Meetings

How I met Eads Poitevent In the early 1960s Woodberry Forest School condoned mild hazing of its first year students. "New boys" were expected to wear black neck ties, avoid the grand staircase in the Walker Building, and change the sheets for prefects and monitors on their floor. The most onerous duty that new boys performed was the daily wakeup. The drill had two components: opening the door to each room at 6:30AM to announce that the day had begun and calling out each minute from 7 to 7:05-- "it's seven o' two" to assure that everyone made it to breakfast on time. I spent my new boy year on C-Dorm, a long hallway of rooms on the third floor of the Walker Building, and sometime in September of 1962 my first wakeup shift rolled around. Component one passed uneventfully until I reached a room half way down and on the right side of the hall. As I opened the door, ready to announce "6:30," one of occupants was furiously cranking a metal device wired to the doorknob. The device was a dynamo intended to shock the new boy as he grasped the metal knob; the cranker was Eads Poitevent. We looked at each other. I thought, "what is he doing?" I imagine that Eads was thinking "damn," as something had shorted the connection. I learned that benign electrocution and greased door knobs were all part of the routine, and that life-long friendships could begin with inauspicious introductions.

David Block 

Class of  1964

 

 

 

Best Woodberry Memory

Tiger Square was noticeably "electric" on the eve of the 1989 St. Christopher's football game. At age six, visiting my 5th and 3rd form brothers was exciting, particularly at a Parent's Weekend pep rally. Familiar cheerleaders and ballplayers invited me to the stage, asking if I had something to say. I yelled "Beat the Saints!!" as loud as able, and the community reciprocated the enthusiasm. I then lead a spirited "Short Tiger" cheer at a time when most Virginia six-year-olds may have been asleep. "Orange" became a color of new meaning. Woodberry was a festive place that year, as the school's centennial was well-documented. The number "100" appeared everywhere, painted on souvenir cups, brochures, and Hanes Field itself. I believe the community's strong appreciation for its history and traditions is partly responsible for fiery moments such as that pep rally.

Ford Thomson

Class of 2001

 

 

 

My Woodberry Experience

Dr. Norffleet taught me French for the 5 years (yeah, that's right) I was at Woodberry, and it was a struggle. But he encouraged me, and my French got better and better with his help. When I graduated, he wrote me a note ( I believe he posted it on the bulletin board with his grades, downstairs, in the Walker Building) that I will never forget. He said he had "never taught a more diligent student" in his entire career. That was better than any grade or anything else I ever accomplished in all the years I was at Woodberry. I thought the world of Dr. Norfleet, and I cherish his words, even now, almost 45 years later. While many, many Masters had an impact on me and my life, both in the classroom and on the athletic fiield, none had a more profound affect upon me that Dr. Norfleet. The Honor System was probably the single, most important thing I learned at Woodberry. Some people have it, and some people don't. Believing in and following the Honor System became part of my life when I went to Woodberry, and I know I am a better person for it. "I have neither given or received help on this examination." When I was in the V Form, I signed-up to play Fall soccer, my favorite sport. I was in the Walker Building, looking at the bulletin board, and I heard this voice come up behind me. It was Coach Caughron, and he said he'd seen that I was signed-up for Fall soccer, not football. He told me to go over to the gym, to see Bobby Mobry, and that he would see to it that I got all my football gear. That was it; no discussion. Bobby Mobry took care of me, and, in my VI Form year, I got "invited-up" for "early football," started on the varsity football team that year and got a varsity letter. I "lettered" in soccer 2 years and was co-captain of the varsity team my VI Form year, but playing and "lettering" on the varsity football team was something I had never planned to happen. I will always owe Coach Caughron for that. For me, that was a "really big deal." (I still have the "Ugh" award I got for the Peddie game.)

J. Van Wyck Taylor

Class of 1969

 

 

 

The Night Dr. Norfleet

Threw the Clock

A number of years ago I attended my 30th or 40th Woodberry reunion and while there I went on a hike along the Rapidan River with one of the masters and his young son.  In the course of our hike I engaged the son in conversation and learned that he was the grandson of Dr. Fillmore Norfleet.  I commenced to tell him that I had studied French for three years in Dr. Norfleet's class and that he was one of the finest teachers I'd ever had.  The son replied, "Were you in study hall the night he threw the clock?"

I had been, in fact, in that study hall and my first impulse was to say, "I DIDN''T DO IT!"

One winter night in Anderson Hall study hall in the late 1950s, Dr. Norfleet served as duty master.  During break, he went outside to smoke a cigarette, and someone - I honestly know not who - put an old fashion windup alarm clock in the metal trash can below the master's desk.  He set it to go off mid-study hall and covered it with wads of crumpled paper. 

Dr. Norfleet was as sharp as a tack but a little hard of hearing.  When the alarm went off, he rose furiously but could not determine the source of the alarm.  As he stormed up and down the rows of desks, I'm certain that not one student lifted his eyes from his work, convinced that if he did, he'd be suspected.  Up and down the rows Dr. Norfleet stormed until finally he deduced the source of the noise.  He grabbed the alarm clock and hurled it across the room, over the heads of students until it burst into shards against the blackboard.  Not one student raised his head or failed to muffle uncontrollable snickers.

To my knowledge, the culprit never confessed nor was found out.  Sometime later - long after Dr. Norfleet's death - in a conversation with his daughter, Gail, I learned that she had never learned the identity.

In Dr. Norfleet's class one learned much more than French.  We read Paris Match magazine regularly and discussed all the delicious Parisian gossip it contained.  When I finally went to Paris, I bought a newspaper the headlines of which broke the sad news that Josephine Baker would never dance again.  I knew who she was because of Dr. Norfleet, so I kept the paper and sent it to him when I returned home.  He wrote back to say, "Ah, Jean, if only I could have been with you so once more I could have spat in the Seine."

John May 

Class of 1960

 

 

 

The Wretched

800 Word Theme

One of the dreaded assignments during my years at Woodberry was the weekly requirement to produce an 800 word theme. I thought I would never master all the rules of syntax, vocabulary, punctuation and composition. Those essays became a real bugaboo. My senior year I had Mr. Chambers for English, and for one of his last assignments I decided that I knew enough at long last to create the PERFECT theme. I wrote it out, worked on it half the night before, refined the wording, and finally turned it in knowing I'd followed every known rule. It came back covered with red marks, and the grade was something like a B+. If a comma was optional he'd marked it off whether I'd used it or not. i couldn't believe it. This was child abuse. It prompted the first time I ever confronted an adult. I took it up to him and told him I knew the paper was a good one and asked what it took to get an A out of him. He agreed that it was good, that it was one of the better ones he'd seen. Then he said something I've never forgotten: "Tiny scratches reveal themselves best on a polished surface". In all the years that I've been running writers groups and screenwriting workshops out here in Los Angeles I've had many occasions to use that quote when writers get discouraged. Mr. Chambers had probably made that remark as casually as dropped laundry, but it has stayed with me ever since. I had always thought of him, as indeed of other masters, as a somewhat remote man, but one whose mind was tremulous with a sort of tender mischief toward the boys. Neither of us could have known how his words would resonate down through the years. As for those wretched themes, they began to repay me very quickly when I got to college.

John Rixey Moore

Class of 1961

 

 

 

Do You Feel

We Prepared You?

One of my fondest memories of Woodberry Forest School is a seemingly simple question posed to me by Dr. Campbell in the fall of 2001. One Saturday during the first semester of my freshman year in college, I returned to campus for a WFS football game. While we were watching the game, Dr. Campbell inquired about my college experience thus far. He asked, "Do you feel you we prepared you?" But before I could respond, he added, "Do you make good decisions? Can you write an English paper?" These two questions made me pause and seriously reflect on how Woodberry prepared me for life beyond Woodberry, as his questions struck at key elements of of a Woodberry experience: high quality teaching, academic rigor, critical thinking, considering the needs of the "whole boy," and integrity. My answer to Dr. Campbell was, and still is, a resounding "yes." Indeed, with regard to writing, I ended up being an English major and English teacher. Even more, Woodberry not only prepared me for college, but also for navigating the complexities of life and work.

Ansel Sanders

Class of 2000

 

 

 

Overall Memory of

Years at The Forest

I continue to feel fortunate for the three wonderful years I spent as a student at Woodberry, where I made many lifelong friendships with classmates, where I was guided and infuenced by outstanding masters who instructed me in the subjects that would form the basis of my career as a journalist and author in the fields of the performing and visual arts and of cultural history, and where I found superb role models among members of the senior administration, who personified the school's justly renowned Honor System, by which I have tried to live ever since. I am reluctant to name my closest friends simply because I would appear thereby to ignore others who mean just as much to me, but among the leadership I would identify Baker Duncan and John Stillwell as the two gentlemen whose character and compassion proved most inspirational to me. Their belief in me and my abilities led me to choose elite Amherst College as the only institution of higher learning suitable to maintain both the academic exxcellence and the artistic freedom that Woodberry provided for me to develop my talents. As English teachers, I would cite John Marr and Patrick Bassett as important cultivators of my early promise as a writer, and in the related creative fields I would recall with deep appreciation Malcolm Moore in art, Harold Lowry in music, and Arthur Johnston in theatre, the disciplines in which I have felt most at home ever since.

Gregory Speck

Class of 1971