Education: The Pater

Alumni of Connecticut’s Kent School remember a famous function—the night the headmaster sat in for a sick violinist at the prep school’s dance. The Rev. Frederick Herbert Sill, priest of the Protestant Episcopal Order of the Holy Cross, fiddled till midnight so that his boys and their girls could dance to proper music. From the raised band platform he could also keep an eye on student manners. Any Kent boy who departed from propriety got a smart rap with the master’s fiddle bow as he danced by.

Few of the boys were surprised at Father Sill’s versatility. At Kent they were ready to believe that the restless little cleric could do anything. He was the school’s founder, first headmaster; he presided over the discipline of the school, taught religion and English, supervised admissions; he coached football, hockey and crew;* he acted as chaplain, purchasing agent, business manager and dietician. For his boys, Father Sill prescribed his precepts of hard work and simple faith. Under the “Kent system,” they made their own beds, waited on table, did most of the chores of the school. And under Headmaster Sill’s uncompromising leadership, in 46 years Kent has taken its place high up in the ranks of Eastern preparatory schools.

Discipline & Purpose. Growing up in Manhattan, where his father was vicar of St. Chrysostom’s Chapel, “Pater,” as generations of school boys affectionately called him, had no idea of becoming a prep-school headmaster. At Columbia College, he enjoyed himself while he edited the Spectator, was a campus social lion, coxed the crew, and took five years to get his degree. Not until he had spent a year as a newspaper reporter did he start thinking about the ministry. Then, in the Anglo-Catholic faith of the monastic Order of the Holy Cross, he found the discipline and purpose about which he built all the rest of his life.

At the turn of the century, he got permission from his superior to start a boys’ school. He mailed an appeal for funds to 1,500 well-heeled New Yorkers, aimed at a founding fund of $250,000. In all, he received six answers and $300. “Well,” sighed Father Sill, “if the Lord wants me to make a school with $300, I will do it.”

In 1906 the Kent School began its first term in a run-down farmhouse on the banks of the Housatonic. On the first night, the cook fell ill and the houseboy sprained his ankle. The 18 students and three-man faculty had to pitch in to clean away what was left of the debris of generations of indifferent housekeeping. Pater managed the kitchen. Thus began the self-help system that continued even as the school prospered.

Rich & Poor Alike. Today the tumbledown farmhouse has grown into a group of Georgian buildings clustered about a handsome Norman chapel. The original $300 investment has grown to more than $2,000,000. Instead of 18 boys, there are now 315. But the sons of rich & poor still share alike in the chores, while their parents work out with the school just how much tuition they can afford to pay.

In 1941, after a paralytic stroke, Headmaster Sill was forced to retire as active head of the school. But he stayed on at Kent, living in his modest house, watching over the school he loved. He still attended regular meetings of the school trustees, and every Sunday afternoon some of the senior boys gathered to hear one of their number read a paper Pater had prepared. The weekly column “Pater Recalls” still ran in the Kent News, and letters went out steadily to Kent alumni all over the world. Not until last week did the youthful energy run down. At 78, after 46 years of service to his school, Father Sill died.

*The Kent oarsmen have four times won the Thames Challenge Cup in the Royal Henley Regatta.