The McCallie Years

Chapter Three, McCallie, “Honor, Truth, and Duty”

It was the fall of 1963, and I was headed for Chattanooga, Tennessee.  I was being sent to McCallie School so I could have more male influence in my life.  In retrospect that almost seems funny since my mother was far tougher than most men.  She might not have been much at hunting and fishing, but that was only because she did not enjoy them.

Still I was destined to go to McCallie.  Like most teenage boys, I was not particularly interested in being dragged away from what I considered a perfectly good life.  I had enjoyed an exceptionally rich family life for an only child with a single mother.  Living close to my mother’s sisters and her oldest brother, Henry, had given me just about everything you could ask for in life except a dad.  It was really tough going to away to school, and I fought it pretty hard.

Sometime during that first fall away, my dad had a heart attack. He was 88 at the time of the attack.  If you do the math, you can figure out that I was born when he was 74.  Something in the care he was receiving really upset my mother who in a very short time went to live in his house and took over his care.  She eventually agreed to what he had wanted for many years, and they got married.

I know my mother made a few trips to Chattanooga to try to help me adjust that fall, but it was only when Major Arthur Burns had a talk with me, that I finally gave up and decided to make the best of what I considered to be a tough situation. I was a heavy kid so that created some challenges for me, but fortunately the academics came pretty easy to me so I did well there.

I had also been taught to not get into trouble so I stayed out of trouble, did my work, and figured out the system.  The system as a freshman was not a lot of fun.  We had to carry our laundry down the side of Missionary Ridge each week.  As freshmen we also got to carry that of upper class students.  I can remember a couple of frozen laundry bags that I had to carry.

I managed to get involved with things and eventually paid enough attention that I started succeeding in the military world.  Getting by at a military school means getting up when the bells ring every morning, getting your name checked off at breakfast whether you ate or not, making your bed, and showing up for inspection with a shiny belt buckle and shoes.  For some strange reason, I enjoyed shining my shoes and brass so that was never a problem.

Each morning we would head off to chapel for a few minutes of talk and announcements. There I mastered one of the great skills in life, sleeping while appearing to be awake. Then we would have classes, drill, lunch, another chapel meeting, more classes, and then sports.  Unfortunately, I figured out how to do as little as possible in after school exercise so my weight remained a problem all through McCallie.  I did get involved in some school sports as a manager and really enjoyed that.

In the evenings we had a very short time after the afternoon activities before our six PM dinner.  Lunch and dinner were both eaten at a family style table with a teacher at each table.  When I became a sophomore, I was rescued from the life at an ordinary table by my Latin II teacher, W.O.E.A. Humphreys.  I joined his table which eventually came to be known as the Establishment.  It was a bright spot in an otherwise uninspiring dinner environment.  It offered intelligent conversation and a group where I felt like I belonged.  Perhaps that explains why I took four years of Latin at McCallie.

After dinner was study hall which ran from 7 to 9:30 PM each night except weekends when Saturday was free and Sunday was a little shorter.  You had to do study hall in the study hall unless you had good grades and had stayed out of trouble.  If you met the requirements, you got to study in your room.  I do not remember many weeks in the study hall.  If you got over ten demerits each week, you had to walk them off around the track on Saturday afternoon. It was a system designed to keep you on the straight and narrow.

Some kids fought the system, I decided to make it work for me.

I had come back to McCallie my sophomore year with a different last name since my dad went through the formal adoption process so I could have his name.  My roommate was a little worried until I showed up, and he figured out that the new person was actually me.

Somewhere along the years, I became popular enough to run for office.  I ended up in the student senate for a term or two.  I still remember one of our great victories was outlawing the hazing of freshmen students.  We lived on floors in dorms.  Each floor had a room with two seniors who were called prefects.  Their job was to inspect our rooms, make certain we were in bed by 10:15 PM and in general keep us in line.

The summer of my junior year I was chosen as one of the prefects for the second floor of Founders Hall.  It was one of the nicest dorms on campus and housed mostly juniors.  I had worked exceptionally hard my junior year, often waking at 5 AM to study by a flashlight in the small alcove for our room doorway.  I had risen to second or third in our class rankings.

That spring I was also one of four juniors appointed to the rank of captain. I was also inducted into some leadership organizations.  It was to be a pretty good senior year.  I can remember getting into some trouble with the senior play when we executed Santa Claus which I believe was me, but I doubt anyone goes through high school without a few challenges.

My senior year, I got a special privilege which was to keep my car on campus because my dad seemed to be rotating in and out of the hospital, and I was often called home because he appeared to be dying. I was only allowed to drive the car for these emergency missions, but still it was nice having the car there.  I think my parents had felt guilty about sending me away so they had given me a blue and white GTO convertible.  It was a very cool car.  It took me a while maybe even into my college years to figure out that having a cool car did not make you cool, but I suppose I figured it out a lot sooner than some.

A big part of McCallie was getting into college.  Getting into college in those days did not mean you had been on a grand tour to select the colleges which you liked.  You applied to some colleges, got in to some and went to the one everyone thought you should go to.

Lynn Weigel, my prefect my junior year, had gone to Harvard.  When he figured out what a great experience it was, he convinced me to apply to Harvard.  Harvard even sent an admissions person down to Chattanooga and I spent some time with him. I am sure he had other stops, but he made a compelling case for going to Harvard.  When the admissions slips came, I had gotten into Harvard.  In what seemed like an obvious decision, I decided to go to Harvard.

I was glad to leave McCallie, and I vowed to make the most of my experience at Harvard.  I can still remember pulling the cord of my alarm clock out of the wall.  When I got home to Mt. Airy, I filled the clock with solder so that I would never forget the exact time when I left McCallie.

I know I learned to work hard, take care of myself, and to be careful with any power that was given to me, but sometime you have repeat lessons until they really sink into your character.  I did vow that my children would never be sent way to school.

The next chapter is Harvard and the world beyond the South.