The 2025-26 Wooster school year has officially begun, which means a whole new year for archival discoveries! Did you miss me?
Our Archives class has grown from three students to 12! Archives will seemingly live on for many years to come.
We have also lost our founder and leader, Mrs. Thaler. We will always remember her efforts in preservation, love for journalism, and unwavering care for her students. “It was the end of a decade, but the start of an age!”(Taylor Swift, “Long Live”). We miss you already. <3
Ms. Newman ’21 now takes her position, keeping The Archives in good hands! We are all so happy you’re here!
While searching through a collection of The Wooster General, one of Wooster’s old student newspapers, I stumbled on a small wish list from June 1943:
This is probably one of the best things I’ve read in The Wooster General. These boys had a sense of humor! We’ve had 82 years to fulfill these requests, so let's see how we did…
1. A traffic cop at the dining room doors.
YES! The claustrophobic mad rush into the dining hall is not an experience most students look forward to. “Mr. Swallen would dress up as one,” says Marley ’26, and I don’t disagree with her! “The problem is I work up until 11:50 ,” Mr. Swallen explained to me, but I’m keeping my hopes up a little…
2. A coat of paint on top of the chapel.
Personally, the chapel’s paint job looks fine from afar, but who knows what it looks like up close! I am definitely not volunteering to climb up there.
3. A gymnasium complete with a swimming pool, basketball court, etc.
The only gym at Wooster in 1943 was actually the barn! Wooster’s first “real” gym, The Alumni Gym, was built in 1961, so mission accomplished! We currently have three basketball courts, but our swimming pool was filled in last year. However, it wasn’t the only pool on campus, so let me know if you want to hear about that!
4. A sixth form smoking room.
Sixth form=12th grade. Smoking of any kind is banned on the Wooster campus, so I don’t see a smoking room in our future. However, smoking rooms used to exist, with certain smoking privileges designated per grade.
5. A school bus complete with gasoline and tires.
What kind of bus were they taking?! I think I need to research this a bit more…
6. Paved roads.
We did it! Woohoo!
7. Escalators up the Hill.
Now this is something I can get with! “It’s really hard to carry big instruments up the hill to the chapel sometimes,” commented Carly Rae ’26, one of Chapel Band’s lead singers. She and many others would definitely appreciate the lift! I always feel bad watching all the grandparents on Grandparents Day march up the steep slopes to upper campus, so I’m sure they would benefit as well. (Yes, I know we have golf carts, but there’s so many of them!) And don’t get me started on the march up and down to the Art Center!
8. Paid Athletes.
I’m not a Wooster Athlete, so I asked a few who are! “I could mess around, stay fit, and make money? That’d be awesome!” one senior put it. “I’ve been so invested with my sports for so long. Of course, winning and losing is enough, but a little incentive would be nice,” commented Sean ’26, one of our football and lacrosse captains. I don’t see this happening, but you never know…
9. A joke book for the masters.
For those of you who don’t know, teachers at Wooster used to be called masters. I guess the teachers in 1943 were a little too uptight!
10. Comfortable chairs for the movies.
To my knowledge, Wooster first started having movie nights in 1942. The Wooster General reported: “This year the school is fortunate in having movies every other Saturday night. These movies consist of a full-length feature and a short subject. This is possible through the efforts of Mr. Charlie Childs who supplies the projector and arranges to get the films that the boys choose.” The first movie ever shown was The Lives of the Bengal Lancers, a 1935 adventure film about a group of British cavalrymen trying to defend their stronghold in Bengal against the Bengalis. It was nominated for seven Oscars and grossed $1.5 million in worldwide theater rentals. Personally, I think we should have another movie night and watch this again! I doubt it’s aged well, but in any case, I don’t think we have enough comfy chairs, and that needs to change!
11. Ping-pong table, pool table, bowling alleys.
Okay, keep in mind the boys who wrote this lived on campus, and I don’t know how many fun places to hang out were in the area. However, these sound awesome. I’m sure the Student Commons would greatly benefit from ping-pong and pool. As for bowling alleys, I don’t think Coburn basement is being used for much nowadays…
12. Copies of Esquire in all the common rooms.
Esquire in the 40s was very different from the Esquire of today, and I think it’s a bit too mature for some of our younger readers. At least they were doing some reading!
13. An automatic fireman in the Farmhouse.
For new students, “the farmhouse” is the big white house across the street, the original Wooster schoolhouse! Did it keep catching on fire??
14. More Dances.
“I would like more dances because I think it’s a good social event and a way to connect with each other. Prom is really fun and I know a lot of people look forward to it, so having more throughout the year would be nice,” says Marley ’26. Let’s make it happen!
15. A nursery.
When I read this, my first thought was: “Who was having babies on campus?” I was soon told that they probably meant a plant nursery. Oops. Does the greenhouse count?
16. A faculty-meeting room, with ear-phones for the sixth form.
Even back then, the students wanted to understand what was going on above us. I’m sure many of us would love to be a fly on the wall during some of those conversations! Is there an official faculty meeting room?
17. A dish drier.
What.
I approached Chef Rick about this, and he told me that a “dish drier” has not been invented. He also shared his concerns that if one did exist, it would blow germs all over the place, so air drying the dishes is the way to go!
18. An indoor hockey rink.
We used to have an outdoor hockey rink way back when (I’m sure you’ll hear about it later this year in a presentation) that was dedicated to William Mayhew Rolfe, an early Wooster student who tragically passed at the age of 17. Right now, I believe the hockey team practices at the Danbury Ice Arena. Antonio ’26, a long-time Wooster hockey player, was very enthusiastic about the idea of having an ice rink on campus again. Who knows…
19. Elevators in the New building.
Wooster has one elevator in the Middle School building! Mission accomplished!
20. A school orchestra.
“We have a chamber ensemble, so similar but not exactly the same,” the star string bass player, Ellie ‘26, informed me. I wonder what they wanted to play…
21. The return of Mr. Eyster’s moustache.
Who is Mr. Eyster?! Alumni, help me out!
22. A stove in the infirmary kitchen.
To my knowledge, the infirmary in 1943 was in the same room where the nurse is now. Who wanted to cook for the sick kids? I’m not complaining though…
23. Co-education.
What a bunch of goofballs. Sorry boys! You had to wait 27 more years for that, and thank goodness it did, otherwise who would be writing this article?!
So there you have it! In total, Wooster has fulfilled 8-ish/23 of these requests. Yikes! We'd better get to work!
If you have any questions about Wooster’s history, please feel free to send an email to our archives team at lily.newman@woosterschool.org. Keep an eye out for more articles by me. The archives have many buried stories! Did you know that a B-24 bomber crash-landed at the Danbury airport, or that Aaron Coburn’s daughter witnessed Pearl Harbor? The full stories are on the way!
Thanks for reading!
Hannah '26
Advanced Journalism Student
