50th Timeline: 1982 – The Opening of the Noel-Baker Building

In the last entry, we discussed the creation of the Middle School under the leadership of Alex Horsley and Hanshi Deshbandhu.   While this was one of the most important and long-lasting of his achievements, Horsley himself said that the greatest accomplishment during his tenure was the “construction of the Noel-Baker Building.”  Board Clerk Dorothy Kramme and Margaret Priest coordinated the building program and launched a fundraising drive to secure funds. When it opened, the new building housed second through fifth grades and a library for the Lower School.  Most spectacularly, the new building housed a wing with, for the first time, a gymnasium that included a full-length basketball court. A special committee named the new structure after Philip Noel-Baker, an English Quaker and the only person in history to have won both an Olympic medal and a Nobel Prize.  He was a widely admired activist for disarmament and a member of the British Parliament for nearly 40 years.