George School - History

History

George School was founded in 1891 and opened in 1893. It is named for John M. George, who donated much of the money for the school. It was intended as a school for Hicksite members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) who wanted an alternative to Orthodox Westtown School. The two schools have remained friendly rivals in athletics, although the sectarian rift between them was resolved in the 1950s. The Patterson Cup (commonly known as "the moose" for the moose head at Westtown where the tally was kept by hanging tea bags on alternating antlers) is awarded each year to the school which has won the most varsity and junior varsity contests between the schools. An alumni fundraising competition between the schools, the "Machemer Cup" also exists.

The campus was built on 227 acres (0.92 km2) of the Worth Farm. The owners retained 60 acres (240,000 m2), including the 1756 Tate House and 1804 Worth House. The bulk of the school property was given over in the early years to a farm managed for the benefit of the school. The school's milk and much of the meat was produced there into the 1920s. The remaining property including the two historic houses was purchased in 1945. Parts of the campus were leased or given over to Newtown Friends School in 1947 and Pennswood retirement community in 1979.

The first headmaster, George Maris, had been a strong voice in favor of "guarded education," separated from worldly vices, for Hicksite Friends. He was one of the group of Hicksites who courted George and secured a codicil to his will 74 days before his death. He apparently was not an effective headmaster, although the reasons for his lack of success are unclear; he was forced out of his position in 1901, replaced by Joseph Walton, who had also been part of the founding group.

The new headmaster, Joseph Walton, had been a leading candidate for the presidency of Swarthmore College, the Hicksite-sponsored Friends college, in 1898. During his tenure as head of George School (1901–1912), the school overcame what had been a troubled balance sheet by expanding. A new dormitory, Drayton Hall, was built in 1903 (Orton had been built in a fit of optimism in 1897), and the first separate classroom building, Retford Hall, was built in 1903. Unlike Maris, he was an opponent of the idea of "guarded" education, and encouraged arts education. He died of a duodenal ulcer, aged 57.

George Walton, the son of Joseph Walton, served as headmaster from 1912 to 1948, the longest term of any head of school. There was little new construction during his term (the one major building was Bancroft Hall, built in 1931), but considerable social change. The enrollment nearly doubled, from 226 to 425, while the number of Quakers attending remained about the same, lowering the proportion. The first black student was accepted in the 1940s, and social dancing and football were introduced. Outside of the school, he was a prominent voice within the Friends community. He was part of the group that founded the Pendle Hill study center in 1930, and he accompanied two of that group, the well-known writer Rufus Jones and D. Robert Yarnall on a 1938 mission to Germany on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee to allow that group to distribute relief in Poland, then under occupation. After retiring from George School, he was an instrumental figure in reconciling the Hicksite and Orthodox Philadelphia Yearly Meetings in 1955.

Following World War II, teacher Walter Mohr, who had also worked with the American Friends Service Committee, organized affiliations with two German schools, Jacobi Gymnasium for boys in Düsseldorf and Gertraudenschule for girls in Berlin, at first sending relief supplies and organizing student exchanges. In 1950, the first of almost twenty years of German workcamps began. In the late 1960s, these affiliations and work camps began to spread, to Russia, Africa, and Latin America, and came to include work projects domestically.

The next headmaster, Richard McFeely, ushered in an era of campus growth, and of a change to a less formal relationship between students and faculty: he insisted on being addressed by first name, and was generally known as "Mr Dick." McFeely had contracted polio while a student at Swarthmore. He in fact was friendly with Franklin D. Roosevelt, having spent time with him at Warm Springs, Georgia. During his time as head (1948–1966), the Alumni Gym, Hallowell Hall, McFeely Library (so named after his death), and Walton Center were constructed. He was forced to retire because of poor health resulting from his polio, and died within the year.

During the mid-1950s, Julian Bond, later a prominent civil rights leader, attended George School. While he did encounter some cases of racism while attending there, he was impressed by anti-racist philosophy of the school, and first encountered ideas of non-violence and social action. One event in particular involves Bond, a varsity athlete, going to Philadelphia with his white girlfriend while wearing George School apparel. Upon returning he was reprimanded by the dean. George School has claimed it was based on a policy of not wearing George School insignia apparel off-campus, but Bond believed it was based on racism and "That was just like somebody stopping you and slapping you across the face."

Eric Curtis, an Englishman and a former faculty member at Earlham College, was brought in to be the headmaster after McFeely, serving from 1967 (there was an interim head for 1966–67) until 1979. He oversaw a tumultuous time of change in the social relationships within the school, as assertive students and younger faculty battled older faculty and administrators (and the George School Committee) over a variety of procedures. The two major new buildings in his time were the Science Center and the Sports Center.

David Bourns was head of school from 1979 to 2001, when he left to head the Paul Cuffee charter school in Providence, Rhode Island. His time began as a kind of recentering after the tumult of the previous decade. New emphasis on academic rigor was enforced, along with more focused activism: the school built an Alternative Energy Center in the mid-1980s, and for several years hosted a regional "Peace Fair." He was succeeded by Nancy Starmer, the first non-member of the Society of Friends to head the school.

On September 18, 2007, Barbara Dodd Anderson, George School Class of 1950, gave a gift of $128.5 million to George School. The gift is to be received over a period of twenty years from an irrevocable charitable lead trust and is the single largest gift to an existing private school in U.S. history. The gift has its origins with billionaire businessman and philanthropist, Warren Buffett. Buffett was a student of Anderson's father, David Dodd, an economist and professor at Columbia University School of Business. Dodd became an early investor in Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Ms. Dodd stated that "This gift is meant to honor not only my father, David Dodd, and his legacy, but also all of the teachers at George School who had such an impact on me and are so important to their students today. I want to help George School because of the excellence of its faculty and because it is a school without pretensions, where caring for and learning from each other are as important as academic success." Ms. Dodd Anderson, Mr. Buffet, and Mollie Dodd Anderson, granddaughter of Barbara Dodd Anderson were present for the dedication of the new LEED Gold Certified Learning Commons and Mollie Dodd Anderson Library on October 17, 2009.