Farewell to the Oddens Farewell to the Oddens - The Taft School

E N D N O T E
of our new track, who commented at the
dedication ceremony last spring that “the
harder you work, the luckier you get.” A
comment so Taft-like, that it nearly belongs
on the Belcher Library windows.
Horace Taft also believed that the individual
is responsible for his or her lot in
life and that a residential school teaches
enduring lessons. In his earliest recorded
Vespers notes he wrote, “The first lesson
here and everywhere is the lesson of unselfishness.
Not to or for yourself. The great
advantage of boarding school is that it gives
opportunities for a student to get out of
himself. He must work for others and learn
that he can work with others. He must go
into things and make them work. The great
value of football and baseball is the unselfishness
and self-suppression they enforce.
The grandstand player or the one who trains
only when the coach’s eye is on him, is not
the one to be successful in life.” Or, “School
is what you make it.”
Horace Taft believed in total commitment
to whatever he or his students undertook.
Thus, he wrote, “There are two elevating
aspects of work at Taft, first to do it well,
and second, to do it for others.” Of course,
the latter sentiment is rooted in his family’s
deep belief in public service, a belief still
carried on so many generations later by our
own Bob Taft ’59, current governor of Ohio.
In one Vespers after another, Horace Taft
spoke of the duties of Tafties to contribute to
American society, most often speaking of
Washington and Lincoln as models of selfsacrificing
men, one who gave up his fortune
for the country’s good, and the other his life.
From these beliefs came our motto—not to
be served but to serve—a call to all Taft
students and teachers to make a difference in
the years ahead.
Horace Taft’s school was designed to assure
that the whole student and his learning about
every aspect of life would be the responsibility
of his faculty. At Taft, masters would live
among students, not segregated to the side,
in houses connected to dormitories. Faculty
meetings were to be about students, who
were to be known well in the classroom and
even better on the playing fields, in the
dorms, or as young people growing up.
George Van Sanford, the great headmaster
of Hotchkiss and a fellow Yale classicist, was
famous for stopping students in the hall and
asking them to conjugate verbs or to cite
declensions. Horace Taft conversed with his
students about their roommates, their extracurricular
activities, and how well they were
doing. He cared for the whole person and
asked his faculty to do so as well.
His was to be a student-centered community,
and here his vision is also clear.
Connectedness was virtue, and so we would
eat, sleep, go to classes, and live together in
one ever-connected, serpentine building, always
designed so that people would acknowledge
each other. While his collegiate Gothic
architecture was grand, it was designed at a
human scale so that people were connected
and not diminished.
Last spring, I went back to my alma
mater for a meeting and arrived early. I went
on a nostalgic walk only to find myself surprised
that the students neither acknowledged
visitors, nor asked if they could be of
assistance, which our students do routinely.
The academy’s paths and hallways are grand
allowing people to pass without any eye contact,
remaining anonymous. Size, scale, and a
vision of connectedness shaped our campus
and lie behind our traditions of reaching out
to each other and to visitors, which we have
maintained even as our campus has grown.
Trained in the law, Horace Taft was a man
of undeniable principle. An avid opponent
of Prohibition, Horace Taft gave one last
dinner party the night before Prohibition
began and never again took a drink in the
United States until Prohibition ended. Perhaps
this explains his deep devotion to
Murray Bay and his beloved vacations in
Canada! From 1890 to 1927, Mr. Taft
owned his school and rejected all offers of
financial gifts, fearing that they might somehow
compromise his independence. When
he was persuaded to incorporate as a nonprofit
organization and turn governance
over to “Old Boy Trustees,” to assure the
school’s survival after his death, he continued
to reject any gift which had strings
attached. Thus, when the great philanthropist
Harkness approached him about a gift
of $5 or 6 million, equal to his benefaction
at Exeter, Mr. Taft asked if it meant we
would have to incorporate the round table,
or Harkness system, of teaching. Harkness
said yes, and Mr. Taft said, I appreciate the
offer, but I cannot accept, proving him to
be a man of impeccable principle—and for
our school to have a little less principal than
we might have had otherwise.
However, Mr. Taft was never rigid. Two
stories come to mind. In 1926, Ben Belcher,
a middler from Lakeville, Conn., was caught
importing enough bootlegged booze to intoxicate
his entire class. Mr. Taft expelled
young Ben, but called Mr. Van Sanford at
Hotchkiss and asked him to take Ben on as a
special day student for classes only, to return
home before athletics each afternoon. If
Belcher did well, Taft said that he would take
him back as an upper middler. Van Sanford
agreed and Belcher went to Hotchkiss for six
months, meeting Mr. Taft’s requirements.
Belcher returned to excel in his upper middle
year, and subsequently Mr. Taft appointed
him head monitor of the school. He went on
to be not only a great head mon, but also a
distinguished alumnus and, of course, a great
benefactor of Taft. Penalty, contrition, and
absolution were Mr. Taft’s values.
Once Taft was asked how he had survived 46
years as headmaster. He immediately replied,
“I have never forgotten the little boy
inside me.” He could empathize with the
students. Imagine this story. One night the
east wall clock hands disappeared from the
Town Hall down by the old P.O. Drug
Store. The town was scandalized. The next
night, the south wall clock hands disappeared.
Several nights later, the west. Several
nights thereafter, the school’s best rock
climber returned with the north wall clock
hands, crept into bed in the dark certain that
he had pulled off a remarkable coup. Imagine
his surprise when he found Horace Taft
Taft Bulletin 39