A Milestone Year

REMEMBERING 1951-1952: A Milestone School Year

Thevery first Milestones yearbook published by Harpeth Hall students featured a page that set the publications’ intentions for the year and decades to come. In years to come as you turn these pages, we hope that you will pause at the milestones along the way to relive each moment of this important year which has seen the metamorphosis of a dream into reality. As Harpeth Hall reaches its first milestone, it is with deep humility yet with great pride that we present to you this annual. To each student and to each annual staff that follows, we transmit our hopes for the future – aspirations which can never be exhausted and which give “year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity,” and courage which transmutes aspirations into achievements. Seventy years later, Harpeth Hall echoes those words in all we do. Harpeth Hall’s founders believed, as we still do today, in the bold and barrier-breaking idea that girls deserve an excellent education filled with possibilities and purpose. When Harpeth Hall’s predecessor school, Ward-Belmont, closed in 1951, local community leaders organized to ensure that college-preparatory, all-girls education continued in Nashville. The group purchased the Estes Estate in Green Hills and renamed the school Harpeth Hall, inspired by the nearby Harpeth River Valley. On Sept. 17, 1951, the new Harpeth Hall campus opened with 15 faculty members and 161 students in grades 9-12, most of whom transferred from Ward-Belmont. The first Head of School, Susan Souby, was the former high school principal at Ward-Belmont. As Harpeth Hall has grown and innovated in the 70 years since, our school’s foundational traditions remain. From intramural clubs to the Lady of the Hall and the Milestones yearbook, our history grounds us and moves us forward. Here, we honor the past and the present. We celebrate all the Harpeth Hall women who have stepped forward to shatter glass ceilings as they acknowledge those who came before them and hold the door open for those who will come after. In that spirit, here are memories from two of Harpeth Hall’s very first alumnae.

Debbie Luton Cate ’52 When Harpeth Hall opened in 1951, the only building on campus was the original home, the place that would later come to be called Souby Hall. Excited to be a part of opening a brand-new school, Debbie Luton could not wait to come to campus. In that first year, classes were held wherever there was space. “I think we held algebra in the kitchen — or maybe it was the dining room,” Mrs. Cate said. “I don’t remember which one. Sometime in the fall, the first classroom building was completed. I remember helping carry boxes of supplies into the chemistry lab, which was my favorite spot on campus. I was enthralled with chemistry thanks to Miss Penny.” With new doors open to her through her Ward-Belmont and Harpeth Hall education, Mrs. Cate went on to major in chemistry at Vanderbilt University. After college graduation, she worked three years in a biochemistry lab before becoming a teacher herself — yes, at an all-girls school — and leading the next generation of students to discover passion for STEM careers. When she went on to lead as an upper school administrator, Mrs. Cate carried with her lifelong friendships and memories from Harpeth Hall. That includes her unforgettable role as Audrey in the senior class performance of “As You Like It” on the school lawn.

“I still keep up with my classmates even though I have not lived in Nashville in 62 years,” she said. “I think it is special that we can say we were the first graduating class.”

Mary Schlater Stumb ’53 Miss Patty didn’t shy away from putting the girls through their paces. As Harpeth Hall’s physical education teacher, she led the girls in exercises on the lawn and took them down to the field at the bottom of the hill to play field hockey. Mary Schlater loved every part of it. Before she came to Harpeth Hall, Mary worried that she wouldn’t have a place to complete her schooling. Ward-Belmont closed quickly and with little warning, leaving entire classes of young women without a place to learn. “Then a bunch of wonderful Nashville families got together,” she said, “and they gave us all the opportunity we hoped for.” So, whether it was exercise or education, Mary embraced it all. She remembers the early days, when girls first went to the big house on the hill to learn. Mrs. Souby’s office was where current Head of School Jess Hill’s office is now “and the entire back of the house was a sunroom where we had assembly, study hall, and lunch,” Mrs. Stumb recalled.

Classrooms were upstairs and the basement, she said, is where the athletes had their lockers. Whether it was field hockey or finance, the women who first attended Harpeth Hall learned how to take charge of their own futures.

“Because it was an all-girls school, it taught girls how to do whatever they needed to do — whether it was run their homes or run their own businesses,” she said. “We all learned the leadership skills we needed.” In the years that have passed, Mrs. Stumb’s daughter, a daughter-in-law, and three granddaughters have all attended Harpeth Hall. While the school looks different than when she attended, Mrs. Stumb’s bond to the mission of an all-girls education remains. “If you ask, ‘What is the best thing that I have taken away from the education at Harpeth Hall?’ It is the teachers and my friends and knowing that a female can do anything that a male can do. “I still feel a strong connection,” she said, “and I am very grateful I had that opportunity.” WINTER 2022 | 3