of George Greenwood

Benches have been arranged,
A kind of tabernacle;

New Hampshire pines and oaks

Filter August light

As if through stained glass.

We have gathered for a reading

And note the absence of

Fathers and mentors,

Teachers and friends,

How they would have urged on

These young people, seeking after

Poetry, in words new to them.

I tell the dark-haired boy:

You have written a poem;

That makes you a poet.

Wolfeboro Opening Faculty Meeting June 26, 2012

On June 26, 2012, I did a brief reading for the opening faculty meeting of the 103rd session of the Wolfeboro Summer Boarding School, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Ed Cooper, Head of School.

As you might guess I've attended quite a few opening faculty meetings over the years and am flattered to be included in this one. I'd like to read three pieces, two by me, one by someone else; two about the opening of school, the other about our setting here on Rust Pond. 

Summer School

1.

Next to our cottage is a tutoring camp;

My father taught there summers ago.

I walk along the lane behind the tents

They use for classrooms

And listen to the commingled voices

Of young teachers and their kids.

Much of it is new and strange, of course,

But some I recognize:

Third person plural, active voice…

What Gatsby really means…

And I am carried back to

Forty years in schools:

A mug of hot coffee

To put my hand around on cool mornings,

A smile for the 14-year-old,

Embarrassed at his mistake,

Wanting to try again.

2.

I came upon my father’s grade book today,

On the cottage shelf

Where we put it when he died,

Twenty years ago now.

I wish that he’d retired

While his memories were all good ones.

I see him in his classroom by the pond,

Leaning forward, wanting to tell a boy or two,

Sullen, not unkind, needing credits,

About the Generation of ’98,

But struggling with the preterite, I think.

Then the meaning comes to me:

A tutor is someone who keeps you safe.

In my head of school days, I always read this poem by the late American poet Howard Nemerov at the opening faculty meeting. I hope it will speak to you as it always has to me.

September, The First Day of School  (Howard Nemerov)

I
My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.

Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible

Bow down before it, as in Joseph's dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.

II

A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare's Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler's Law,
As from the whole, inseparably, the lives,

The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its form

Nor hope to know it. May the fathers he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.

The meadow begins here at the lodge and runs past the girls' campus, ending at the Greenwood property. In another poem I wrote of it this way: "That it is a pleasant scene, no one disputes/To call it beautiful, a matter of memory and hope..."

By the Meadow: June 2007

Betsy Winbourne, now eighty,

Rakes hay in the meadow at midday—

You would not do this a month from now;

Up from Boston, opening the cottage.

No sign of the Woodleys;

They say his tumor has come back,

His fields thick with timothy and clover,

In need of Seth to mow,

If one knew where Seth had gone.

I walk along the lane

Gathering the winter’s news:

Someone’s cellar flooded,

Someone’s well has failed,

Bears in the woods, taking out bird feeders.

And yet:

The young leaves, the greens, the light,

So various, so fresh with innocent hope:

It is early June in New Hampshire

And the world seems possible.

May your world and the worlds of those you serve this summer be possible, and may great kindness come of it.

Bob Demaree

June 26, 2012

School Anniversary Poetry Readings

WOLFEBORO: THE SUMMER BOARDING SCHOOL
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
POETRY READING


On Sunday, August 16, 2009, Bob Demaree presented a program of poetry as part of the 100th anniversary celebration of Wolfeboro: The Summer Boarding School, in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. Ed Cooper, Head of School, presided.


Thank you, Ed. I’m honored to be part of this occasion. As I looked around at the reception yesterday, I thought I might be among the older alumni returning for the weekend, but would not win the prize for distance traveled. For 54 years we have been your next-door neighbors. This morning I want to share some pieces that address the things you and I have in common, the experience of the independent school world, and Rust Pond. You will recognize the setting.


SUMMER SCHOOL

1.

Next to our cottage is a tutoring camp;
My father taught there summers ago.
I walk along the lane behind the tents
They use for classrooms
And listen to the commingled voices
Of young teachers and their kids.
Much of it is new and strange, of course,
But some I recognize:
Third person plural, active voice…
What Gatsby really means…
And I am carried back to
Forty years in schools:
A mug of hot coffee
To put my hand around on cool mornings,
A smile for the 14-year-old,
Embarrassed at his mistake,
Wanting to try again.

2.

I came upon my father’s grade book today,
On the cottage shelf
Where we put it when he died,
Twenty years ago now.
I wish that he’d retired
While his memories were all good ones.
I see him in his classroom by the pond,
Leaning forward, wanting to tell a boy or two,
Sullen, not unkind, needing credits,
About the Generation of ’98,
But struggling with the preterite, I think.
Then the meaning comes to me:
A tutor is someone who keeps you safe.



The next piece arises from this place, and from the fact that I spent 42 years working with students in grades 9-12. And I should say here that poetry is neither journalism nor fiction but is closer to fiction.


ADOLESCENTS

On our pond is a coed summer camp.
In the first week you see the boys
Walking on the lane:
The blond, handsome ones,
Already grouped, laughing,
Casual, expensive clothes,
Punching each other on the arm;
Others, by twos and threes,
Make tentative overtures, risk friendship;
A few alone, head down, thinking of home.
The girls keep to themselves.
It is quiet these first days;
By midseason, noisy with adolescent camaraderie.
In the last weeks you see them on the pond
In pairs, boys and girls,
Kayaking along the rocky shore.




RUBBINGS

The graveyard came with the property,
The realtor had told my dad;
So each summer I take some time
To clear out the corner of our land
Where the Peavey family lies.
New Hampshire law requires this of me,
Or so my father thought,
But I believe I would do it anyway:
The Peaveys were tenants for the folk
Who farmed these acres beside the pond
Before forest reclaimed field
And realtors drew maps of shorefront lots.
Down the lane a proper granite wall
Protects the owners’ graves,
And people take snapshots
Of scrubbed headstones in ordered rows.
The Peaveys have not fared so well:
With ungloved hands
I uproot weed and bramble
And the beginnings of little trees.
Like my father before me
I do not have the proper tools
Or know the right names for things.
I leave in place the fragile ferns
And the ground cover
My mother called clintonia.
The headstones tilt at different angles
Like dancers in a tableau turned askew--
Our girls took rubbings of them
Years ago, for their grandparents’ pleasure:
One, in a far corner, almost hidden,
All but on the ground,
Marked only with initials:
Perhaps a child taken before his time
Or a hired man
Seeking the New Hampshire home
Of which Frost spoke.


Requiescatis, Peaveys,
And rest well, too,
Parents and grandparents,
Whose headstones are far from here
But whose presence fills these woods
And the furniture we have not moved.
May your sleep be like the nap one takes
On the porch, some gentle July afternoon
With its fine, light breeze off the pond,
After a swim in those pristine waters
Which only a glacier could have made.


The formation you see across the pond was once called Mt. Chase, but most of us know it as Longstack.


LONGSTACK

The only place it is a mountain is from our dock.
Driving around, I have seen it from other angles,
No more than undulations
In the New Hampshire landscape.
But across the pond it rises
Gently, right to left,
And runs asymmetrically along a ridge
Perhaps a mile,
Sloping at last toward the big lake.
It is the remembered view
We carry home at the end of summer.
In my binoculars I can see
New A-frames in the high meadow
On the near slope.
I do not begrudge them their gated driveway,
Their view of the pond,
That they have taken up residence
In our field of vision,
Their binoculars trained, I suppose, on us.


My father taught at The Hill School in Pennsylvania from 1944 to 1969 and started coming to Wolfeboro in 1947. So he is of a line that began with George Robins and continues today with Bob Parker. I guess the reason I’ve always liked “On Golden Pond” is because it’s about academics from Pennsylvania who loved coming to New England in the summer.


MEMORIAL SERVICE: PENNSYLVANIA 1994

The school motto, in gothic letters,
On the altar, dark, angular,
The patina of old wood against exposed brick:
Boarding school boys sing a requiem
For a headmaster they had not known.
My father taught here then, years ago,
And I, maladapted son and student to them both,
Have come a long journey of memory and regret,
Representing one shade to another.
In the worn walnut pew
I hear the eulogists recall their mentor:
Does it matter that my remembrance is not the same?
The choir recesses against a January sky:
There I am, the sullen boy behind the crucifer.

Outside the oak-beamed dining hall
Odors and textures jump across time:
Cheese soufflé cooking on Saturday morning,
Wet wool drying in steam heat.
Over coffee I speak to classmates after forty years
But do not stay for lunch,
Pleasantries left like cream not stirred.
Sand and soot grate upon the ice beneath my shoes
Past mounds of graying snow
In the visitors’ parking lot.



The next several pieces deal with the experience of working in schools.


FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

New in town, she waits for the school bus
Alone,
At the edge of the crowd,
And thinks of a place where
Others would stare instead at her,
Envious of friendship’s familiarity,
Careless, insolent.

She sees another girl, solitary, head down,
Her skirt and blouse a truce
Negotiated of her mother’s expectations and her own.
Should she speak, should she risk suggesting lunch?

The bus approaches.
She clutches her fragile shield
Against the long moments of being fourteen:
New book bag, new organizer,
Velcro snap for her new laptop.




DEDICATION

At the school where he taught
The yearbook dedication was always a surprise.
At the assembly that year
They gave it to the track coach:
Very fitting, he thought, much deserved.
He had worn a nice jacket, though.



The next piece will ring a bell with day school teachers more than with your boarding school colleagues. I suppose I should have some misgivings about this piece, but I don’t. So I’ll just say this is probably not about anyone you know….


CAR POOL

Tennis skirts taut,
Private school parents
Preen in parking lots,
Over the low rumble of
Escalades idling, double parked:
The French teacher is nice, they think, but hard;
The tuition high, the headmaster glib,
And the Danish at the coffee just now
Maybe a little stale.



TWO OLD TEACHERS

Forty years ago I watched a friend retire:
Box upon box of brittle notes,
Purple ditto masters, faded and smeared,
Slowly down the paneled English hall,
Keats’ bust staring.
Yesterday I deleted computer files,
Obscure lore with links to the arcane.
Are you sure, the machine asked.
Perhaps was not an option.


I meant to include various aspects of school work. The next piece dates from my days as a head of school in Louisiana, and it deals with maintenance.


HAROLD

He worked for the firm
That cleans our building.
The night before he died
We walked the school together.
With amiable displeasure
I had shown him things,
Unstripped wax,
Unwiped blinds and louvers,
And we lamented
(Him an old school man, too)
How kids are these days,
Trouble getting good help.
Someone else must make some sense
Of the notes he took that night.
The company doesn’t know
Who they’ll send us now.
See, there on top of the lockers,
In the dust caught in the afternoon’s late light,
Furrows plowed by the
Fingers of a hand which
Something tells me
Must have been his.


I do not often write about public events, and when I do, it is because I cannot not write. The horrific events of April 2007 in Blacksburg, Virginia, gave rise to this piece, which I see is, of course, about teaching:



VIRGINIA TECH

Film loops roll all day:
College kids, police running,
Another cable news orgy of violence
That Dylan Thomas might refuse to mourn:
Young dancers who will not see the stage,
Second Amendment rights upheld.
Politicians, journalists, poets
Insinuate themselves upon the grief of others.
What can be remembered that might help?
Two things: that college cheer,
Incongruous at first,
A cry of pain and hope;
And the old professor,
The Holocaust survivor,
Rising bravely to protect his students.
I picture him moving toward the door,
Thinking:
I’ve seen worse than this.


Epilogue: Haiku


Across the campus,
Cell phones in lifeless trousers
Ringing, still ringing.


I imagine several of you have had the privilege of having your own children in your schools. In our family for several years we set out, all four of us, for the same school. I see your sons and daughters riding their bicycles and tricycles on the lane, and I hope that, if not now, then surely later, they will come to treasure, as I have, the experience of growing up in the world of the independent school, and of summers on Rust Pond. I want to close this morning with a piece that touches on some of this. It is part of the title piece of my book, Fathers and Teachers; the person addressed directly is the American poet Howard Nemerov.


LINES WRITTEN THE DAY AFTER VIRGINIA’S GRADUATION
MAY 30, 1984

The gym is empty now--
Graduation was last night.
The polished floor is lightly scuffed
By the shoes of girls in long white dresses:
The rented chairs are stacked against the wall,
And beside them yesterday’s magnolias and
My orange extension cord
And the discarded programs,
Where you said they’d be.

Last night I shared my daughter’s joy
With the calmness of a minister at a wedding,
Or a funeral:
A school man on a working day.

But something has come to me today,
Walking the halls,
Picking up after graduation:
Here is where she stood last night to give her speech,
And here is where she sat laying out the newspaper,
And here her desk for calculus or English,
Or where she tried out for cheerleader:
And here are all the places of the part of her life
We thought was ours
But is no more.

An empty school, the day after graduation,
In the cool and eerie light of the sun’s eclipse--
They say this will not happen again
For thirty years or so:
I wonder if I shall see it.
The men are moving the rented organ now,
And I suppose that if I leave the flowers where they are today
They will still be there in September,
Dried, brittle, incongruous against the opening of school.

It has dawned on me thorough this day’s strange, dream-like light
That I have indeed lived to see her coming forth:
My tears belong to ritual,
As you said they would.

It has dawned on me through this day’s strange, dream-like light
That Virginia doesn’t go to school here anymore.
The men carrying away the rented chairs
Disrupt the practice of the cheerleaders:
My younger daughter squints in the now-bright sun of noontime
And plans with friends for other days.


Thank you for coming this morning. I’ve enjoyed being with you.

GREENSBORO DAY SCHOOL 40TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

On April 24, 2010, Greensboro Day School in Greensboro, N.C., celebrated its 40th anniversary. Bob Demaree, who served there for 17 years as Upper School Director and Director of Financial Aid, College Guidance and Publications, was asked to write and read for the occasion the poem below:


HEARTS BEHELD:
GREENSBORO DAY SCHOOL, APRIL 2010

Entering the story
About a third of the way through,
I tried to tell of its unfolding.
We recall two leaders:
One whose sense of historic irony
Turned to confidence a hopeful, uneasy past;
One whose warm, baritone arias
Dreamed beyond what the founders dreamt.
Another has come to fulfill those visions,
A school in the fullness of time.
I think of a tournament in Asheville,
Nineteen eighty-seven,
A loss, a snowfall, a hope that would be redeemed,
The cheerleaders, my daughter among them,
Singing “Lean on Me”:
I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on;
I’m right up the road,
I’ll share your load,
If you’ll just
Call me.