Catskills Past: What Was That Color?

By T.M. Bradshaw

The word history suggests to many people that which is dusty and quaint. Certainly, images of clothing, hairstyles, and various kinds of conveyances can seem so. But history is the story of change and innovation—we take note of people and events that were new and exciting.

Since innovation is a response to a need and is always based on what went before—even the most revolutionary idea has its roots in the past—it often happens that similar ideas come from various points, the reality behind the aphorism “great minds think alike.” If one person hadn’t addressed a particular need, surely someone else would have, albeit in a slightly different way or at a different time.

Dr. Frank W. Cyr (1900–1995) was a force in rural education. He was behind two significant innovations that are ubiquitous features of education today. The first came about while he was a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. In April 1939 Cyr organized a conference, underwritten by the Rockefeller Foundation, that included educators from each of the then 48 states, engineers and designers from Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge, International Harvester and the BlueBird Bus Company, and chemists from Dupont, Sherman Williams, and Pittsburgh Plate Glass. The goal was to develop safety standards for school buses nationwide. Prior to this, students were transported in whatever truck or wagon was available, and although some loca- tions did have school buses, the design specifications for those varied widely, so automotive companies had little interest in producing them. The committee also chose a standard color, primarily for its visibility, named by Dr. Cyr as National School Bus Chrome. The pigment in that particular shade contained lead; the color has since been reformulated and is now known as National School Bus Glossy Yellow. That conference earned Dr. Cyr the sobriquet “Father of the Yellow School Bus.”

The story of the other innovation, distance learning utilizing various shared media, began either before the 1939 conference or in the 1960s, depending on whether thinking about something or doing something about it counts as its start. And like all innovation, it, too, followed an evolution of incremental steps. A 1935 letter to Dr. Cyr from a Max Brunstetter of Erpi Picture Consultants described a study in which twelve Pennsylvania schools shared “educational talking pictures” on a rotating basis, a concept Dr. Cyr wished to discuss with his students interested in rural education. He had begun visiting the Northern Catskills in the 1930s as educational consultant to CCC Camps, liked the area and thought its scattered small populations and rugged terrain epitomized the particular problems of small schools. In the 1940s Dr. Cyr was part of a group developing the concept of Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES). In 1955 a jukebox in Hunter’s Lodge in Windham sparked the idea of pro- viding packaged individual instruction; five years later, as part of the Ford Foundation-funded Catskill Area Study in Small School Design, a repurposed jukebox was installed in the Margaretville School Library. The speakers had been replaced with six sets of headphones and the music had been replaced with a variety of lessons, especially foreign language lessons.

Dr. Cyr and Grolier executive and philanthropist Fred P. Murphy, a Stamford-area native, were friends, resulting in Cyr visiting Stamford often. Murphy made a grant to Teachers College that enabled international graduate students to do field work in Delaware County. The same grant was used to develop and install a Telelearning system in schools. Up to 21 students, gathered around seven microphones, could listen to and ask questions of an expert in any field, anywhere.

In August 1965 Dr. Cyr retired to Stamford, but retired is not quite the right word. Consideration of Catskills geography had led to another idea percolating around in Dr. Cyr’s mind. Yes, riding to school on a highly visible bus designed for safety was an improvement for rural students, but some endured very long bus rides. What if there was a way to bring at least part of their education to them instead?

On his very first half day, he demonstrated a pilot program of an idea conceived by some of his students to solve that traveling problem. As he described his transition from Teachers College to what might be called his late-life career, “I finished my last class at noon, packed the car with my electric blackboard, TV camera, and tape recorder and headed for Stamford. I was having dinner with seven area administrators at the Hidden Inn [in South Kortright].”

The guest speaker that evening was a vice president of General Telephone, addressing them from his home in Connecticut. Of the group gathered at the Hidden Inn, Cyr said, “I filmed them, interviewed them, and they all saw themselves on TV. That was the beginning of low power TV in the U. S., or the world for that matter.”

Cyr persuaded his friend Fred Murphy to donate the former Rexmere Hotel, built during Stamford’s reign as the Queen of the Catskills, to be used as the offices of what would become the Rural Supplementary Educational Center (RSEC). The resort building’s kitchen became the TV studio. The US Department of Education had approved the proposal for RSEC in January 1966, providing the FCC approved the television plan by August 18, which turned out to be the date the FCC would meet.

With help from an experienced communications lawyer, the RSEC proposal moved from desk to desk at the FCC, securing needed approvals and signatures from various agency engineers and attorneys until August 3. On that morning, Dr. Cyr received a call that all the required signatures but one had been obtained. The last signature, meant to confirm that all the others had signed off on the project, was not likely to happen. The person responsible had locked the application in his desk and gone on vacation until after the deadline.

Dr. Cyr first called the local state representative, but that man couldn’t make any headway with the FCC. Cyr’s next phone call, to the Chairman of the Delaware County Democratic Committee, achieved results—Senator Robert Kennedy called the FCC, apparently inspiring someone to find a key to the locked desk, because the RSEC application was on the agenda for the August 18 meeting. And on that day it was approved, with nine hours to spare.

Schools were fitted out with coaxial cable; transmitting towers were erected on Mount Utsayantha in Stamford and Mount Pisgah in Andes. RSEC first came on the air on February 5, 1968, taking programs relayed by microwave to RSEC from New York City’s PBS station and then rebroadcast locally where they could be picked by UHF antenna.

That television system soon provided 51 and a half hours of programming a week, offering educational materials weekdays from 9 am to 3 pm, along with evening hours from 7 to 10:30 pm, and Saturday afternoons from 1 to 5 pm. Advanced placement courses were offered through closed-circuit TV, enabling small groups of students in several schools to participate as a group with a teacher from one of the schools. Some of the offerings were produced in the old hotel kitchen TV studio by students and RSEC staff. Sixty-five such shows were produced during the 1984–85 school year including classes in Hunter Safety, local law, an analysis of George Orwell’s 1984, discussions of the drinking age and seatbelt use, and “The Brain Game,” a local variation on “The College Bowl.” Rebroadcasts from PBS stations in Syracuse, NYC, Schenectady, and Binghamton continued.

Over time, schools and homes in 20 local school districts scattered over four counties were served by 18 mountaintop translators. Those districts included Andes, Charlotte Valley, Fleischmanns, Gilboa-Conesville, Grand Gorge, Hunter-Tannersville, Jefferson, Margaretville, Roxbury, South Kortright, Stamford, and Windham-Ashland-Jewett.

Of course the system has grown and evolved. Tami Fancher, co-president, along with Karen Insley, of the New York State Distance Learning Consortium, explained some of the changes along the way. Coaxial cable was eventually replaced by a fiber optic network, and the system is now internet-based. Students can go on virtual field trips, including as far as Australia. There are activities for very young students, such as Monster Match and Flat Stanley journeys. High school students at multiple schools can still participate in AP classes taught at one of the schools. They can also learn about different career choices, connecting with professionals in various fields.

Along with the RSEC staff, Dr. Cyr produced a book containing his ideas on education, including predictions for the schools of 2050. Most of his predictions have already come true.

At the time of the 1989 fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the school bus conference, a movement began to get the USPS to issue a stamp commemorating the bus. Dr. Cyr felt it could take as long as five years. In 1998, Joan Dorr of Laurens revitalized that effort. In 1999, the New York State Legislature issued a resolution in support of such a stamp. But no school bus stamp was produced. That is, until January 5, 2023, when the USPS unveiled a twenty-four cent additional ounce stamp depicting a bright yellow bus. We can imagine that Dr. Cyr would have been pleased at the recognition, but we know for certain what the “Father of the Yellow School Bus” thought of the iconic color he named. He said, “To me, it’s always looked orange.”

Francis X. Driscoll

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