Greenhills Headmaster 'Retires'

Greenhills Headmaster Retires

BY MARY JO FRANK

News School Reporter

A tranquil life of sawing logs and grooming a house with a history dating back to 1790.

That's how Edward M. and Caroline Read envisioned their first year of retirement in Jaffrey Center, N.H., a community of about 200 persons.

The country home, surrounded by peach and apple trees, was built about 50 years ago from the timbers of the cider mill that was constructed more than 130 years before that.

Read, who has served as headmaster of Greenhills School since its founding in 1967, retired last Monday. He celebrated his 65th birthday in December. Read was succeeded by James W. Gramentine, formerly assistant to the headmaster of the University School in Cleveland.

Instead of embarking on the idyllic life he had planned in New England, Read will be interim headmaster at Hawken School in Cleveland, Ohio, a private school more than three times larger than Greenhills. The Reads move to Cleveland Tuesday, but they will spend the summer in Jaffrey Center.

Of the change in plans, Read says, "The Hawken thing looks interesting. Lightning has struck in our direction.”

Hawken was founded in 1915 as a private school for boys. It became coeducational last year in kindergarten through third grades and ninth through 12th grades and will become coeducational in all grades within the next few years, Read says. Hawken has 800 students on two campuses.

When the one-year stopover at Hawken is over, Read plans to try to retire again. Hawken School is 170 miles closer to Jaffrey Center than Ann Arbor, he points out.

Read, a graduate of the private school system, came to Ann Arbor eight years ago to help organize Greenhills.

“I went to such a school in St. Louis, Mo., when it was founded,” Read says. He was in the ninth grade in 1923 when John Burroughs School opened.

“I remember very well the first year. We had no locker room. We changed our clothes in a dusty attic, but we survived,” Read recalls with a smile.

He secured his first teaching assignment in 1933 in a private boarding school, Pomfret School in Pomfret, Conn. He later taught at St. Paul Academy, St. Paul, Minn., for six years, then returned to John Burroughs as a teacher for six years. Read became assistant headmaster at St. Paul in 1948 and headmaster two years later.

The community, the University and a group of parents who had organized themselves to establish an independent secondary school — those were the magnets that pulled Read to Ann Arbor.

He doesn’t regret the decision.

“I’ve really enjoyed Ann Arbor; it is a great place and has a great group of people,” Read says.

Precipitating factors for the establishment of Greenhills were the closing down of University School and growth in the Ann Arbor school population causing pressure on facilities, particularly at the high school level, according to Read.

Many people assume private schools are organized because parents are dissatisfied with the public school system.

"I have never felt that the sole reason for private, independent schools was the inadequacy of public schools,” Read says. “There is a need for different kinds of schools. Much smaller schools can do things differently, the way they want.”

One of the advantages of the smaller school is that people are concerned about each other, says Mrs. Read, who taught English and efficient reading at Greenhills.

The competition fostered by good public and private schools in the community is healthy, Read says. “I see the schools of the community each pulling the other up."

When Greenhills School opened in 1968, there were 62 seventh, eighth and ninth graders enrolled. Now the enrollment is over 250 and includes seventh through 12th graders. The facility, now valued at about $3.5 million, was built to accommodate between 240 and 250 students.

Read is partial to an enrollment of about 250, rather than expanding the facility. However, he notes, the founders of Greenhills had no monopoly on wisdom.

Greenhills was built in phases on a 35-acre site at 850 Greenhills. Dr. Read says funds for the building came from about 40 individuals plus some foundations and corporations. Two families combined to pay for the gymnasium. Consequently, the school has no building debts.

When asked about the future of private schools. Read says all schools, like businesses and individuals, suffer from the results of inflation.

However, he adds, there always will be a demand for good private schools — those with a general appeal, a strong scholarship program and a good academic program.

About 20 per cent of the students attending Greenhills receive some scholarship aid. The average for the 20 per cent is about half the tuition. Tuition at Greenhills will be $1,280 next year.

Students are admitted on the basis of entrance test scores and observation of the youngsters.

Students must have the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.

“All we’re looking for is the probability the student will be happy and successful in a college preparatory program,” Read says.

In addition to traditional mathematics, language, science and social studies classes, Greenhills offers a full activities program including music, drama, forensics, publications and athletics, Read adds.

He likes to quote one senior who said of the school "You have to work hard, but somehow you seem to enjoy it.”

Read, who was named honorary headmaster (a title similar to professor emeritus), promises he and Mrs. Read won’t be underfoot after they leave, but they will return for visits.

“We’ll have a long telescope pointed this way,” Read says. 

"I've really enjoyed Ann Arbor; it is a great place and has a great group of people," says Edward M. Read on the eve of his departure as retiring headmaster of Greenhills School.  But, he adds, the ties won't be easily severed. "We'll have a long telescope pointed this way."

Read Finds Sawing Wood A Way To Relax