Memories of My Time at Wyndcroft

By Dick Peach, Class of 1965

I attended Wyndcroft from the middle of third grade (1959) through eighth grade (1965). I have many fond memories of those years and believe strongly that the education and personal growth I experienced during that period has served me well. I was pleasantly surprised and flattered when my classmate Robert Evans, Wyndcroft’s new Director of Development, emailed me and asked me to write something about my career and my memories of Wyndcroft.

Regarding my career, I graduated from Penn State in 1973 with a B.S. in Economics. After a short stint at law school, which I concluded was not for me, I enrolled in the Economics Graduate Program at the University of Maryland in the fall of 1974. I eventually received my Ph.D. in Economics in 1983. Before completing my degree I began working in Washington, D.C., first as a computer program auditor for the Social Security Administration then as an economist for the Bureau of Economic Analysis. I then spent six years as the Staff Vice President for Forecasting and Policy Analysis with the National Association of Realtors and then another six years as Deputy Chief Economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association of America, reporting to Chief Economist Lyle Gramley. Working for two powerful trade associations was an eye-opening experience.

In 1992 I received the opportunity of a lifetime: to join the Research Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It was a tough transition moving from D.C. to the New York metro area, but my wife, Beverly, who I met while working at the Realtors, had grown up in Northern New Jersey and had family and friends in the area. I have been at the New York Fed ever since, and find each day here exciting and meaningful. Within the Research Group alone there are roughly 60 Ph.D. economists, with several of whom I have co-authored research papers. Dozens of others are spread out among the other groups of the Bank, including five of the 12 members of the Management Committee. For my bank work, in contrast to research, I am the head of a group that prepares what we call the “judgmental” forecast for the US economy, as opposed to a strictly quantitative forecast. I help prepare the President of the New York Fed for meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee, which are held eight times per year. I have served four Bank Presidents-- Gerald Corrigan, Bill McDonough, Tim Geithner, and now, Bill Dudley. I have had the opportunity to attend FOMC meetings on occasion, and have traveled to international destinations I most likely would never have seen had I not been here. I strongly urge young people to learn more about the Fed and keep it in mind when thinking about their future.

It has been over a half century since I attended Wyndcroft, so my memories are for the most part very hazy. But there are a few instances that I recall as though they occurred yesterday. I started at Wyndcroft in the middle of third grade as the principal of Lower Pottsgrove Elementary insisted that my parents find other arrangements for me. The first thing that happened on my first day was my parents and I met with Mr. Carlisle Snively, the Headmaster. At that meeting he looked at me and said, impassively, that my parents were making a great sacrifice to send me to Wyndcroft and that it was a no-nonsense kind of place. As of that moment I feared him, and I am sure that was the intent. (I later learned that my father took on the duties of Treasurer of Wyndcroft to help pay my tuition.) For many years after, Mr. Snively had a great influence on me, and over time the only fear I felt was of his disapproval. If my grades started to slip, he would take me aside and tell me, again, impassively, that I was not living up to my potential. He was not angry nor did he raise his voice. He was way ahead of his time in terms of motivational psychology.

In addition to being Headmaster and Latin and English instructor, Mr. Snively was our coach and referee on the playing field. During the summer he was the manager of the swimming pool at the Brookside Country Club. He taught me how to swim with his unique “bobbing” technique, which over time made you feel quite comfortable with your head under water and with exhaling through your nose. I used that technique to teach all three of my daughters how to swim.

At this point I have only the faintest recollection of the academic part of Wyndcroft. For some reason I have a very vivid memory of art class with Marilyn Dwyer, who was a well-known artist who painted with a palette knife. I still have my first and only oil painting which I look at from time to time. It is very lame. Other than that, I mostly recall the routine and traditions. The students stayed in one room and the teachers came to us. The number of students in each class was quite small, maybe a dozen or so. Classes went until around noon and then we would have lunch. There was no cafeteria so everyone brought a sandwich and maybe an apple or some Tastycake product. Mr. Snively was quite fond of peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches. An active market in trading lunches developed. I recall trading peanut butter and jelly for Lebanon bologna with Sue Ann McCaslin ‘64. I believe that after lunch there was a reading hour and then we got to go outside to play some sport; football in the fall and baseball in the spring. Mr. Snively instructed us in fundamentals such how to tackle someone much bigger than yourself, like Bobby Brown. We had a decent baseball team and played teams from Pottstown High School and the Hill School.

Wyndcroft had a demerit system called “hours”. If you talked in class too much or were disrespectful, the teacher would write your name in the upper left corner of the blackboard and give you say, ¼ hour. I am not sure how often the slate was wiped clean, maybe each week. But if you accumulated a full hour, you then had to do some work while the rest of the school was playing sports. I recall clapping chalk board erasers and raking the leaves at the Snivelys’ house at the far end of the playing field. I hope that tradition is still alive.

I recall a field trip to the Philadelphia Zoo and then on the way home stopped at a bakery in Collegeville and bought sticky buns to take home to our families. We also visited the Tom Sturgis pretzel factory in Reading and saw how machines grabbed straight pieces of dough and mechanically made the crisscross of a pretzel. We had Halloween parties and occasional dances, but as I recall the boys were way too timid to ask a girl to dance. We had assemblies and sang songs like “Oh Susanna”, “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and “Row Row Row Your Boat” in the round. Eighth graders had to recite a poem at those assemblies. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost was a favorite. Finally, the school year ended with Field Day with the Blue Team versus the Gold Team. The events I recall are the high jump, long jump, and baseball throw, but I am sure there were others.

Many of my classmates were close friends after school and on weekends. I lived very near Matt Prince and Rick Ludwick. (It turns out that Rick also earned a Ph.D. in economics.) Matt and I got Daisy pump action BB rifles when we were twelve and used to shoot them in the woods around his house. Neither one of us lost an eye. I also used to play with Todd Jeffries ‘64, and Lee and Neil Jenkins, Greg Zimmerman, and Robert Evans, all ‘65. At Todd’s house I shot a pistol for the first time, trying to hit a quart beer bottle. Betsy Revell and Camille Moffatt were in my class, as were Glenn DeTurk and David MacElree. Some of the older students that I recall are Sandy Sanders and Walter “Winky” Schell, both ‘61, and Nick MacElree ‘63.

It is said that you always remember where you were when you learned that President Kennedy had been shot. I was in the seventh grade room when one of the eighth graders rushed in and shouted “They shot President Kennedy!” I do not remember if school was canceled for the day or for a few days afterward. I do know that we were glued to the television (black and white) for days. I saw the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby live.

As tragic and scary as that event was, it was just one episode of what in retrospect was a very scary time. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, World War II and the Korean War were very fresh in people’s minds. My parents met while both of them worked in the Pratt &Whitney airplane engine plant in Hartford, CT during WWII. My uncle, Bayard Peach, was a pilot of a B-26 Marauder in Europe. After the war he wanted to continue to fly, so he joined the South Carolina Air National Guard which offered him the opportunity to fly the P-51 Mustang, the fastest propeller-driven fighter plane of that era. Unfortunately, he died in a mid-air collision in 1951 while practicing attacks on an invading bomber.

Before moving to Pottstown in 1957 my family lived on Arch Street in Royersford. Several of the men in that neighborhood had served in the war, and they showed us souvenirs such as bayonets, a German Luger pistol, a Samurai sword, and assorted tattoos. My next door neighbor, Luther Schad, served in the Navy and was stationed in Papua New Guinea. He brought home lots of pictures he had taken of the indigenous population, which were quite interesting to young boys. I recall one man on the street who served in a submarine in the Pacific. My father told me that he had jet black hair when he went into the service and had pure white hair when he came home. I asked my father why that happened, and he told me about depth charges and what they could do to a submarine.

We played army constantly. One of the fathers made us mock machine guns and grenades out of wood. A piece of wire hanger was used to fashion a pin for each grenade. Another set up a genuine US Army tent that we slept out in during the summer.

In October of 1962 (6th grade) the Cuban Missile Crisis reportedly brought us to the brink of a nuclear confrontation. Some people in Pottstown and the surrounding area had fallout shelters built in the ground by their homes. On Christmas Eve of 1962 my family was having dinner with the radio on when there was an announcement of an unidentified flying object coming from the North Pole. Of course, it was soon obvious the announcer was referring to Santa Claus. But it was well known that if the Soviets attacked, the missiles would come over the North Pole. To give some sense of how on edge people were, I remember my father saying “Just like those atheist bastards to attack us on Christmas Eve.”

To top it all off, the US was increasing its involvement in Vietnam and by 1965 we had 500,000 troops on the ground with a large naval presence in the South China Sea and a huge air force base in Thailand. There was a draft back then, and as my older brother graduated from high school in 1965, it was a frequent topic of conversation at the dinner table.

Not all was bad, of course. The Beatles came to the US for the first time in early February of 1964 and an estimated 73 million people viewed their performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. As a percent of the population, that was a larger audience than any recent Super Bowl. The Beach Boys were also very popular at the time, and a common topic of conversation was which group you thought was best. Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) upset Sonny Liston in early 1964 to become the heavyweight champion of the world. And Project Mercury produced a whole new category of heroes, a group of astronauts known as the “Mercury Seven” which included Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. Also memorable, I believe it was in 1963 there was a mass distribution of polio vaccine, which was administered by eating a sugar cube. Until that vaccine was available, about 20,000 people per year in the US came down with polio, with an epidemic in 1952 with 50,000 new cases.

I have rambled on but it has been fun to reminisce about my Wyndcroft days.