Frederick was born for study and inquiry. He disclosed this in early infancy. A severe pneumonia at thirteen disqualified him during his youth from the athletic sports of his younger brothers. Accordingly, both natural aptitudes and ill health combined to centre his life wholly in the activities of the mind.
But it would be untrue to say that Frederick was ever a hard student. The fact is that he acquired knowledge too easily and rapidly for that. He always had plenty of leisure, but from childhood up he invariably stood at the head of his classes without conscious effort. At eighteen, though not intending to enter Harvard, he yielded to the persuasion of a Ten-Dollar bill offered by his father, to take the Harvard entrance examination and was admitted to Harvard without conditions. I preferred Harvard for him, but the boy preferred the University of Chicago, mainly, as I have always believed, on account of his acquaintance with President Harper, our family friend and frequent guest. So, after a summer trip to Europe, he was admitted to the University of Chicago in October, 1905, on his Harvard entrance papers. He remained there a year and a half only. After Dr. Harper’s death Frederick transferred his college work to Yale, with our approval. My old friend, Dr. Goodspeed of Chicago, secretary of the University, told Frederick’s fraternity brothers, and subsequently wrote me, that his classroom marks were higher than those of any other student who had ever studied at the University at that time—some five thousand, I believe.
At Yale, in the academic course, Frederick stood from the first at the head of his class of over four hundred men. In his first term he won the Andrew D. White prize for the best historical essay. He was accorded in due time the Phi Beta Kappa key. Later he invented a small improvement in chemical apparatus, and wrote a paper on a chemical subject that was translated and published in Germany. He was elected to the Sigma Psi scientific fraternity, and graduated at the head of his class in 1909 Summa Cum Laude. Several of the Yale officers, including Dean Wright, wrote us congratulatory letters on his graduation, predicting for him a distinguished career.
Frederick chose the medical profession and the Johns Hopkins Medical school. He was admitted to Hopkins in the fall of 1909. As at Yale, he stood first at Hopkins from the beginning, and continued to be first during the entire course of four years. But he also took special work as an extra in research, under Dr. Moll. Dr. Welch, the President, told me on Frederick’s graduation that his papers on pathology, which was Dr. Welch’s chair, were the best ever handed in by a Hopkins student. Frederick was accorded the Alpha Omega Alpha emblem on graduation, a medical honor for scholarship corresponding in medicine to Phi Beta Kappa in college.
Dr. Moll recommended Frederick for research to the Rockefeller Institute, and Dr. Flexner accordingly offered him a subordinate position on the institute staff. He has now, in 1926, spent thirteen years at the Institute. His researches, especially those on influenza in collaboration with Dr. Olitsky, have been recognized in all centres of medical research throughout the world.
On the declaration of war in 1917, Frederick volunteered in the Medical Corps of the United States Army, was accepted, and made First-Lieutenant. Subsequently, the Rockefeller Institute, with all its facilities, buildings, and equipment, as well as its staff, was offered to the government without cost. Frederick was then assigned for duty on the institute staff. Here he gave lectures to selected groups of the Army Medical Corps, sent in relays to the Institute. He was also assigned to visit local United States training camps, in the interest of preventive medicine, and traveled quite widely among them.
Frederick has been advanced through the several grades until he has become an Associate Member of the Institute. A single step only remains to make him a full Member, beyond which there is no advancement in rank among the workers in research. He is now head of the department of light, a congenial and responsible position, for which his tastes and studies from his youth up have especially fitted him. His department has been furnished with scientific equipment nowhere else surpassed, or indeed equaled.
Franklin was admitted to Yale without conditions in June, 1908. He maintained an excellent stand in scholarship throughout his course, receiving the Phi Beta Kappa key at the end of his sophomore year. He joined the Psi Upsilon fraternity, and of the four senior societies was elected to the Elihu Club.
Frank loved athletics, and had been taught by his father to recognize their cultural value. As a boy in northern Jersey he had attracted local attention in baseball, in pole vaulting, and especially in tennis. These tastes and acquirements he brought to Yale. He became the champion of Yale in tennis, served three years on the varsity team, and was made captain in his junior year. His children, for whom I am writing this paragraph, will be glad to know that during their father’s three years’ membership the varsity tennis team of Yale never lost a match with any other college.
After his graduation in 1912, Frank went down to North Carolina, where I had bought a tract of some twenty thousand acres of cheap, unimproved land in the “sand hills” of Scotland and Richmond Counties. On Russell’s graduation from Yale in 1914, he joined us in North Carolina. Together the two young men cleared, developed, and fertilized about a thousand acres. This farm we called Broadacre. For some eight years I spent nearly all my time at Broadacre. The farm was developed on the principles of scientific agriculture. We secured and studied the most recent standard books on agriculture, and these we supplemented with the bulletins of the United States Department of Agriculture. For the sons, the farm experience amounted to a postgraduate course of training of varied and very high educational value. Besides these studies common to both sons, they divided the daily work between themselves. Russell, on horseback many hours daily, superintended the field work and the field hands, from fifty in number to more than a hundred. Frank kept the books, involving enormous detail, conducted all the correspondence, did the buying, looked after all the livestock, for we had many cattle, hogs, and mules, and when possible handled some of the farm machinery. In the evenings we consulted together and laid the plans.
But Russell left Broadacre for the army soon after the United States entered the war in 1917, and from that time until the successful sale of our entire estate in North Carolina, Frank, with such help as 1 could give him, had the entire responsibility of Broadacre.
It was while Russell was still with us that the two sons planted the superb peach orchard of more than seventeen thousand trees. The State Horticulturist pronounced this orchard the finest in North Carolina. Frank subsequently sold it for Eighty Thousand Dollars, and the purchaser paid for it out of the crops of the next three years.
In 1917 Frank was drafted and of course passed the physical examination. But the County Board of its own initiative declined to call him into service. For service meant the abandonment during the period of the war of our plantation of over a thousand acres under cultivation. It was fruitful enough to feed and clothe a regiment at the front in France. It gave remunerative employment to many scores of laborers. Also Frank was a married man, with wife and two children. The County Board decided that Frank could serve his country better at home than at the front and refused to call him into the army.
Having sold out the entire estate in the spring of 1920, with such help and counsel as I could give him, for a price which liquidated the entire investment with interest, Frank fixed his future home in Montclair and prepared himself for a business career. During the summer he mastered the Alexander Hamilton business course, and in the fall of that year was admitted to the Chase National Bank as a student of banking. At the end of this student apprenticeship he was accorded a permanent place on the staff of the bank. He is now, in 1926, a Second Vice-President of the Chase Bank, in charge of the new business activities of the Central Bank and all of its branches.
Russell entered Yale in 1910, two years later than his elder brother Frank. It is interesting to observe how nearly alike were the college careers of these two brothers. Both joined the Psi Upsilon fraternity, both won the Phi Beta Kappa key, both were elected to the Elihu Club, both were for three years on the varsity tennis team, both became champions of Yale in singles and doubles, each was captain of the varsity team in his junior year, and Russell, after captaincy, became manager.
Russell reorganized the entire system of tennis at Yale, and it is not too much to say that he is the “father” of the Yale tennis of today. At a cost of several thousand dollars, Russell constructed and opened to Yale students some seventeen new tennis courts and, because of the multiplication of players with a trifling fee from each player for the use of the courts, Russell liquidated the entire cost without recourse to the university treasury.
I have already described Russell’s invaluable services at Broadacre from his graduation in 1914 to the American declaration of war in 1917. On a visit North he enlisted in New York, for aviation, was examined and accepted, and in August reported at Atlanta for his preparatory theoretical training. After six weeks he was appointed to be Cadet Captain of the entire school. He and his friend, Sam Slaughter, standing side by side, were graduated at the head of their class. Both were ordered to France to learn to fly. They took their early training at the aviation camp at Tours, but both finished it at the United States aviation camp at Issoudun, with its nine successive aviation fields. One of Russell’s Yale professors—Bingham, later United States Senator for Connecticut, and just now, in 1926, reelected—was Russell’s superior officer at Issoudun. At the end of his course, Sam was ordered to the front, but Russell, much against his will, was held at Issoudun as an instructor. Both as a flyer and an instructor Russell rose to the highest rank. As an aviator he became a Chasse, or single combat flyer, a class which all seek, but which only one in ten has the physical and mental qualities to reach. As an instructor Russell began as one of twenty-two. In three months twelve of these were dead. Russell spent more than two thousand hours in the air, made more than eighteen hundred flights, and, owing to the inferior planes selected and furnished our boys by the French, suffered seven crashes. I must not here describe the intensity of his daily life, the necessity of frequent relief, and Russell’s adventures and even escapades in seeking it. The worst of these, that blessed Bingham alone of all the camp could not see, for Russell’s broken nose was bound up from a wound received on a clandestine visit to the front, explicitly forbidden in advance by Bingham.
Russell’s voluminous diary, covering every day of his absence from home, was kept secreted in Alice’s bureau at Tours. (Diaries were forbidden by regulations.) It will be a precious treasure to generations of his descendants.
A short time after he was mustered out Russell received a citation from General Pershing in recognition of his services at Issoudun. He had trained, in whole or part, one hundred and sixty-seven men to fly, and towards the close of his period of service became the final tester- out of the candidates for the front.
Together Russell and Percival reached home, to our inexpressible delight, in February, 1919, and in a few days were mustered out.
Russell was soon after admitted to the Equitable Trust Company, to make the rounds of the departments and learn the technique of banking. In about a year he was taken into the permanent service of the trust company, and has since risen through various grades of advancement to his present (1926) responsible position as a junior officer in charge of the industrial department, and secretary and manager of the Equitable Securities Company. He is physician and surgeon to sick firms and corporations which owe the bank money. In this delicate and tactful work he has proved extremely successful and is highly useful both to the bank and its creditors.
Percival, at my suggestion, chose the Hill School at Pottstown, Pennsylvania, for his preparatory course. Here he was graduated in June, 1917. He had already taken a summer at the Plattsburg training camp, with its drill and discipline. He won the sharpshooter’s badge. At Pottstown he was made Cadet Captain of the school. On leaving it he received a beautiful, unsolicited testimonial for efficiency and for character from the United States officer in charge. His distinction in the scholastic department of Hill School was in winning the several public debates. After his graduation Percival, though under age, offered himself in New York for aviation, with suitable credentials, was accepted, and assigned to Atlanta for his theoretical training, which he began on October twenty-fourth, 1917.
Here his mechanical ingenuity and training were of great help to him, and he made rapid progress. From Atlanta he was sent to the United States aviation camp near Memphis, Tennessee, to take the early lessons in flying. There Percival found himself the youngest of a group of sixty men admitted together in January, 1918.
The camp was so recklessly conducted that needless and appalling accidents were reported in the press almost daily. We ourselves protested to the department at Washington. The management was soon changed, but not before Percival had spent many wakeful hours at night in visualizing every possible crisis and figuring out what to do in each case. Soon after a contingency unprovided for in the instruction as yet given him occurred. The plane turned turtle; Percival saw the earth apparently above him and the sky below him. He fell a thousand feet before he could right his plane. His wakeful nights had provided for such a crisis and he glided at length in safety to the feet of his astonished instructor, who had seen the fall.
Percival was graduated from the Memphis camp two weeks in advance of any other member of the group which entered with him, and was sent to France for more advanced instruction. He was ranked in the Chasse class of pursuit flyers and, after completing the course of instruction, was sent to St. Jean de Mont, on the west coast of France, to the school of aerial marksmanship. Here he attained such skill as a marksman that at the end of his course he was offered an instructor- ship. But he declined this as he was determined to fight the Germans. Other similar offers that would have kept him from the front he also declined.
In June, 1918, his training being now completed, he spent some weeks in flying planes of every make from Paris to our army on the Meuse, returning to Paris by rail.
At length he was sent to the front and enrolled in the first pursuit group of Pershing’s army. Here he was in daily, and later in nightly, flights into the enemies’ territory on both sides of the Meuse, until the Armistice of November eleventh. Mother and 1 have since gone over by automobile with Percival the whole of his fighting ground on the Meuse, and heard the thrilling story of it in complete detail. He must not fail to write out in full, without any suppressions, the full account of his life on the Meuse as an aviator. By his descendants it will be cherished as a precious legacy.
Percival arrived home in the same ship with Russell, in February, 1919. He was then twenty-two years old. The severe discipline of aviation had changed him from boy to man. It had proved to be the best possible mental training. After eighteen months, spent mainly at Broadacre and with the family at Lake George, Percival entered the University of Chicago (January of 1920). He chose the scientific course, and on account of his studies and experience in aviation was given advanced standing of a year. He was fortunate in his associations. He was invited by Professor Salisbury to share his own rooms, was chosen to the Psi Upsilon fraternity, was given an important place in many student functions, and was made by the University one of six university marshals. In scholarship he won the Phi Beta Kappa key and was elected to the Sigma Psi scientific fraternity. He stood near the head of his class, and was awarded an honorary fellowship of one year by the University on the basis of scholarship.
After graduating he continued his studies, specializing in plant pathology and in research in genetics, both at the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin, where he spent a year, and here also was accorded a fellowship.
In March of 1926, wearied with his prolonged and unbroken studies, he delighted his parents and his Auntie Horence by coming with his wife, Frances, to make their home near his parents and his brothers in Montclair. His future career will be shaped to conform to his tastes and aptitudes. Very likely he will follow his brothers into banking. Indeed he now has a position with the Bankers Trust Company.
I have written this chapter on the higher education of our sons, and their later successes in life, mainly in order to show that the theories of education on which our children were reared proved in the sequel to be correct. We had given a minor place only to the study of books. But we had kept our children busy sixteen hours per day in self-chosen, spontaneous activity, as intense as possible, and furnished with all needed facilities and tools. In this we seemingly took the risk of sacrificing scholarship altogether. But it proved to be just the mental training required for scholarship. Frederick’s scholarship goes without saying, but all his brothers easily maintained a high standard in the classroom, as we have seen, while at the same time distinguishing themselves in their chosen sports. The reality and soundness of their mental training have been further illustrated by the large and increasing responsibilities of their manhood.
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Chapters In My Life 