Remembering Benjamin R. Burdsall, 1903-1968

Got to thinking about Benjamin R. Burdsall this week as our Upper School faculty has been doing its own thinking about recipients of our annual awards for the Upper School closing ceremony on June 9. Today seems a good day to remember who Mr. Burdsall was for so many at BFS and why BFS gives a scholarship in his memory. BFS encourages the entire BFS community to be deeply involved in and concerned with the life of the school. Among the myriad opportunities for involvement are celebrating reunions at Alumni Day and attending special events like the Spring Gala, giving annually to the Brooklyn Friends Fund, volunteering as a PAT class parent, a Brooklyn Friends Fund class agent or as a guest speaker at BFS - contact the Development and Alumni Office at 718-852-1029, ext. 211 or ext. 208 to learn about such opportunities and much more. BFS also encourages giving to the school to honor and celebrate special people and milestones in our lives. 

One special gift celebrated a 50th reunion and was sufficient to create a separate endowment fund which has enabled BFS to annually remember our 1934-1968 English teacher and Upper School Head Benjamin R. Burdsall, 1903-1968. Thanks to the generosity of the BFS Class of '49 in celebration of its 50th reunion, BFS has given an Upper School junior the Benjamin R. Burdsall Scholarship of $500 towards his/her senior year's tuition for the last decade. The recipient demonstrates the commitment to public service that Mr. Burdsall encouraged in his students and the scholarship helps BFS honor its excellent students of today who emulate the enduring values of a Brooklyn Friends education, the same values Mr. Burdsall helped his students develop in themselves. Through his actions and words and his deep sense of responsibility and commitment to international law and peace, Mr. Burdsall guided his students at BFS to a deeper and more internalized understanding of Quakerism, of what the values of integrity and excellence, compassion and community can help achieve for our own selves and for our world.

After his death, the Class of '69 included this line in their yearbook: "Benjamin R. Burdsall was a man of that peace and gentleness which inspired love in all who met him." One '69 graduate included the following on his personal page of that yearbook: "Mr. Benjamin Burdsall - The only person I had ever met who always had time to guide and advise no matter how complicated or trivial the question or problem." In the words of his student, the late L. Ronald Scheman '49, founder of the Pan American Development Foundation, "I am sure today Mr. Burdsall would be deeply involved in getting students to address the issues of climate change, nuclear non-proliferation, and education. In all, he was a man who, with his gentle, caring manner, opened the world to us and wanted to help his students to be positive, constructive global citizens. If he had the opportunity to talk to BFS students today I am sure he would ask them about their primary concerns for our country and for ensuring the health and safety of our planet. And he would give them a lot to think about to help them define the vision for their lives. "

For generations at BFS, Mr. Burdsall inspired many of his students and the Class of '49 was further inspired to give that inspiration back to BFS. How are we inspired today, individually and collectively, and by whom and by what? 

Tribute to Mr. Benjamin R. Burdsall from the October 30, 1968 edition of The Life

Mr. Burdsall must have had a fine sense of humor as shown
on the right in this photo from a 1940s BFS Variety Show

In Meeting
by Benjamin R. Burdsall
published in Friends Journal, June 15, 1968

My ship is now in harbor;

Its sails are furled,

And gentle waves

Make peaceful murmurings

Along the shore

My friends are here to greet me

And to tell

Of what is closest to their hearts

Now that the journey of the week is o'er.

Tomorrow I shall once more set the sails

And head again for an uncertain sea,

But I shall have a compass and a star

And vision that this hour has given me.

Facing Truth in BFS History

1928-1936 BFS Lower School Scrapbook,
news clipping of the first May Day, 1928
"Emulating the May Day Celebration of the Early Settlers..."

Sometimes history reveals a past that is not always what we want it to be, even at BFS. A few months back, I wrote about our school's path to enrolling students of color, particularly to enrolling African American students. Honesty in researching, interpreting and presenting history frees us from the fallacy of unintentional reinvention while it gives us greater understanding of ourselves. My historical work at BFS often reminds me of the West African Akan word "Sankofa" which means, "We must go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are today." I first came to know and appreciate the concept behind Sankofa when I worked as a historical researcher for the African Burial Ground Office of Public Information and Interpretation many years ago.

BFS "head" count. Heads of school, that is...

Stuart Smith, 1968 to 1978

Since 1867, BFS has had 19 heads of school, not including interim heads. Over the years, the title of our school's highest administrative role has evolved from principal to headmaster to today's head of school. The history of each administration is unique, fascinating and lengthy, so today I'll only give the list of BFS heads of school and a few facts I find interesting, including the fact that only nine of the nineteen BFS heads of school were Quakers. 

1947-48, the year BFS was nearly lost, Part II

Celebrating our school having been saved,
The Friends School Life, February 16, 1948

This week, I'm following up on last week's post concerning the discovery of the 1947-1948 Fight to Save BFS Scrapbook which allowed us to finally remember an incredibly important moment in our school's history. I'd like to share a few items since historical events are deeply nuanced and people's actions even more so.

Happy Holidays - Yesterday and Today

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year!

A moment from a 1930s Lower School Christmas Pageant.

And a moment from this year's Holiday Sing when, for the first time ever, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was sung outside.

Post by Brooklyn Friends School.

BFS Yearbooks - know all words are faint

These days BFS yearbooks are hard-bound volumes, about 200 pages in length, often have color photos, and provide an overview of the year for the entire school. The earliest known BFS Yearbooks, from 1927 to 1932, differ in many aspects from today's norm.

The 1927 BFS Yearbook was the Commencement Edition of The Life, which then was a quarterly magazine (an earlier blog post delved a bit into the history of The Life). The yearbook's focus in 1927 was on the senior class, with portraits of each graduate on individual pages, with their high school activities and a poetic quote for each. Other features of this yearbook also celebrated the graduating class and were yearbook traditions for several years: the valedictory, a class history, the class's last will and testament, and the class prophecy. Also included were an overview of the year in sports, the latest news at BFS, and, finally, charming advertisements from businesses of the day which were much needed as our students not only wrote all publications, but were charged also with raising funds to cover the costs of their publications through advertising, magazine sales and subscriptions.

Finding BFS: Further Evidence

Some may remember that we published an article about the 1931 Football Team in 2006, honoring the 75th anniversary of their incredible feat, A Perfect Season - The Football Team of 1931. Ironically, while scanning new photos for the BFS Sampler album on the Photos page of the Digital Archives, I discovered that there had once been a plaque at BFS honoring the acclaimed football team of that 1931-1932 school year. The photos below illustrate how short institutional memory can be. And it's not just BFS, believe me, such memory lapses happen everywhere.

The first photo is of a wood shop class, taken in the late 1930s. What is on the shelf on the rear wall?

The Life, the paper of record

The paper of record at BFS was once known as The Life. An award-winning student publication,  The Life was published continuously at BFS from December of 1919 until, we believe, 1995. For its first 50 years or so, The Life was made available to the entire BFS community for a small annual fee because it functioned not only as a student publication, but it also chronicled school, parent and student events, activities for all grades, sports, alumni class notes, interviews, and much more. The Life became more student-focused after the BFS administration went forth with its own publications in the late 1960s.

BFS Field Hockey Team of 1936, from the 1936 Yearbook