Education: Cruikshank at Taft

Connecticut’s hilly preen Litchficld County has seemed to two young Yalemen an ideal place to found preparatory schools. In 1893 Horace Dutton Taft (Yale 1883). tall, spare brother of the 27th President, settled himself and 30 pupils in an old resort hotel at Watertown as the Taft School for boys. Thirty-seven years later brown-haired Paul Fessenden Cruikshank (Yale 1920) went ten miles west to found Romford School in Washington, Conn. Big Taft and small Romford have each enjoyed a notable success. This week 330 Taft boys from all over the U. S. returned from their vacations to find Yaleman Taft gone, Yaleman Cruikshank in his place.

When Founder Taft, still spry and salty at 74. told his trustees last year that he wanted to resign (TIME, Dec. 16), they took little time to agree unanimously on Headmaster Cruikshank as his successor. Now 38, Paul Cruikshank worked his way through Yale by covering University news for New York and Boston papers, managed the freshman swimming team, found time to win two Latin prizes. After graduation he taught at Gunnery and Hopkins, before starting his own school. In 1923 he married Edith Fitch, has one son, three daughters. As conservative as Horace Dutton Taft in educational policy, he will introduce no frills at Taft. ‘keep it a stronghold of Latin, mathematics, plain hard work. His younger brother Harold, a onetime Taft student who graduated from Yale in 1931, inherits his job at Romford.

In San Diego, Calif, last week, on his first long vacation in 46 years, onetime Headmaster Taft kept busy by writing articles on the Civil Service and the Merit System, his old-age hobby. Recently a secretary at Massachusetts’ Worcester Academy heard that he was “leaving Taft.” hopefully sent him a pupil’s application blank. Horace Dutton Taft gravely filled it out, gave his age as 74, replied that he “enjoyed reading very much,” chuckling sent the blank back to Worcester.