I read your Jan. 19, ’07 News article with great interest and some concern and hope that you and the News staff will be receptive to the following reactions. You [the writer] are currently a young woman at Choate Rosemary Hall and heir to a long tradition of education by and for women which, from its beginning in 1890, emphasized clear thinking, accuracy, mastery of the liberal arts, excellence and accomplishment.
I was surprised therefore, that you think that Rosemary Hall “took a back seat” to Choate when it moved to Greenwich. While it is true that “few women were present” in the classrooms and administrative offices at Choate for the next 75 years, plenty of women were on campus as faculty spouses, secretaries, nurses, librarians and housekeepers. Without them, Choate could not have functioned. Rosemary Hall, on the other hand, continued as a vigorous, successful, and well-known school in Greenwich, run by women in the administration and the classrooms as well as the other venues. Furthermore, I understand that during those years, Rosemary Hall was known as the better school!
As for women heads-of-school, Rosemary had six spanning 85 years: Caroline Ruutz-Rees, Eugenia Jessup, Helen Williamson, Alice McBee, Elizabeth Loomis, and Joanne Sullivan as well as significant movers and shakers like Margaret Marshall, and trustees Beezie Brownell and Suzanne deLima. In 1974, Mrs. Brownell became the first chairperson of the combined board of trustees of Rosemary Hall and Choate.
Rosemary Hall returned to Wallingford in 1971 as a separate and coordinate school. Gradually, the two schools merged their boards of trustees, their resources, their administrations and students to create, by the end of the decade, a coeducational Choate Rosemary Hall. You are correct in noting that since then, a number of women have held high administrative posts although Pauline Anderson was not a Dean of Academic Affairs. Joanne Sullivan was the first person to hold that position following her tenure as headmistress of Rosemary Hall.
In your history classes, you have learned about the writing of history, that she who tells the story does so from a particular point of view and experience. For this reason, history is always interesting, always contradictory, and always open to revision. I wonder how your story of women at Choate Rosemary Hall would read if, in 1971, Choate had closed its doors in Wallingford and moved to Greenwich as partner to Rosemary Hall. Would Choate be in the back seat, do you think?
Gwenith Heuss-Severance
The writer is the History, Philosophy, Religion & Social Sciences Department head, and has been a member of the faculty since 1971.
