The following is from a 1958
letter by Leonard Outhwaite '05 to Mark Kunen '58
and published in THE PIONEER:
I visited the school only a few years
ago, and found only a few parts of the old buildings
left. You have much nicer rooms than we had in the
old dormitories, and you have many improvements in
your school equipment--both indoors and outdoors.
I am not sure that you are having any more fun than
we had, even if life at School was somewhat simpler
then. We used to organize riding parties, and would
ride through a large part of the countryside in all
directions from the school, and we also used to take
long walks on Sunday afternoons. The countryside has
also changed since our day. There used to be magnificent
stands of American chestnut trees not far from the
school, and they provided the most wonderful nuts.
When these were ripe in the fall, Mr. Fay used to
announce a "chestnut holiday", and we put
away school books and spent the whole day in the woods
and fields.
In the winter we had something that
I think you now miss, and that was a wonderful toboggan
slide that somebody had presented the school. It was
erected each year when the snow came, near the present
school buildings, and was as high as the roofs. It
started our toboggans off at a great rate in the direction
of the reservoir at its nearest points.
Do you still plant your own gardens
in the spring? And have a strawberry festival?
I remember I used to work as chairman
of the library committee, and we thought that for
the number of boys in the school, and for our day,
we had a very fine and interesting school library,
but I am sure that your present library is a great
improvement on the library of our day.
Without radio, television, or even
Elvis, boys have always had fun while learning at
Fay.
