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FROM THE ARC HI VES
FROM T HE ARCHIVE S
FROM THE ARCHIVES:
The Enduring Appeal of Ragged Robin
Carrying
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Ragged Robins Today bouquets at Commencement, the annual yearbook and the Upper School singing group
remain beloved traditions, keeping the Ragged Robin an enduring and important part of the GFS experience.
By Dante Beretta, Ph.D., School Archivist, Upper and Middle School Latin t Commencement 2022
Perhaps the
2022 GARRISON FOREST SCHOOL
Another link between graduating Seniors and the school flower emerged significantly in a publication sponsored by students, which has also continued throughout the years. The Class of 1920 published the school’s first yearbook, which it named the Ragged Robin. In its inaugural edition, the yearbook featured a stylized version of the Ragged Robin flower on its cover. With a graduating class of five Seniors, the school had achieved the milestone of completing its first decade in operation, and the future looked bright. 1920 graduate, Lois Wood, was one of the original students in 1910, making her the first GFS “lifer.” The senior class of 1920 also began another enduring tradition, the class ring, featuring Manor House. During the 1953 academic year, the next Ragged Robin tradition was launched. With an abundance of musical talent available that year, Senior Julie Cuyler, president of the Music Club, formed a separate a capella group consisting of Juniors and Seniors. Dubbed the Ragged Robins, this group has continued singing for 70 years. Specializing in light classics, folk and popular music, the Raggeds perform on- and off-campus, including their annual rendition of “The Bramble and the Rose” at Commencement.
p Senior class advisor Tasha Landis adds a commemorative Ragged Robin, crocheted by Becca Share ’22 for each classmate, to a bouquet before Commencement 2022
t This year’s Ragged Robins performing during Commencement
RAGGED ROBIN
most versatile among the signature emblems that founding headmistress Mary Moncrieffe Livingston is credited with selecting during her tenure at GFS from 19101929 was her choice of the school flower, the Ragged Robin. As with the school motto, the alma mater and the school’s official colors, Miss Livingston left no explanation for her choice of the Ragged Robin as the school flower, except for the important fact that her Ragged Robin, favorite color was blue. A native also commonly known as a cornflower or bachelor’s button wildflower, also commonly Illustration, known as a cornflower or Bee Shriver Kant ’54 << bachelor’s button, the Ragged Robin’s petals exhibit both light and dark blue shades, a perfect symbol for both Light Blues and Dark Blues to embrace. It is tempting to suggest a connection between Miss Livingston’s choice of flower and a popular contemporary musical of the same name, which was making the rounds throughout the country, stopping for a week in 1910 at Ford’s Theater in Baltimore. Ragged Robin received rave reviews and was compared favorably to the 1904 play Peter Pan. As the reviewer in the Sun noted, “Ragged Robin, as every wanderer in the fields knows, is a blue flower and the hero of the play earns his nickname by wearing a blue posy.” The musical continued to tour as a popular favorite into the 1920s. Miss Livingston may also have chosen a wildflower over a more splendid alternative as better suited to her modest country school surrounded by farms and woods. It was also Miss Livingston who included the school flower as a distinctive feature of Commencement pageantry. To this day, graduating Seniors march in procession to the stage wearing white and carrying bouquets of Ragged Robins.
Scan the QR r code below fo l na additio content—like n how and whe ed gg the Ra Robin was shown as a bird instead of a flower. Illustration, Carrington Dame Hooper ’54
p This year’s yearbook editors, Stella Tognocchi ’23 and Shyne Carter ’23 with the 2022 yearbook, with a theme of “Playlist for the Year”
p In 2020, diplomas were handed out at a socially distanced, drive-through graduation; during the formal Commencement later that August, students received a framed copy of this drawing from B.J. McElderry.
2022 GARRISON FOREST SCHOOL