ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY SCHOOL LATE FALL 2014 NEWSLETTER ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP DRIVE 2015 Yes it is that time again: the kick-off of the annual membership drive of AAUS. Our yearly membership period runs a calendar year. Please read the enclosure for more membership details. LIFE members will not have an enclosure nor will those whose membership is currently up-to-date and don’t have to renew yet. If you are not currently a member, please consider becoming one now.
ANNUAL MEETING REPORT At the annual meeting we re-elected the AAUS board unanimously by voice vote and announced two major projects; one completed and the other well on the way. The new description of the AAUS Endowment Fund has been accepted by the OSU board of Trustees. The grant will be advertised this school year and is now more accessible by students and faculty. Previously the grant was limited to graduate students in Education. The new wording was especially important for us because we wanted to have the grant available to students and faculty outside the College of Education. Here is a partial listing of the new wording.
Endowment Description The University School Endowment (607422) The University School Endowment Fund was established March 12, 1993, by the Board of Trustees of The Ohio State University with gifts to The Ohio State University Development Fund from alumni, faculty, and friends of the University School. The fund was revised in 2013. The annual distribution from this fund shall be used to fund faculty and student research that preserves and explores the philosophies and history of progressive education as embodied by the University School from 1932 to 1968. It is preferred that research includes materials from the University School housed within University Archives. The selection of candidates will be made by the dean of the College of Education and Human Ecology and the University Archivist, following an open application process. "Should no research grant be awarded in a given year or the annual income is not completely distributed, the annual distribution or balance after partial distribution shall be made available to University Archives to be used to arrange, describe, and inventory historical collections including the University School collection." When we developed the idea of the Endowment Fund it was one way to keep alive the idea of University School and to help future generations understand how the University School 1
philosophy put into action an educational experience which helped shape and influence so dramatically a group of students into reaching such a high level of personal achievement and satisfaction as so many of us have. The fund, along with the digital archiving which has been done and is being done currently, is our legacy to the future. Thankfully because of these sources of information, we will have a record of what we were and what we have accomplished. It would be nice to re-establish our commitment to the Endowment Fund by contributing to it. Here is how! Please make your donation payable to The Ohio State University. In the memo line put the endowment fund number or it won’t get in the correct fund #604422. Then send the check to: College of Education and Human Ecology Office of Advancement 110 Arps Hall, 1945 N. High St. Columbus, OH 43210 The other project, that of the framed photo collages, which are to be placed along the walls of Ramseyer Hall to pictorially and historically show the decades of student life at University School. We now have two complete with the rest planned to be completed during the next several months. We concluded our meeting by setting the date for next year: JUNE 27, 2015. To help additionally fund this project we are selling prints of University School sketched by Bob Miner who was on the University School faculty. They are black ink on parchment colored card stock. The overall dimensions are 14” x
11” with the actual picture 9½ x 71/4. The lower right corner says University School, 1932-1967, renamed Ramseyer Hall. Then there is a signature of RE Miner. In another bottom corner there is RE Miner,’84. The print can be easily trimmed to fit a standard frame. We are asking $10 per print which includes postage. Please make out your check to AAUS and mail to 587 Fox Lane, Worthington, OH 43085.
FAREWELLS The Fall newsletter always recaps the names of those University School “family” who have passed away during the past year or whose passing we only found out about this past year. Sadly our ranks continue to dwindle significantly. *Robert Hightshoe, fac *Don Bateman, fac father of Susan Bateman, ’67 and Anne Bateman, ‘68 *Shirle Nesbitt Westwater, ‘36 *Robert C. Bohannan, ’37 brother and brother-in-law of William F. and Mary Jeanne Barricklow Bohannan, ’39 and brother-in-law of Grace Barricklow LeBart, ‘41 *Sarah (Sally) Sells Bryan, ‘38 *Margaret Cornuelle Ricketts, ’42 sister of Janet Cornuelle Gallant, ‘44 *Janice (Kay) Klages Boyce, ’46 sister of Lorna Klages Loveless, ‘50 *Bruce Kennedy, ’46 brother of Mary Jo Kennedy Bur, ‘49 *Milton Van Schoik, ‘46 *John Windnagel, ‘47 *Roger L. Smith, ‘47 *Stewart M. Rose, ‘48 *Allan Jacobs, ‘52 *C. Eugene Price, ‘53 *Naomi (Noni) Reeder Johnston, ‘53 *Ann Caren Greer, ’53 sister of Robert (Chris) Caren and Charlene
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Caren ‘62 *David (Clark) Barnard, ’55 *John (Jack) Davidson, ’56 brother of Nancy Davidson Davies, ‘60 *Joel Barkan, ‘59 *Leonard Shartle, ’62 brother of Alex Shartle, ‘57 *Martin (Yogi) Foster, ‘65 *David L. Tolbert, ‘69 *William R. and Helen Rutherford, parents of Lynn Rutherford Harper, ’66 Arch Rutherford ’63 Our deepest sympathies go out to the friends and families of the following University School “family” who now join the list: *Eugene Smith, fac *Tom Maimone, ‘43 *Virginia Dillon Rittenhouse,’48 wife of Hugh Rittenhouse, ’48 and sister of Whit Dillon, ‘46 *Tom E. Wilson, ‘50 *Walter Ream, ‘51 *David William (Krapp) Dax, ‘56 *Gary Flanders, ’56 brother of Dennis, ‘55 *Gretchen Mumma Chapin,’60 sister of Lyn Mumma Sherman, ‘55 and brotherin-law Bruce Sherman, ‘55 *Jon Lazear, ’67 brother of Conni Lazear, ’61 and Tom Lazear, ‘70s *Marjorie Smith mother of Sterling, ’67, Philip W., ’68 and Thomas T.,’70s
ANNOUNCEMENTS MARY TOLBERT’S BIOGRAPHY By Bob Butche Mary Tolbert’s biography rises from two decades of arguments and negotiations. Mary Tolbert wanted her biography to be about the life of Miss Perfect – the woman and teacher we all knew at
University School. I said she’d have to write it for I wanted to tell about the real Mary Tolbert for her real life story is immensely interesting, uplifting, depressing and historic. In the summer of 2009 – nearly three years before her death in May of 2012 – Mary Tolbert gave in – demanding of me only that I tell the truth. She agreed to authorize a biography that would be based, in part, on her own personal papers, images, writings, dealings and letters from her days at Columbia University and subsequent European study tour in Germany in 1939. She alluded to but would not let me see her collection of love letters and the details of her failed marriage plans to Wiley Campbell in 1948. The Mary Tolbert you knew was genuine – highly intelligent, musically sound, educationally well founded, a former singer turned pianist turned music teacher. She was, however, only one Miss Tolbert – the one built on the idealized model of Miss Perfect. The others, driven to some degree by her short temper and stubbornness were as reflective of her overall life as our own behavior patterns and habits. The Mary Ruth you did not know was vindictive, tough, and at a visceral level, a survivor. She loved to entertain, and follow the careers of her former students. She often baked sweets for her visitors, and always put on a refreshment event for those who visited her at her Mount Oval home. The Apogee of her career was the morning of May 10th 1954 when she refused to take responsibility for what one of our 1954 classmates had done to the lighting system at Hughes Hall. On that morning Dr. Eugene Weigel, Mary Tolbert’s longtime mentor, cancelled Hughes Hall privileges for Brigadoon –
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five days before opening night. Their resulting fall-out, Weigel’s failure to enforce his ban conspired to begin Tolbert’s downfall at Ohio state – ending in her being pushed out of the Music Department by Wayne Ramsey and others nearly twenty years later. I Hear Music – the Mary Ruth Tolbert Story -- is based on Bill McCormick and my 50 year connection to Tolbert, all of her professional and personal papers, and nearly 18 months of in-depth research – part of which involves the run up to the American Revolution. The Revolutionary War connection derives from from Tolbert’s decision to gift most of her multi-million dollar estate, her Mount Oval home, and the historic grounds upon which it was built by William Renick and Jane Sterling Boggs in 1832. Mary knew her property was historic, but until the worldwide research reach made possible by the Internet, the most obscure, timely and probative books about the revolutionary era were locked-up in archives or the basements of libraries, including the New York Public Library where one of the most critical books, a 1880’s era history of Pickaway County was digitized by Google. This book, and a great many others, were lovingly digitized for the Tolbert biography by Jeffrey Slee, a computer guru who lives in Palm Beach, Florida. Jeff Slee’s digitalization work made 1000 page books easily searchable. Wow! Thus Mary Tolbert’s contribution to history, and by way of having left her property to the Pickaway County Historical Society, has produced probative evidence, corroborated by historians writing over two centuries, that the vote that was taken that began the Revolutionary War on July 4th 1776
was taken at the Council House at Grenadier Squaw Village, overseen by Chiefess Nonhelema, on Friday, October 8th 1774. In Mary Ruth Tolbert’s front yard. I Hear Music will begin final preparation for its limited and private first edition release in early 2015. The 300 page book with well over 100 images, photographs, letters, charts, tables and maps, will be released in paper back for sale at the Mount Oval Historic site in late winter, and as an eBook next summer. Autographed limited first edition hard bound copies ($100 each) are being offered only to persons who knew Tolbert which includes our University School family. 10 copies have been reserved for AAUS. Expect hard copy shipping costs to be about $10 each. Non-cancellable orders for the first edition, with a check for $110 (to include shipping,) should be sent to I Hear Music, AAUS, 587 Fox Lane, Worthington, OH 43085. Second edition copies (paperback) will follow at $49 plus shipping ($55 total) in the spring from the Pickaway County Historical Society, P. O. Box 85, Circleville OH 43113-0085, or at Mount Oval, 3601 Emerson Road, Circleville, Ohio 44313, ( 740-474-3216 ). Epilogue Become Prologue An excerpt from: I Hear Music, The Mary Ruth Tolbert Story Copyright 2014, Robert Butche As early as 1898 certain American historians were coming to understand that a fuller accounting of the run-up to the Revolutionary war was obscured by a pervasive invisibility of events outside of Philadelphia, Boston and Charlottesville. Absent adequate resources and means of communications, what was recorded
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and published at the time was to some degree limited to what happened at Philadelphia in the summer of 1774. Prior to the invention of electrical telegraphy in 1837 what was recorded about events was sporadic, uneven, and costly to transport. News, the core information underlying all history, remained separated in time and space until the 20th century. 21st century Americans will recognize the problem as one of bandwidth for 19th century telegraphy was limited to about 100 bits per second. The result was a two fold distortion of information, 1st what happened near to news gatherers was favored over what was afar, and 2nd classification of information is cast in terms of the editing viewpoint, not the point of news capture. Thus what was published in books and newspapers (what happened) about the run-up to the American Revolution provided far deeper coverage of what was happening in Philadelphia than elsewhere – with a near blackout on news about important, possibly related happenings in the vast backcountry outside the colonies. It took over a century for historians to overcome the bias of inconsistent classification. Thus history was distorted by omission. By 1902 historians had come full circle – the American Colonies were vast and complex organisms in which events played out in places either too distant to be considered newsworthy, or worse, events that appeared to be unrelated, or whose connection with larger events was masked. When historians began to examine what happened in North America between 1770 and 1790, as opposed to what was recorded by revolutionary war editorial standards, a fuller and more revealing account began to emerge. The world has long known that the vote for Independence occurred in Philadelphia and that the first battle of the revolutionary war was at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. All of this is true. And, as cited by historians writing at the end of the 19th century, systemically incomplete. There were two wars in the offing in the fall of 1774 – one against the British whose purpose was to win the independence of thirteen colonies, and a second in Ohio Country between the Colony of Virginia and Indians, mostly Shawnee and Mingo. They were both part of the same battle, for both had to be won to survive. For history they were originally categorized as different: one to earn Independence, the other to cast out tribal Indians.
What’s of interest to readers of Mary Tolbert’s biography is that in her decision to make her family home and farm an historical site, based largely on it having been the site of Great Shawnee Town (Meemkekak), she helped to adduce new understanding of long festering issues. Tolbert knew, for example, that her barn, abutting the rising ridge to the Shawnee burning place, was close to where once stood Grenadier Squaw Village’s large Council House. There were two separate votes underlying the Revolutionary War, one taken July 4th 1776 at Philadelphia’s State House, presided over by John Hancock, and an earlier one, taken on October 7th 1774 near Mary Tolbert’s barn, presided over by Nonhelema, Shawnee Chief and great warrior. On or about Friday October 7th 1774, Nonhelema, Chief of Grenadier Squaw Village called a tribal meeting at the Council House. The issue was extremely serious, for her brother Cornstalk’s tribe had decided to take revenge upon the Virginia Militia at Point Pleasant for earlier atrocities against Mingo tribesmen and their families in what is known today as the Yellow Creek Massacre in the spring of 1774. By the end of the day, Nonhelema’s tribe chose to join in the action. Together with a band of Mingos, the warriors of Great Shawnee Town, set about attacking Colonel Andrew Lewis’ Virginia Militia, and army of 1000 men, at their camp at Point Pleasant, on river Ohio, at dawn on the morning of Monday, October 10th 1774. Today, more than a century after Mr. Hunter’s revelations in Columbus, serious historians have come to accept Mr. Hunter’s central thesis: that backcountry events, most which went unrecorded when so much attention was directed to the happenings at Philadelphia, were at times supportive of independence, or, at times triggers. Today, for example, historians Eric Hinderacker (University of Utah) and Peter C. Mancall (USC) describe the events that ended Great Shawnee Town and sent disgruntled Shawnee to Oklahoma as an epilogue to the Indian era in Ohio Country even as it served as prologue to the American Revolution. If Dunmore's War serves as the epilogue to one story, it is the prologue to another: the story of American independence. The events of the preceding decade amounted to nothing short of a revolution in backcountry affairs, and the military campaign led by Lord Dunmore against the Ohio Indians constituted the opening chapter
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of a new epoch in American affairs. From the perspective of the backcountry, the shots fired on the Ohio late in 1774, not those at Concord six months later, constituted the beginning of the American Revolution. Though the Ohio campaign was led by a royal governor, its muscle was provided by two thousand men who had waited a decade in mounting frustration and anger while the king neglected their needs. This was their declaration of independence. There were two raging conflicts in play before the Continental Congress as convened in Carpenters’ Hall at Philadelphia on September 5th, 1774: The foremost was interior to the American colonies, i.e. British taxing and rule, and a second, exterior to the colonies, in which the aboriginal peoples sought to protect their birthright from what was fast becoming a tidal wave of white settlers. There were two wars at hand when John Adams left Braintree for Philadelphia – only one of which he was fully aware. Adams was a learned man, and Abigail a consistent contributor to his thinking, but Adams and most of his fellow delegates had only one driving issue on their mind that September: independence from Britain. Meanwhile, two prominent Virginians, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, by virtue of being members of the House Burgesses were well aware of the ongoing battles between Virginia militias west of Fort Pitt and Indian interests – external to colonial lands. When John Adams nominated Colonel Washington to be Commander of the Continental Army in 1774, the delegates believed there would be but one war. In fact there were two, but because the war with the indigenous Indians west of river Ohio was between the Virginia Colony and what were deemed to be savage aborigines, an ongoing major war outside of the colonies was largely ignored. W. H. Hunter’s view that the American Revolution began with the battles between Indians on the frontier is now largely an accepted reality. As is Hinderaker and Mancall’s assertion that the first military battle was at Point Pleasant where Cornstalk and his sister did horrible damage to Colonel Lewis’ Virginia militia in what is widely believed today to have been the first battle in the American Revolution.
and modernized. This was accomplished thanks to a very generous donation by Richard Baker, ’62 and the efforts of webmaster, Steve Moore. Also be sure to visit the OSU Knowledge Bank to see all the U-Hi yearbooks available for you to browse through. To access the yearbooks go to: https:kb.osu.edu/dspace Once there, choose 1) Communities and collections, 2) go alphabetically to University Archives, 3) then go alphabetically to University School and you will find the yearbooks listed by year. What fun!!! We have some great stories and announcements coming in future issues of the Newsletter and we thank you very much for continuing to sending articles and memories. We have a large number of talented, prolific alumni who continue to dazzle and amaze! Please do continue to send us more of your memories of University School and stories of the achievements and interesting lives of those who were part of the University School experience. We always need more material about fellow students and faculty to add information for researchers learning about University School. Please send your stories or comments to jswhaueisen@yahoo.com or snail mail to AAUS, 587 Fox Lane, Worthington, OH 43085 PLEASE NOTIFY US ASAP IF YOU CHANGE ADDRESSES – WE WANT TO KEEP IN TOUCH!
Happy Holidays and a Wonderful New Year!
Remember to visit our website, www.tosus.org. It has been totally updated
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