When I was just a boy, back in 1961, my parents took me and my brother out of public schools and enrolled us in Darlington School, a private boys’ prep school in Rome. Thinking back, I realize it was because Rome schools were just starting to be integrated. I think they were afraid there would be violence, as there had been in other Southern towns. That didn’t happen, fortunately, but we still went to Darlington.
Darlington was not a segregation academy like so many that appeared in the South in those days. However, in addition to being all boys, it was also all white.
It was founded in 1905, and had a pretty decent reputation for academics. The public schools did not, so Darlington insisted that every student that started the fall had to go to summer school to make sure they were ready for sixth grade.
In those days, Darlington affected a sort of English-inspired terminology. Grades six through eight were the Lower Forms, and nine through twelve were the Upper Forms. I was in the first class to go through all three years of the Lower Forms in the brand-new Junior School. My brother Henry started in ninth grade in the Upper Forms.
I was not a great student. OK, but not great. I was not a happy student, either. I was a little uncooperative in some ways, and oblivious to most of what was going on around me. I made my way through the Junior School, then on to High School, just middling along. And then, somehow, I started doing better. I was surprised a few years ago when Henry was recording his memories after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis, when he mentioned that he noticed when I started doing better in school. He also mentioned that I had been, as I mentioned before, uncooperative in some ways. I had no idea that anyone could possibly have noticed.
I ended up pretty close to the top of my class, below a couple of guys who thoroughly deserved to be ranked higher than me.
Those years were probably formative for me, although I persisted in being oblivious to a lot of that. It was easy to be submerged in a culture where academics were valued as a matter of course, and everyone was expected to go to college. I never studied as hard in three different colleges as I did at Darlington. There was no academic shock when I started college. It was only in graduate school that courses became harder than at Darlington.
After I left Darlington, I didn’t maintain any kind of contact with the school or my classmates, other than my friend Dan, Leah’s brother. I ran a race on the cross country course at my 15th class reunion, and a few years later I took some books that a friend was disposing of to the new school library. But for the most part, Darlington has been a part of my past that I didn’t think about or miss.
I have seldom seen anyone I knew from Darlington. I saw one of my favorite teachers, Gordon Neville, at a cross country meet that my nephew ran in sometime in the ’90’s. I saw another teacher at the barber shop about 20 years ago.
And then on Wednesday I saw one of my old teachers in the parking lot at Lowes. I walked up to his car and he rolled down the window. It was history teacher Jack Summerbell. His hair was thinning and gray, and his eyebrows were wild and white, but it was still him. We spoke for a few minutes. Neither of us had been back to Darlington for years. He said the school was unrecognizable. For some reason a few days earlier I had GoogleEarthed Darlington, and I knew what he meant. The old buildings from my day looked small and lost among all the new buildings. What had been open, grassy fields were home to dormitories. My brand-new Junior School had been demolished and replaced with new buildings. Nothing looked the same.
And Gordon Neville died last year from Alzheimers.
In fact, almost all the teachers I knew at Darlington are dead now.
It has been nearly 53 years since I graduated from Darlington. I do not want to see it now. I prefer to remember it as it was; all the teachers are young, and so am I.
Postscript
Unfortunately, in the last few years Darlington has been most widely known because of sexual abuse accusations against at least one teacher. The accusations that ended up in various news reports were about a teacher who came after I graduated. One of the worst things I learned is that a few students reported to school officials that they had been molested, but the officials did nothing. I have to wonder whether anything like that went on when I was there. As I said, I was oblivious to a lot of things, and also pretty naive. It could easily have happened, and I might never have been aware.
A lawsuit was filed a few years ago. I don’t know its status today.
i’m envious that you can look back so objectively and see patterns and progressions in your life. I don’t seem to be able to do that.
I went to a private, all-boys college prep high school and was a middling student as well. I haven’t kept in touch with my old classmates, including the one who was best man at my wedding. I saw them twice in the last 40 years, both times at organized “reunions” that lasted the space of a dinner at a noise restaurant. The school itself is now closed and gone. And, it seems, there was a notorious pedophile who was one of the teachers, and nothing was done about him.
So interesting to read this memory of your high school days, and to read Paul’s comment as well. It would have never occurred to me that you went to a private boy’s prep school. Such a different experience from my high school days. Was there a private girl’s prep school nearby? How many students were in the school? I am so curious about those times in the 1960s there. I went to a public school that had over 1500 students. That number seems crazy now.
Paul — I guess boys’ schools are like the Catholic Church — they can attract the wrong sort. When I think back with the benefit of a lot more age and experience, I still can’t see anything that hinted at that kind of problem. We had some teachers who I now realize were obviously gay, and some students, too. It never occurred to me at the time.
Robin — There was a private girls’ school in town, Thornwood. It was founded in 1958. For a while, all its classes were held in the rooms of a pre-Civil War mansion. It merged with Darlington in 1973 or 1974. Thrornwood classes were around 20. My class at Darlington had, I think, 103. The entire upper school enrollment was around 500. I don’t know how many were “dorm dirt” and how many were “day dogs.” It was a near-ideal environment for someone whose main interest was going to class, learning, graduating, and going to college. But I can’t say that I missed it once I left.