Harvey School September 1957 to May 1958 Michael West, Class of 1958 We Were Still at Hawthorne Circle… the Day My Father

1 Harvey School September 1957 to May 1958 Michael West, Class of 1958 We were still at Hawthorne Circle… The day my father dropped me off on a sunny September day, I remember my excitement, getting checked in and then getting fitted for a football uniform. As I was trying on a new pair of cleats, my father said, “Well, I’ll be going now.” He turned to go back to the car and drive off - leaving me there. Suddenly, it was like an anvil fell on me from out of nowhere… a deep homesickness hit me in the center of my solar plexus, making me want to cry, something I knew I never wanted anyone to know. Instead, I sank into a prolonged quiet for most of the time I was at Harvey, pushing myself from class to class, day to day. My room was at the end of the school building, on the second floor, with Frank Graves and Tom Marston. A bank of windows looked out on Hawthorne Circle. Sometimes at night, I would watch the cars carrying people to their homes and I wished I could be in one of them at the same time that I enjoyed just daydreaming about the cars and the people, so near to the excitement and possibilities of NewYork City, so close. I felt something of the same wistful longing to be like a day student after sports in the late afternoon when the parents of Day Students would drive into the gravel circle in front of the School House to take those lucky kids home each evening. The afternoons themselves had been something of a struggle, meeting the demands of school, now on the sports fields, whereas before, I would leave school shortly after three o’clock and go home, having the rest the afternoon and evening to myself. Some of the songs of that time – Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, The Dorseys, etc. – are played from time to time now and they remind me of Harvey, something sweet and pleasant from youth, something melancholy. Weekends were the toughest because, basically, they were boring. Mr. Shea was after us to get out of our rooms to ‘enjoy’ the fresh air (and out of his hair). Being bored on top of homesick made the weekends difficult and easy to forget. I do not remember many activities of the weekends, except, perhaps Friday evenings when Mr. and Mrs. Smith invited 5th Formers, including me, to their home where they served cookies and cocoa and Mr. Smith read us stories. It was homey and comforting. He was good at conversing with us young folks. On Sunday morning, a minister from General Theological Seminary came to lead a church service, also a comfort however short lived, as he would hurry back to his home to enjoy Sunday afternoon separate from Harvey. There were some breaks on weekends when one teacher or another would take a few of us to area prep schools for sports events, such as English teacher, Mr. Neville, driving us in his blue VW convertible to watch Kent play Taft in football. I do remember activities during the week, which was hectic, always beginning with making our beds and cleaning our rooms, all for inspection by the ever neat and clean Mr. Shea. Actually, I enjoyed it that our rooms were required to be kept tidy, Mr. Shea inspecting the bottom sheet for Square Corners and tight fit before the covers were pulled up, all of them uniform. After breakfast, we gathered for a School Assembly, with a prayer led by Mr. Smith and a song with Mr. Terry playing the piano. (Mr. Terry: Tall and lean, he was a superb musician and superb athlete, who put butter and pepper on his oatmeal, rather than cream and sugar – he insisted his kids eat oatmeal that way, too, to their chagrin, judging from their young faces and slowness in eating.) After that, we hurried through the day, with me dragging my homesickness, hiding my urge to cry at any time, worrying about doing well scholastically as I went from class to class, learning Algebra with Mr. Smith (“Oh! What a prune!” he would lament loudly, raising his face to the heavens as he paced back and forth around his desk at the head of the classroom, a yellow pencil and open text book in hand whenever we confused monomials with polynomials or whatever else we first-year Algebra students would confuse. ), Latin with Mr. Shea, who was always beautifully dressed and precise, and English with Mr. Magnan, who served up an occasional “Noogie” when Jon Birch or others “hacked” around 2 in class (“Assume the position, Mr. Birch!”). I began to learn and appreciate binomials, good writing and Latin which I continued to study for four more years, finally realizing language was no more my forté than sports. The disciplines, though, helped me get into Kent, something I finally, now, appreciate a great deal, and my Harvey classes in Algebra helped me get into Kent without being held back for a year, as happened with some others of my Kent classmates. (Note 1: I entered South Kent School after Harvey, but transferred to Kent in the Fall of 1959. I graduated from Kent in 1962. Note 2: I was taken out of sports in the middle of the Football Season in the Fall of1958 at South Kent School when it was learned, at Yale University Hospital, that I had a heart murmur, a reason that I was not strong in Body or at sports even though I was a boy in a family of excellent, strong athletes, my older brother earning Football All State honors in his senior year. In 1965, I finally went to the University of Michigan Hospital for open heart surgery to correct the problems, and it opened a new life for me as I gained needed weight, suffered less from colds and flu, etc., less tired during the day and not feeling cold most of the time. I could lead a relatively normal life, finally.) I was never good at sports, so I sanded splinters from the benches on game days. It was fun, though, to be part of an undefeated football team, coached by Mr. Magnan who lead our exercises wearing a Marine Corps gray sweatshirt with a hood, starting by raising his hands high above his head while praying: “Allahhhh and down and through, his hands dropping to the grass, his legs straight at the knees. I actually got on the playing field a few times, when, late in the game, Harvey was ahead by a mile and Mr. Magnan didn’t want to run up the score against the opposing team. With me, and others of my athletic prowess, it was a safe bet Harvey would not embarrass any opposition. With Harvey School sports, it was the first time I encountered traveling to a “foreign” school where the smells and sights were different from Harvey, especially their locker rooms, but they made me start to appreciate Harvey as a home base. It was a first, too, for me to enjoy the tradition of “Victory Ties.” Whenever the football or soccer team won a game, the players enjoyed wearing a “Victory Tie,” “Victory” meaning the loudest, most obnoxiously vile tie you could find. As a team, we succeeded in finding a plethora of the worst of the worst. A widespread choice was the bright lime-greenish yellow or pink, but in any case fluorescent, tie favored by many players for the unmistakable retina-burning, stomach turning affectation that those ties inevitably. From some friends from Rumson, New Jersey, I was delivered a somewhat garish tie with a bright burgundy at the top, where the knot formed, with a beautiful yellow-gold background on the main part of the tie, to highlight burgundy and blue saxophone, piano, guitar and slide trombone, floating aimlessly and at jaunty angles, with colorful musical notes punctuating the effectI wish I could find that tie now, just to gross out people from time to time at parties, or at least serve as a conversation piece. (I’m too sexy for my tie, too sexy for my tie, too sexy for my tie and my shirt… Oh so sexy they hurt!) After beating Children’s Village at the end of the season, undefeated, Charlie LeFebure favored us with a full neck-around effect of a full rafter of “Victory” ties, not at all concerned that they did not all fit under his shirt collar. By count, he managed to wear eight to ten of them, like a veritable carnival tie huckster. Lee Comfort and Eddie Winslow (’59) were star running backs, Freddie DeRham was a hard-•-hitting fullback and Peter Cook was our steady quarterback. Our linemen – my classmates – were excellent, too. We even beat the vaunted Children’s Village, teamed by some rough kids, the most feared appointment on our schedule. I remember at one point during that game, our center, Michael Burbank, of the New York Burbanks, came off the field with tears in his eyes compliments of the hard hitting by the CV players, most of whom had learned contact sports on the streets of some meaner neighborhoods of New York. Even so, Mike went back in the line when called upon. It was a good example to me and I somewhat idolized this mostly quiet, scholarly-type kid. I met Michael Burbank again when his prep school team came toSouth Kent School to play the SKS team in the fall of 1958.

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