Isabel's Childhood and Youth

Bacheler children in about 1901 (Isabel is seated on far right)

“My first memories are, I think, of loveliness. There were seven of us children and mother and father felt that the village school was not a good influence, so none of us went to school. None of us went until we were at the high school. But in the meantime being seven, and being seven very clever children, and very energetic and very delightful, there would be just one in the family who would be sort of laughable, which was myself. I felt very lonely. I felt that everyone else was smarter than I was and everyone else had more of everything than I had, so that I sort of tagged around and filled in the chinks as best I could. I was always hoping that someday I would be more like them. I can remember the desperate, desperate loneliness that I had because of this feeling.

“As children we would pack up a lunch and go off into what we called the fields of beauty that were skirted by forests or were skirted by unknown magic land beyond us. These fields of beauty we just simply adored and there I found my companionship. I found it in the grass. I found it in a little stream, and I found it in the shadows of the trees and it was a source of great solace and comfort to me.

Isabel in about 1902

“I never wanted to have attention drawn to me because I felt I was something to be laughed at. When I got a loose tooth which I tried to hide, my brother, Robert, found it and he wanted to pull it out and he was going to tie a string to it. He was going to tie the string to a door and the first person that came in the door would yank the tooth out. All of the children got very excited about it. The more excited they got, the worse I felt, not because there was going to be pain, it just seemed all so horrible. A young man who was at a theological seminary came down to talk to father. He was tall and quiet and gentle. He looked at me and said, ‘What’s this little girl doing here?’ And they all said, ‘She’s got a tooth that’s got to be pulled out! Yank it out! Yank it out! And he said, ‘Come here, honey. He put me up on his knee and he put my head against his shoulder and he said, ‘Now I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ve taken lots of teeth out and you see this handkerchief?’ And he took out a beautiful, big white linen handkerchief and said, ‘I’ll just put it around my hand and I’ll take hold of your tooth and you say, ‘ah’ and when you stop saying ‘ah’ your tooth is out.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t care if it hurts or not, I’ll just put my head here and keep it here forever.’ I put my head down and he put his handkerchief over his hand and I said, ‘Ah’ in a little voice and the tooth was out. I thought it was the most divine feeling that I had ever, ever known. That night I went to church and I sat on his lap all during church time.

“The next morning when he left on his bicycle, I was out in the field picking some buttercups. I wanted to run out as he went by and give him the buttercups and say ‘thank you’. I wanted to say ‘thank you’ and I wanted to say ‘I love you’ and all I could do was just to stand there like a little piece of lawn and he waved to me and I didn’t even wave. I couldn’t move. I was completely immobile. But this was the sort of a funny creature that I was.

“I not only was sort of odd and perfectly devoted to every little shaft of sunlight and every little blade of grass—I felt that they were a piece of me—but I wanted to know that God was real. I wanted to know that there was a God. And I thought to myself, ‘Well, the sensible thing to do is to make a little church and this seemed easy enough—I will go into my room, or what they called the children’s room, and I will kneel down by the bed and I will say, ‘Dear God, please put a doll in that chair over there. And may it be a doll with blue eyes and long eyelashes and golden hair and a little dress with flowers on it, sprinkled all over it and then I will know that you are a God.’ And so I prayed quite a long prayer and described the doll minutely and opened my eyes expecting to see a doll there but the chair was empty. And I said, ‘Well, that proves that there isn’t any God.’ I felt bereft, terribly, terribly bereft. From time to time we were allowed to associate with the hoi polloi (common people) outside of our family circle and especially if we saw the top brass hoi polloi and some of them were the Tolfits of Tolfits Hill where we lived. We visited Alice Tolfit. She took us into her playroom. There were rows of dolls and they all had golden hair and curls and they all looked perfectly gorgeous. And I suddenly thought, ‘How utterly, utterly uninteresting they are and how utterly I don’t want them. There is nothing in them that seems to me to be delightful or lovely. And I went home and I went out in the woods and I took my jackknife and I cut some sticks and I got some acorns. I put these together and I made a perfectly adorable brown doll and I loved it. And I thought, ‘It is a doll! He showed me how to make a doll! It is much nicer than the other dolls. Thank you, God! I’m so glad you’re my friend!’ So I discovered there was a God.

“Then I got to worrying about Hell because it seemed to me a very selfish thing for people to be willing to go up on the golden cloud and walk the golden streets and play on golden harps and cavort in the heavenly meadows when other people were down below in a great big horrible pit where they were eternally doomed. And I thought, ‘If there is a Hell, I’m going down there and I’m going to stay with those people and I’m going to burn with those people and I don’t care if it’s for eternity. I’m just going to burn and be as miserable and as full of anguish as they are.’ My father, whom I loved very much, but who was closest to me when we were reading books or when he was preaching a sermon, came into the kitchen one day and I screwed up my courage and said, in a faltering voice, ‘Father, is there a Hell?’ And he said, ‘Well, honey, what do you want to know about Hell?’ And I said, ‘Well, it just seems to me that it’s very horrible for God to make a Hell and make people burn for eternity and wars are just as bad, too.’ And he said, putting his arm around me, ‘Do you think I would make you burn in Hell forever?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t think so, but I’m pretty bad.’ And he said, ‘Well, do you think I am as good as God is?’ And I said, ‘Of course not, daddy! Nobody could be as good as God. Not even you.’ And he said, ‘Well, if I wouldn’t do it and I’m not even as good as God, do you think that God could do it?’ And I said, ‘Oh, I guess not! I guess there isn’t any Hell after all.’ And he said as he laughed, ‘Well, darling, it isn’t the sort of Hell where one burns for eternity. And you won’t understand this now, but someday you will. There is a Hell because I’ve been there.’ And so we dropped the subject of Hell.

Isabel and Robert in 1903

“I had the reputation for being the member of the family who was the most laughable as far as caring if somebody swatted a fly or stepped on a spider. And one of these things which became the family byword and caused a great, great deal of amusement was on a day when Robert was getting his haircut. Mother cut Father’s hair and Theodore’s hair and Robert’s hair as a regular thing. One morning as I stood there watching Robert getting his hair cut, and he Has screwing up his face and making all sorts of grimaces, I shuddered and I said, ‘Awsh, I hate agony.’ And everybody roared with laughter and ever after that I cringed when, as a mosquito was swatted and Robert said, ‘Awsh, you hate agony, don’t you?’

“I think we all had the great feeling of the importance of being honest and being noble, as it were, above the children who went to the common school and who chewed gum and who did all sorts of worldly things to which we felt vastly superior and to which we enjoyed being superior.

Bacheler family in about 1908 (Isabel is seated in lower right)

“One day a man came to see father. We children had gone to bed. In the children’s bedroom there were two big double beds. There was in the middle of the room a register that would presumably let the heat from the living room up into the room above and whenever there was company we would go and open the register and rally around it and peered down to see who it was and it was very nice. On this particular occasion, it was a man from the Theodore B. Stark Company in New York City. My father had been, at one time, a part of the firm. He had a remarkable ability to judge gems and to tell the value of diamonds, if they were real or imposters. And they had never had anyone who could quite fill his place. So the visitor was talking to father and saying, ‘You know, Mr. Bacheler, we really need you badly and we will give you so much if you would come back. We know that you have all these children who need to be educated and who will need to go to college and as a country minister you have little or nothing to offer them in the way of financial security, which you would have if you were with us.’ Father said to him, ‘Well, no, no, thank you, our family is very happy to be here. I like what I am doing. I want to do the Lord’s work.’ And the bearded-mustached gentleman representative raised his voice and paid no attention to him whatever and went on talking, increasing the offers, doubling the offers and tripling the offers and getting very much concerned about the whole thing. And finally a little voice, I’m afraid it was mine, from the upper region called out, ‘Oh, Mr. Man, you don’t understand. It’s not money we want, it’s goodness we are after.’ This was the passion for God and goodness and beauty and deep powers of being.

“It was about this time of the year that we had a visit from the school board. Father and mother were both qualified to teach and they taught us children, but the local school smoldered until they sent a representative to inquire about the situation. The man who came knocked at the kitchen door when mother was peeling the potatoes and the children were sitting around the room and sitting at the kitchen table with various books and papers and studying. He came in and introduced himself and said, ‘I understand that you have children here who are of school age and they need schooling badly.’ And she said, ‘Won’t you sit down and listen to our activities?’ And so he sat down and she called on Muriel, she called on Frances, she called on Theodore and she called on me and she asked me if I would give a report on what I had been reading which happened to be Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. And I who knew nothing about anything but reading was so happy to tell him about Les Miserables. When we were through, the visitor said, ‘Mrs. Bacheler, I want to commend you for your experience and I only wish that you could be added to our staff in the local school. It would be a privilege to have you with us.’ And so he left.

Bacheler home where Isabel was taught by her mother

“But mother kept saying to me, ‘You know, Isabel, when I once get through with Robert, I will give you my full attention and you will learn your tables.’ That was one thing that was hanging over my head because I was completely baffled by anything that had a number in it. It didn’t seem to me that numbers had any importance in the world. And I didn’t like them and I didn’t want them and I wasn’t interested in them and I had never been taught my tables. But mother promised me that she would teach me my tables and she would teach me other things such as spelling and geography as soon as she got through with Robert. Robert was a couple of years older than I and he was a great problem. He was called the ‘drunkard’ and I was called the ‘drunkard’s wife.’ And the ‘drunkard’s wife’ followed the ‘drunkard’ followed around and picked up his nails and handed him his hammer and waited on him hand and foot.

“There was an old blue sleigh in the barn and he told me that if I’d lay down in the seat, I would know how near being a grown man I was by whether or not my head would touch one end and my feet the other. And he showed me that by stretching his toes out and by putting his head up against the other end that he was really a grown man but that I was just nothing. I didn’t amount to a row of pins. Of course, I’d hold in my breath and try very hard, but it didn’t do any good whatever. I wasn’t a grown man and I never would be it seemed.

“Robert really deserved the title of the ‘drunkard’ because he led quite a life. And he wasn’t always particularly happy because he didn’t live up to my ideals—he lied and he stole and he did things which were unkind and I was always having to cover up for him. He had a fertile vivid imagination which he used to the whole. As the pastor’s family, we had the privilege of having all the kerosene oil we needed for the lamps by going over to the basement of the church and filling our little can from the drum that was there. And he explained to me that God had so arranged it that when he said the 23rd Psalm and came to the point that said, ‘My cup runneth over,’ the can would be full. And surely enough, every time he came to that point, the can ran over; its oil would spill. The church was a place of great interest because while we were over there filling the can with oil, we also went up into the steeple. Going up into the steeple was quite exciting because at first you’d go up steps and then you’d go up a ladder and then you’d go hand-over-hand on some framework until you reached the bell. And as I look back now I don’t know why we weren’t both killed, but we weren’t. And we used to collect the pigeon’s eggs that were up in the belfry, and do all sorts of interesting things, that we were not supposed to do in the realm of getting the oil, but we nevertheless did it. And as I say he had a fertile imagination which flowered in unexpected ways.

“I remember one day the field was flooded at the foot of our neighbor’s hill and the fence posts were just sticking out the water. And it seemed that the heavy rains plus the overflow of the sewer had made a little artificial lake and inasmuch as mother was having a missionary society at the house, she suggested that we children go outdoors and take care of Timmy, who was the baby, which we did, in our own way or in Bob’s way. He collected an armful of slats from the tobacco barn and laced them together with string making it into a raft. Then he said that we should put the baby in the middle of the raft and push the baby out into the lake. We put the baby in the middle of the raft and the raft immediately went down. We grabbed the baby by her diapers and pulled her out and the ‘drunkard’ told us that the probability was there wasn’t quite enough water under it. If we were in a deeper place, the water would hold up the raft. So the raft was towed out into a considerably deeper spot. He went out on the fence and having taken off his shoes and stockings and rolled his pants up and we passed the new baby, and the baby Timmy was put in the middle of the raft and down the raft went. And the baby, Timmy, was rescued. By this time she was not very happy. And Bob said, ‘The thing we had better do now because she seems to be very cold is to take all her clothes off and I’ll put my jacket around her and stay here with her and you, Isabel, go back and take these wet clothes and bring us back some clean clothes and everything will be fine.’ So the ‘drunkard’s wife’ gathered up the mass of wet clothes and wrung them out and put them under her sweater and walked into the house and scuttled past the missionary group that was sitting in the living room and went upstairs and. put all the wet clothes in the far end of the bedroom closet and got out all dry, clean things and brought them down for her and again scuttled past the door, and rushed out to poor little Timmy who was shivering and shaking in the bushes with Bob while he held his jacket around her. And having dressed the baby, she still seemed rather cold; I thought we’d better bring her into the house. So we came back, again past the missionary group and I heard one of the women say, ‘Oh, those darling children! Couldn’t we see them, Mrs. Bacheler? You have adorable children!’ And mother said, ‘Come in, Isabel. Bring the baby.’ So I came in with the baby and they said, ‘I think it’s perfectly remarkable how beautifully your children are brought up. Just see, the baby looks as if she had just come out of a bandbox. So clean. So sweet.’ And I was very red-faced while they passed Timmy around and admired her. Then I made my exit as soon as could.

Sketch by Isabel about Robert's idea of a raft

“Bob’s activities, however, weren’t limited to having trips with Timmy on the overflowing sewer—we often went into Hartford to do errands. Mother would give us a list of errands and Bob and I would do them. But in the process, Bob would do a little light shoplifting and he would say to me, ‘Now, you just stand here in front of this counter. I’ll be back in just a minute.’ And when he came back he’d say as we went out the door, ‘Look at that box right by the door. I wonder what it is.’ And it would be a box with something in it that he very much wanted. At this time he was building me a doll house and I didn’t want the doll house and I didn’t particularly like it but he had wonderful ideas about it and enjoyed it tremendously and he equipped it completely with things he just happened to find. He not only happened to find furnishings for the doll house, but he found other sundries. He found jackknives and anything he happened to need he just happened to find. Sometimes this would result in a very sad conversation with the family, but he never, never—he was all perfectly innocent, and I, like a little nut, he would say to me, ‘Isn’t that so, Isabel?’ and I’d say, ‘Oh, yes, yes, that’s very true.’

“However, father and mother began to feel that there was something wrong here and that they weren’t getting what they should from Bob and that he really should go away to school. So various representatives from schools came and talked to them and Bob was sent off to school. But every single school that he went to after he’d been there a very short time would say they couldn’t take him. He had to be expelled for various reasons. Sometimes it was because of a broken window. Sometimes it was because of things that had been stolen. Sometimes it was because there were no boys that he could get along with and they would have quarrels and jaws would be broken and so forth. And so back he would come. With all his badness, he had, however, a corps of something humorous and good about him.

Railroad tracks on Elm Street in Talcottville near Bacheler home

“In my loneliness I had picked up a stray cat called Rusty that was a comfort to me. And one day when the trolley went by the cat was in the way and half the cat was left on the trolley tracks. And Robert picked up the other part of the cat and went off with it. And after I’d sobbed for a while and Bob got back and I said, ‘Bob, what did you do with Rusty?’ And he said, ‘Well, I went over to Mr. Brewer’s and I showed it to him and he just at that minute as it happened, he was just walking into the house with a chicken he had killed and he cut a slab off the chicken and plopped it onto the half of the cat that was gone and tied it up very carefully and he said he thinks it may grow.’ And I said, ‘Really, is that true, Bob?’ And he said, ‘Yes, it’s perfectly true. It’s just as honest as can be.’ And I said, ‘Can I go and see it?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s a very delicate situation and we mustn’t go over just now.’ So day after day I asked him about the cat and he would tell me, he would give me a report, and finally he said, ‘You know it’s got fur on one side and feathers on the other and it’s as lively as a cricket. But,’ he said, ‘it’s one of the most nervous animals you ever saw and you mustn’t go over and see it.’ And I believed this. I swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Later when I went away to school, I went to the academy, the professor was talking about some of the remarkable things that can happen with propagation and cross-breeding of different kinds of things. He said, ‘Do any of you have any experience that you’d like to share with the class that could illustrate what I am saying?’ And I raised my hand in great excitement and I said, ‘Oh, I have a most remarkable experience to tell you about.’ And I told them about the cat, Rusty. And the class—absolutely you could hear a pin drop. But when I finished there was a great roar of laughter. And after they were back to quiet, he said, ‘Now, class, I want you to know that I have absolute faith in Miss Bacheler, I think she’s telling the absolute truth, but I have no faith whatsoever in that rascally brother of hers.’ But I am getting ahead of my story because I am telling about being away at school and how I happened to be away at school.

Bacheler family in about 1913 (Isabel is standing on far left)

 “After Bob had been expelled from all the schools that he was sent to, Grandfather who had an insurance company up in Norwich, said he would take him on for a while and see if he could do anything with him. And there was a big family conclave and father and mother said, ‘Well, she hasn’t any preparation for high school. She really doesn’t know anything. How will we manage it?’ And he said, ‘Well, my daughter, I really don’t know, but we’ll see if it can be worked.’ So I was sent off with Bob and interviewed by the principal of the school and he looked at me and he said, ‘Now, you know, I’m not going to give you any tests whatever.’ He said, ‘I have just such a strong feeling about people and I have a great, great confidence in you and I know your father and mother, and I know the kind of children by the records when they went into high school (I had three older brothers and sisters who had gone to the high school). So he said, ‘We’ll just simply skip all and any tests whatever.’ So I slipped in under the wire, and then my days of excitement began, because I not only had to do lessons that were completely beyond me, I never heard of Greece except when I came across it in my reading. But my spelling, my geography, my arithmetic were just completely nil, and not only did I have a little time getting along with my friends, but I had my hands full taking care of Bob and he very soon became quite a serious project. He fell in with a very, really very, evil person, called Monty who was a dwarf who had a long police record and who was wanted on several charges. And Monty and Bob together did all sorts of things which were serious offenses. One thing which struck very close to home was that Aunt Mary who had some money received a blackmail letter telling her to leave a certain amount of money by the old stone wall. And things finally got so bad that Grandfather sent Bob home and I was called home too. No one, however, suspected when the detectives, the police and so forth came that I knew anything at all and I can remember very vividly walking in the starlight under the apple trees, back and forth, back and forth, wishing to heck I was out of it all.

“I was sent back to school and I was doing two things at once—I was going to the academy and in every free period that I had, the campus is a very lovely old campus and it has a beautiful, beautiful art school with a marvelous collection of a lot of casts, sculptures, you know, of the discus thrower, Moses and all that stuff, and a valuable collection of paintings and it was a very spectacular place. The head of the art school was my Aunt Charlotte who used to say of me, which I didn’t know at the time, ‘Isabel is a genius’ and I didn’t want to be a genius, I just wanted to be somebody like everybody else. But I was now on my own and I found that even though I didn’t have Robert to take care of, I had other people to take care of. There was a girl called ‘Oily Ann’ that nobody wanted to have anything to do with. She had horrible skin with acne and greasy hair and dirty clothes. She was skinny and she shuffled when she walked. And I made it a point to walk with her every recess and eat my lunch with her. And I had a bid from one of the sororities to join a sorority and I thought it over and I thought, ‘Sororities weren’t good because they’re just nice to their own kind and you were supposed to be nice to people who were not nice.’ So I didn’t join a sorority, but I got prizes at the art school and I got prizes at the academy.

“I lived in the Doorstep House, the Doorstep House being the house where the poet, Edmund Clarence Stedman had lived, which was owned by Aunt Mary and was in a very, very lovely spot. It was a beautiful house to start with. The fireplace in the dining room was so big that you could sit right inside of it. It had a built-in oven. The top of the house was full of treasures which were from Aunt Clementine who was Aunt Mary’s sister. She took a group of the Dodge Ferry Girls abroad every summer and brought back all kinds of exciting and exotic things so that the house and the attic were full of these lovely things. And up on the attic floor there was a room called the ‘playroom’ where for generations the children had played and left their treasures. And there was a rag monkey and there were very quaint old doll’s furniture and there was a beautiful, beautiful little doll’s house, completely equipped with a little kitchen stove that would really burn if you put matches and paper in the stove. It would burn and the smoke would come out from a little chimney at one side. And the accouterments that went with the stove—there was a little frying pan with two little fish in it and there was a tiny little teakettle, and all of these were very, very charming little things.

“Out of the windows when the wisteria was in bloom there was a bank of purple blossoms and then a hillside and down at the foot of the hill the loveliest brook and this brook ambled through the fields that belonged to the house and back to other fields and beyond to a hillside covered with pines. And these fields of Aunt Mary’s went into what was called ‘The Loffit Meadows’ and here the meadowlarks sang as though it were sunshine beams put into sound. And there was an old stone bench under the pine trees and on the stone bench were carved these words: ‘They may grow old who gather gold, the spring awakes and flowers unfold’ and used to play with the brook and play with the grasses and sit on the bench and bask in the sun and find a little piece of Heaven there.

“When I graduated in five years from both art school and the Norwich academy, as an assistant teacher, I had gone to the public high school. The teacher that I assisted was a person of great experience and twice my age and very adequate. But she had no ability to keep order at all. And it was tormenting to me to see how her pupils made a laughing stock of her and how little she was able to accomplish with them. So
I would actually be her monitor. Leota Shoto was one of the worst offenders in the class. She’d pay no attention to anything that the teacher said to her and was a source of great pleasure to the class because she was the class clown. And as she came into the room she would come in late, she would trip over whatever she happened to bump into. She would fall over her feet. She would spill the paint and water, and all done in an air of innocence. And everyone in the classroom would roar and her adroitness in doing this was so clever that there was really nothing that the teacher was able to find a niche and she was completely at a loss to know what to do. So one day, it being my responsibility to go from one desk to another to help the pupils, I stopped long enough at Leota’s desk to simply say, ‘Follow me.’ And I went into the little office that was adjoining. I had no idea whether she would come or not, but as I went into the room and turned around I realized she was right by my elbow. She looked very defiant and as she looked at me and expected a dressing down which she was going to get the best of, I simply said to her, ‘I called you in here to give you a compliment.’ I said, ‘There are very few people that can have, as you do, the class completely with you and that you can show such a degree of leadership.’ I said, ‘This type of leadership, however, is a very, very cheap show-off and comparatively easy compared to a different kind of leadership.’ I said, ‘If you came in setting an example of support to the teacher and of a real interest in your work, it would be extraordinarily difficult. And I don’t really think that you’d be able to do that. But you certainly are doing a good job of what you are doing now. You are being able to upset the class completely.’ And I walked out.

“After that I happened to be ill and was out of school until the following year and when I was out on the lawn one day on a lawn chair, a car drove up and Leota Shoto stepped out and came to me and said, ‘I came to thank you for my prize.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And she said, ‘After you talked to me I decided I would try to be the other kind of a leader and I did, and I did it with my heart and soul, and when the good citizenship prize was awarded that year, I was given the big citizenship prize and I wanted to thank you for it.’ So when I returned, I came not as an assistant, but as a teacher. And I never had any difficulty with any discipline problems in contact with the youngsters. In fact, it seemed as though I got the very cream of every aspect of youngsters who were in my class. I could hardly call them youngsters in a way because some of them were older than I, and some were larger than I. But they were always a pleasure to be with and they were always a great deal of help to me, so that teaching was a tremendous pleasure to me.

Isabel, Frances & Christine Bacheler as teachers in 1921

“There were three buildings on the campus and each building had an art department and each art department a teacher and as it happened when I came to be a teacher in the art department of the Broad Street Building, the other two buildings were where my other two sisters who were acting as teachers so that we were all there together, which meant a great deal of fun. And it was in inspiration to me to be with them. We were all extraordinarily individual. Fran was president of the Eastern Arts Association and invented a new pottery device, and Christine painted and from there went to the Yale Art School and from there to Paris. She is presently doing an outstanding job in England with their penguins. I did a very humble sort of thing but was able to feel a delight in introducing my youngsters to something that was so very deeply moving which was just love of beauty. I felt as though I were taking them across the fields of beauty as I had followed them as a child, again hearing the brooks and watching the grasses in the sunlight. It was something which the children were oddly enough happy to receive and enjoyed its impact. It was a very real thing and we were very, very close together. I never felt that there was any sort of a real problem. One day I forgot my class—the schedule varied from day to day and I thought it was a Tuesday schedule and it was a Wednesday schedule. And I went off in the park to look at the trees and watch the leaves in the sunshine and picked up some colored crayons at the corner art store and when I came back I opened the door of my classroom to find it filled with pupils and the principal of the Broad Street building and the principal of the Hawkins Street building were both standing there, and it suddenly dawned on me that I had made a mistake on the schedule. I was horrified. And when I said to the Broad Street principal, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ he said, ‘Don’t make any apologies, Miss Bacheler. I wish every teacher in the building could be as sure of perfect discipline when absent as when present.’ He said, ‘There has not been a sound. When I came in the room it was as quiet as a barn and everyone was working very diligently.’ He said, ‘This is a tribute to you!’

“Shortly after this, one day I was listing the marks in the teachers’ room downstairs and I heard a bevy of teachers discussing a boy by the name of Francis deVohl and the remarks ran: ‘Isn’t he terrible!’ ‘Do you have him in any of your classes yet?’ ‘I can’t do anything with him, can you?’ ‘No, not a thing.’ ‘He’s awful.’ ‘He certainly deserves to be expelled!’ ‘I think he has nothing but a life of crime ahead of him.’ ‘He’s really terrible!’ And I thought to myself, ‘How strange, because I have a Francis deVohl in my classes and he’s a marvelous exception. He’s a very good friend and he’s always doing such kind things for me and it isn’t a very usual name. And I wonder if it can be a different spelling or I’ve heard correctly.’ And I spoke up and I said, ‘I have a boy by the name of Francis deVohl in my classroom and he doesn’t seem like this at all. Are there two Francis deVohls?’ And the teachers looked at me as though I were a moron and said, with a great deal of expression, ‘There is only ONE Francis deVohl!’ And they turned their backs on me and I missed the remarks. I realized I made a great mistake. However, Francis deVohl after a short expulsion came back and we continued to be good friends and I worked with him and got him a scholarship to the Norwich Art School or I helped him with his scholarship at Norwich Art School and he became a successful professional.”

These stories are from a tape recording done in October 1972, recorded and transcribed by Mary C. Konle.