Westover. Laurie Lisle
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the girls of Westover along with a plea to help a young Russian woman scientist. “The letter was an appeal from a poor country to a rich one,” wrote an editor of The Lantern in the March issue. “But it was more than that,” she continued. “Written by a great woman, whose life had been spent, in every sense of that word, for her oppressed people, and who at her present age of eighty-three years has not the remotest intention of quitting her post, it contained an expression, in rather broken English, of the courage, enthusiasm, interest, hope, and appreciation of a very remarkable personality” whose “outlook on life is broad, varied, and alive, excluding only despair and defeat.” Baboushka’s countryman, Vladimir Zenzinoff, was touched by the way the old lady was remembered at Westover—“her name here is surrounded by a sort of halo”—and he noted in his memoir that photographs of her visit “are reverently kept by Miss Hillard as relics.” He observed that “time and again did she speak of the Grandmother and her life to her pupils, and these stories evidently formed a part of her educational system.”
Indeed, in Mary Hillard’s effort to teach the importance of philanthropy, she established the Dorcas Society, named for a Biblical woman known for her good works. Members of Dorcas sewed and knit clothes for the needy and undertook charitable work in the community. Every pupil was expected to give up dessert during Lent; as she left for church on Easter morning, she was given a gold coin she had earned for the donation plate. Girls also hosted a Christmas party for neighborhood children every year complete with a Santa Claus and gifts. After Miss Hillard took students to Waterbury to hear a talk by Sir Wilfred Grenfell, a quiet English doctor who ran a humanitarian mission in Labrador, they began to raise money for him as well. The headmistress also established a charitable Mary Hillard Society, which over the years gave away thousands of dollars to many causes, including churches, visiting nurses, girls’ clubs, crippled children, and missionaries in China.
Miss Hillard’s wide sympathies and worldly interests created a well-rounded life of her own, especially after the war when she was able to travel to Europe again. In 1928 she offered to take Ursula Van Wagenen Ferguson on her first trip to Europe. Ursula had been the admired president of St. Margaret School’s class of 1908, and after her graduation she was a chaperone at Westover for a while before her marriage. When she moved to Middlebury with her husband and young son and daughter, she renewed her friendships with the Misses Hillard, Pratt, and LaMonte. She became deeply involved in the life of the school and was eventually hired to oversee the Dorcas Society. During the summers when not in Europe, Miss Hillard liked to have the Sunday midday meal served outside in the Quad for whoever was around—her nieces and nephews, teachers and friends, as well as members of the Ferguson family—when “she would always try to stimulate the conversation to some interesting topic,” recalled the Fergusons’ son, John.
The women’s trip to Europe typified the busy, purposeful, and even grand way in which Mary Hillard traveled. Before their ship left New York, gifts of books and magazines, baskets of fruit, bouquets of flowers, and boxes of nuts and candies arrived in the stateroom. Perhaps it was on that trip when she gathered all the fresh flowers in her arms and dropped them into the sea right after the ship left port. “A withered flower is the size of a withered soul,” she liked to say. “She could not bear to think of so much beauty left to fade and decay—nor of such expressions of love and friendship allowed to wither and to be neglected,” explained a friend. Miss Hillard, Ursula wrote in wonderment to her husband, had seven pieces of luggage, including a hat box, a bundle of rugs, a box of books (including a three-volume history of England), and a tin box for picnic lunches. When the two arrived in Paris, they met up with Helen LaMonte (who was traveling with young Gertrude Whittemore and a school friend) as well as a number of acquaintances (including Vladimir Zenzinoff) for sightseeing and social, sporting, and cultural events. In England the two toured the countryside in a chauffeur-driven automobile, meeting up with Theodate, John Masefield, and a Westover alumna or two. Mary had many appointments in London, including a luncheon with Lady Astor at her home, and a meeting with two Englishwomen, a Miss Low and a Miss Michello, who would both teach at Westover the next year.
As a result of all that Mary Hillard brought to her community of females in Connecticut, attending Westover was much more than simply getting an education from books. The year the school opened, a girl perceived that she was learning the art of living, and others throughout the years would echo her words. Accordingly, it was at graduation near the end of her reign when the headmistress proclaimed that “your diplomas are precious to you because they are sign and emblem not alone of mastery of courses of study successfully completed. They are sign and emblem of more than that—the hidden and secret message running through them … [of] your loyalty to radiant, glorious, immortal, unchanging spiritual values with their ‘power to quicken, quell, irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift’ the souls of men.” The years under her tutelage had taught Bidda Blakeley, for one, “about beauty and honor and all the wonderful qualities of life,” she remembered. “And thank heaven I went there.”
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The Spirit of the School:Engaging Youthful Idealism
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