East Falls Historical Society Oral History Interview

Interviewee: Dr. Earl Ball (EB)

Also Present: Pam Ball (wife) (PB)

Interviewers: Wendy Moody (WM) and Mimi Mather (MM)

Interview: Feb. 16, 2024

Transcribed by: Wendy Moody, EFHS

WM: It’s February 16, 2024. We’re in the home of Mimi Mather. Mimi and Wendy Moody are interviewing Dr. Earl Ball, Headmaster of Penn Charter School, and his wife Pam is here. Hi, Earl. Thank you.

EB: Glad to be here.

WM: Why don’t we begin – we’ll talk mostly about the school – but tell us first a little bit about your life before the school – when and where you were born, and what got you up to the point of going to Penn Charter.

EB: Sure. I was born in West Philadelphia, and we lived there until I was about 10 or 11. My father was a milkman. And he got the chance to be a manager of a small dairy in South Jersey, so we moved to Collingswood.  We lived there, and I went through the public schools there, and then went to Middlebury College in Vermont. Then, after that, I went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for a Masters Degree in Education. Then we jumped around. I went to Massachusetts for a year and taught in Winchester High School, and that’s where we (Pam and Earl) met. And then I had the chance to go back to Baltimore to run, well, it was like an Upward Bound program for inner city students. And so we moved to Baltimore, got married, and then, after three or four years, I went to Penn for a doctoral program. And when I was there, I had the opportunity to go back to Baltimore to be the Assistant Head of a school called the Park School – a Pre-K through 12 Independent School right outside of Baltimore. From there I went to Penn Charter.

WM: And what year were you born?

EB: 1943.

WM: Date?

EB: February 26.

WM: Coming up!

EB: It’s coming up. (laughter)

WM: OK, so did you know early on you wanted to go into education? How did that evolve?

EB: Well, I think I did. I think in high school, I thought about it.  For some reason, the principal took an interest in what I was going to do and so I got to see a little more about how schools run. And I did a lot of student government things.  I thought it would be really interesting to teach. I knew I didn’t want to be a milkman (laughter) – milkmen were disappearing. And so, when I was in Middlebury, I majored in English, and they did very little with teaching. At that time, a lot of people went into what we called Master of Arts in Teaching programs, and I went to the one at Johns Hopkins.  So, I knew pretty early on I wanted to teach.

WM: Right. So you began as a teacher and then went into administration after that?

EB: Yes, I began as a as an English teacher at a big inner-city high school in Baltimore, and Pam taught in a high school in the Baltimore County system, which was more rural – she actually had some farm kids in her classes.

WM: How did you hear about the job at Penn Charter?

EB: Well, the person who was the Head at Park School said he received a notice, and, at that time, that’s the way they did searches – through the schools. There were no search consultants, which is probably a good thing. They would mail openings to other big schools.  He showed it to me and said, “You know, it would be good for you to apply for this, because it will be great experience to be interviewed.” He actually said, “You’ll never get the job.” (laughter)

WM: At this point, were you an administrator or teacher?

EB: At that point I was the Assistant Head at the school, but he said “They’ll want someone with more experience” – all of which made sense.

WM: And made you determined? (laughter)

EB: Well, I don’t know, but it made me interested and, also, it was really helpful because it made me very relaxed in the interview, because I didn’t expect anything to happen.

PB: Sure, you went for the experience of interviewing.

EB: So it was. It was basically to do that, and I had a full day interview – a two day interview, but at the end of the first day interview I interviewed with the business manager.

WM: Who was that?

EB: It was Oscar Jansen.  He was there for a long time, and he said, “You’re much too young to do this. Come back…”

WM: How old were you then?

EB: At that point, 31.  And he said, come back in 10 years, which I thought was a little long… I’m sorry about this long a story, but I love this story. So I literally called my parents, who were in South Jersey, and said “Get some pizza and I’ll stop and buy beer, because, I said, these people are not interested in me, so I might as well enjoy seeing you and then go back and visit the school.”  I went back to visit the school the second day, and Ralph Palaia, who was the Assistant Head and who was actually my father’s age, took me in a room and said, “I would really like to work for you.”  And I thought “Ooooh…” (laughter)

WM: Who was the Headmaster who was retiring?

EB: The Headmaster was a man named Wilbert Braxton.  And he had been the Head for, I think, nine years, but he was a long, long time faculty member there.  And he, actually, didn’t really want to be the Head. He became the Head because the Board asked him to, and he loved the school, and it was that time which we got the tail end of, of real anger in schools about the war and everything else. He did a terrific job, but he didn’t seek the job.

WM: What year are we talking about when you first interviewed?

EB: It would have been the fall of 1975, because we came in the fall of 1976. Although maybe even the spring, because the interview process went on for a long time.

WM: Tell us a little more about that.  What did they ask you?

EB: Well, they asked a lot of questions about curriculum. They asked a lot of questions about running a community. They asked, actually a lot of questions about dress code, because that was a topic very much on their minds at that point.

WM: Did you have a feeling about dress code?

EB: Well, I did, and I still have the same feeling, which is, if you want a dress code it’s fine, but you can’t assume that it’s going to improve people’s behavior. It makes them look better (laughter) but it won’t – schools, at that point, were doing this because they thought it would make people more civilized in some way. And that doesn’t work. We actually tightened the dress code at Penn Charter.  One of the ironies of going there is that Park was a very progressive school and people said “Yeah, you’re going to Philadelphia to basically liberalize the school and what I found out, to my surprise, is that the school, in some ways, actually needed tightening – it didn’t need liberalizing, and in part it was because of the time and the sort of anger about institutions, but that was early on. That was one of the big challenges – just to get a feel for the school, and there still was some of that post-Vietnam feeling.

MM: Did they ask you about Quakerism?

EB: They asked me about Quakerism.  I was really concerned about Quakerism because I’ve been a Presbyterian my whole life.  So, actually, Wilbert Braxton talked to me most about Quakerism, and he was a really terrific help because he would share ideas and approaches. Actually, the school where we were in Baltimore had some Quaker connections in terms of who the early leadership was, but it wasn’t a Quaker school. Well, actually, the school was founded by Jewish leaders in Baltimore who found that they couldn’t get their kids in the Baltimore Independent Schools, including Baltimore Friends School.

WM: Did it seem a handicap to you that that you didn’t have the Quaker background? Was that a challenge for you?

EB: I think it was a challenge. People were really wonderful about it – Wilbur Braxton in particular. But it was a challenge because, I think this happens in any religiously based schools, people will use their religion to push their position. And so one of the favorite things that happens in Quaker schools is people say, “Well, what you’re doing is not Quaker” and that’s supposed to stop everything. (laughter) And so I think that was one of the hardest things. But in terms of welcoming us and helping us, they were really terrific. And we were, in terms of leadership in the school – we were the first non-Quaker people. I was the first non-Quaker Head of the school.  So, you know, I think it made people apprehensive.

WM: Was there a big learning curve for you? I mean, did you start studying Quakerism?

EB: I did.  Mr. Braxton – Wilbert – was wonderful, but I did a lot of reading because I was apprehensive. I mean, I thought, it’s a Quaker school and I’m not Quaker and I’m clearly younger than people anticipated.  So we did a lot of reading, but Quakerism is one of those things that is almost sort of a feeling about life and how you appreciate others.  And one of the religion teachers at Penn Charter once said “You get it.  Quakerism is something you catch. It’s caught, not taught.” And that was it. And I think that’s still true about Quaker schools.

WM: So you were young and a non-Quaker and they gave you the position. You must have been very impressive! (laughter)

EB: Honestly, I think there was a whole lot of luck involved in it.  I tell people that it was like being in a race, and you weren’t always in first place, but all of a sudden, the first place person wasn’t there, nor the second place.  So it just took a long time, but it felt really fortunate.

WM: When you got there, were there things you felt you wanted to change right away? Did you have a good impression of the school?

EB: Yes, I had a really good impression. And it’s honestly a really good school.  It was a good school before I got there and it’s a good school now that I’m gone.  And so when you see that, you know, it was really impressive. And I felt strongly that if you want to go into a school and change it in a particular direction, you really shouldn’t go, particularly with schools with history, like Penn Charter; you have to respect the history.  There are definitely, probably, things you want to change, but you should really spend time listening to people and then figure out what the change should be.  It seems to me it’s a mistake to go in fast. I still do some consulting with people who take on leadership positions, and I always tell them that if it’s not a crisis, spend time and just listen to people. There are people there who really know the school and love the school.

WM: That probably accounts for your long tenure.  You mentioned the history – can you, in a few sentences, tell us the history of Penn Charter for the interview?

EB: Well, the school was actually started under the direction of William Penn; there were three charters that were issued to the school.  And one of the things that used to scare me, was that one of the charters was in the office. The school took many shapes and in 1875 was consolidated into a boys’ school downtown near 12^th and Market.

WM: Oh wow.

EB: I would sit there and look at look at this document which had William Penn’s signature on the bottom. The school was downtown in a number of places. And like all schools that talk about their origins, it took a whole bunch of different forms. It wasn’t as if in 1689, which is the founding date, there was anything sitting there saying “William Penn Charter School.” There was a school – I think it was called “The Public School.”  And then in 1875, the school was consolidated into one school that was a boys’ school, where the PSFS building was in downtown – right on 12th Street.  There was also a meeting house there.  For a long time, the students would go from there and come out to East Falls for athletics.  They would take the trolley or bus. They would play on the field, which is now the football field.  And there was very little there.  Pictures show there was one house on the edge of it.  Then they’d go back downtown and go home.  Some of them would catch the ferry and go to Camden.

WM: And the school actually moved in 1925?

EB:  I was going to say 1924, but it’s right in there. And it was an estate of some sort that the school was able to purchase.  It was called Pinehurst. The first building was built in the 1920’s and then they added on different buildings at different times.  Actually, the Lower School – they’re now building a new Lower School – but the Lower School was new, right when we arrived. And then the field house was built after that, and then the Middle School. There’s been some more expansion – the school built a big Wellness Center – I call it a field house.

WM: So when it was first purchased, I read somewhere that it was 47 acres. Has the size stayed the same or did they acquire more land over the years?

EB: No, they acquired some land, because when we got there, I think it was 44 acres. And then they acquired some properties on The Oak Road – the Timmons House, and then the Brown House, which is where the Head lives. We were also able to purchase the Strawbridge property.

MM: How about the one at the end of the at the corner of Oak Road and School House Lane?  

EB: That’s the Timmons House.

MM: No…

EB: There was a house there that was eventually torn down.

MM: Whose house was that?

EB: I don’t know because that was torn down before we arrived.

MM: Oh, and somebody gave it to the school, I guess.

EB: Yes.

MM: And they tore it down, but luckily, they didn’t tear your house or the Timmons’ House down. My father went to Meadowbrook School and he used to take a bus, in about 1920, from there to Penn Charter to play games on the field.  There was nothing there but the fields, and they came and met the boys from Penn Charter coming out of town. The other thing I was going to say was the property, Pinehurst, was owned by a family named Waln.  Did you know anything about them? Waln – they owned it and sold it to Penn Charter.

WM: So was their house on the side of the street where the main Penn Charter buildings are?

MM: I guess so.

EB: I guess, although I don’t know, I honestly don’t know.

MM: It must have been there.

WM: Interesting. So where did you say you lived as Headmaster?

EB: We lived in a house at 3830.  If you know The Oak Road – there’s the church (note: Memorial Church of the Good Shepherd), then the manse for the church, and the next one is the school’s house.

WM: OK, I always thought you lived in Timmons House.

EB: No, no. We actually had a chance to live in the Timmons House and we said no.

I don’t know exactly what we said, but it, honestly, was just too scary. (laughter)

We had young kids, and the arrangement of Timmons House was that you would live basically on the second floor, and the downstairs would be for entertaining.  It just seemed a little overwhelming.   And I remember saying to you (to Pam), “I don’t know if I can do this job, and if I leave, we’re never going to have our kids live in a house like this, so we better live in something that’s more like a house.” Of course, the house that the school has – the other house – is gorgeous, so probably we couldn’t ever live in a house like that either.   But we did have a chance to live in the Timmons House.

WM: What was it like living on The Oak Road? Was there a sense of community?

EB: Yes, I was thinking about this.  There was a strong sense of community on The Oak Road. You might even call it, though it’s not a favorable word, a sense of privilege, because the people at that point really loved living on The Oak Road, and they had a sense of history. And, actually, one of the families who lived on The Oak Road was the Andress family, and Mrs. Andress was a Timmons, so they had a connection to the Timmons House.  

WM: She used to use the library; I remember her.

EB: There was an Oak Road Association, and they were very, very proud, in a good way, of the fact that The Oak Road is only one block. And so there was that sense of having something that was really interesting to be part of.

WM: And not much turnover.

EB: We were the youngest people in the street when we got there, and we were probably the oldest when we left. (laughter).  So it was great; there were very nice people on that street.  I can remember there was a General Murphy – remember General Murphy? He lived right next to the church. And he was active in the church. And a lot of the people on the street were involved with the church.

WM: So did that become your church?

EB: No, we went to the First Presbyterian Church on Chelten Avenue in Germantown.

PB: First Presbyterian.  We had the kids, so we wanted that church because they had Sunday School – Good Shepherd didn’t.  And the other thing about the Germantown church is it’s really, in wonderful ways, diverse, and we liked that for our kids, and we’re still there. The kids aren’t there, but we’re there.

WM: Talking about diversity, tell us changes you saw over the years in Penn Charter in diversity.

EB: Sure. Well, the big diversity was that there were no girls there!  So the Coed development was probably the most important for diversity.  Also, in Penn’s Charter, it actually talks about scholarship aid.  It says something like the rich will pay and the others will come without charge, or something like that.  And so it’s one of the reasons the school has a strong financial aid program, because it’s right in the Charter.  And every time somebody wanted to limit it, we could say ”Well, look here it says…”. And so I think the expansion of financial aid – when we got to Penn Charter, remember, there was no financial aid in the Lower School.  There was in the Middle and Upper School.  And so one of the things that we changed fast was to have financial aid available to students in all grades.  The expansion of the financial aid program was really important. I think the expansion of diversity, particularly racial diversity, was important to the school.

WM: Can you talk a minute about how you achieved that racial diversity, and also the process of making it coed, and how that came about during your tenure?

EB: Racial diversity, I think you honestly just have to work at.  We felt that we could build on families that were there.  And we did a lot of outreach to communities. I remember visiting churches – African – American churches – and trying to encourage them to suggest students.

WM: You’d go around the city?

EB: Yes, it wasn’t very successful actually, but it was fun.

WM: But a good concept.

EB: We also had some kids from the projects.  Do you remember the high-rise projects? A lot of the issues in the Falls were dominated by either appropriate or inappropriate concern about the projects, and the projects were a pretty awful place to have people live, but we got some wonderful, wonderful kids from there.

MM: Oh, did you?

WM: From Abbotsford as well as Schuylkill Falls?

EB: Mainly from Schuylkill Falls. We had one student, I remember, who was late the first day of school because he rode by the school – he thought it was a church and he was just looking for his school. But I think we really worked hard at that, and I’m really, personally, very proud of where the school is in terms of welcoming families from different backgrounds.  And right now, there’s a really strong tradition of doing that. So I think it would be hard if anybody wanted to reverse it, not that they would; it would be hard because now people believe so much in the benefits of diversity.  Darryl Ford replaced me. He’s an African American leader and did a wonderful job increasing diversity within the community. It is part of the school, but people had to work at it early on.

WM: Were the students well received into the Penn Charter community?

EB: I want to say yes. And I think, for the most part, graduates would say yes, but I think it’s foolish to think that there aren’t issues in terms of inclusivity in a community.  And there aren’t issues of, you know, wealth and poverty in the same setting.  And I think the whole “Black at…” – have you seen those posts, about a year or so ago, there was a whole series of things on social media “Black at…” – so  it would be “Black at Germantown Friends,” “Black at Penn Charter,” and people would talk about painful experiences, so I think we’re all more sensitive to the fact that we were making progress, but there’s probably still a lot to be made.

WM: And what about becoming coed? How did that come about? What year are we talking about?

EB: Well, the school made the decision to become coed in 1980.

PB: Before that, there were girls in kindergarten and first grade.

EB: Yes, kindergarten and first grade.  It was actually unusual. Somebody had convinced somebody in the school that coeducation was really good until second grade. And I’ve studied a lot of things, and I’ve never, ever found anything like that (laughter). Somebody probably had influence in the community. So when we arrived, Pam said there were girls until second grade. The other thing that happened is the school had had a coeducation study, which decided that the time wasn’t right for coeducation.

WM: When was that?

EB: That was probably in the 1970s, I would say, before we arrived. But it was one of those things where they didn’t say it wasn’t a good idea, they said it wasn’t the right time. So we felt that it was really important to resolve that question because of all sorts of implications for the school going forward. If the school were going to remain single sex, then that had one set of priorities that would probably come into play. If the school was going to become coeducational, then there was a huge set of priorities that would really come to the forefront.

WM: Could you give us an example of what one of those might be?

EB: Well, one of them was facilities;  another was staffing.  When we arrived, I think there were only a couple of women teaching in the high school.

PB: And bathrooms. Locker rooms.

EB: Yes, in fact, somebody – the head of Baldwin, who was a little sarcastic – sent me a note when we announced we were becoming coeducation, and she said “Just want you to know this involves more than bathrooms” (laughter) and that was clearly true.

     The school started a study.  We were going to do a long-range planning process, and I said “I think we should try to resolve this question, and it could be resolved either way.”  And coeducation has been wonderfully successful at Penn Charter and at Episcopal, and Haverford School has been very successful staying as a single sex school. So I think it could have been decided either way, but it was an extensive two year study.

WM: Were you for it?

EB: Well, I was definitely for it, but didn’t think was really my decision. I was actually asked at a board meeting if I would leave if the school stayed single sex, and I said “Honestly, no.”  I came to the school and liked what I had found, and I thought it was an important decision to make, but I wasn’t placing my presence as a condition, because I didn’t feel that way.

WM: So how did that turn out? Did they have a vote among the overseers?

EB: Well, it’s interesting, because Quakers don’t vote. Quakers operate by consensus. And so after a lot of discussion, they reached a consensus about going forward.  But before they did that, they polled the alumni.  And, also, the Coed Committee, which was a board committee, interviewed every faculty member, which I thought was extraordinary, individually, to see what they were thinking.  The quality of the discussion – I was just amazed at the quality of the discussion.  We had alumni writing in. David Reisman, who was a wonderful sociologist and anthropologist at Harvard, is a Penn Charter graduate, and he wrote.  Ted Fiske at that point was the Education Editor of the New York Times, and he wrote. And so it was a hugely stimulating discussion for a long time. And, actually, I should say Lew Somers, our friend Lew Somers, he was not enthusiastic about coeducation , and he decided to join the consensus after looking at all these things, and became a tremendous advocate for the school and, you know, head of the board.

        And so the process really, really worked. The head of the Coed Committee was a man named Richard Brown, who was highly esteemed in the community.  He had been, among other things, the head of the committee at Penn that that studied divestment of South African Investments. So it was great. It was a wonderful process. The thing I remember thinking was that this is the most important decision we’re going to make, if I stay here for 40 years. This is the most important decision.

WM: Did they ask the students?

EB: They asked the students, but not extensively. You could predict what the students would say.  The Upper Schools students would have very much wanted coeducation, and, you know, the Lower School students probably didn’t care.  But the boys that became the last single sex classes were very proud of that all male tradition, like Chris and David.

WM: I see that here it was 1992 when the first Coed graduated. So what did they do? Add a grade each year?

EB: Right. Basically, they added a grade each year, because one of the things that made the decision hard was that the school was full.  Most schools, at the point they were becoming coed, were doing it in part for enrollment reasons and the situation at Penn Charter was that the school was full, so the decision was made more on philosophical grounds.  And that’s not to say there weren’t people who were mad about it, because there were some people who were upset about it.

WM: Did it tend to go smoothly?

EB: I think it did. I mean, I think the fact that we were doing the grade by grade process really gave a lot of opportunity. Some people wondered if we’d ever get the girls graduating because it took so long, but it did mean that we could plan programs.  It was helped by some wonderful women who joined the Upper School faculty who became really strong parts of the faculty.

WM: Who were some of those?

 EB: Well, one of the biggest was Alice Davis, who was the Head of the Science Department, who was just a legend.  She was incredibly strong as a teacher and as a faculty leader.  Cheryl Irving, who was an African American teacher who’s now got a conference named for her in Philadelphia about inclusivity. And so there were some wonderful, wonderful teachers who took leadership positions and that made a difference.

MM: Ann Watters?

EB: Ann Watters, who was in the Lower School, was the Admissions person, and also taught in the Lower School.  And Beth Glascott, who just retired.  So I think it was helped by really high quality people.

WM: Sounds like it. Do you remember any specific issues or problems that came up?

MM: Dress code. Remember that?

EB: Dress code was a problem. Dress code is always a problem in many ways, but in this case, it was hard because we were trying to figure out a dress code for boys and for girls.

WM: Was there a dress code for boys at this point?

EB: Yes, and so there was tension around it.  Girls occasionally felt they were being singled out, and boys occasionally felt that the girls were getting away with more, but it was just a sort of community issue more than anything else.

WM: What did they come up with for the girls?

MM: Well, I remember the boys were supposed to wear collared shirts, but the girls were not wearing collared shirts, because they were wearing just lovely scoop neck things, or whatever you’d wear when you were a girl. They didn’t see why they had to wear a collar.

WM: Did they have to wear a skirt?

MM: No, I guess you could wear blue jeans. I just remember the shirts being a problem because the girls didn’t want to have to wear collared shirts when they had perfectly nice blouses. 

WM: So that was the biggest change during your tenure, but what were some of the other major changes that you remember?

EB: Well, I think  one that we were really proud of was the development of the arts program. When we arrived, the arts program was somewhat limited, and the music program, in particular, was limited.  So it took a long time, but it really built into a wonderful part of the school.  Particularly, there was a man named Joseph Fitzmartin, who retired recently, who built the choral program, and now there is a strong choral program and a strong instrumental music program. I think that was a very positive change to complement the other parts of the school that were strong.   And of course, all schools have had huge technology changes. You know, the way you do things is so different now.

WM: So that happened right during your tenure?

EB: Yes, and it continues to happen. Now in terms of the issue of ChatGPT, or whatever that program is, that’s a huge issue that we didn’t have to deal with.  So we got out of that! (laughter)

WM: So the advent of computers was during…

EB: That came pretty early on.  And so the development of computer capability within the faculty, and also for the students, and the building a Computer Department, and all those things were big changes for the school. And I think there’s a change in the way people learn. If you go to schools, you watch much more learning in groups instead of individually, and much more collaborative work instead of individual projects.

WM: That’s so interesting. I was going to ask you about that – changes in the way children learn.

EB: I think that’s been a really big change. And so schools are designed now to enhance that.  My guess is, though I haven’t seen much of it, but my guess is the new Lower School at Penn Charter will have a lot of flexibility and a lot of opportunity for working in groups. I tell the students we work with at Penn (University of Pennsylvania) when I started working at Penn 15 years ago, we taught at times in one of the Wharton buildings.  All the students were seemed to be squirreled away in little carrels doing their independent, competitive work, but now if you go in there, you don’t see individual spaces, you see group spaces and people working together on projects. So it’s a real change.

WM: So you had the arts program, technology changes, co-ed and diversity changes.  What about the physical plant? Tell us a little about the changes there.

EB: Well, the plant expanded, although Darryl Ford’s done a much more exciting job expanding the facilities than I did.  But while we were there, we built the Fieldhouse, which was actually just torn down, and also, probably the most exciting space was the Middle School, which is an absolutely wonderful Middle School space designed for that age group. The Arts Center was under construction as we departed.

WM: About what year was that?

EB: I don’t know, I’d say 20 years ago, but I’m not that positive (Note: 2002).  It was named for Dick Fisher, who actually was an East Falls guy, who grew up, went to Penn Charter, went to Princeton, and became the head of Morgan Stanley.

      And then the squash courts were built, and the Art Center was being built when we left. It was a construction project.

WM: Oh, the Kurtz Center.

EB: Yes, the Kurtz Center was being built.

WM: What a magnificent building.

EB: It’s a wonderful building.

WM: Going back to the squash courts, we wanted to ask you about historic preservation and if that was an issue, because I know that was in the area where the Strawbridge Mansion was?

EB: Yes, I’m trying to think about the timing. My recollection is that with the squash courts, there wasn’t an issue about historical preservation. The Strawbridge house was earlier than that, and there were issues about that.

WM: That was before you?

EB: No, no. We were there. We were there, but, the Strawbridge house, did you ever see?

WM: I never saw it.

EB: It was a wonderful sort of Victorian mansion.  If you go down School House Lane and look at the current baseball field, at the back of the baseball field, that’s where it was.   And there was concern about historic preservation there. Our concern was the development of space for kids and learning.  They actually changed the law, not because of that, but after the building was torn down, so I don’t know what would have happened today – whether you could tear it down, but what had happened is that the property itself was in fairly significant disrepair.

PB: I was going to bring that up.

EB: They had kept, I forget which member of the Strawbridge family lived there, but the woman who lived there was like the matriarch.  They kept up the spaces where she was, and left everything else go.  And there was no interest from the Strawbridge family in any kind of collaborative project.

WM: Not repurposing the house for Penn Charter’s use?

EB: No, no, the head of the family said to me one time “We’re the kind of Quakers who like to do well.” (laughter) “So don’t expect anything.” And he was very honest about it. But there was no opportunity. I mean, if we had refurbished that building, it would have all been all on Penn Charter. There was no collaboration.  Not many people know this, but Germantown Friends and Penn Charter were prepared to do something with that property, and somehow maintain the house, but use the rest of it for athletics, but the head of Germantown Friends and I had talked about that…

WM: Who was that at the time?

EB: At that time, it was Fred Coulter, but the family just wasn’t interested in that.

WM: Do they teach historic preservation or any course in that at Penn Charter?

EB: I honestly don’t know. They certainly didn’t when we were. They do all sorts of community conservation work, and they do a lot of work in the Wissahickon, but actual preservation of buildings may come up in courses, but I don’t think there’s any. Randy Granger, a revered art teacher, did teach about architecture.

WM: Well, let’s talk a little bit about that – the interaction with the community, I think Penn Charter was very generous with the community. But what were some of the collaborative efforts and how did you get your students involved?

EB:I think most of it came from individual effort.  When we arrived, there actually was a program that had just stopped – it did some work in schools. There’s a long-standing college prep program that runs in the summer for inner city students that is funded entirely through the school.  There’s also work with individual projects in the community. I remember going to the old YWCA building on Germantown Avenue and painting.  So we would do that, and I think they’ve only expanded that.

WM: You remember that Penn Charter students remade the mosaic at the library.

EB: Yes.

WM: That was a huge project after the mosaic disappeared.  It was crumbling, and I still have pictures of that of the beautiful new mosaic.  That was a great community effort.

EB: And students would work through Cynthia Kishinchand, who had some way of getting them involved with Tree Tenders.  The students, through the science program, would be involved.  So I think that there’s lots of community involvement, and actually right after we left, the school established something called the Center for Public Purpose, and that basically is entirely community involvement. Now it’s probably a broad definition of community that would include. Germantown and aspects of North Philadelphia.  But it’s very active.

WM: Did you let the public use your facilities at all?

EB: We did, primarily outdoor facilities – people use the track all the time and, on occasion, depending on usage, we would let some of the East Falls teams  use it, if they didn’t have fields. Both of our kids, primarily Christopher, were involved in the East Falls Athletic League, and actually, I don’t know whether they do it much, but one of the terms of the gift that established the Kurtz Center was the idea  that there may be opportunities for community groups that use the stage. That was Esther Kurtz’ desire.

WM: Yes, I think the East Falls Village has used it; I can check on that. Now this is impossible to answer, but how would you describe what you’d call it a typical day as headmaster? What were you doing day-to-day?

EB: Well, a lot of what you do is respond to things that come up.  Also, a lot of what school heads do is planning – long range planning and working with the leadership team.  You’d like to have as much contact as you can with the students, but you do an awful lot of adult-directed work. It’s either the board, or fundraising, which has become more important.  Penn Charter just completed an amazing fundraising campaign.   When that happens, the Head is really involved in that. I know Darryl Ford basically spent most of the last couple of years of his tenure raising money, and that means somebody else is working with the kids.  So I think it’s trying to keep the mission of the school in front of people, and working towards whatever those goals are.

WM: Did you interact much with the students?

EB: I did, but not as much as I would like, but I did. When we first arrived, I taught a senior English class, and then for a couple of years – maybe it was just one year – I taught a 9th grade class, but that was every day all year and almost killed me, but I tried to do that. (laughter).  One of the things I enjoyed  doing was, in the spring, I would have a meeting with each senior and ask that person to reflect on their experience at the school and what went well, what didn’t go well, and what their hopes were. And so that gave me some contact. It took a lot of time because there were 100 plus seniors.

WM: Was that worthwhile?

EB: Oh yes, I think it was really worthwhile. Gives you affirmation of what you’re trying to do, and also some directions where maybe the school should do something different.  I think it was a great, great opportunity. And before that, I would do lunches with groups of students.

WM: You’d just appear in the cafeteria and sit with them?

EB: No. I did that sometimes, but they weren’t that happy about that.(laughter). But I would invite them to a room right off the Head’s office, where you could have lunches for 10 or 12 students, and they got a free lunch and a chance to talk.  It was really positive.

WM: Did they send discipline problems to you?

EB: Yes, it had to be pretty bad to get to me. (laughter) Most of the minor discipline problems were handled by the school directors – we had really strong school directors, and so they did it. But in order to get to me, it had to be serious and involve suspension or expulsion.

WM: Would that be cheating or bullying?

EB: Could be cheating. It’s interesting, it could be bullying, but nobody 15 years ago, called it bullying. I don’t know what it was called, but it wasn’t called bullying. So it would be things like that. There was an Honor Council and they deliberated things like cheating, and they would make a recommendation to me, and that was a student-faculty group. So, I honestly didn’t spend a huge amount of time on discipline. But when you were involved – like with major suspensions or expulsion – then it was really, really time consuming.

MM: Did you have an army of parents coming in demanding an A for their students?

EB: That’s a great question and the answer to that is really no. I had a lot of parents who would come demanding different things, but it wasn’t very often about grades. It would be about something else – a teacher they wanted their student to have, or annoyance over college choices, or something like that, but I got very little about specific grades. And I think, compared to other schools that I heard from colleagues, the Penn Charter community was really wonderfully respectful of time boundaries, so we very rarely got calls at night from people complaining about anything.

MM: I bet they do now.

EB: They probably do. Well, the one thing, you know, I beat social media! (laughter). That’s one huge difference.  So I’m sure you’re probably right.

MM: I think they got their teacher’s emails; they’ve got their phone numbers, their cell numbers.

EB: Oh yes. And the other thing that’s true, is that if something happens, you had time to respond to it. And now if something happens, if something happens in the 3rd grade classroom, the chances are the parents are going to know almost as quickly as you know, and so I think that makes it much harder. And I think parents have become more demanding, in part, because they’re more worried about their kid’s future. And right now, the tensions around the political climate.  (pause, then conversation resumes)

EB: (continues) It’s the kind of thing that the Heads of Schools, if they don’t handle those things right, they could lose their jobs. Look at Penn and Harvard.  Who would have thought? I mean the woman at Penn basically said one, I mean, admittedly, really inappropriate thing, but one thing and she’s out of a job. 

WM: So you kind of answered this, but how would you describe your management style?

EB: Well, I tried to be collaborative. I think I got more collaborative as I got older, and partially it may have been, when I first arrived, I may have been really concerned about proving I had some idea what I was doing? (laughter) So I definitely became more collaborative and a better listener.  I was a fairly hands on Head of School.  And Henry Scattergood, who was the Head at Germantown Friends School for a long time, after he retired, he came to Penn Charter to teach. And he said to me one day “You know, you’re really a throwback about how to be in a school community.” So, I think that was good….!  But I think that was our approach.  I always knew

my job was to do the best I could for Penn Charter, and I always felt that I had been entrusted with something that was really valuable, and that the school, the board, in particular the school, took a chance on me.  I would certainly make mistakes, but I owed it to them to do the best I could.

WM: That’s a great attitude.

EB: And so it was a wonderful experience. I didn’t leave because I was unhappy. I just thought it was time.  When people ask me about it, I said “I loved being Head of Penn Charter.”

WM: What about your relationship with other Quaker schools. Did you have much interaction with them?

EB: Well, there is a wonderful organization called the Friends Council on Education that brings together people from different Quaker schools.

WM: Is that for sports?

EB: No.  There actually is a Friends League – Penn Charter is not part of it. There is a Friends League for athletics.  The Friends Council is a school organization, so all the Quaker schools are part of it, and it basically focuses on Quaker aspects of schooling. And it creates a network of Heads of Schools who talk a lot.

WM: So you would have meetings with them?

EB: So they would have meetings, but beyond that, for most of the time I was there, I was really close to the Germantown Friends Head; I was very close to Fred Calder, who was already an established Head when we arrived. He was a wonderful sort of friend and mentor to me, and Dick Wade, who was a long time Head there was a very close friend.  So I would say that there was a lot of sharing of Quaker school talk and support. But if I got worried about something, one of the people I would talk to, for a long time, was Fred Calder, and then it was Dick Wade, and, also, some of the Germantown Academy Heads. It was not a Friends school, but we’re also really close, I would say Heads do a good job of sharing with one another.  Philadelphia is a really great place.

WM: It’s good that rather than have it competitive, it’s cooperative.

EB: Yes, it’s still competitive, but the schools are different enough.  What’s that saying – something about a rising tide will lift all boats? And I think that’s true.  If independent schools are strong in Philadelphia, that helps the schools and, I think, for the most part, the big schools are really pretty strong right now.

WM: Were there any special or memorable teachers or students?

EB: Well, there were certainly memorable teachers.  Alice Davis was just an extraordinary, extraordinary teacher and really did amazing things with students in science.

WM: What made her distinctive?

EB: Well, I think she was dedicated to the students, and she was brilliant.  You know, you can be dedicated, but if you don’t have the ability to share with students, not much happens. So I think she was really wonderful, wonderful teacher.

MM: And everybody liked her, too.  I mean, students really liked her.  They also liked Pam – she’s a lovely person (note: Pam Ball was a math teacher at Penn Charter.) as was Alice Davis.

EB: Well, she would spend extra time with them; so I think she was wonderful. Joe Fitzmartin, who built the choral program, was extraordinary as a musician and a conductor. Randy Granger, who was a legendary art teacher, just left. He was a wonderful art, photography, and film teacher. When we first arrived, there was an older Quaker gentleman, Bert Linton, who was the Head of the Math Department who was legendary as a teacher.

MM: And Charlie Kaesshaefer.

EB: Yes, Charlie Kaesshaefer from the Lower School. And Richard Smith.

MM: The kids loved him.  And Ralph West – the kids liked him, too.

WM: Are there any students that were there when you were Headmaster who had special achievements later on?

MM; Well, what about the guy who started that Goldberg Show?  Do you know that show TV show called The Goldbergs? Well, Earl will tell you about it.

EB: Well, yes, Adam Goldberg was a Penn Charter graduate, and a lot of the stories are based on his Penn Charter experience twisted somewhat, I think. But he’s really, I think, an interesting story because he carried a camera around as a kid and would take these videos that later became the genesis of this successful TV show. And it’s just a great example of somebody finding something he loved.

PB: And his mother kept all those pictures, which is amazing.

EB: Yes. And so he’s had quite a career. Then the public person we see a lot is Matt Ryan, who was a quarterback in the NFL, and it’s now a commentator.

WM: I remember Winston and I went to hear Edward Albee at Penn Charter, I think while you were there. Who were some of the noteworthy people who came there and how did you attract them?

EB: Well, I think. Sometimes people who are really luminaries like the possibility of contact with kids. They’re used to adults and so we made an effort to bring in people who would represent, you know, a different viewpoint for students and families.  Edward Albee was one. John Gardner was another.

MM: There was a pianist who came…. Leon?

EB: Yeah, Leon Bates came. Henry Louis Gates was a speaker, and Cornel West was another person who came in.  The idea was to try to provide stimulation for the students. And honestly, early on, I wanted people to have something else to come to other than the football game. And so it worked out. I’ve always loved Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot, who’s an anthropologist at Harvard, and she came and spoke. And remember the woman who became the president of Harvard, Drew Faust?   She was a speaker at one point when she was a history professor at Penn. So that worked out really well and I think they’re still doing that.

Sometimes it takes an artistic bent, so they’ll bring in poets.  Early on, when we did it, it had a literary bent.

WM: You mentioned earlier that Penn Charter wasn’t part of the Quaker League. Why was that, and what was the importance of sports at Penn Charter?

EB: Well, I think what a lot of people have felt, and I agree, is that sports at Penn Charter can be a really positive experience for people.  There are a lot of people who think back – they just had somebody who was a wrestler in 1960 come back and do some kind of presentation. I just heard that the other day. One of the lovely things about involvement in sports in independent schools is that there are usually two or three different levels, so that somebody gets the experience of playing on a team without having to be that good.  By the time you get to the varsity level, those people are really talented. I think that sports is really an important part of the school and  its tradition.  There are just a lot of people who talk about what they learned from being on teams. I just had breakfast with Jack Rogers the other day; he was a wonderful Middle School coach, who made kids who could trip over themselves feel good as a team member. You didn’t have to be that strong.

     So Penn Charter was part of the Inter Academic League, which includes Episcopal Academy, Germantown Academy, Haverford, Malvern, and Chestnut Hill, which is now Springside Chestnut Hill.  That is a strong historic association for the school, and that predates the Friends School League.  So the feeling was with the historic ties, it would be a mistake to move.

WM: So outside of Penn Charter, how did you two involve yourself with East Falls?

EB: Some of our involvement was through our kids. Chris, in particular, did a lot of sports at McDevitt Playground. And that was great for him because he met a lot of kids from East Falls who weren’t at Penn Charter.   And the church has always been a big involvement for us, but that’s Germantown, and the library.  So those were the main things. And I think the feeling of collaboration or shared interest with the community is much stronger.  When we first arrived. there was a tension between the school and the community, and I think over the years, there’s much more of an understanding of mutual interest and less animosity.

WM: Right. This was probably after your tenure, but I know with both Textiles and Penn Charter, the students would park on the residential streets.  Was that an issue?

EB: Oh yes, that’s always been an issue. We dealt with it, not necessarily well, by trying to emphasize to the students that they could park on the street, which they could, but they had to respect people. We would get problems when a student blocked somebody’s driveway.   

Sometimes building projects were contentious.

      And again, I think people like Geoff Brock and his wife who live at the end of Penn Charter’s driveway and have gotten involved in the East Falls associations, have been wonderful because they understand the fact that schools like Philadelphia University and Penn Charter are assets to the community. They certainly help property values and stabilize the community. 

      There was a feeling when we first arrived that the school was sort of a park, and Penn Charter actually closed the track to people.  One of the first things we did was open it up.  You don’t have to be brilliant to figure out that if you have people running around the track, who are community members, that’s like free security if anything happens (laughter).  So the school opened itself up more and also, I think, listened more to the community – the school should have done that – and tried to work with people in the community.  It’s been really productive. But I remember particularly the building of the fieldhouse, which was just really contentious.

MM: Are they putting the new Lower School where that fieldhouse was?

EB: Yes, yes.

MM: And then what will happen to the old Lower School?

EB: That’s a good question. I think it’s going to be some classroom space and also maybe some offices.

WM: Are you still involved?

EB: Not really. I mean, we were involved more with Darryl Ford, because I think he’s absolutely wonderful, and he was great at calling. And we were involved at one point when Hadley and Walker were both there – our grandchildren, as students, but now they’re gone.  There’s a natural changing of the staff at Penn Charter, so we don’t have the connections we did. We read things and we’re happy for the school, but I wouldn’t consider us involved at this point.

MM: There were quite a number of East Falls people who taught at the school, weren’t there? Like I’m thinking of Nancy Donaghy, and there were others, too, I think.

EB: Well, Cynthia Kishinchand was the receptionist for a while. Nancy taught.  The Watters lived right as you come out of the driveway, and John Steere lived on Coulter. So, yes, there are a lot of them. And one of the things that happened when the school became coeducational, it became more attractive to families because they could send both their kids there and so there are lots of ties to East Falls now.

MM: Debbie McIlvaine teaches there, and Joan McIlvaine did too. (Note: Linda Leube and Norma Mercer, both East Falls residents, also worked at Penn Charter)

(pause, then conversation continues)

EB: Germantown Friends has been very active in the community.  I’m on the Board now at Friends Central, and they’re pretty active in the community. I do think for some schools, it’s an outgrowth of the Quaker ideals or other religious ideas – Episcopal has had a wonderful service program for a long, long time. I don’t know what they’re doing in their new site, but in the old site, they would do a lot in the community.

WM: Can you talk about any special memories when you look back on those years, any special challenges or achievements, moments of pride or just any moments that stay with you?

EB: Yeah. I think the moments, some are really personal moments, so I remember giving both of our kids their diplomas, and I remember the wonderfully poignant moment when the final meeting for worship the year we left – the full school meeting for worship. Pam, you may not remember, but in the gym fieldhouse, the whole student body was there….

WM: You mean for your retirement?

EB: Well, no, it was a regular meeting for worship at the end of the year, but it was when we were retiring, and Hadley came over and sat on my lap. She was in kindergarten. And so I think those are just wonderful, wonderful moments. I think that if I’m….

WM: You don’t have to be modest.

EB: Well, I’m not. I’m not. Every time I think of something, I think of the fact that people do things together, and so you can’t say, well, gee, I did this, because it wasn’t just me or Pam or anybody, but I’m really proud of the co-education movement in the school, and I’m really proud of the diversity in the school.

      And I worked really hard – I don’t have any talent, musically, but I worked really hard to try to build a good music program. And I’m proud of it; I’m really proud of that. And I think when we left, my father used to tell me when I was a kid “If you’re going to leave a place, you want to leave it better than you found it” and I think, not just because of us, with a lot of people, I think the school we left was stronger in many ways because of these things than what we found, even though what we found was a really good school. Yes, but it’s a different time.

WM: Is there anything that you didn’t get to achieve that you wanted to?

EB: I don’t think so. There were things that I would have liked to have done if we stayed, but I didn’t leave with a feeling of “Gee, I didn’t do this big thing.”

WM: So how old were you when you retired?

EB: I think I was 64.

WM: And you felt it was the right moment? What spurred that?

EB: I honestly did feel it was the right moment, and I always thought that I would know. Part of it, honestly, is a Quaker idea – the Quakers have an expression of “The way will open.” And I just felt that it was a good time.  We finished a capital campaign. The school was in good shape from an enrollment standpoint. I thought there were some wonderful people there. And I thought  Darryl would be a terrific head if he were selected.

WM: Did you help select him?

EB: Not really, because you don’t want the Head of the school selecting your own successor. But I did. I mean, I was asked, and so I can’t lie, I did say that I thought he would be wonderful. That didn’t mean they absolutely needed to choose him, but I thought he would be a terrific Head and he was a terrific Head. So that worked out worked out well. But I just thought it was the right time, and I thought there would be something else to do.

WM: And what was there to do? What are you doing now?

EB: Well, right now I’m still teaching some at Penn, in the School of Education.

WM: What are you teaching?

EB: I teach administrative kinds of things, so I teach Leadership Theory, Change Theory, Supervisory Approaches and Curricular Ideas in a program that’s for people who want to be school leaders. It’s a Masters program, and I was really fortunate in that, when we left Penn Charter, I got the opportunity to develop this program, so I had the opportunity to go to Penn and to build something with other people. That’s been great fun.  And there are a lot of Penn Charter links. Beth Glascott teaches some of the science work and Darryl Ford is a consultant on the program. And so there are a lot of links to really good people at Penn Charter.  So we feel very fortunate.

WM: Anything else you want to add?

EB: The Penn Charter name is somewhat of a problem operationally because people call up and think it’s a charter school. And then when they hear the tuition, they have a heart attack. And so it’s just funny the way that’s developed.

WM: That’s interesting. How did they make changes with the tuition over the years? Were you involved in that?

EB: Oh, yes, that’s a big thing. Now the school usually does budgeting around December, January, and there’s a process for tuition and tuition setting. There’s a Finance Committee on the Board, but the Head of School and the Admissions people are always involved in setting tuition. It’s a painful process but, yes, the Head of School has to be involved in the budget.  Now Penn Charter has a wonderful CFO, Hal Davidow and we worked really collaboratively. But it’s one of those questions” How do you do what you want to do? Where do you get the money?

WM: Was the tuition commensurate with other Friends schools?

EB: Yes. Yes. We would compare ourselves to the larger Friends schools, so I don’t know if you ask me how the tuition compares to, like, Plymouth Meeting or something. I don’t know. Greene Street, I know, is less expensive, because Greene Street has done a wonderful job keeping expenses down. Unfortunately, one of the ways you do that is you pay teachers less, but still they’ve done it. They’ve done a great job in terms of building a good program that is more available to people.

     On the flip side, someplace like Penn Charter has really strong financial aid resources, and so that helps to offset that. But we would compare, after the fact, our tuition to the schools you would think of as big schools: Germantown Friends, Friends Select, Penn Charter, Haverford, Episcopal, Shipley and Baldwin, Abington Friends, but you have to do it after the fact, because it’s against the law if you do it before.

       When I arrived, the schools actually had a luncheon group and we would meet monthly. At one of the monthly sessions, we would say “Well what are you going to do? What are you going to do?” So that people weren’t setting the prices necessarily, but it certainly could be interpreted as that. And so, at some point in our tenure, that became illegal because it was considered price fixing. And so now you can’t. You know, after the fact, you can look at where you sit. And it’s always the question of when you’re going to price yourself out of the market. I remember, probably early on in our tenure, I forget what the tuition increase was, but a board member said, “You know, this is it. We’ve priced ourselves out of the market.” And, you know, forty years later, they’re’ still in the market and schools, I was at a Friends Central meeting the other day, and their enrollment looks good and so it’s the big challenge as to what do you do with that.   And Penn Charter, I just is really fortunate, and GFS is too, because they have good financial aid resources. If you don’t have that, then I don’t know what you do, because then it becomes only people with high incomes who can be part of it.

WM: Yeah, that’s an important component.  Well, thank you so, so much. If you think of anything else, get in touch and we’ll add it on.  This really was terrific.

(pause, then the conversation about the name change, from Headmaster to Head of School)

EB: It wasn’t a Penn Charter thing. It was the National Association of Independent Schools who changed it so it wouldn’t be gender specific.

MM: Oh, I thought because of the master and slave.

EB: I don’t know; that’s a good question. Maybe it was. But they clearly came from the National Association.

MM: They could otherwise have had Headmistress, but that’s not so good either.

EB: Well, we belonged to an organization. I was part of the Headmistresses of the East! (laughter) and I have good friends who were women who were part of the Headmasters Association. So all those terms were changed.

PB: Well, what about “overseers”?

EB: When we went to Penn Charter, the Board was called the Overseers of Public School in Philadelphia. That was the title that Penn gave them, but they eventually changed it because it was thought to be offensive because of the way the term was used during slavery.

WM: What is it now?

EB: It’s now Trustees, but I have this wonderful citation when they made me an overseer.  It just sounds wonderfully historic. They can tell you what sort of chronological place you’re in – like you took so and so’s place. So that was fun, but they definitely changed all of those terms.

MM: Now you can’t hang out on your wall in your house!

EB: Well, actually, it is on the wall!

 (laughter)