8 P u T n E y P o S T

The story of the Hinton family sounds like a situation comedy run amok.

There’s grandmother Carmelita—82, unbowed by age and illness, still setting the tone for the clan as she has since her husband died in 1924.

Children Bill and Jean and Joan—in their 50s now—settled down with families of their own. They worry about their mother overdoing things and disagree with some of her ideas. But the underlying love shines through.

Then, there is the horde of grand-children—all handsome and healthy and, in spite of your basic generation gap, remarkably close to Carmelita, whom they call “Gani.”

There are even a few dogs.

It sounds pretty normal, even a little saccharine—the family next door. And that is where the twist comes in.

For the Hintons have a few eccentricities. Like Carmelita’s mortgaging the house in Weston, Massachusetts in the middle of the Depression to bankroll her dream of

founding a progressive secondary school. She called it Putney (after the little Vermont town where she built it) and the school became one of the most important institu-tions of its kind in the nation.

Like Bill’s living in China for nearly a decade and developing into a respected

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, first full-length animated cartoon, released.

Albert Einstein writes to President Roosevelt about potential military uses of nuclear power.

Phyllis Watt ’50 and John Bret-Harte ’50 start 1st grade at Putney, the only two to complete 12 years.

Hurricane of ’38 wreaks havoc. Mrs. H, at height of hurricane, shakes her fist at the sky shouting “This can’t happen! We can’t afford it!”

First Social Security checks mailed, totaling $75,844. A Vermont widow, first recipient, gets $22.54.

Germany invades France, sets up a collaborationist regime at Vichy.

A girl is dismissed “because she was found in a classroom with a boy—with the door closed.” Boy was not expelled.

Eric and Janet Rogers take drama group to NYC to perform The Admirable Chrichton in the Dalton School theater, perhaps first off-campus performance ever.

Putney School’s coed soccer team startles Mt. Hermon opponents who graciously turn home locker room over to girls.

Hitler launches attack on U.S.S.R. and is so confident of success that troops are not furnished with winter clothing.

National Gallery of Art opens in Washington, DC with a $15 million bequest from Andrew Mellon.

Mount Rushmore unveiled in South Dakota, depicting heads of Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, Lincoln.

John H. Caldwell, Sr. takes over as business manager. Jack focuses new energy on faculty quarters and soon starts baseball team, having persuaded Mrs. H that competition was central to boys’ development.

1938 1940 1941

From Putney to Peking: Carmelita Hinton at 82

By Christopher Wallace

ExCERPTED BY PERMISSION FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE SuNDAY MAGAzINE, NOVEMBER 26, 1972

All photos in this story are from the personal archive of Marni Rosner ’69, Mrs. H’s granddaughter, depicting scenes of early campus

life and a 1930’s road trip out west.

scholar on the Communist revolution. He was not always accorded respect, however. When he returned to this country in 1953 after six years in China, his papers were impounded and he had to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee for three days. Mississippi Sen. James Eastland called him a traitor on the floor of the Senate.

Like Joan’s participation in the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. After Hiroshima, she protested the government’s destructive use of scientific research. And in 1948 she joined her brother in China. She, too, was attacked during the McCarthy era, accused of giving atomic secrets to the Chinese and dubbed “Peking Joan.” She said, however, that she was actually breeding livestock in Inner Mongolia.

Like Jean’s relatively normal life, which means that no one called her a traitor. But she lived with migrant farmers in the 1930s, collecting data for the Farm Security Administration. She was president of a union local of the Federal Workers of America. She organized Western Pennsylvania in 1948 for Henry Wallace’s presidential campaign. She has since taught in several schools, from Haverford Friends to Dorchester High.

Like the grandchildren’s adventures, ranging from Ted’s trip to Cuba to work in the cane fields to Carma’s participation in China’s Cultural Revolution.

And, finally, like the whole clan’s reunion in China last fall: Joan who lives on the Red Star Commune near Peking; Bill who wanted to return to China to research another book on the revolution; Carmelita who at the age of 81 wanted to resume her 40-year-old practice of taking young people on trips to foreign lands; and all the grand-children, who went to play their part in a very special family history.

The hair has turned from reddish-brown to white, the folds of flesh have softened the outline of the face, the short, squat body is now slightly stooped—but the big brown eyes are still bright and fine.

It is in those eyes that one first senses Carmelita Hinton’s vitality. A conversation deepens the impression of energy. As she reminisces about her life, she meanders a bit, but her mind is still sharp and quick. Her knobby fingers clench an unclench as she excitedly makes a point.

Mrs. Hinton’s energy is legendary among those who know her. She was a champion shotputter at Bryn Mawr College in 1912. She climbed mountains in the Canadian Rockies. At Putney, she used to lead the

school on moonlit cross country-ski trips. At least one strapping boy refused to attend the school because he was physically afraid of its foundress-director.

Probably the best evidence of Mrs. Hinton’s vitality of mind and body is a recounting of her ailments over the last decade—and the way in which she has responded to them.

She broke a leg in 1962 while skiing in the Catskills at age 72. She broke her right hip a few years later while marching in an anti-war demonstration in Philadelphia. In 1968, she fractured her left hip while mountain climbing. She suffered two strokes this spring during her 11-month visit to China.

1942 1943 1944 1945

Japanese-Americans are systematically relocated “in interests of national security.”

First sustained nuclear chain reaction occurs at University of Chicago.

Warren Leonard, John Holden, Hugh MacDougall and others join armed services. Eleven Putney School ski heroes eventually volunteered for mountain troops.

Putney becomes exclusively for grades 9–12 with founding of Hickory Ridge (elementary) School by Philip and Helen Chase, Mrs. H’s brother and sister-in-law.

Student population 173, resources scarce during war, “living lean” becomes strong ethic.

D-Day—150,000 allied troops storm beach at Normandy.

Kodacolor Film makes it possible to take color snap-shots with low-priced cameras.

School constitution delegates authority to the head of school to select health authorities to regulate health issues at Putney.

German leaders surrender to Western Allies, VE Day.

Hiroshima destroyed by atomic bomb “Little Boy.” Two days later Nagasaki bombed.

Japan surrenders, and World War II is over.

Charter of the United Nations comes into force aimed at “maintaining world peace and security. . . .”

Pair of generous parents contributes $10,000 toward a science building; boys help build foundation.

School hires architect and launches first campaign, seeking $250,000 (raising $78,000) for new housing.

Nancy West publishes first alumni notes, covering classes of 1940–45.

P u T n E y P o S T 9

10 P u T n E y P o S T

Has she finally been felled by these most recent ailments? “I don’t call them real strokes,” she said a few weeks ago. “I didn’t get paralyzed.” In fact, Mrs. Hinton said, her problem is that she feels too good. “I mustn’t give way to that feeling,” she said. “I must hold it in. I now say to myself ‘you must remember you are 82 and must slow down. You can’t cover everything in one day.’”

“I find it terribly difficult,” she continued. “I don’t know what it is to feel 82. I’ve never been it before. I can’t be inside another 82 year-old.”

A visit to the Fleetwood, Pennsylvania farm that Mrs. Hinton bought after she retired from Putney in 1955 provides still

more evidence of the woman’s freshness. Nowhere does one find a relic of her 20 years as the director of the boarding school. The Pennsylvania Dutch stone farmhouse is decorated with “trophies” from her two trips to China.

“Carmelita lived and breathed Putney School,” Nancy West, who was Mrs. Hinton’s secretary and later alumni direc-tor, said recently. “People thought she would never be able to put it away when she retired.” But Mrs. Hinton has always looked to new adventures, not past ones—as the Peking opera mask on the living room wall, the picture of Mao Tse-tung on top of a box of books, and the silk hanging of a panda in the hall, bear witness.

Carmelita Hinton’s life has a mythic quality—a singleness of purpose, a con-stancy of major themes, a series of water-shed episodes. Most lives cannot be traced as linear, eminently logical narratives. Mrs. Hinton’s can.

And so it is possible to find one most important moment in her life and—through her influence—in the lives of her children and grandchildren. It came in her sopho-more year at Bryn Mawr. She read an essay by William James on emotion, and as she recalled years later in her college’s alumnae magazine, “it was to plague my life from this time forward. It read something like

this. ‘If you find yourself deeply stirred by what you read and see, it is harmful to you to let this emotion dissipate itself without resultant action. Do something.’”

Many people would be struck by the phi-losophy. Mrs. Hinton has lived it: if you are stirred by something, act on it. The culmination of this process was to come in the creation of Putney.

oIn college, Mrs. Hinton learned two lessons besides her William James philosophy. One was from the black maids who waited on the students. “I don’t think there was one black girl attending the college,” she said. “They were there to serve us, the elite. We were parasites on them.” Self-reliance became important to her. People should be able to take care of—even provide food for—themselves.

Secondly, she took an education course and became acquainted with the writ-ings of John Dewey and other progressive educators. Children should learn by doing, they wrote. Education should be a series of real-life experiences, not a feat of memori-zation. Also, the whole child was to come to school. He was to be taught not just a few specific courses, but about basic human values. For someone with Mrs. Hinton’s strong views on the virtues of the arts and

Senator J. William Fulbright introduces bill primarily to award academic grants to Americans studying abroad.

School broadcasts an appeal for funds to help replace the machine shed that was tem-porary dorm—remains in use today as Old Boys.

Robert Frost, American poet, graduation speaker.

Students Karl Schuman ’49 and Hugh MacDougall, Jr. ’50 start Putney News, a free weekly, “to make the world a better place.”

Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier, reaching 700 mph in top-secret Bell X-1 rocket plane in California.

In 1947–48 the New Girls’ Dorm, now called Leonard’s Keep, is built.

Summer trips abroad re-instated, summer 1947.

Town of Putney paves West Hill Road.

Supreme Court case forbids prayer in schools.

President Truman allocates $6 billion for Marshall Plan, designed to rebuild Europe and contain Communism.

U.S. recognizes state of Israel.

President Truman issues executive order forbidding segregation in the nation’s armed forces.

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt hailed for efforts to pass U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.

Former Soviet agent Whittaker Chambers’ testimony to House Un-American Activities Committee prompts indict-ment of Alger Hiss.

Putney receives accredita-tion from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

Mrs. Hinton purchases primitive farm in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia for $1,250 and successfully lures Larry Titus, farm foreman for the Mt. Hermon School, to Putney.

Putney wins first state ski meet under coach John Holden.

Garland Pond Nature Area acquired for use as an outdoor science laboratory.

Delegation of six teachers including longtime labor organizer and neophyte history teacher, Ed Smith, presents Mrs. Hinton with letter announcing Putney Faculty Association.

Faculty rejects Mrs. H’s proposed ad hoc commit-tee; she responds by reading ultimatum and demanding resignations.

Ed Smith accuses Mrs. Hinton of unfair labor practices.

1946 1947 1948

P u T n E y P o S T 11

physical fitness, the outdoors and hard work, the all-encompassing view of education was understandably attractive.

Spurning a society role in Omaha, Mrs. Hinton went to Chicago after college and worked for Jane Addams in Hull House, one of the first social settlements. She also took graduate school education courses and, in 1916, married Sebastian Hinton, a patent lawyer who invented the Junglegym.

It was not until her husband’s death, however, that Mrs. Hinton put most of her ideas into practice. She moved her family to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1925, accepting a teaching job at the innovative Shady Hill School. She held sway over the second grade there for nine years.

She would read poems and stories about shepherd life to her students in the first half of the year. In the second term, she would get a live sheep and the children would help shear it, spin the wool, and make little mats. “One day, the sheep got loose from the school,” Mrs. Hinton remembered, laughing. “The school was down then at the real Shady Hill below (Harvard’s) Memorial Hall. The sheep ran away, and all the chil-dren ran up Kirkland street after it, including myself. Finally, a policeman cornered it at Memorial Hall and we brought it home in a wheelbarrow. Then we wrote a poem about it.”

“The school had very alive things happening,” Mrs. Hinton said. “When a child couldn’t come to school, he used to cry. It was a tragedy. Now, I ask my grand-children about their schools and they are so bored. My heart sinks. School should be exciting. After all, children spend most of their day in school.”

Life was exciting not only in Mrs. Hinton’s class, but also in her home at 38 Avon Street, near Radcliffe. Ponies and dogs and cats and a goat had the run of the place. Mrs. Hinton boarded the children of friends

who did not live in Cambridge, but wanted their kids to attend Shady Hill. Eventually, the animals, the boarders, and the Hintons outgrew Avon street and a house and barn were built in Weston. Two cows and 50 chickens joined the household there.

oThere is one last element in Carmelita Hinton’s “Development”: foreign travel. After her husband’s death, she started taking her three children on trips during the summer—to visit in-laws in Mexico and England, to explore Norway and Wyoming. unsurprisingly, Carmelita Hinton’s trips were real adventures. While in Mexico, the family went on a “safari” to the western part of the country. Joan was then 4. “We all came back alive,” Mrs. Hinton laughed, “except that we all got lice.” The trip to Norway was as rugged—hiking across mountains without a guide.

When she arrived in Massachusetts, Mrs. Hinton became one of the first leaders of Donald Watt’s Experiment in International Living, taking teenagers to live with families in Europe for the summer. R. Sargent Shriver was a student assistant on one of those trips.

oIn any case, all was now in readiness for Mrs. Hinton’s 1934 drive from Woodstock,

Putney Faculty Association, under leadership of Geoffrey Bret Harte, votes to become CIO-affiliated Putney Teachers Union.

Thirty-three nonacademic staff sign a letter rejecting any union and giving Mrs. H support.

Union members present proposals. If issues not resolved by spring vacation on March 26, plan to strike.

Corporate directors meet and vote to accept contract; “union members get virtually

everything members hoped” but none return the following fall.

Administrative Council formed as part of Putney government reorganization.

Teacher strike: 20 of 26 teachers leave. Mrs. Hinton hires 20 new teachers over summer to replenish faculty after disrup-tion of strike.

John Holden works to build independent board of trustees, new charter based on Antioch democratic forms.

After Joseph McCarthy flaunts “subversives” list, Foreign Relations Committee begins investigations.

U.S. enters Korean “Conflict” when President Truman orders troops to help South Korean forces without receiving permission from Congress to declare war.

Charles Schulz’ Peanuts debuts with hapless Charlie Brown, who has a basic mistrust of adults.

Warren Leonard trains first female truck driver, though Ginny Rogers Hunt ’42 report-edly drove one during the war.

CIO Union contract signed during the strike of 1949 was not renewed one year later.

Mrs. Hinton announces to alumni that union no longer represents majority of faculty and school is healthy.

Fifteen pioneer trustees meet under first board chair, Richard Brett, who notes, “not a com-mon thought in the whole mob.”

Hickory Ridge School burns and closes at the end of the year.

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye celebrates fleeing boarding school and plain talk.

Union contract no longer applicable. Mrs. H makes formal promise to “adhere to substance and spirit of contract.”

Library Wing started with gift from Wasserman family in memory of Steve ’50.

School receives gift of $35,000 from Chris Reynolds’ mother, Libby Holman Reynolds, to build science building.

1949 1950 1951

“It was to plague my life

from this time forward.

It read something like

this. ‘If you find yourself

deeply stirred by what

you read and see, it is

harmful to you to let this

emotion dissipate itself

without resultant action.

Do something.’”

New York to Weston. She has written often of her life, and Putney School bro-chures have also. The Woodstock-Weston trip is usually depicted in only slightly less hallowed terms than Paul’s visit to Damascus. But Mrs. Hinton’s journey that afternoon was highly unusual, if not quite miraculous. It saw a remarkable coalescing of the ideas and experiences of 44 years of life into a single creative act.

Why not keep Bill and Joan and the boarders with her, get some more children, and

move to a farm further from the city? The students would help build and maintain the school and run the farm. Children’s eve-nings were so often wasted. Why not offer them music and dancing and discussion at night? Travel would be continued dur-ing the summers. And the students would become a part of a small country town.

“I asked myself what kind of secondary school I would like to have,” Mrs. Hinton said recently. “I suddenly thought (James would have been proud) well, I guess I ought to try and start one.”

Within a week, using a pencil, she wrote a prospectus for the school. “All of us to a greater or less degree build castles in the air,” it began.

But Mrs. Hinton’s plan for the school was not nebulous. To the contrary, all that she envisioned was instituted at Putney. Ideas that were innovative—even radical—in 1934 were formulated and then put into effect as if nothing could be more natural.

The purpose of all these elements was to awaken the social conscience of her stu-dents. “I had this idea that the world was a pretty unpleasant place. I thought education could help make children less greedy, less self-centered. Many of the young people that came to the school might become gov-ernment leaders when they were of age. And they might have a different, more ethical

slant on our problems as a result of this education.” It was a mix of the optimism of the Roosevelt era and a lesson learned from some black maids years before.

Mrs. Hinton organized the school in typically idealistic fashion. She procured a farm in Putney, Vermont before she hired any teachers. She hired teachers—paying them relatively high salaries—before she enrolled any students. She mortgaged the $30,000 home in Weston for $10,000. Somehow, it all worked.

Putney opened in September 1935 with 54 students—the children of friends who believed in Mrs. Hinton’s ideas. But some of them did not have total faith. Many parents were willing to send their daughters to an experimental school, but not their sons—or at least not sons that were counted on to be successful. “We had some weird boys at Putney that first year,” a student from those days said. “I remember one boy always wore an Indian headband and walked around on tiptoe.”

Much as Mrs. Hinton scorned the dulling influence of college requirements, she realized she would be able to attract top students only if she could show that Putney gradu-ates could get into the best schools. Every senior got into college that first year and, as added vindication, all but one decided to stay at Putney for a post-graduate year.

Joseph McCarthy compared to Adolf Hitler in U.S. Senate by Senator William Benton of Connecticut.

First issue of the Putney Post published, evolving from the Putney Alumni News.

Henry Benson Rockwell arrives at Putney, already spotted by some as “the shy, retiring, heir-apparent, weaver of dreams.”

Edmund Hillary reaches 29,028' summit of Mount Everest with Nepalese moun-taineer Tenzing Norgay.

Clyde Hulett, teamster since 1935, retires from the farm.

Alumni House, with spectacular view of Mt. Monadnock, is ready for weekend visitors.

By 1953, library holds more than 10,000 books, larger and more diverse than many college facilities.

Ed Shore, previously a college teacher, begins influential development of physics courses at and beyond Putney.

Hester Goodenough Caldwell ’46 and John Caldwell Jr. ’46 return to Putney, bringing life and rigor to skiing and the entire sports program while teaching math and history.

WCAX, first television station in Vermont, begins broadcasting.

Vermont elects first woman lieutenant governor in the nation, Mrs. Consuelo N. Bailey of South Burlington.

First Annual Fund drive reaches $15,000 goal.

Poor cash position forces Putney to curtail voluntary tax payments and borrow $40,000 to meet payroll.

Despite state requiring loyalty oath, three Quaker Putney School teachers refuse to swear to anything, fanning anti-Communist fears.

Bill Hinton ’36 returns from Communist China and promptly has papers impounded by U.S. Senate.

First alumni reunion, held at Harvest Festival.

Decision to appoint Ben Rockwell second Putney School director is greeted in assembly with many minutes of applause, shouts, and joy.

1952 1953 1954

12 P u T n E y P o S T

The school was a vibrant, intoxicating place. Graduates complain about descrip-tions of it as a three-ring circus. There were at least seven or eight rings, they insist.

In all of this, the school was a reflection of its director—created and run in her own image. Students, faculty, and staff all par-ticipated in school government, but there is general agreement that “Mrs. H,” as she was known, could carry any question. She felt that teachers should conduct discus-sions, not lectures, in their classes. And teachers were hired and fired on that basis. Students were also chosen and expected to conduct themselves in accordance with her ideas. “If you wanted to get into Putney, all you needed was a couple of interesting hobbies,” Bill Hinton said. “Perfect grades in math didn’t cut too much ice with

mother. If you had an interest in writing short stories or collecting butterflies, you were in.” This authoritarianism, which made the place so special, eventually got Mrs. Hinton into trouble.

Ask Mrs. Hinton about the teachers’ strike of 1949 and the hurt still comes to her face. “This is a very sore spot in the Putney annals,” she said. It was the most painful episode in her life, according to her son.

Mrs. Hinton had hired a teacher in 1947. When she found he lectured to his classes and would not change his teaching style, she asked him to leave. The man was a labor organizer, however, and mobilized about half the faculty against the director. He was able to do this because many teachers were upset with Mrs. Hinton’s arbitrary salary scales.

Incredible for a small school of 170 students and 75 adults, communications broke down. The rebel teachers formed a union local. And in the spring of 1949, they went on strike for three days.

By the end of the year, most demands had been met, but the union and many of its members left school anyway. The sense of betrayal remained. Mrs. Hinton had always viewed Putney as a small community. An institution with two bases of power was antithetical to that vision. Even with the dissolution of the union, things were never quite the same. According to John Holden, a teacher-administrator at Putney at the time, “Carmelita lost a lot of her confidence after the strike.” She had always retained ultimate control over the school, relegating the board of directors to an advisory capac-ity. Schools should be run by educators, not businessmen, she felt. However, after the strike, she sensed the need for a buffer and relinquished her final authority to a new board of trustees. There is in the episode, without being too dramatic, a sense of innocence lost.

It was to be expected that the idealism of the Woodstock-Weston trip would be watered down over the years, as Putney turned from an experiment into an institution. And yet, the school remained remarkably ahead of its time. Mrs. Hinton introduced many

President Eisenhower sends military advisors to Vietnam to offset recent success of pro-Communist forces.

Minimum wage upgraded to $1 per hour.

Rosa Parks arrested after sitting in the front of an Alabama bus; boycott begins with Martin Luther King, Jr. as spokesman.

Applications increase sud-denly as Putney “more closely approaches the ideal type of progressive school.”

Garland Pond purchased; about 50 acres set aside for nature preserve.

Tony Hiss, son of Alger Hiss, enrolls as a Putney School 9th grader.

Martin Luther King, Jr. home is bombed in Montgomery, Alabama.

Montgomery bus boycott ended after bus segregation is declared unconstitutional.

Congress passes measure to subsidize farms to reduce their production of certain crops.

Ben and Barbara Rockwell purchase Garland house next to Darrow’s orchard.

Putney’s fee exceeds all but the most elegant all-girl schools; many mothers take jobs specifically to earn tuition.

Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady ’36–’45, graduation speaker.

Elm tree by General Store at Lower Farm dies; also one on the main drive. “Putney Elm” still healthy.

Town of Putney builds new entrance road on land donated by the school.

Senate approves Civil Rights Act despite 24-hour filibuster by Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

Soviet Union launches Sputnik satellite, beating United States into space.

Ski team has first unbeaten season; sweeps local, state, and eastern meets.

Beginning of the great flu epi-demic; 120 out of 181 students stricken; KDU fills with beds.

Alexander Calder, father of Sandra ’53 and Mary ’58, hangs mobile in KDU.

1955 1956 1957

14 P u T n E y P o S T

techniques that are today called the latest innovations—team teaching, independent study, modular periods. In addition, many prep schools are now trying to shore up sagging enrollments and a creeping sense of irrelevance by instituting ideas that were present in Mrs. Hinton’s 1934 prospectus—coeducation, community involvement, no grades. Putney has had no problem finding students since its first year.

In 1955, Mrs. Hinton retired after 20 years as school director. “I hate to leave,” she said, “but I have so many things before me that I’m boiling over.” It may have sounded like a 65-year-old woman’s whistling in the dark. But, as it turned out, it was only the truth.

oNo American family has had closer ties to China over the last 25 years than have the Hintons.

And the head of the clan, Carmelita Hinton, has channeled all of the enthusiasm and energy she devoted to education for more than 50 years into support for the regime of Mao Tse-tung.

It may be a long way from Putney to Peking, but the Hintons’ ties to China seem natural to those who know them well. For the children, who were the first to become excited about the revolution, are

merely revealing their mother’s tremendous influence on them. And in following her children’s lead, Mrs. Hinton is once again demonstrating her receptivity to new ideas.

Little wonder that the Hintons should be caught up in the Chinese revolution. It embodied many of the concepts Carmelita Hinton had been talking about for years.

“Mrs. Hinton always used to talk about the frontier when we were at Putney,” Mrs. Winship remembered. “She was always saying one should battle the elements and find the frontier. She also talked about getting involved in agrarian life and about social conscience. I often thought it would

be tough for her kids to find the frontier and all those other things in America. So I wasn’t at all surprised when they ended up in China.”

Mrs. Hinton said reporters used to call her during the McCarthy era to answer charges that her daughter Joan had given atomic secrets to the Chinese. “It certainly made me mad when they called her a traitor,” Mrs. Hinton said. “I told them that she was having nothing to do with scientific research in China. She was in charge of 60,000 Peking ducks.”

Mrs. Hinton had become increasingly political after her retirement from Putney.

NASA announces first successful launch of inter-continental ballistic missile, restoring confidence in space and defense technology.

Student-teacher Glen Maples and students picket Brattleboro Woolworth’s for racial discrimination.

Boy’s lacrosse and girls’ soccer added to sports offerings.

Joe Post, a recent Cornell Hotel Management graduate, becomes business manager.

Bob Mills arrives at Putney and begins to change biology program, tying it to land-use curriculum.

Musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. Richardson (Big Bopper) die in plane crash in snowy Mason City, Iowa.

Queen Elizabeth and President Eisenhower formally open the St. Lawrence Seaway linking Great Lakes with Atlantic Ocean.

Ben Rockwell announces 25th Anniversary Fund at graduation.

Mary Scherbatskoy ’59 leads crew that finishes Stone Hut.

First alumni children enter Putney: Becky Winkelstein ’61 and Santiago Leon ’62.

The inn at Lower Farm closes—not competitive with local motels.

Senator John F. Kennedy defeats Vice President Richard Nixon by less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the vote. Televised debates influence elections.

The Grammar School opens in Putney, founded by Dick Richardson ’40, Jerry Pfohl and George Shumlin.

School’s 25th Anniversary drive nets over $200,000— one third from a single family.

1958 1959 1960

She worked with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, promoting understanding of China and later demon-strating against the Vietnam war. And ten years ago, during a trip around the world, she flew into China, although she did not have permission form the American government, to spend nearly a year with her daughter Joan.

Mrs. Hinton had been planning to revisit Joan. But then she thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful to take a group of youngsters on a work trip through China, like the adven-tures through Europe and the Far West 30 years ago? In August 1971 Bill cabled her that the Chinese government would

permit her to take 15 people, including daughter Jean’s children, “none over 30 and all personally known to you as people of goodwill.”

After a tour of Peking, the group spent a month harvesting crops in Tachai, a col-lective of 400 people. There, Mrs. Hinton husked corn with “my buddy,” a woman a year older than she, who had bound feet.

Mrs. Hinton said that mountains of corn needed husking and it seemed that the job would take months. However, one day, while she was away on a trip, the head of the collective said it must be completed the next day. When Mrs. Hinton returned the following night, she said that one of her grandchildren ran up to her, shouting that the whole job had been completed.

“We rushed up so excitedly and all the corn had been husked. We were so joy-ful that we started dancing. To accomplish something like that, with a lot of zest and eagerness, put a lot of joy into their lives.”

This spring, Mrs. Hinton suffered two strokes in China. Seventeen physicians attended her after the second one. Even now, back in Fleetwood, she wonders with a trace of embarrassment why the Chinese sent so many doctors to help “just one old lady.”

She said that she told the doctors that if she recovered, she would devote herself to telling

the West what China has to offer the rest of the world. She said that when she regains her strength, she will make speeches. In the meantime, she is compiling information to send to Chou En-lai on what the members of the work trip are doing as a result of their months in China.

The physical vigor is largely spent. The dreams have narrowed. But the drive remains—the excitement about a good idea; the unbending social conscience; most important, the Jamesian activism. If you are stirred by something, act on it.

Carmelita Hinton was talking in Fleetwood a few weeks ago: “No, there’s no use liv-ing on year after year just to live—to take a little nap and take a little nourishment and take a little walk. That’s not life. If I can contribute, that’s one thing. . . . To stop creating is to die.”

1961 1962

“No, there’s no use

living on year after year

just to live—to take a

little nap and take a little

nourishment and take a

little walk. That’s not life.

If I can contribute, that’s

one thing. . . . To stop

creating is to die.”

P u T n E y P o S T 15

Wednesday free afternoon inaugurated in exchange for Tuesday double workjobs.

Old Timers (’36–’49) whip Youngsters ( ’50–’59) at first alumni ski meet.

Plans for greenhouse underway. Hope to complete during fall of ’60.

Salaries exceed 50% of annual budget for first time in history of school.

U.S. invasion of Bay of Pigs (Cuba) ends in disaster.

Alan Shepard becomes first American in space in Mercury capsule.

President Kennedy orders 400 Special Forces soldiers and 100 military advisors to Vietnam.

Freedom Riders testing desegregation regulations in South attacked. Federal marshals deployed.

Nine Putney students, led by Ed Shore, take eight-week trip to Russia, re-introducing summer abroad.

Noyes Dorm opens its doors to 18 students and a faculty family.

Long Fall camping weekend reinstated.

Just before she dies, Putney Latin and history teacher, Jane Arms Kelly, writes last perora-tion against “modern Putney seniors’ obsession with college entrance.”

Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points for Philadelphia Warriors. Some complain his 7'3" height is “ruining the sport.”

James Meredith crosses riot-torn campus to become first African-American student at University of Mississippi.

Alumni Executive Committee develops class agent system.

Twenty Putney students attend Student Peace Lobby in DC; leaders include Jeffrey Campbell and Roger Franklin.

Board of Trustees establishes endowment fund, with first gift of $10,000.

First Natural Science Summer Camp replaces Putney Work Camp.