LETTERS RECEIVED ON MR. PUTNEY'S SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY
I am glad you are to have a birthday tomorrow. I feel sure that it will be a happy birthday. Your children and grandchildren will see to it that the day is properly celebrated.
It is a great pleasure to look back on the days spent in St. Johnsbury when your influence meant so much to us. You can never know how strongly your personality and your life influenced the boys and girls in the Academy, especially those of us who were away from home. Many of the things which you said to us, the time or occasion of saying them and the place too are very vividly recalled after thirty years. You in St. Johnsbury, four or five professors at Dartmouth and perhaps a half dozen other men, make up a small group of men who have given me most in the way of stimulation and encouragement. To express adequately my gratitude is impossible, but out of a full heart I do thank you and am glad of this opportunity to extend my best wishes to you for continued health and happiness.
Yours very sincerely,
David N. Blakely, '85.
You have been living in my life all these long years since the old St. Johnsbury Academy days.
That wonderful kindness with which you looked upon all our shortcomings has been the great example of kindness I have looked to all these days.
That wonderful equality of judgment with which you decided all our cases, has always remained unquestioned in my heart.
And that which most of all has influenced my life has been that wonderful quietness with which you have possessed your soul.
I am more grateful to you every day I live and more thankful for the years spent under your influence.
We are all to be congratulated because of this birthday. May you have many, many more and may you know better every year how much we all love you.
Yours most sincerely,
Mary Drew, '87.
Believing that the only real satisfaction to a teacher after all is the knowledge that somewhere down the years there sounds an echo of his effort, I am venturing to add my word of appreciation to you on your birthday.
There in your office and classroom I received, as have hundreds of others, the inspiration—the vision, if you will, of what life means—and there are no memories more hallowed than those of the associations at St. Johnsbury Academy. Year after year for thirty years I've watched the groups of young men and women leave the institution but never without a keener appreciation of what the years had meant to us.
Not for the first time do I say that whatever little success I may have had with young people is due in large measure to the help received at your hand, and with all my heart I thank you for your firm and gentle guidance, your paternal influence over us all, and most of all for your exemplary Christian character that never failed.
The best wish I can offer you today on your seventy-fifth birthday is that you may realize more and more what a mighty power for good you have been and are in the lives of an army of men and women today who once fell under your influence.
Very sincerely,
Caroline S. Woodruff, '84.
I wonder how many of us you can remember and whether any of our failings are still in your mind?
You only had me for a short time, but such as it was it completed my school work.
In fact it was my only schooling away from home. I am therefore able to recall vividly many impressions made on my mind during the time I was under your charge. I formed the impression that you were absolutely fair and honest with your scholars and that you expected no higher standard of conduct from them than you were practising every day. I can see you as you were then and wonder why, with such an example, we did not do better.
I do not say this because it is your seventy-fifth birthday but because it is true and I wish you to know that I realized it.
Seventy-five years of upright living comes to but very few and is a crown of glory more valuable than great wealth or political advancement and I most sincerely congratulate you on having achieved this end. May your remaining days be filled with content and happiness and may the expressions of appreciation and love that you are sure to receive at this time, bring to you a partial reward for all you have done in the past for your fellows.
Sincerely and lovingly yours,
G. H. Prouty.
Patey and I were speaking and writing some time ago about the seventy-fifth birthday. As the boys would say, "That is some birthday," and it is fitting that more than ordinary notice should be taken of it. I expressed a belief that expressions of loyalty and grateful remembrance were more to you than material things would be. I hope the expression will be as spontaneous at this time as it has been from year to year all through your service. I have never known in any other case such a continued and universal loyalty as the students of St. Johnsbury Academy have given to you. By reflex action it has been inspiring to me and cultivated in me the same desire to serve my pupils which you have shown.
With best wishes,
Franklin A. Dakin.
Words are after all poor substitutes for the genuine feelings of the heart but I know you will be able to brush aside the words and get at the sentiment back of them.
In three more days from this date you will be rounding out seventy-five years of a very useful life.
I am sure you will let an old pupil and one who has received so much inspiration and good cheer from your life tell you so at this time.
Your boys and girls are in many lands but they are still your boys and girls. Never have I seen a man retain the affection and esteem of those who have come under his influence to a greater extent than you have.
May the good Lord continue to bless you and yours is the sincere wish of your former pupil and friend,
Hedley Philip Patey, '86.
As I look back on my years in St. Johnsbury Academy I know that I appreciated to some extent what you were doing for the young people in your charge, and especially the many kindnesses that you showed to me in assisting me to prepare for college. It was not until the close of my second year at the Academy that I made any definite plans to go farther, but I appreciate very much more today than I did then the character of the work you were doing. It was my good fortune to be brought into touch with able teachers and educators during my entire education, but I can truthfully say that not one of them took time out of a busy life to arouse and assist a growing ambition for a broader education as you did, and I shall always look back to the three years spent under you at St. Johnsbury Academy as the time when my ambitions clarified themselves and I began to look out toward a broader field.
Very sincerely,
Matt B. Jones, '86.
As one of the many students who in St. Johnsbury Academy had the pleasure and advantage of your instruction, I am glad to acknowledge the obligation I personally feel to you for the kindly and patient direction given me at such an important period in a young man's life. It seems to me that the knowledge that one has wisely directed the education and lives of so many young men and women as you have, must constitute one of the crowning and most satisfying joys possible, and I am sure that all the youth who have felt the influence of your teaching sincerely wish that you may live long to enjoy the happiness which you deserve for service so conscientiously and cheerfully performed.
Very sincerely yours,
Edwin A. Bayley, '81.
I am sending this letter hoping it may be opened by you on February 26, which I am told is your birthday. I want you to be sure of the love of an old pupil who never forgets you, and never will cease to be grateful for your gifts to him during the three years that we were together in St. Johnsbury. The Lord richly bless you with all good things.
Yours loyally and affectionately,
Ozora S. Davis, '85.
I wish to take this opportunity to write to you to extend congratulations on your seventy-fifth birthday, and further to express my appreciation for the service you rendered me back in St. Johnsbury Academy. You will recall that when I entered the Academy I told you I wanted to become a teacher and to that end I have always striven.
I must not weary you with too much of my own history, only enough to let you know that after eighteen years of service I can still look back with appreciation to the man who above all others in the Academy made a lasting impression on my life. May the years that are before you be full of sunshine and happiness.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur F. O'Malley, '93.
Some one tells me that you are to have a birthday tomorrow and I desire to join with the host of your former students in sending you good wishes on that day. There are many of us who still feel in our lives what a factor St. Johnsbury was, and of all those in the old school you were the one who meant the most to each one of us. When I think of my experiences at the Academy—and St. Johnsbury meant more to me than college or anything else—I always think of you and the great help that you were to us boys in the time when we needed help. The pleasures of my classes in Greek and all the other things in which you were of such valuable assistance, will always be remembered. I only wish I might do for some boy as much as you did for me. I send you my sincerest greetings and best wishes for a happy birthday.
Yours for '85,
Jay B. Benton, '85.
It hardly seems possible that you are reaching your seventy-fifth birthday, but such, I am informed, is the case. I have really known you quite a while; because you will remember that you were the Normal School examiner, and I was in one of the classes graduating from the Randolph Normal School in 1882.
I presume that as you think over the factors which have led to such a hale and hearty old age, you will agree with Mark Twain who attributed his seventy years to, among other things, never having smoked but one cigar at a time, never having smoked during sleep, and not always at his meals.
I hope that on this auspicious day you will take out the gold-headed cane presented you by the class of '86 and, at least, wave it in the air a few times; for, as I think I told you on the day of its presentation, we hoped you might never need it for walking purposes.
I can never forget your many acts of kindness rendered me personally during my course at St. Johnsbury. Were I to attempt to recount them as they occur to me I am sure I should make this letter, which is intended to be simply one of warm congratulations, far too long.
Among the many things upon which I think you are to be congratulated, I would mention first the spirit which inspires you to still love your work at seventy-five, and again the nervous and physical energy which permits you to stay, as Roosevelt might say, "in the ring." No less are you to be congratulated on the consciousness, which I know must be yours, of the love and devotion of hundreds, yes, thousands by this time, of your pupils throughout the world.
I am sure I have imperfectly expressed the love, gratitude, and admiration which I always cherish toward you, but you can be sure there is much of it here, as there is in the hearts of all who have come in contact with you.
With cordial best wishes I am, sincerely,
George E. May, '86.
Tribute written by Mr. Roland E. Stevens for the Hartford Gazette, a paper printed by Mr. Stevens' small boy.
Editor of the Hartford Gazette:
Every day in every year, I suppose, has a special meaning and interest for some one or more of the great human family. The day of the present week that has a particular interest and meaning for me (and without doubt for many others whom I know) is Friday the twenty-six. Why? Because nearly thirty years ago when I was an awkward, spindling boy, thirsty and hungry for an education, without means and not in very good health, I wrote a letter to the principal of St. Johnsbury Academy, telling him of my ambition to enter the Academy as a student and asking him if he thought I could find work by means of which I could earn enough to pay my way at the Academy. When I was writing the letter I was half discouraged and rather feared and expected that I wouldn't receive an answer, because I knew the letter was not very well written or expressed, and I was almost sure that so great a man as I supposed the principal of St. Johnsbury Academy to be, wouldn't pay much attention to such a letter.
In a short time, however, I received a very encouraging reply expressing a friendly interest in me and advising me to come to St. Johnsbury in season to take an entrance examination and stating that a willing boy could most always find work.
The letter was not dictated nor was it typewritten. It was written in long hand and by the principal himself. The spelling, grammar, and punctuation were, I felt sure, absolutely perfect; but the handwriting, to my great joy, was no handsomer than mine. This and the kindly tone of the letter helped me to a quick and firm determination to pack all of my worldly possessions, including some cookies, loaves of bread, etc., into a rough wooden box and start for St. Johnsbury in season for the opening of the fall term.
Within an hour after my arrival I found myself in the home of the principal sitting quite near him, hearing him say in a quiet, sincere voice, that he was glad I came; that he had found work for me; that he wanted me to know that he was interested in all boys who came to the Academy with a desire to work and to learn. I went from him to the family where I was to live and work, inspired with confidence in him and respect for him.
Master editor, these things happened nearly twenty years before your birth, and in all these years the only change in my feelings toward this principal of St. Johnsbury Academy that I am conscious of, is an increased and unbounded faith in him as a Christian gentleman, love and respect for him as a true friend, gratitude and admiration for him as a teacher and wise counsellor who has ministered generously to the physical and spiritual needs of many besides myself.
You know, of course, that I refer to Prof. C. E. Putney who was principal of St. Johnsbury Academy in the days when it ranked with Andover and Exeter and for a number of years has been teaching Latin and Greek in the Burlington, Vermont, High School. February 26, will be his seventy-fifth birthday. This is why that day has a particular meaning and interest for me and many others.
Roland E. Stevens.
Hartford, Vermont,
February 22, 1915.
On Mr. Putney's seventy-fifth birthday the teachers of Edmunds High School presented him with a beautiful loving cup. This note accompanied the cup:
To our honored Friend and Co-worker,
Mr. Charles E. Putney.
The teachers of the High School, with the superintendent and his wife, wish to send you hearty congratulations on your birthday and the many years of usefulness that lie in its wake. They wish to emphasize their appreciation of what it means to the whole school to have in their midst a loyal old soldier, a kindly and genial friend, and a real gentleman of "the old school."
They hope this loving cup will be to you a substantial evidence of their appreciation in the past, as also of their good wishes for the future.