FOREVER FORWARD. FOREVER LATIN.
The following is a reprint of the preface of Latin Translations, published in 2001 as the school welcomed Arch N. McIntosh, Jr. as Headmaster. The book, written by Mary Yorke Oates ’83, illustrates and celebrates the school’s history up to that point. Copies are available at charlottelatin.org/latintranslations.
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n 1973, Eastover neighborhood still seemed sleepy and old-fashioned; it had not yet become the rebuilt enclave of wealth and opulence. People endured tiny bathrooms and wet basements. It was desirable because of its tree-lined streets and paved sidewalks, a sort of safe place to raise a family. It was also desirable because of its close proximity to uptown Charlotte. Charlotte, even then, was a banking town. Conversations at the end of the driveway were commonplace, and people were “neighborly” to one another: they were kind; they spoke pleasantries; they delivered your paper if it landed in their yard. Like most of the neighborhood children, I played outside until dinnertime, and I roamed as far as the sidewalk took me, yet still in range of my mother’s voice. I often pedaled past Mr. Knight and Mr. Thies, two of Latin’s founding board members, and I, of course, spoke to them. They were extraordinary to me in the way all grown men were. They were simply grown. I remember quite vividly the overgrown hedge beyond Mr. Knight’s driveway because you had to duck if you rode your bicycle under it, and I also remember a low brick wall across the street. I often walked the wall imagining I was Nadia Comaneci, the ten-year-old Olympic gymnast, dipping my feet and balancing on one leg. On a daring day, I might have even cartwheeled off it. It wasn’t a tall wall. It was just the right height for sitting. I didn’t know that Mr. Knight and Mr. Thies sat on that wall and discussed at length the curriculum problems in public school and the frustrations they felt. I also didn’t know they sat on that wall and discussed the importance of a challenging curriculum, the need for phonics-based reading instruction, or how to go about starting an independent school. But they had. They had sat on the wall many times and not just during integration and busing. They had sat there years before, as early as the mid 1960s, because they strongly believed in traditional education and because they had high expectations. Hardly elitist, they wanted children to benefit from the no-frills, hit-the-books basics that they had known as boys. To them, the youth didn’t seem to have an appreciation for Western Civilization and all that had come before; they wanted their children to learn and to feel a sense of responsibility as leaders.
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LATIN Magazine • Special Edition 2019
By 1973, Latin was three years old. The first graduates would march in May of 1974, when enrollment had reached 764 students, in grades one through twelve. And while so much had been accomplished, the pioneers — the founders and the families who followed them — knew the road was far from paved. Funding was a continuing problem and resources were hard to come by. In the public schools, things weren’t much better, as the climate in Charlotte was volatile. Outside the two square miles where I lived, the educational storm was far from calm, and every child in my neighborhood was in a different school. Some of us remained in public schools, but year after year those numbers were dropping, and familiar faces were disappearing each September. To some, it seemed Latin was just an alternative to busing, perhaps even a place to avoid the outside turmoil of society. Vietnam, Roe v. Wade, and citywide integration must have seemed heady at best, especially to a population of conservative bankers. Maybe to some, sending their kids to a school in the woods might shelter them just a little bit longer, keep them younger, more innocent. Maybe some simply wanted a guarantee that the classroom would still be a place of higher learning, where the child’s ability was understood and challenged. But to others, especially those founding mothers and fathers, Latin was not an alternative. It was an opportunity to teach children to be citizens, to be leaders, and to be challenged, nurtured, and embraced. So the people came. And the people defined, and still define Charlotte Latin. The people and the stories, the ones that started in Cameron Faison’s garage playroom and continue, explain Charlotte Latin. And through these stories, the history begins. The story of how a campus, so carefully and thoughtfully built, and a school, so carefully and thoughtfully developed, emerged from a mound of red Carolina clay. Thirty-one years later, a school that started with two buildings on a muddy tract of land has evolved into a campus to rival any small liberal arts college. I think it interesting that the climate at Latin today is so similar to the neighborhood where I grew up — a sort of safe place to turn cartwheels and roam a little further than you should. It, like Mr. Knight and Mr. Thies, is neighborly. The venerable old wall where Mr. Knight and Mr. Thies sat is still there, but interestingly enough (quite like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale) it now is covered with ivy.
Special Edition 2019 • LATIN Magazine
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