News & Events 2003-2004

Convocation 2003

Headmaster T. Chandler Hardwick III presented the following convocation address on September 11, 2003.

Convocation gives me a chance to say for the last time – but with great pleasure – welcome to Blair and Blair Academy’s 156th year.

Mike Kampmann ’04 was the student speaker at this year’s convocation.

I want to start by pointing out that the path we took down from Insley is very much the same way that boys and girls and school masters came down the hill 155 years ago – and for over a hundred year afterwards – to this church for a variety of weekly church services. In fact, it is almost certainly the case that in this church the idea of Blair Academy was first conceived, discussed and agreed upon.

Back in 1848, John I. Blair, our founder, was a wealthy merchant and owned a feed/grain/hardware store in Blairstown. The store was located where Blair Academy now has several faculty homes, across the dam and above Blair Lake. Later in his life, Mr. Blair built and owned railroads and was one of the wealthiest men in the world, but that was later in the century and a different story. Back in the middle of the 19th century, when John I. Blair ran his hardware store on the hill above this church, there were no public schools in Blairstown and, in fact, public education was many years from becoming a widespread reality. In those days – not long, remember, after Napoleon charged through Europe and a full decade before Abraham Lincoln presided over a divided nation – boys and girls were either home schooled or were given lessons by a traveling scholar who was employed by a group of families; sometimes, too, local ministers served as teachers, but the long and short of the situation was simple: there was no formal school in Blairstown or nearby.

Thus, in the winter of 1848, did John I. Blair offer the First Presbyterian Church a school, which would be governed by a Board of Directors. These directors, all elders at the Presbyterian Church, which included Mr. Blair, founded the school in early April of 1848, and so we are now in our 156th year.

Our beginning was not ambitious, but practical. Therefore, Blair’s first 50 years were undistinguished and unrecorded in most respects, though there is a surviving student diary from that period. Primarily serving families within a 50-mile radius, the Blairstown School, as we were known for a brief time, had the modest beginning of but one building in which all classes were held. At the time called simply “CAD,” short for “academy,” but now known as Old Academy – this is the building in which Dr. Sayers lives today, over on that hilltop.

At first, a few boys lived in teachers’ houses, while the girls were mostly day students or boarded in town. Sports did not exist, because time not spent studying or worshipping was invariably spent doing chores normally associated with rural life, like tending to animals, washing, cleaning, keeping up the fire, water gathering and so on. One diary entry from the time – written by a 16-year-old boy from Drakeville, New Jersey – describes part of a typical day:

“I arose late and missed prayers. After I had dressed myself, I went down in the yard and found Mr. Johnson catching chickens. I helped him catch five and after we killed them, took them to the House where the girls took the chickens and cooked them for Dinner. Five chickens being enough for the whole school...” In 1850 Blair Hall – a wooden building on the site of Insley – was built, but the construction of the two great buildings, Locke and Ivy – known during the 19th century as “Girls Dorm” and “Stone Hall” – would not find completion until the 1890s, with the American Civil War being a significant disruption to progress.

The first 50 years of our history saw eight different headmasters, each leading the school for a handful of years before moving on, none of whom seems to have been particularly memorable. However, the next 100 years gave Blair seven Headmasters; the average length of service has been 17 years.

The beginning of Blair’s emergence as a great school came during the summer of our 50th anniversary, June 1898, with the arrival from Ohio of Dr. John C. Sharpe who, though we do not speak much about him anymore, is perhaps the greatest headmaster in Blair’s history and one of the great headmasters in the country during his years at Blair.

Let me read a short passage written by Albert Freeman, known as Dean Freeman, on the occasion of Dr. Sharpe’s retirement: “Dr. John C. Sharpe assumed the duties of Headmaster in July, 1898... (and retired in August, 1927). He found a campus of eleven acres; he leaves a campus of over three hundred acres. He found buildings few in number, poorly equipped; he leaves a large group of buildings finely equipped for every school purpose. He found a school provincial in type, of one hundred students; he leaves a cosmopolitan school of three hundred boys. He found a school of only local repute; he leaves a school famous throughout the country.”

I offer this bit of opening history because I believe most of you have not heard much about Blair’s beginnings and because I want to remind us that we are following a tradition of learning at Blair and living in Blairstown, just as thousands of boys and girls and hundreds of school masters have before us.

And so we come to this church tonight to remind us of our past, our Blair tradition, but it is in each of us, each of you, that the future resides, the future of this School and the future of this year. And I leave you all with this simple fact: In 38 Saturdays from this Saturday, the seniors will graduate, and in 38 Wednesdays from next Wednesday, the last of the underclassmen will be leaving for summer holiday. Remember that in the days ahead: stay focused, be good, and God speed. Thank you.

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