posted July 26, 2002 12:20 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by lorraine_byers:
looking form any info on the academy or history behind it

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I graduated from the Academy in 1965. Not sure I know a lot of the history. I think it originally started out in SC, then moved to Zellwood, FL. The Academy was founded by "Doc DuBose" (I believe "Hamden" was his father.) Doc died in 1960, I believe, the year before I started at the Academy. After his death, the Academy was "run" by Mrs. DuBose (Doc's widow) and his daughter, Peyton Cole. (Technically, Mr. Cole was president, but is was really run by the DuBose folks.)

Not long after I graduated the Academy lost steam and eventually shut down due to lack of students.

posted December 28, 2002 07:44 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by lorraine_byers:
looking form any info on the academy or history behind it

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posted July 14, 2009 01:18 AM            

My four years at HDA were intense. Without a doubt there was much that went on that was indefensible and some kids, due to their personalities and backgrounds, suffered more than others. In my case, I came through it in good shape, in thanks perhaps to the "band of brothers" I roomed and goofed off with. The closeness we experienced probably kept me coming back year after year.

I was not, at that time in my life, spiritually attuned (something that changed in 1971) so am afraid I benefited little from the excellent speakers. My role, instead, was that of class clown as I regularly, wherever two or three (students) were gathered, did my impressions of staff and visiting preachers.

posted February 27, 2010 10:26 PM               

I had never previously been away from home by myself for over a week. I arrived at Ewell Hall to a group of friendly, smiling faces. My first dorm was Grove Park. At semester change, I was moved to Moody Manor. I observed the order and beauty and felt like a bit of Heaven had come down. Soon I would suspect that somewhere else had come up.

I remember the message that followed each meal, “Are there any announcements from the Faculty? [There seldom were.] Are there any announcements from the administration?” This was sometimes followed by a the click of the PA system on the head table, where the headmaster’s wife would often include comments directed to a particular student who was deemed to be having behavioral difficulty. Discipline by public humiliation. At first I thought that those rebukes were deserved. I wondered how such kids could do such things in such a paradise. Then came the day when she inveighed against “one young man” whose lies had convinced his foolish parents that HDA didn’t have proper healthcare. Again, I wondered about the sinfulness of such a fellow. Then she stated that perhaps that young man had had too many privileges and shouldn’t be the only sophomore on the varsity football team. That pretty well narrowed it down to me. I was then left to try to figure out what I had done to deserve that. And I was incensed that they would call my mother and father fools. Quickly I remembered the phone call made in the small hall in Ewell…a “night letter” it was called then…in which I had complained that the “walking pneumonia” I had suffered the previous summer had returned. Over a bad connection I had forced a wheeze, so that my RN mother could hear the proof. My complaint was that they would not take me to see a doctor and I eyes watered to the point that I could not read about how Caesar had come, seen, and conquered. The headmaster’s wife also sternly warned a boy who had not moved his trunk to the storage room. She didn’t know that that was me too. My mother had made a nice cover for it so it could be used as a seat. What I learned from this was not to trust anyone freely.

Alleging hypocrisy was also easy when you observed the difference between the birthday parties of the headmaster’s children and the teacher’s kids….the difference between the way the evangelists’ kids were treated and the rest of us. I had never thought of Christians that way.

The previous school year my brother had convinced our doctor that we had weak knees and spurs in our heels and that gained us a birth in adaptive [handicapped] PE. I remember telling that to the gym teacher at HDA. I also remember his response: “Tough.” And he sent me off on the mile run in the sand to Northgate and back, followed by lap around the track and 20 minutes of exercises, including deep knee bends. The ultimate result was a lean, mean boy who excelled in each sport, as the Whites defeated the Blues for the first time in years. When I got home for Christmas, my mother wept to see me so thin. I was in the best shape of my life.

My classmates were a wonderful group, but I quickly found out that you needed to be very careful about what you said to whom. I became friends with several seniors and managed to get those much sought boy worksheets: burn dump and lock-up. The first allowed me to sun beside the dump all Saturday. The second gave me some actual time by myself as I walked from building to building, watching out for the African-Americans that I was told sometimes lurked in the groves. I carried a billy club just in case. Being a big kid also qualified me to joining the upperclassmen in fighting the occasional forest fire—which didn’t feel so honorific after hours of flapping flames.

I learned much about polite society, including (the hard way) the volume limits of a glass of ice tea. Never again would I appreciate the services of most waiters in even the best restaurants across the country. Always I would find myself audibly preparing for a speech, even if it was to a member of my family, who, upon overhearing me would think I was talking to myself.

Dating was, at first, a wonderful, new experience at 15. Coming from a home in which I was not allowed to date until I was 16, the “forced” dating at major celebration was fun and enlightening, even if I had to avoid “holding hands” which Jack Wyrtsen informed me was “the first step on the road to immorality.” I even got to date that beautiful freshman girl that I had hoped for. And how did they know that I did? But when she had her sister tell me that she didn’t want to continue to be assigned to me, I turned bitter and refused to date anyone of my own free will…which caused one staff member to ask me if I was gay.

I enjoyed my classes, and found the teachers to be a wonderful crew that were easier than some of those in my previous public schools, but clearly adequate to their tasks. In later years as a professor in college, I did not change my mind.

Must difficult to handle were the meetings called without notice for us to go to Barn Tabernacle and wait in the metal chairs for the founder’s widow to descend from the upper story of Ewell Hall, drive to the Tabernacle, unwind her various scarves and sweaters, and begin a harangue about how her husband would turn over in his grave in God’s Garden to know that students were so ungrateful for what God had provided for them. We got to expect what came next: 1-3 hours of silent waiting for some freshman girl to break the silence with a confession of borrowing her roommate’s toothpaste or a stamp for her weekly letter home. Those of us who had days before spoken in hushed terms about how they were misusing money given for meat to build the cottage by the lake for the brother of the headmaster’s wife (and son of the founder) or her daughter’s play house (which we were “honored” to tour), …WE never spoke up. Indeed, what I learned from all this was how to cover rebellion.

By the time the year was well progressed, many of us secretly desired to leave. In my case I wanted to go to a local Christian Academy. My mother, concerned for my health, helped convince my father. I was able to send in my application through letters to my parents. I had observed letters to other schools refused at the post office in the Cow Palace.

As we boys wrestled in gym shorts on the sandy floor of the Barn Tabernacle taking the skin off our knees as we tried to hog tie each other, I would tell my trusted friends that someday I would be the captain of the wrestling team at Wheaton Academy. That would come true. And when the students of my next school would complain about the rules, I would laugh and horrify them with stories of confession meetings. I never had it so good as I did at Wheaton Academy.

The summer I left, I wrote to the Headmaster (whom I respected), that I might desire to return for my senior year. Perhaps the last minute crush on a classmate (female I assure you) had something to do with that. But (Stockholm Syndrome taken into account) that I didn’t return. And maybe that was because at Wheaton I ran into another HDA escapee who became my first true love…and the first woman to truly break my heart when she dumped me for the “one she was with” after she went off to college.

Many years later I became a colleague with another HDA graduate, a girl who attended there ten years after me. She recounted stories that made mine seem lame. Confession meetings expanded to 6 hours, a classmate who was so distraught that she tried to kill herself. Frankly, I have known a number of alumni, from a wide range of graduation years, and in my perception (for which I claim no scientific value), none of them escaped emotionally unharmed…including me.

And yet…for all that…I’ve been back twice since that year of the Cuban missile crisis. The first time (in the ‘90’s) I had tea on the porch of Ewell Hall with the elderly teachers, unable to leave the “nunnery” if they had wanted to because they had no retirement or Social Security income. But to its credit the school provided for them, and apparently better than I can now care for myself financially. They were dear ladies and my family and I had a wonderful time.

They told of the lightening strikes against some of the buildings. Barn Tabernacle, where all those horrific confession meetings had taken place was destroyed, including the foundation. I admit I felt it was God’s judgment. The next time I visited (2007), I met with the same teachers, but that time it was in God’s Garden, where I looked down at the little markers and thanked God for the influence of their Godly lives. I even felt sadness over the graves of the administrators. I grieved over the loss of the school and over what HDA could have been.