Horace Mann - Spring 2012 - (Page 6)

Horace Mann School Celebrates 125 Years of Educating and Inspiring Students to lead Great and Giving Lives: 1887 to 2012 Part of the Teachers College Archive Photograph Collection Horace Mann School Building And Surroundings. From Broadway, Includes Thompson, Main Building, And Whittier. Teachers College. (Date Not Known) n the fall of 1911, as Horace Mann School was about to begin its 25th year of educating children, Elinor Fosdick came into the world. Born on September 19, 1911, she would graduate from Horace Mann High School for Girls in 1929, go on to Smith College, and then to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine—as one of five women students in a class of 75. Married to a classmate the two physicians planned to establish a family medical practice, but their plans were interrupted by the start of WWII. Dr. Downs ended up practicing pediatrics on her own, while raising two young children with her parents’ help, after her husband’s tragic death during the war. Dr. Downs later became a researcher and professor in the nascent field of public health, until she “retired” to study and work in archeology, finally suspending her world travels at age 85. In the spring of 2012, at age 100½, as Horace Mann School was celebrating the 125th anniversary of its founding in 1887, Dr. Elinor Fosdick Downs ’29 shared memories of her Horace Mann School days. There were many, including serving as president of The Girls League, working on The Mannikin, and playing var6 Horace Mann Magazine Spring 2012 I sity field hockey and “side center” on the school’s varsity basketball team, along with her sister, the late Dr. Dorothy Fosdick ’30, a renowned international affairs expert who helped structure the UN, the Marshall Plan, and NATO. Most significant to Dr. Downs were her memories of the quality of teaching she experienced at Horace Mann School. “We had fantastic teachers. We were encouraged to pursue whatever we were interested in, in classes and activities. Of course, we had requirements, but, intellectually, I felt free as a bird at Horace Mann,” she said. A pivotal experience in the latter part of Dr. Downs’ HM education resonates today. “I was a student at Horace Mann School from the younger grades and went straight on through high school, with the exception of one year our family spent in Switzerland. I missed geometry that year, but the teachers put me into the class I would have been in had we not gone abroad. I had to catch up with geometry in order to do advanced math. I did the problems the way I thought I should, not the way the rest of the class had learned, and I kept getting the right answers,” said Dr. Downs. “Instead of making me do the problems over my teacher would take my work to Teachers College to have

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Horace Mann - Spring 2012

Horace Mann - Spring 2012
Contents
Letters
Greetings From Dr. Tom Kelly
Greetings From Melissa Parento ’90
Horace Mann School Celebrates 125 Years
Alumni Council Corner
Bookshelf
Class Notes
Memorials

Horace Mann - Spring 2012