{"id":3369,"date":"2016-08-18T15:05:31","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T19:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/?p=3369"},"modified":"2020-10-23T23:00:23","modified_gmt":"2020-10-24T03:00:23","slug":"sarah-stevens-in-her-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/sarah-stevens-in-her-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Stevens in Her Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sarah“First Lady of Williston” Sarah Stevens left us on February 9, aged 99 (read her obituary\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>). \u00a0At a memorial service in the Williston Chapel on Saturday, August 13, Ellis Baker delivered the following remarks.\u00a0 Mr. Baker graduated Williston Academy in 1951, returned to teach English, 1957-1961 and 1966-2000, and was Director of the Williston Theatre.<\/em><\/p>\n

Talking about Phil and Sarah Stevens separately is impossible \u2026 at least for me, since I knew them both from the time they arrived at Williston in 1949, Phil as Headmaster and I as an upper middler (11th grader), both new kids on the block . Actually, I had been there earlier, too, from age 10 in grade 6 in 1944 through grade 8 in 1947, through the end of the war years, in the Williston Junior School. And the distinguished Galbraith Years were soon to end. The end of an era. The beginning of another.<\/p>\n

\"Sarah
Sarah and Phillips Stevens in the Homestead, 1966<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Phil Stevens had been hired to reconstitute Sam Williston\u2019s school physically, to remove it from its once elegant but deteriorating 100-year-old downtown campus to the half finished \u201cnew campus\u201d out Park Street where Samuel Williston\u2019s farm and Homestead had been\u2014and where in the 1920\u2019s and 30\u2019s Ford Hall and the \u201cnew gym\u201d had been built before the Depression and World War II years. The problem now was: Phil had to move the school with precious few remaining funds, especially owing to Samuel\u2019s ill-advised late-in-life bad business decisions in the 1870s, to which Emily Williston had objected to no avail and which ultimately had sapped the funds meant to endow Sam\u2019s school. Sam had gone ahead without her approval, which he had never done before, she being the one with an uncanny head for business. He lost nearly everything. Until then, they had been the perfect team, and history has spoken of Sam and Emily in one breath.<\/p>\n

\"The
The 1951 parade from the old campus to the new steps off from Payson Hall. Subsequent units carried the furniture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Phil and Sarah, the new 100-years-later team, the going was tough, but they had wasted no time, and at the end of their first year in 1950, we had a ceremonial celebratory parade through town carrying beds and desks and chairs and suitcases and bureaus to the modernistic new square brick edifice along Payson Avenue to be known as Memorial Dormitory, as yet surrounded by a sea of mud and construction debris. A dreary beginning, but it was the best Phil could do with too little money \u2026 certainly a stylistic departure from the Classical and Georgian \u2026 but that\u2019s what you get when the money annually runs dry. You learn to get by. For classrooms and a library and labs and offices, even a chapel, Phil had renovated three 19th century factory buildings languishing at the edge of the campus by the railroad tracks. They would have to do. Given that Sam\u2019s original button factory still stood a block and a half away, this 19th century factory connection seemed not inappropriate for this school \u201cfounded on a button.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, the old campus was sold off and torn down, including the historic gymnasium with its iconic Italianate tower. Gone were the baseball field, tennis courts, North Hall, Middle Hall, and South Hall; and across the Main Street green, gone was Payson Hall, originally the Mansion House, if memory serves me properly, a hotel\/rooming house, then serving as a dormitory and the school\u2019s dining hall; and gone were the playing fields behind the dormitories where bonfires with crowds gone crazy had, just a few years before marked, the end of World War II, celebrations which I remember well to this day. In their places: Ed\u2019s Foodland, two banks, an insurance agency, a dentist\u2019s office, a Laundromat, a law office, and dumpsters \u2026 \u201cbeautifying\u201d the center of town. The price of progress.<\/p>\n

\"The
The price of progress: the Old Campus on Main Street, with the iconic Gymnasium Tower at center.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In relocating the School, Phil and Sarah undoubtedly intended to honor the founder\u2019s wishes to make available educational advantages for young people, boys and girls, advantages unavailable in Sam\u2019s youth in the Connecticut River valley, advantages for which he had walked to Andover to the Academy there to study. When his eyes gave out, making his own education no longer possible, born was his dream of a school like Andover for Easthampton. Phil and Sarah were determined to carry on Samuel\u2019s dream.<\/p>\n

The neighbors of Payson Avenue, Park Street, Payson Lane, Brewster Avenue, and Main Street may well have been concerned by the school\u2019s continuing development in their front, back, and side yards. Sarah Stevens understood this, so she became Phil\u2019s eyes and ears in the community, as Emily apparently had once been for Sam, undoubtedly staying tuned to the neighbors\u2019 anxieties as they saw bricks and mortar replacing yet more of the genteel lawns and gardens\u2014and the putting green\u2014of the Williston Homestead and farm. Sarah knew they had to be good neighbors. It is clear to me that Sarah\u2014the smart Smith College graduate that she was\u2014knew that if the school was to survive this changeover, it had to be embraced again by the town which had spawned it in 1841. She cared. Surrounded by that community, Sarah set out to build bridges. She identified with those in it. She became an important figure in Sam Williston\u2019s Congregational church downtown, taught Sunday School, became involved with the PTA in town, and with the school\u2019s immediate neighbors, and in time deeply involved with the academy\u2019s activities, faculty and staff families, and students \u2026 especially as Den Mother extraordinaire to legions of Williston boys, at the head of the table at dining hall dinners, iconic braids and all, surrogate mom. A generation or more of Williston boys have considered Sarah their adored surrogate Mom, annually celebrating her ever since at reunions both on and off campus until she died just shy of 100. Because Sarah had cared. We were family. Importantly, Sarah was proof that Phil cared.<\/p>\n

\"Sarah
Sarah Stevens with Emily Williston, 1961. Sarah is wearing the brooch worn by Emily in the portrait.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And when young neighbor Gordon Gilbert fell from the bridge over Williston Pond and, unable to swim, drowned, Sarah and Phil opened the Williston pool to the town\u2019s children, providing them swim lessons and a safe place to play and swim, thus binding town and gown further. The 1950\u2019s were a make and break time for our school. Together, they made it.<\/p>\n

So, who comprised the Stevens\u2019 immediate neighborhood? These are names some of you will know: The Donais \u2026Doc (for many years the school\u2019s doctor) and Roma, Hank, Harriet and Paul; The Torreys \u2026 with David and Marcia; the Strongs and son David; the Lussiers , the Gilberts, the Dempseys, the Diamonds, the Bauers, the Felsens, the Pitchers, the MacIntoshes, the Hepworths, the Manchesters, the Bridges, the Hatches, the Kistlers, the Snyders, the Whitneys, the Adamses, and lastly but not leastly, the Curtises \u2026 with their three, Barbara, Dick, and Jeff. Now an aside: Dick (now 70, to whom I taught 9th grade English in 1959-60) and Jeff were to become my brothers-in-law, as I married their older sister Barbara in this Chapel forty-nine years ago last week. 1967. At Sarah\u2019s suggestion to Barbara, Sarah and Phil had generously opened their house to Barbara and me, housing the bride and her bridesmaids and hosting our wedding reception. Picture this: that sometimes austere once teacher-then-businessman-turned-headmaster (who had given me my first teaching job in 1957), making the rounds of that reception, sleeves rolled up, a bottle of champagne in each hand, keeping our guests\u2019 cups full, an image we have cherished since.<\/p>\n

For Barbara\u2013who had often been the Stevens\u2019 baby sitter yet one of the neighborhood kids enjoying cookies and donuts in Sarah\u2019s kitchen\u2013for Barbara, Sarah was not a distant lady in the big white house on the corner a block away. Rather, she was that mother who embraced all the kids of the neighborhood and school, including six of her own\u2014Flip, Peter, David, Jonathan, Ruth, and Tim\u2014Mrs. Stevens, wife of Headmaster Stevens, majorly involved in town and school life, known as the lady who had teamed up with her husband, as Emily had with Samuel Williston 100 years before, to build a new school and make it central to the corporate image of the town. Clearly, neither man could have done it alone without the woman at his side.<\/p>\n

Finally, for me, deeply imbedded in my career of theatrical memories is that of Sarah playing Sir Thomas More\u2019s wife Alice in Robert Bolt\u2019s play A Man for All Seasons<\/em> on the Williston Theatre Stage \u2026 Fall, 1966. Sarah, herself a woman for all seasons, created an elegant and powerful portrayal of Alice More in what was a moving, unforgettable, truly triumphant performance.<\/p>\n

\"As
As Lady Alice More, 1966, with Theo Westenberger ’68 and Doug Jones ’67. (Paul Wainwright ’68)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So I am grateful for this opportunity to pay tribute to the lady who was at the elbow of Phil Stevens, steering him\u2014as we all suspected she did\u2014softening him, making the school for many, more of a home away from home. Decades of boys had called Phil \u201cThe Pin\u201d\u2014\u201cKingpin\u201d\u2014but we all knew that his beautiful lady was his \u201clynch-pin,\u201c truly the Queen Pin!<\/p>\n

And so it is with great fondness\u2014Barbara joining me in this\u2014that we remember Sarah Wallis Stevens.<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“First Lady of Williston” Sarah Stevens left us on February 9, aged 99 (read her obituary\u00a0here). \u00a0At a memorial service in the Williston Chapel on Saturday, August 13, Ellis Baker delivered the following remarks.\u00a0 Mr. Baker graduated Williston Academy in 1951, returned to teach English, 1957-1961 and 1966-2000, and was Director of the Williston Theatre. … Continue reading Sarah Stevens in Her Time<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[164,336,12],"tags":[418,84,419],"class_list":["post-3369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty","category-guest-bloggers","category-williston-academy","tag-ellis-baker","tag-phillips-stevens","tag-sarah-wallis-stevens"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3369"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4990,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3369\/revisions\/4990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}