It is Mother's birthday. She would have been 95 today.
Before any of us were particularly aware of Tower Hill School or its motto,
we intuitively knew what
Multa Bene Facta meant. Mother.
And one of the things she was best at was school.
Both The Morning News and The Evening Journal carried articles about the Claymont High School Graduation in 1935. Complete copies of these newspapers exist in The Stuff.
Here are scans of a separate, crumbling set of clippings that have since been recycled, found in a different box.
 |
| "At the right is shown Miss Kwick, who won all the honor prizes" |
Growing up, while we knew that Mother had been a good student, we were not told of this coup.
Late in her life she did tell me that during the graduation ceremony, Mr. Stahl, the principal, when calling her name for yet another prize, added an aside to the audience something like, "Lest you think that Grace spends all of her time studying, you should know that she has a very nice boyfriend, too."
Her high level of involvement in everything persisted at college.
With her picture in the yearbook from her Junior year:
Class Editor Blue and Gold 1; Business
Manager Blue and Gold 3; Class Treas-
urer 2, 3; Math Club 1, 2, 3; French
Club 1, 2, 3; German Club 2, 3; Science
Club 1; Freshman Formal Committee 1;
Stunt Night Committee 2; Sophomore
Tea Dance Committee 2; Soph-Senior
Luncheon Committee 2; Business Man-
ager Junior Prom 3.
One girl who does well what would
enough work for three ordinary girls.
(Stunt night Committee??)
There are other documents that illustrate academic excellence and much careful, if not very interesting work in elementary school -- and a lot of notes and related correspondence about her Masters degree. Both are out of scope for this post.
Suffice it to say for now that we had an amazing academic role model, and that it was always understood that school work was of utmost importance.
