Prep Schools: Taft's Third

To tell one New England prep school from another is "sometimes terribly difficult," says Taft's Headmaster Paul F. Cruikshank. But the name of his small (360 boys) school—an ivied Gothic campus in Watertown, Conn.—is hardly forgettable. It evokes the massive figure of President William Howard Taft, whose slimmer brother, Horace Button Taft, founded the school in 1890. A score of other Tafts* have since passed through; but these days another name makes Taft just as memorable—Cruikshank.

Yaleman Cruikshank, who succeeded the founder in 1936, had himself started another school near by after a teaching stint at Hopkins and The Gunnery. But...