TRIBUTES FROM FRIENDS AT ST. JOHNSBURY ACADEMY
I take special pleasure in sending to Mr. Putney's memorial an appreciative testimony to the long tried friendship which we had for each other. I was with him as fellow teacher under Mr. Fuller's principalship and after that worked with and under him as principal until his resignation. Was with him a longer time than any other teacher, always with the kindest and most uniform relations both in educational and social respects, and more than all else in the higher spiritual relationships. In a letter from him a very short time before he passed away he hoped he might still be in the work of teaching when he reached his eightieth birthday. I thought he was to be much rejoiced with that he came so near it and was called up higher while in the joy of his chosen life work.
It is very pleasant to remember also the close friendships between wives and daughters of our two families.
Solomon H. Brackett.
None of Mr. Putney's pupils were more devoted and loyal to him, none had more sincere love and affection for him, than the teachers who were privileged to work with him. Mr. Putney's great aim was to make true men and noble women and all those who were fortunate to be called his pupils will bear his mark with them in their accomplishments, in their graces, and in their power.
Many of his pupils will be inclined to virtue, holiness and peace, because the teacher was the embodiment of these qualities. In all things he had charity. Tolerance was of his nature. He respected in others the qualities he himself possessed, sincerity of conviction and frankness of expression.
His power over his pupils was marked and abiding because of his own example, his profound scholarship, his humility, his absolute justice, yet accompanied with sympathy and respect. His impulses were great, earnest, simple, unostentatious. His is the old story of devotion to duty, a religious sentiment and faith, serious determination, cheerfulness and untiring effort.
"For he was a faithful man and feared God above many."
A. L. Hardy.
When you speak of Mr. Putney you will find my loyalty as strong as ever. We kept up our correspondence to the last. I am glad to express again my debt to him, and I certainly should not wish to be omitted from any group of Mr. Putney's friends.
When I went to St. Johnsbury Academy at Mr. Putney's invitation I was inexperienced and needed a good deal of friendly advice. He had a rare gift in that way. His own devotion, unselfishness and conscientiousness were contagious. He was a good teacher and still better trainer. But the moral effect of living and working with him was the best thing about the Academy. I believe all the excellent staff of teachers felt just as I did. So much so that our intimate association gave us more than the pupils could get. Some of us enjoyed too the fine, generous neighborliness of both Mr. and Mrs. Putney.
In administrative councils his judgment never lost sight of the central object—the cultivation of each pupil to the most effective Christian manhood and womanhood. What higher mark than that can be set by any of the theorists and innovators of the present day education? The typical "New England Academy"—and St. Johnsbury was the ideal among them—can bear comparison with the latest and best of schools in the highest object of education. Probably it needed its own environment which could not be duplicated elsewhere. All honor to it and to him who was its exponent during my own years so happily given to its service.
Sincerely yours,
Franklin A. Dakin.
The first impression which Mr. Putney made upon me when he joined our circle of teachers in the Academy was that of a man of strength, high moral purpose and rare teaching ability, an impression which grew to a certainty as the years went on and he became our principal. His courtesy, unfailing kindness and good fellowship made it a pleasure to work with and under him, and I shall always remember him as a true and valued friend and a great teacher. "What more can we desire for our friends than this," as was said of that other beloved teacher, Edward Bowen of England, "that in remembering them there should be nothing to regret, that all who came under their influence should feel themselves for ever thereafter the better for that influence."
L. Jennie Colby.
It is difficult to put in words my estimate of Mr. Putney. He was a loyal friend to everyone he knew, always looking for ways of encouragement and help. Many a scholar can testify to the truth of this. We know his thoroughness as a teacher, we remember his reverence for the Bible, his prayers, his loyalty to church and its organizations, his devotion to his Heavenly Father.
I think his influence for good will extend to the ends of the earth. It has been a great blessing to know him. I have been so glad he could keep up his work to the last.
Mary Cummings Clark.
If I were to put into one word what seems to me the keynote of Mr. Putney's life as I knew him, it would be service. There was never a moment that I was not conscious that even when he was in physical suffering, which, alas! was often, he was ready to help in every way possible. This patience and kindness were unfailing, and his sense of humor, which must have helped him as well as us, often pricked our difficulties, and showed us how unimportant they really were. I was with him only two years, but his character, and the lessons learned from him have been a very real influence in my life ever since.
Elizabeth Washburn Worthen.
The distance of time (now forty years) since those Academy days does not dim the fond recollection and appreciation of my teachers at St. Johnsbury Academy. And of them all, before or since, there is no one who holds a higher place in my esteem than Mr. Putney. Though engaged in teaching mathematics and astronomy during the greater part of this time, I have not forgotten, nor ever shall, the essentials he taught—some things even in Latin and Greek, but far more in earnestness and sincerity and purpose. And I prize also the closer touch with his sensitive, kindly, sterling personality afforded by the few months when I was privileged to teach as a substitute at the Academy.
Would that we had more such men now in the ranks of the profession.
F. B. Brackett, '82.
With high reverence for what men had known as wisdom and beauty in the past, with sane and clear-eyed understanding of the shifting needs of the present, with confident faith in the ultimate good, whatever the future, he taught many lessons which we did not know until long afterwards that we had learned.
Margaret Bell Merrill, '94.
It is a great pleasure for me to add my word of appreciation with respect to the splendid influence that Mr. Putney exerted at St. Johnsbury Academy. He was always fair, always friendly, and his sense of humor was a delight. A thorough scholar himself, he was not satisfied with superficial work. He was able to sympathize with the pupil's view of life and yet he knew how to enlarge that view. The branches of Latin and Greek which he taught did not afford him full scope for expressing the originality that was a remarkable part of his character; but I remember a course of reading in English literature which our class took under him as an extra, and there he was able to disclose the poetic part of his nature, and we were able to know him as a thinker and a seer. I look back with gratitude to the days at "St. Jack."
George R. Montgomery, '88.
I first saw Mr. Putney in August, 1881, when I came alone and somewhat homesick to seek admission to the Academy. He was standing on the steps of South Hall ready to greet new students with his quiet friendly manner and sincere expression of interest. He made us feel at once that we had in him a friend, one who understood us and expected the best from us. I like to recall this picture of him for it gave me an impression of the man that I have never had occasion to change.
Mr. Putney was a great teacher. Thorough in detail and wise in daily drill that he knew was necessary for our success, he showed a love for the literature that he taught and an enthusiasm that was contagious. Fortunate the boy or girl who learned Virgil under his wise guidance. Always sympathetic and encouraging, he could detect the bluffer and discourage one who tried to get through his lessons without adequate preparation. He corrected our mistakes, but encouraged our attempts to succeed, even though we often failed. He appealed to our ambition, to our sense of obligation, and to our pride; and thus he led rather than drove us to our work. And work we did; we did not dare to disappoint him, we did not wish to disappoint him. Later in college we had occasion more than once to be thankful for the wise and sound training we had had under his leadership.
It is, however, the personality of the man that lives with us, whether we remember him best in the classroom or in the chapel exercises, in the dormitory or in some other phase of his active life. He was quiet, even-tempered, but forceful. His voice was not often raised, but it carried conviction. His directions were accepted without protest or question; or if, as I remember well, on one occasion we did protest, he had a firm, convincing manner that made us accept his word as final. And yet there was no rancor left, we felt that Mr. Putney was right. As a rule he was serious, but he had a merry twinkle in his eye that told of a sense of humor and an ability to join with his students in their good times. In a very real sense he entered into the lives of all of us and made upon us that impression that makes us rise and say with one voice, "He was a Christian gentleman."
Gilbert S. Blakely, '84.
The personality of Mr. Putney has stayed with me during all these years with singular distinctness. Many other teachers, whose influence has been undoubted and deeply felt, shape themselves in memory somewhat vaguely. But Mr. Putney stands out clearly and vividly, as if the days under him at St. Johnsbury Academy were but yesterday. Here was a man quiet and unassuming, and yet I am conscious, and always have been conscious, of a certain power that flowed from him into the lives of his pupils.
Such a force does not lend itself readily to analysis. Like most fundamental things, it is subtle, undefinable. But some elements in the character of Mr. Putney in the retrospect are clear as air. In the first place, he was a born teacher. His scholarship was backed by thoroughness of application in the classroom. A part of his painstaking self passed into the mental processes, and so into the equipment, of those who sat under him. His instruction went deep. It was thorough plowing of the mind. Slip-shod methods were repugnant to his nature. Then, too, how patient he was! For every student he seemed to carry in his mind an ideal of development that made every effort on his part toward that end a real joy, and so he first grounded him in basic things and then built on that foundation.
With poise and self-control, though not physically robust, he managed a large school in such a way that it ran as smoothly as a well-oiled machine. We took it all for granted then. But we see now, especially those of us who are teachers ourselves, the meaning and the reason of it all, and we trace the fact to its source in an able and inspiring personality.
Mr. Putney had a quiet glow of humor, and many an incident comes to mind to show how large and wholesome a part this characteristic played in his career. But most of all I would pay tribute to the Christian gentleman. His idealism was not too lofty for "human nature's daily food." Rather it expressed itself in practical devotion to the best interests of his pupils, to good things, and to noble causes. He was a leader because he allowed himself humbly to be led by something above him. He moulded character because he was himself being moulded by spiritual forces. Not ambitious in the worldly sense, he came into his own long before his gentle life passed from among us. I fancy that, could he do so, he would tell us that his real ambition has been realized. In Mr. Putney we are gratefully aware of that gracious thing, the distribution of a rare personality through the lives of others, the multiplication of self in terms of helpfulness to the world.
Henry D. Wild, '84.
Those were days of exceptional privilege in the eighties and nineties for the shy but eager boys and girls of rural Vermont who found their way to St. Johnsbury Academy, there, under Mr. Putney and the able and friendly faculty of his choice, to catch enlarged vision and the preparation to fulfill it.
The quiet, unobtrusive life of such as Mr. Putney lends itself to fewer striking, outstanding memories than more brilliant careers, yet how positive the impression and far-reaching the influence, and how sweet the incidents one does recall!
My first acquaintance revealed his friendly interest and thoughtfulness. Discovering that I, a timid new-comer, was the only girl enrolled for Greek with twenty young men, he sent a kindly word of encouragement and the hope that I would not let the fact discourage me in my purpose. That pledge of sympathy on the part of one of my first male instructors had large weight in deciding me to brave the ordeal. It was, too, a pledge fully and most wisely carried out, so discriminatingly administered by daily, tactful consideration as to set me wholly at ease and to establish the most natural, unconscious comradeship with the class. The only visible evidence of his thought came in occasional approving comments upon the little rivalry in scholarship in the class and the requests that I conduct the class sometimes when he was necessarily absent. Thus he made of the experience, by his fine tact and wisdom, a happy and fruitful one.
I was early inspired with a confidence that the ideals he held for us were but those of his own life. The urgent suggestions to drill and review our lessons thoroughly were the more forceful when I learned that it had been a habit of all his own student life to review each Saturday the entire daily work of the week. A trying epidemic of colds and coughs was prevailing one winter, disturbing school exercises greatly. At the close of chapel one morning Mr. Putney told us in his quiet, earnest manner the dangers of allowing a cough to become aggravated and the possibility of entirely controlling it. Skeptical of this, I well remember with what gleeful malice I scoffed at it in the hearing of a teacher who made the lesson one of life-long practice by telling me of the heroic, thorough treatment to which Mr. Putney had in early life subjected himself, so that he had spoken out of personal experience again. When his life had been despaired of because of supposedly fatal illness he had effected a complete recovery by checking the deep-seated cough.
When in later years I found that his benign presence and quiet influence was bearing daily fruit in the same, or even greater respect and reverence with a younger generation of students, I realized afresh under what a rare teacher I had had the privilege of coming, and how profoundly true it is that such a personality teaches constantly, often when least suspected, the finest and most profound lessons. The vision which he communicated is one of the most precious treasures.
Bertha M. Terrill, '91.
I appreciate exceedingly this opportunity to add my words of tribute to the memory and worth of Mr. Putney.
To him I am indebted beyond measure for the incentive, encouragement, aid and inspiration which he gave me while a student at the Academy.
His was a life long in years, ripe in scholarship, and rich in unselfish and generous service. In him were combined the qualities of the best type of teacher.
His clearness of vision, and straight thinking made him a leader whose influence was broad and lasting; while by the gentleness of his manners and by the broadness of his sympathies he won and held the affection of all who knew him.
His loyal devotion to the cause of education was such that he desired nothing more earnestly than to serve and aid those who sought his instruction, and he ever held before the student the highest ideals of a fine, clean, strong and Christian manhood.
His influence continues, and will widen in the years yet to come.
George E. Miner, '83.
All the way along, from the days when, in the absence of my own father, he initiated me, a little girl of five, into the joys of a dip in the Atlantic to the almost equally happy days in number ten when I learned through him to know the wonder and beauty of Virgil and Cicero, Mr. Putney seemed to me one of the best and finest men in the world.
How considerate he always was! During the years of my father's pastorate, Mr. Putney was among those who gave unsparingly at all times just the help and cheer that the minister needed.
I think of him as one whose life was a beautiful mingling of gentleness and strength.
Cornelia Taylor Fairbanks, '97.
March 26, 1913.
It would be a genuine and great pleasure to us to be with you at the doings of the Alumni Association and to meet again all the famous characters expected there, especially the guest of honor. We are glad of this opportunity to renew our profession of allegiance to him. He was our principal during the final year we passed at the beloved Academy, the year when, because of Mr. Fuller's absence abroad, he was the acting principal as he afterwards came to be the titular principal as well. We have always cherished the sincerest regard and affection for Mr. Putney,—not only because he was our competent and faithful teacher and our respected principal, but because he was in the truest sense our friend. We owe him a great debt of gratitude which, like honest though insolvent creditors, we can acknowledge though we cannot hope to pay. Ours was the first graduating class that knew him as principal, and we always cherished the fond conceit, that, as he was peculiarly dear to us, so we were a little more to him than any other class could be. I hope he will not say or do anything upon this occasion to banish that happy thought from our minds. He will probably try to appear as fond of you as he is of us. He always did have a way of letting you down easy when he didn't want to hurt your feelings. You cannot have forgotten how, when you answered his questions in classroom, he always said, "Yes, yes," as though your answer was all that could be desired, even when he followed it by some quiet correction, which when you had taken your seat and thought it over, gradually let you see that you had missed the mark by about a mile. We wish that we could do anything as well as Mr. Putney could teach! Happy is the school that has him for a teacher! Happy are the boys and girls—of whatever age—who have him for a friend!
Sincerely and fraternally yours,
Florence and Wendell Stafford, '80.
Being both a paternal and maternal grandson of the Academy, I subscribe to the above with duty as well as pleasure.
Edward Stafford, '07.
I hardly know what to say. There is such a mingling of emotions—sorrow for the loss, joy that he has been with us so long, gratitude that it has been my privilege to keep in so close touch with him during most of the years since I, a school girl, first came under the influence that has never lost its hold for a minute.
No one individual has ever had more to do with the shaping of my life than he and whatever little good I have been able to do for boys and girls is largely attributable to the influence that has helped me for so long.
My experience can be multiplied a thousand times and then the story has not been told. We all shall hold his memory in love, and in reverence. Generations to come will still feel indirectly the help that we have had from him.
I've always seen Mr. Putney as I read those words of Tennyson in his dedication to the "Idylls."
"Indeed he seems to me
Scarce other than my king's ideal knight,
Who reverenced his conscience as his king,
Whose glory was redressing human wrong,
Who spake no slander, no nor listened to it,
We have lost him, he is gone—
We know him now—and we see him as he moved,
How modest, kindly, all accomplished, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself—
And in what limits, and how tenderly—
Now swaying to this faction or to that—
But through all this tract of years
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,
Before a thousand peering littlenesses.
Where is he
Who dares foreshadow for an only son
A lovelier life, a more unstained than his?"
Very sincerely,
Caroline S. Woodruff, '84.
Among the many valuable and valued possessions which were mine when I left St. Johnsbury Academy was a clear-cut impression of Mr. Putney as a man, as a friend, and as a teacher. He stood for standards, high standards of behavior and of scholarship. After all these years this image is still clear and vivid. Simple, sincere, and single-minded in his life work, his standards of living have always been a challenge to the best in his associates, a challenge which has, consciously or unconsciously, helped us all to higher levels of service. This is our tribute to his memory.
Elizabeth Hall, '86.
I look back on the old Academy days under Mr. Putney with ever increasing appreciation of him and of his influence over my life. I am glad to add my tribute to his memory and I do so most heartily.
Charles E. Putney was a kindly, courtly, Christian gentleman. He was a wonderful teacher, leading his students through the classics by ways that made Latin and Greek no longer "dead" languages but very much alive; and so were the thrilling narratives of the old worthies who almost seemed to speak again in Mr. Putney's classrooms. Meantime, character building was going on and his insistence of high standards of honor and strict discipline made most of the boys more manly and most of the girls more womanly, and they are grateful to him, as I am, for it all.
Devotion to duty was characteristic of him in school and church, in home and public life. He was a good soldier and to him citizenship meant service. He was a true friend and that meant the helping hand.
I honor and revere his memory. My humble tribute is one of gratitude for his noble life, which, touching mine, revealed more clearly for my stumbling feet the shining pathway that he trod to worthy self-investment, to truth and God.
Rolfe Cobleigh, '86.
From that first day when I went into the Academy office to consult with Mr. Putney as a new student, I have been and shall continue to be under the deepest obligation to one of the noblest spirits and finest teachers whose influence ever has been exerted upon young men and women. His scholarship was accurate and he made Greek interesting. His moral standards were lofty and he made honor and truth beautiful. His soul was sincere and devoted and he made Christ attractive to the mind and will of a boy. He knew how to give encouragement at the critical moment and how to exercise discipline justly so that no sting remained. He influenced me more deeply than any other teacher of my youth, and my love and gratitude grew as the years passed. Mr. Putney did not disappoint me as my ideal of a Christian teacher and lover of young men. It was a great life.
Ozora S. Davis, '85.
A teacher projects himself through the lives of his pupils and an institution of learning speaks through the voice of its scholars. St. Johnsbury Academy has been a formative force in the educational life of New England and beyond, and her leadership has been buttressed upon sound learning.
Charles E. Putney was a great principal and an inspiring teacher. In the classics his well-ordered mind found a congenial field for interpretation and elucidation. Frail of physique, with all the scholar's nerves and sensitiveness, he yet day after day ploughed through the hesitating minds of his pupils with patience and thoroughness. Particularly as a teacher of Greek did he excel. He led his pupils through the necessary technique of parasangs to the mastery of the sublime secrets of this imperial mother of tongues. He possessed the capacity of taking infinite pains and played no favorites among his scholars. I imagine the responsibility of administration irked his gentle spirit and the rawness of self-centered youth must have tried his conscientious soul.
I never thought of him in those days as a veteran of the Civil War, in fact, did not then know of his martial service, but I can see now how that experience must have fed his hatred of disobedience and disloyalty and increased his zeal for the proper development of the minds of his boys and girls in order that they too might become dependable citizens of the Republic.
His was a kindly nature, though to the pupil who first fronted him he seemed stern, yet this was but the shell, in which daily duty encased him. It was always a pleasure to watch his sense of humor expand itself in friendly smile and expend itself in his low chuckle as some particularly atrocious translation fell from lips unused to expressing ancient thought.
It is hard to measure his personal influence by a sentence but it seems to me as principal and teacher, by precept and practice, he showed how desirable a thing it is to perform the daily task conscientiously and patiently.
Frederick G. Fleetwood, '86.
To me Mr. Putney was a great teacher. I knew him as a friend, my friend and the life-time friend of my father. I knew him as an active member of the South Church, and a devoted leader of religious life and activity in the Academy. But it was as a teacher that he had a formative power on my life.
As I look back on those classes in "Beginning Greek," and in Cicero, I recognize his painstaking thoroughness. The fundamentals were clear to him, and it was his work to make them clear, definite, and lasting in the minds of his pupils. If he made a mistake it was in his conscientious care that no dull or backward or thoughtless pupil should fail to have these fundamentals of the subject drilled into his mind. How many hundreds of pupils owe their sense of accurate and clear thought to his persistent efforts day in and day out, I have no idea. He was primarily a great teacher because he never relaxed his effort to make every pupil know the essentials of the subject he taught.
But he was more than a drillmaster, fundamental as that is. He was not without a sense of humor. I remember once he came to the door of a room in South Hall where, one Saturday afternoon, some boys were not very quiet in their recreation. Some one answered his knock by asking, "Who's there?" When the answer came, "It's me, Mr. Putney," the boy said, "No, Mr. Putney would have said, 'It is I'"; and I can almost hear his quiet chuckle as he went away.
A great teacher depends for his success on his moral character. No one could ever question the sincerity and force of Mr. Putney's character. With clear vision of the work he wanted to accomplish, with a devotion to his high purpose which never wavered, with a simplicity and straightforwardness which showed in every action, he impressed on the students his high ideals. At the same time he won their complete confidence and made them feel his sympathy.
Such a man leaves a widespread heritage in his pupils. He leaves also a heritage of fine tradition for the Academy he served.
Arthur Fairbanks, '82.
A college professor, at an alumni gathering, in conversation with one of his former students who had been obliged to work his way through college, said to him, "I always had a feeling that you took life too seriously,—that you had too little diversion."
The thought expressed in that remark suggests one of the dominant impressions of Mr. Putney that comes to me after these many years. Teaching was to him a serious matter, and the student's part, in his judgment, both in preparation and in classroom, demanded likewise faithful and not superficial performance.
The basis of this characteristic in his life-work was his Christian faith. It naturally made his objective the development of Christian character, over and above the impartation and reception of information.
I have always felt a deep sense of personal gratitude for a service rendered during a special period of study at the Academy. Members of my class who took the classical course will recall that Greek was not included among my studies. Nearly four years after graduation from the Academy, having decided to enter college as a classical student, I returned to St. Johnsbury for ten weeks of intensive study of Greek alone. Mr. Putney not only made my membership in the class in "Middle" Greek possible, and practically free from embarrassment at being a late comer, but gave me many regular hours of private instruction in Homeric Greek, enabling me during the last weeks of the time to join the senior class in the study of the latter form of the language.
This I believe to be illustrative of his devotion and self-denying service to any who are ready to respond to the forth-putting of time, strength and knowledge on his part.
His home was open, if needed, to receive students or others who were sick and in need of attention impossible to be given in the Academy dormitory or other rooming building. Some cases of illness were of many weeks duration, but this mattered not. The tender ministrations of Mrs. Putney were not lessened until all necessity was passed.
Mr. Putney's influence was not due to his public utterances, for he did not seek platform prominence. But his constant adherence to high ideals of faithfulness, conscientiousness, and efficiency outside and in the classroom, and his personal helpfulness to many an individual student are among the legacies which many of us have been privileged to share from his long and abundantly fruitful life.
George L. Leonard, '83.