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But otherwise, Brent School was irrepressibly American. Students and faculty dressed American, talked and thought American. Although the school was coed, it was so rigorously chaperoned that the closest sexual contact was the dances in the living room of the girls' dorm, where the music was Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller. Virtually the only entertainment that they did not provide for themselves was to walk into Baguio once a week to see an American movie. Because they were isolated and totally dependent upon one another, they shared everything, including an innocent and trustful patriotism.
In the summer of 1941 the last graduating class, consisting of two boys and five girls, listened to a commencement address by the U.S. High Commissioner of the Philippines. Six months after this ceremony, the Japanese army invaded the Philippines, and Brent School ceased to exist. Most of its students spent the long war in internment camps.
Six weeks ago, 43 years after graduation, four of the seven members of the class of '41 were back at school. Along with the other alumni, they had traveled at considerable expense from the U.S. to a country that is not, at the moment, high on anybody's list of tourist attractions. All were drawn by some indelible imprint.
When the alumni began the reunion ritual of photographing one another, ancient images returned. The remnants of each class posed for portraits. The complete starting lineup of Brent's best basketball team (15-3) turned out to be present for a picture. So did the three original inhabitants of the "toddler dorm," the home of the youngest boarding students.
The alumni learned that Headmaster Caleb is vigorously restoring the school to academic excellence and is also restoring some of its old traditions. In the dining room, faculty members rotate from table to table every two weeks so that each teacher gets to know each boarding student. Birthdays are once again celebrated with a rectangular cake that the student himself cuts, handing out the four corners to his closest friends. But there was nothing Caleb could do about the "lucky tree" that the basketball team used to touch on its way to every game. The Japanese army had cut it down.
All through the week of intense recollection, the alumni kept asking one another what made this school and this bond so special—special enough for all of them to have kept in touch with one another over so many years, special enough to bring them back together from such distances for this occasion.
The answers are not a bad prescription for present-day educators, parents and, especially, students to bear in mind:
"Brent was special because of how we treated one another and cared about one another. We were away from our parents. This was our family."
"Everybody was made to feel part of it. It's been with me all my life. When my daughter, who knows my singing, learned that I had been in the choir, she said, 'They must have let you in everything.'"
"My friends think it's wonderful that anyone my age could be so excited about a high school reunion. The difference is that we all knew one another so well. We saw everybody every day."
"I won four letters in basketball and four in baseball. In the U.S., I wouldn't even have made the team."