Milton Magazine - Milton Academy

Post ScriptPost Script is a department that opens windows into the lives and experiences of your fellowMilton alumni. Graduates may author the pieces, or they may react to our interview questions.Opinions, memories, explorations, reactions to political or educational issues are all fair game.We believe you will find your Milton peers informative, provocative and entertaining. Pleaseemail us with your reactions and your ideas at cathy_everett@milton.edu.Looking Back by Fritz Kempner ’40Excerpts from Chapter 21: Back to MiltonThe atmosphere that I enjoyed somuch as a student in 1939, I feltduplicated as a member of the faculty.“Halo effect?” Perhaps. I now knowthat my years as teacher of Latin and Greekand coach of soccer and basketball atMilton gave me a running start into a lifeof teaching.It must have been “real love,” since my livingconditions were not exactly luxurious.I lived in Robbins House, a dormitory of50 boys. My third-floor bedroom/study wasconnected by one door to an area of sevenninth graders, themselves called “alcoves”after their habitation, and by another toa stairway leading to the quarters of foureighth graders on the fourth floor. The 12of us shared a common bathroom. Could Ientertain friends? I don’t think the thoughtever occurred to me. I accepted everythingas a given, happy to have a job at a topnotchschool.In addition to being responsible for these11 boys in the dormitory, it was my dutyto preside over a table of ten boys at mealtime,three times a day. After supper Ienjoyed a period of “rest and relaxation”during which my immediate superiorserved coffee in his quarters, which werepalatial compared to mine. He was JimCarter, also my boss in Latin and, at thetime, a bachelor. As a commander in theNavy he had been nicknamed “SmilingJim,” because he never smiled. He was aspredictable as a well-functioning alarmclock, with set times for coffee as well asstock remarks. He was easy to work forprovided you accepted his routine, which Idid. This very predictability made life easy,but it came at a price: the price of restrictingmyself to a certain behavioral rut.During six years of doing the same job outof the same room, though with differentboys, I gradually became aware of this as atrap and was ready for a change. My UncleFritz, frequent giver of sage advice, wroteme: “…routine is the worst enemy of truegrowth since it counterfeits a security thatis not based on inner growth. It cannotonly fool others, but also yourself.”The siblings: Martha and Max on my right, Franon my left, at the 1999 family reunion in Austria.Behind us a genealogical display.Fortunately, I had some provocative friendson the faculty who prevented my succumbingto a deadening routine. One was TedHolmes, teacher of English, fresh out ofPrinceton’s avant-garde English department,where he had been a protégé of R.P.Blackmur, one of the leaders of the NewCriticism movement. What got us goingwas a discussion about Robert Frost’s“Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”Ted convinced me that this poem wasabout much more than a sleigh stoppingby woods in winter—that in fact it dealswith the whole human condition. He suggestedthat to arrive at the meaning of anypoem, it was not necessary to know anythingabout the author’s life, but that whatevermeaning a poem had was containedin the words of the poem itself. The poetmay have intended this or that, but if themeaning was not contained in the wordsof the poem, if it required knowledge notcontained in the poem itself, it was—forthat very reason—a poorer poem. We discussedthis issue at length, and in the endI had become his disciple.My closest friends on the faculty were TobySmith, Air Force major in World War II,teacher of English, with a strong convictionin favor of teaching the canon; andhis wife, Audrey, vivacious and innovativeteacher of Spanish and chef extraordinaire.Teach Moby-Dick or Malcolm X? JohnKeats or Wilfred Owen? Our conversationswere ongoing.56 Milton Magazine