(2 of 2)
After Mrs. Riddle's death in 1946, the trustees interviewed some 25 candidates for provost, found most of them reluctant to step into the pattern she had laid down for them. Then they hit on Pierpont. The new head, a University of Richmond graduate (he flunked out of Johns Hopkins), was a headmaster of the lower form at a Baltimore school, later bossed a World War II Navy school. The first time he saw Avon Old Farms, he said, "I felt as if I had walked into the middle of a Charles Addams cartoon."
Pierpont was willing to comply with the minor provisions of Avon's code, such as fly-casting and a school uniform (now modified, at night, to a dark jacket), so long as he didn't have to be too literal about the major ones. Particularly, he doesn't believe, as Mrs. Riddle did, that there is one class privileged to produce gentlemen. He is as anxious to turn out gentlemen as she was, but believes that they can be made, not necessarily prenatally. Without Mrs. Riddle to make up its $25,000 a year losses, Avon will still have to rely mostly on sons of the well-to-do. Cost of an Avon education (without extras): $1,800 a year.