At about this time of year seventy five years ago, I took the train from NYC to L.A. to enroll in the school that had done such a good job with my disparate brothers: Ty (Frederic), ’39, and Larry (Lawrence) ’42.

Ty built on his Thacher education to graduate summa cum laude from Harvard in Math.

Larry barely survived @ Casa de Piedra: He loved cars and took John Griggs’s class in motor mechanics which facilitated his “borrowing” of the Thacher truck for an extemporaneous evening excursion to Ventura, where he crossed paths with a teacher. Larry was horrified but the teacher did not want attention on his own Ventura excursion. Larry graduated, and went on to Cornell.

Meanwhile, WW II was on. My family moved to Boston so that my father, a 54 year old patriotic NYC lawyer could work as a carpenter’s mate in the Quincy shipyards. I was at nearby Milton Academy, a feeder school for Harvard, but I didn’t like it. My brothers approached my parents, warning them: “If you leave him there, he’ll just become another New England snot nose”. They listened, and Thacher straightened me out.

Today, I gave a recent Thacher brochure to a cousin (a banker in Hong Kong) and his wife, whose son is considering various New England prep schools. I hope they respond as my folks did!

Nicholas Cunningham CdeP 1946