Newton school celebrates its 75th
Looks back at years of change
NEWTON --When Mary Morrison first climbed the steps at Cabot Elementary School, the Wall Street Crash and beginning of the Depression was still a month away. The phrase World War didn't require a Roman numeral. And the state-of-the-art marvel at the new school was a drinking fountain.
But while the world has changed dramatically since that September 1929 when Morrison started kindergarten, two things remain the same at Cabot: A giant Humpty Dumpty, the school mascot, still guards an entrance, and dodgeball still reigns at recess.
This week, Cabot is celebrating its 75th birthday. And looking back at one suburban school's history charts the dramatic changes that education nationwide has seen since Herbert Hoover was president and a postage stamp cost 2 cents.
Cabot opened with a staff of 10 teachers, all of them women. Only the three R's were expected to be taught -- reading, writing, and arithmetic, and it was up to each teacher to develop the curriculum.
Now, the school has 18 teachers, three of whom are men. Three of the teachers are specialists (a librarian, a speech and language therapist, and a physical education teacher). All of them have websites, and the school has one computer for every seven students. Curriculum is developed by the School Department and the state, often formed to make sure students perform well on standardized tests.
The school has also changed dramatically in its demographics. Fifteen years ago, Marilynne Quarcoo was appointed principal. She became the first black principal at the school, something she says ''challenged" the community.
''I guess all hires come under scrutiny," she said. ''But I think there was a little extra scrutiny when I was hired."
At the time, about 5 percent of the students were minorities. Now, nearly 20 percent of the school is nonwhite. Cabot has had contacts -- through letters and teacher visits -- with every continent except Australia and Antarctica, Quarcoo said.
Morrison, who is now 80, remembers walking into her first day of kindergarten as a 4-year-old. One of her first thoughts was of looking up at the Humpty Dumpty statue.
''He just sat there, and he's still sitting there," she said. ''At one time somebody said he had fallen. But I don't know, maybe they were just imagining this from the rhyme that went with it."
Morrison's three children went to school at Cabot, and she worked at the school twice. And she retired twice, once in 1985 and again in 1995. She currently volunteers at the school as a teacher's aide.
''I think there was much less discipline needed in those days because the parent structure was different," Morrison said. ''The parents really impressed on the children that the teacher was the law, you might say, and if you didn't want to do it she would call your parents, and the parents would then speak to you. I think today there's much less of that, because parents are so busy that they frequently don't feel that they need to be the school disciplinarian."
Parents have been planning for the 75th anniversary over the past year, and they are as giddy as the students.
''It's an old school, it's a public school," said Sally Brickell, cochairwoman of the school's Parent Teacher Organization. ''We decided to make it a big celebration."
A mock trial on the Humpty Dumpty case (Did he fall off that wall, or was he pushed?) was on the schedule for yesterday, with Quarcoo playing the role of Queen of Newtonville and school Superintendent Jeffrey Young giving testimony. Tomorrow, students in each grade will wear clothes from each decade dating back to the 1930s.
Organizers are also handing out bags that include Twinkies (it's the 75th anniversary of the Hostess confection, too), Fig Newtons, and Humpty Dumpty potato chips, imported from a Canadian company.
As part of the celebration, parents have raised nearly $14,000 through T-shirt and cookbook sales and donations, according to Susan Veroff, cochairwoman of the 75th anniversary committee. The donations will go toward building maintenance to ''help get this very old school through until it can be renovated" in about 10 years, Veroff said.
One parent has made a window of nearly 80 pieces of stained glass that will be donated to the school, Brickell said.
Quarcoo compared the community's strong bond with the Cabot school to ''a covenant [of] shared values and ideals."
Cabot is celebrating this milestone year with a reception tomorrow night from 6:30 to 8:30. The event, which is free and open to the public, will include remarks by former students, school tours, original works by the Cabot Parent Chorus, and a slide show. Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com. 