The decision to separate from Woodbury described in the last post led to an explosion of activity in the summer of 1970. Charles Francis Adams, descendant of two Presidents and the ambassador to Great Britain during the 1860s, wrote that during the Civil War he did every day something that would have been, before the war, the most important act of his year. This may have been what it felt like to the members of the Board of Trustees and the school officials who found themselves in the summer of 1970. They needed to open a full school at Mullica Hill by September and had no room for more than half of the 289 enrolled students. In three months, the Board had to somehow acquire more land and construct a new academic building. Even if great funds had existed in the coffers, this still would have been daunting. Yet, according to Langworthy, the School had only $20,000 in cash and needed at least $211,000 for the buildings and land alone. One Trustee, the long-serving Mary Ellen Taylor, noted in great understatement that a “shirt-sleeved Board” was needed. Board meetings lasted so long that, in the near future, the surviving Board members would go so far as to institute a very unQuakerly time limit for the closing of Board meetings. The Board oversaw a fundraising and marketing campaign, “We are a gathering of grownups and children,” and the surviving 1970 pamphlet tells us much about the heart and soul of the School during these earliest days. The breakthrough moment was the individual decision of Trustees Samuel and Kristine Knisely to purchase one of the key pieces of land and to allow use of the property by the School until they could be reimbursed. The other saving element was the ability of the School to find a pre-fabricated academic building that could be delivered on truck. During the last weekend in August, to great publicity in local newspapers, the new building arrived. Due to the town’s wiring system, those delivering the building (which would later be named the Salem Building) had to employ a gigantic crane. Students, staff, and Trustees all witnessed the event, which was described the next day in a local newspaper as “And the Walls Go Tumblin’ Up – 12 Rooms in a Day.”
This historical entry is part of a series chronicling the history of Friends School Mullica Hill on the occasion of the School’s 50th anniversary. The entries begin with the first arrival of Quakers in the region and continue all the way to the present under the leadership of the School’s ninth Head, Matt Bradley.
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