Old Deacon Greenough of Deerfield, Mass, took one look at the new principal of the town's academy and snorted. The principal hardly looked big or bright enough to get along with his students. The deacon's neighbors agreed. "I saw the new principal this morning," said one. "He'll really never do."
But 23-year-old Frank Learoyd Boyden of Foxboro, Mass, did do. That fall of 1902, just out of Amherst himself, he took over the 103-year-old school, then partially town-supported, with its enrollment of 14 students. He taught every thing from Latin to math, coached athletics and served as town librarian on the side. The town soon learned that there was something different about the kindly young schoolmaster in the somber black suit. Fractious kids jumped to obey him; backward boys seemed to brighten. Even old Deacon Greenough was won over. He started coming over to dinner every Sunday night, bringing free bottles of Green-ough's Horseradish with him.
Patch a Faucet. The horseradish was only the beginning. As the years passed, other gifts and other boys came to the school. Many of the students were boarders from out of town. The little principal who had started 50 simply ("No one will graduate unless he can set a pane of glass, patch a faucet, and has a year of Latin") found himself getting famous. When the town's contribution to the school's funds ceased, in 1924, Boyden went out and raised money to make up the difference. Governors, judges and college presidents began sending their sons there. Though Deerfield children could still come free, the academy became one of the top ten private prep schools in the U.S. (total charge: $1,600), with a waiting list as long as any. Exeter's Principal Lewis Perry described the rise of Deerfield under Frank Boyden as "magic." Yale gave Boyden an honorary degree "for his researches into the minds and hearts of boys."
Last week, hundreds of Boyden's boys were back at Deerfield for the school's 150th anniversary. The school put on a pageant, complete with oxen, stagecoach, blunderbusses, and a tableau of the Deerfield Massacre of1704.* But the sight most visitors had come to see was Frank Boyden himself.
He was more than ever an unusual figure —an educator who never claimed to be learned, seldom had time to read, still spoke with a Yankee twang. Old boys and townspeople remembered him jingling to school on snowy days in his horse-drawn sleigh, or shuffling through the autumn leaves with his worn grey cape blowing behind him. He has long kept office at a big desk in the hallway of the main building, where boys can stop and chat between classes.