The night after our 1951 graduation, Nori Kabyama, Charlie Guggenheimer, and I planned our own celebration by sharing a can of beer. Long after lights out, we started our event. Passing the treasured brew around, everything was going well. That is, until we heard a suspicious door open in corridor master Bob Crow’s quarters. Clump, clump, clump came the familiar foot beats. Mr. Crow stopped outside my door, knocked, and came in. “Good evening, boys. What’s going on?” “Oh, nothin’, nothing . . . sir.” By this time, Mr. Crow had seen enough, for in those frantic moments before his arrival, one of us had inadvertently knocked over the can. While we were unaware of our fatal error, Mr. Crow saw enough of the foamy brew between our feet. Whew! We were excused and sent off to our rooms. A short time later, Mr. Crow was back, and we were to report to his quarters immediately.
Mr. Boyden had arrived, and he wasn’t happy. He proceeded to tell us how disappointed he was and how much he had thought of each of us. And, we had let him down. He never showed any anger. Never a threat. Just great disappointment. I felt terrible, like crying, because I had hurt someone whom I held in the very highest respect and love. It was an awful feeling. This wasn’t the end of the story, though. Later that summer, Mr. Boyden called me and asked if I would come back and join the school staff. The headmaster was more than head of school.
~ John Bell ’51