The Founder’s Oak: 57 Years of Athenian History

“The magnificent old oak tree which graced our entrance fell to the ground. It is hard to accept the loss of such a beautiful thing…The entrance to the school was planned so that it would come beneath this beautiful tree. Now that it is gone, our thoughts turn to the future. Since we expect the Athenian School to be here for many decades to come, we would like to plant a young oak to rise and eventually replace the one we have lost.” 

The Athenian School is no stranger to falling trees, as the above excerpt from a Spring 1977 Athenian newsletter recounts. Before the recent collapse of our Founder’s Oak, a tree of relative significance, placed just right of where the “Athenian School” sign now sits, at our entrance, similarly fell.

Dick Bradford, former Head of Upper School, who joined the Athenian community in 1981, also recounts a similar instance of an oak splitting in the middle of the night on the hillside above House 1, where he used to live. Even more recently, a smaller tree at the Middle School amphitheater fell as well. 

All of this is to say one thing: Trees, and the campus landscape, are unquestionably intertwined with the past, present, future, and spirit of Athenian. The Founder’s Oak is where Kurt Hahn, the German educator who inspired Dyke Brown, came to speak when the school opened, and this all comes back to the “Plan for Growth” that was drafted near the time of the inception of the school. It tells the community this: 

“The school was planned to be economically built, of modest materials and simple form… The interest would be in the natural landscape and the excitement of the natural site. For this reason, much emphasis was given to the existence of the major trees, providing shade and building contrast close to living facilities.”

At a recent Athenian reunion event, Bradford said this: “Oaks have their cycle, as do all of us. I used to read a poem to the Upper School every spring about the cycle of trees. I come from New England – the poem is Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Here is the poem:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.”

Now, he adds, “I understand the significance of having a founder, I guess what I would say is, Dyke’s vision remains clear. But, schools change just like trees do and we need to see the growth of schools as maybe how we see trees. There were a lot of people who were upset when we took down the old Main Hall, but we couldn’t fit in there anymore, we had to grow.” 

Tom Swope, a former Dean of Students who was at Athenian from 1970 until 2012, similarly said, “Looking at [the Oak] reminds people of the majesty of our expectations… each day one inspires to that which Dyke Brown articulated. The tree is a reminder of the possibilities of hard work, discipline, creativity, and an open mind. The tree somehow, I think, without becoming sentimental, was a symbol of those possibilities. From the very beginning, the trees were always an important presence on the campus, and we didn’t have to invent anything to make it so.”

In the some 300 years that the Oak stood, it spent 57 of those serving as the emotional heart of Athenian. For many years, before an arborist deemed activities underneath the tree unsafe, it held Middle School graduation ceremonies, up until 2005, it served as a wedding venue for Athenian community members, and even held back-to-school night meetings for parents. 

Lauren Railey, Head of the Middle School, said, “We have all of these samplings from the Founder’s Oak that the Middle School garden planted last fall before it fell; some of them are dead, but not all, so I guess we could try to plant another tree with the saplings. But I would imagine that we’d want to beautify that space and make it useful, maybe in a different way rather than just recreate a tree that won’t be as big and beautiful for another hundred years.”

Shoshana Ziblatt ‘92 and Director of Strategic Communications, who got married underneath the Founder’s Oak, said, “In 2005 we got married there…It was a natural gathering space, a place where you'd want to celebrate something special.”

“It felt like it was called to have important ceremonies under it,” she added. Laura Ellis, Athenian’s Director of Dance & Choreography, was also married underneath the Oak.

One tradition that hasn’t stopped, though, is former Head of School Eleanor Dase’s planting of yellow daffodils at the base of the Founder’s Oak. The tradition began with a gift of 100 yellow daffodil bulbs from her sister.

“Growing up in Michigan, I always loved it when the yellow daffodils that my mother had planted emerged in the early spring after a long winter, but they were usually then flattened by freezing rain or snow. Several years ago, in my early years of being Head, my sister visited and we were reminiscing about our childhood and the daffodils…a few weeks later she surprised me with a box of 100 daffodil bulbs,” said Dase.  

She went on to dedicate a weekday to the planting and asked Seniors, alongside faculty and staff members, to stop by and help. After retirement, former faculty and staff joined her to plant bulbs in the Fall. Though the tradition has missed some years, its spirit still lives on, and Dase hopes for yellow flowers to line the ground where the Oak stood, again soon. 

“In my family, yellow has always been a symbol of hope and peace, so my husband and I would always give each other yellow roses for birthdays and babies. Yellow has always been symbolic,” she said.

She hopes to reach out again to former faculty and staff members and, if possible, do a planting in late October or early November this year. Dase’s vision for the area surrounding the Oak is clear: 

“ It doesn’t have to change as a place of contemplation, peacefulness and inspiration; life is too fast. I just think it’s so important to stop sometimes and appreciate the natural beauty of someplace,” she concludes. 

As much as we can reminisce on what the Oak has meant to the campus and community and those that Athenian has touched in profoundly meaningful ways, we must now shift our gaze to the future. The tree has fallen, what now?

Bradford says, “As the Main Hall replaced the old main hall, as the trees replace the old Founder’s Oak, as new students replace old students, et cetera…, in terms of faculty, Athenian will continue to grow. That’s just part of who we are and as long as we can remember the past and carry it with the best parts of it to the future, then we’re doing Athenian proud.”

Charles Raymond, an Athenian Middle School English teacher with a history in furniture making, has spearheaded a new emergency committee to work to preserve the wood of the Oak. The committee consists of Cassie Kise, the Carter Innovation Studio Director, Keith Powell, Athenian’s COO, Bridget Guerra, the Operations Manager on campus, and Lauren Railey, the Head of Middle School. 

“We have now successfully preserved the largest and most important pieces of wood from the tree for future use. There is still some really important work to do to correctly store it, and I hope to involve students in setting the way some of the wood is stored, having them paint the ends to keep it from splitting, and covering it so it can survive the weather for the next two or three years, or however long it takes for it to fully cure,” said Raymond. 

Athenian, through this committee, has dedicated a conscious effort to preserving as much of the Oak’s wood as possible and treating both it, and the land it sits on, with as much care as possible. 

Raymond separates the wood into three distinct categories: large slabs, small slabs, and small miscellaneous pieces. They have moved to store those large slabs behind the Middle School with the intention of turning them into furniture pieces once they are fully ready. In order to prepare for that, Raymond says, “There was a student volunteer group that came out to help me paint the ends [of the large slabs] to work to preserve them, and more of that work needs to be done.” 

 The second category is small slabs, which can either be made into smaller tables, shelves, benches, cabinets, or whatever else the community decides it wants. There is also talk of turning those slabs into display shelves for student artwork, which will certainly be further considered when the time comes. 

 The final, and most complicated, pieces of wood are the small miscellaneous ones that aren’t viable as furniture. Raymond says, “[Those pieces] would be truly wasted if I didn’t try to get in there and save it. I don’t know who should get involved with that. How do we decide what to do with stuff that would probably just be chipped up and thrown away, but is valuable to us because it’s the Founder’s Oak.”

Raymond makes it clear that he is involved with this process to the extent of working to preserve the wood and prepare it for those next steps, but he isn’t looking to be a decision-maker in product production or sale: “I just want to volunteer my time to make sure the wood gets saved for whatever purpose it ends up taking on… Just because I’m doing all of this work doesn’t mean I want to be the one making the decisions on what to do with the wood. This should be a community thing.” 

He does however hope that, whatever those next steps are, that this is used as an opportunity to engage students in experiential education and direct involvement in the future of the Oak in a way that is “meaningful and long-lasting”. 

“Some of it could be made into furniture as early as next spring: some of the small pieces that I’ve cut. So, we can really get some kids directly involved pretty quickly,” he concludes. 

Swope has been a strong supporter of that student involvement and education on both Athenian’s history and what the Oak has and continues to mean to so many. Like any tree, it was destined to fall, but we must fight to not allow that fall to give us an excuse to forget. 

“I think it’s always a difficult endeavor to convince others of the importance of our history. Particularly for kids of this age, because so much of their lives is of the present and immediate, and that which happened before may not seem particularly relevant to an extent,” said Swope. 

He adds, “I think the important thing is we know we needed to preserve it. Simply because it fell doesn’t mean the end of the tree.”