BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES, 1925—NUMBER 5

Laurence Gillelan Leavitt

Perhaps it was in Lew Stillwell's "Cow-Boy Course" that Larry heard Horace Greeley's advice, "Go West, young man." At any rate, West he went the summer of '25 as tutor to the son of the late E. K. Hall, Dartmouth '92. Reports on Larry as a tutor are lacking, but in September the Halls announced his engagement to their daughter Dorothy, who had graduated from Vassar the previous June.

That fall found Larry teaching and coaching football at St. George's School in Newport, R. I.; but in February he went on to Columbia University to do graduate work in history and education. The following June Larry and Dorothy were married, and, after a summer abroad, settled down at Tabor Academy, Marion, Mass.

Larry's work here consisted of teaching history, coaching football and other sports, and acting as housemaster to an assortment of lively fourteen-year-olds. As time passed this program came to include more and more administrative work, not only during the school year but also summers as head of the summer session. An interesting feature at Tabor was the spring cruises, taken by small groups of boys and a master. To Larry's lot fell four trips touching Cuba, Panama, Columbia, Guatemala, and Mexico. Sally Drew Leavitt was born in 1928. In 1929 came another half-year at Columbia, resulting in an M.A. in Education. 1930 was notable for the arrival of Richard Hall Leavitt.

As the years passed, there came to be a favorite topic of conversation in the Leavitt family—the school of which Larry would be headmaster some day. They made a list of qualifications for this educational Castle in Spain. It must be fairly near Hanover; it must be in good skiing and outing club country, and if must be an old school decidedly run down. This latter somewhat dubious asset would insure the new headmaster a free hand.

Finally in 1934 the opportunity came, and Larry became headmaster of Vermont Academy, an old preparatory school located at Saxtons River near Bellows Falls, Vt. The school fitted the requirements remarkably well—just fifty miles from Hanover, in the heart of perfect skiing terrain, and so far run down it was practically out. But fundamentally in spite of lack of paint and a reputation for ringer football teams, Larry felt it had the makings of his idea of a school.

Four years under the new headmaster have brought many changes. The number of boarding students has grown from the thirteen boys inherited from the old regime to a capacity enrollment of ninety-six this fall. All but one of the old brick buildings have been attractively redecorated and a headmaster's house built, planned along Larry's idea of a home used for the social center of this comparatively small school. And because even with an excellent faculty a small school is more a one-man show than a large school, Larry is kept busy. Coaching varsity football and basketball, helping each senior with college plans, encouraging one boy to stand on his own feet and taking the cockiness out of another, planning transportation and meals for a winter week-end with two teams playing away and three at home, criticising plans for additional athletic fields, taxiing a young athlete in town for an X-Ray, figuring the number of carloads of coal to include in the budget,

convincing a stern parent that his child isn't such a problem after allthese are part of the day's work. Considering that much of the work on enrollment and renovations is done in the summer, it doesn't leave much time for clubs or hobbies, in which line Larry can boast only a membership in the Volunteer Fire Department and a little skiing and fishing on the side.

Now that he is a Vermonter, Larry likes to tell the story about the sign put on a dirt road in "mud season""Pick your rut carefully; you will be in it for thirty miles." And he usually adds that he has picked his rut carefully and hopes to be in it for thirty years.

Editorial Note: "Mrs. Larry" is a mighty important cog—not only in the Leavitt household but in the entire Vermont Academy picture

The Secretary's nephew drove East with him last May, and after considering six of the smaller eastern preparatory schools, picked out Vermont Academy to enter this fall.