The Great Depression was no match for the intersection of vision and opportunity that presented itself to Doane Lowery, an educator of note from the west side of Los Angeles, late of Pennsylvania.

The Pasadena area lacked a boys’ college preparatory school but the Flintridge School for Girls was thriving. Noted for his work at the Curtis School, Mr. Lowery was approached by the girls’ school proprietor to open a branch for boys in Pasadena. The idea was intriguing but the timing was wrong; Mr. Curtis was in failing health and Mr. Lowery was needed at the Los Angeles campus.

Upon Curtis’s death Mr. Lowery was able to consider an independent opportunity to open a school in Pasadena, dedicated to his belief that, “in order for a boy to be alert mentally he must be physically sound.” With loans and investments from loyal backers, he partnered with Jay McMath, a retired chiropractor, who provided the down payment on a large Craftsman home on the corner of Michigan (now Foothill) and Crown Avenues in La Cañada. The wooded four-acre lot had two levels, and the previous owner, Dr. Skillen, had used the outbuildings to house his collection of exotic animals for sale. 

Doane Lowery spruced up the outbuildings as classrooms, built an indoor pool with locker room and classroom, and hired six teachers. He hoped to open with 40 elementary and high school students (including boarders upstairs in the Skillen residence).

However, on September 18, 1933, only 22 boys were enrolled at the new school. It was the first of many financially challenging years, and many times the doors were kept open only through the support of loyal parents and friends.

Even so, Flintridge Preparatory School for Boys held to Mr. Lowery’s high standards. On the rustic, oak-studded campus, according to Ben Earl ’41,
“the whole environment was supportive and warm, yet disciplined and educationally rigorous. They wanted to prepare us for life AND college. They conditioned us superbly, physically and intellectually.”

Sports and sportsmanship were important to the Prep program (and to the boys). Nearly every Prep student played at least one sport after school; intra-class competitions were hard fought; the swimming program was world-class. The whole school attended meets and games and cheered like mad for the Highlanders.

Mr. Lowery’s “Head up, chin in, chest out, lower back flat, feet parallel” mantra was part of his vision that incorporated physical fitness with academics to make a boy into a man. He extolled personal accountability and healthy habits as he eschewed soda, cigarettes, and sloth.

“He was ahead of his time, in health and nutrition,” says John Ridland ’49, who admired Mr. Lowery’s integrity as much as his message. Ridland recalls a blistering hot afternoon football match just after Mr. Lowery had lectured the boys of the evils of sodas. Mr. Lowery did not buy a Coke that day from the senior drink stand, but characteristically admitted to Ridland that he wished he had not been quite so strong in his views on such a hot day!

On the academic side, Prep’s small class sizes (the norm was under ten students) meant, says Sandy Ridland ’37, “Teachers knew darn well how you did.” From the earliest days, Prep was “a hard school, but not a lot of pressure.” Many boys transferred in for the last years of high school, entering in ninth or tenth grade; often, it was a family’s choice over boarding school in the East. Flintridge Prep “really created the educational atmosphere to get kids into college,” remembers Ralph Flewelling ’48. “You got on campus and thought, ‘I’d better buckle down.’”

Ben Earl agrees. “You needed to measure up quickly or you were out. But,” he adds, “the faculty would help you.” There were one-on-one, after-school tutoring sessions with hard-working teachers, as well as the example of “brilliant” classmates like Al Hales ’56, Marv Corlette ’56, and Jon Mathews ’48.

Warren Cutting ’46 says, “The faculty prepared me in spades for college. We had homework coming out our ears.” Good study habits were taught along with courses in history, mathematics, languages, and English. Prep graduates went on to prestigious colleges. Ben Earl reports, “At Stanford I could read Latin like English and I was prepared for the sophomore level of math.”

The school struggled through the depths of the Depression only to be confronted with the draft, demands, and shortages of World War II. After the War the school began to expand and the first new buildings were added in the 1950s.

The first 25 years of Flintridge Preparatory School for Boys is a remarkable story of vision and constancy, with Mr. Lowery, as president, at the center of a group of devoted educators, parents, students, and trustees.

Lowery and His Lieutenants

Doane Lowery was, according to the boys who knew him, “sweet,” “a wonderful man,” “down to earth,” “a straight arrow, not a tyrant, but definite in his principles;” “an educational nut” who “demanded excellence.” He was a legendary man of his word. He supported the students and faculty to the greatest extent possible, arranging loans and scholarships, meting out campus discipline (sometimes without involving parents), and generally running a tight, but friendly, ship. The boys were aware of their good luck, and grateful. Mr. Lowery was “evenhanded, friendly, firm, appropriate,” says Bob Carpenter ’54. “I got caught smoking. When he got done with me, I wasn’t going to do THAT again!”

“What I absorbed from Mr. Lowery was that boys were supposed to become men, not wimps, and that men were supposed to be gentlemen, not slobs,” says Sandy Ridland. “It was Doane Lowery’s school,” explains Jud Breslin ’55 “and he really surrounded himself with good people.”

Mr. Lowery’s trusted right-hand men were Mr. Harold McKee and Dr. Malcolm Dickinson. Their offices were on the ground floor of Skillen House, and the three formed an unlikely but complimentary triumvirate.

Mr. McKee, a Scotsman and financial wizard who was at the ledgers for over 28 years, joined the school in 1937. Always dressed in a tweed jacket, he balanced the sometimes shaky books of the school, headed off bankruptcy, held off creditors, masterminded bank loans, negotiated building permits and title disputes, and oversaw the shift of the school from a failing, proprietary stock company to a non-profit.

He “squeezed everything,” says Ed Bulmahn ’49 appreciatively. Prep’s comptroller was “tall, wrinkled, and ran the school well,” remembers Jud Breslin. “He knew everybody.”

Dr. Malcolm Dickinson (he earned a doctorate in chemistry in 1941) was an original faculty member, first hired by Mr. Lowery in 1933 to teach chemistry. He took over as headmaster the following year, supervising the academic program and college counseling for 32 years.

According to Ralph Flewelling, Dr. Dickinson was “the other end of the spectrum from Mr. Lowery — a rough, tough, demanding disciplinarian.” “He was nice, but tough — maybe too tough,” says Kingston McKee ’49 (no relation to Harold). Jud Breslin remembers that Dr. Dickinson, who had “movie star good looks,” spent every afternoon tutoring him in math.

The Finest of Faculties

Prep’s faculty was a mix of the fearsome and the lovable. A remarkable number made their careers solely or mostly at Prep, staying decades, dedicating their lives to the school and students. Mr. Lowery calls the staff “unusually harmonious” in his history of Prep written in 1967 — they shared formidable intellects and a love for teaching.

“I don’t know how they existed on what they made,” says Ben Earl of the faculty’s meager salaries from the often financiallystrapped school. “Yet they adopted me — I used to golf with Mr. Rose, Bob Hampton ’41 , and Mr. McKee.” Jud Breslin remembers, “They were dedicated, smart, and great teachers — but they were not our buddies.”

Diagramming Sentences, Dodging Erasers

Heading up the “I’m not your buddy” category is the legendary Mr. LeRoy Smith, who began a 28-year career at Prep in 1943. This tough, imposing, pipe-smoking exponent of English was renowned for a stare that could reduce the most hardened teenager to mush. “He was an extreme disciplinarian who scared the hell out of everyone,” remembers Bob Carpenter. “We all hated him — he would raise his voice, break things in anger, slam his fist. He actually fell over backwards off a chair once and no one in the class dared to laugh. It was sensational.”

Unsmiling, unyielding, Mr. Smith drove a bus (or, as the students called it, the “paddy wagon”) and picked up students at their homes in the mornings, including Jud Breslin, who remembers the rides as “quiet and disciplined, just like in class. You were afraid of him, so you were prepared with your homework every day.”

Years later, alumni are grateful for the uncompromising teacher with the detailed study guide and the endless refrain, “The verb ‘to be’ does not take an object!” Most credit him for their good marks in freshman college English at some of the nation’s top colleges.

“In retrospect,” says Warren Cutting, “he was super.” John Ridland remembers Mr. Smith in 1979, at the Huntington Library. “I had been invited to read my poetry,” says Ridland, “and there was Mr. Smith, dressed in his blazer with a Flintridge medallion on the breast, smiling and friendly, proud as could be!”

Language teacher Mr. Joe Rose was also tough, a “wonderful guy who loved the classroom.” He reluctantly filled in for Dr. Dickinson as headmaster during the War and later (’66 –’68). Warren Cutting calls that interlude, in 1942-45, “one good thing the War did for us. We loved Mr. Rose.” His assignments were tough, and standards were high, “but we could call him Joe,” says Ben Earl.

Warren Cutting says Mr. Rose was “one of the most delightful and sarcastic individuals — he would cut you into little pieces and make you love it!” Mr. Rose directed dinner for the boarders and drove them to church, selecting a different protestant denomination each Sunday so as not to play favorites. He was equally diplomatic with report cards, according to Cutting. “He would write ‘needs more prep’ or ‘this is not Warren’s best effort’ — but when I made all A’s my junior year I got ‘That’s more like it!’”

Mr. Joseph Fasken taught history and was admired by students for making a sometimes dry topic nearly always fascinating. But not everyone was attentive every day. Fasken had a remedy, according to Robin Baldwin ’47: “an uncanny ability to hit you right between the eyes with an eraser as you were nodding off to sleep in class.”

“Fasken had a great arm,” concurs Ralph Flewelling. “He could be warm and friendly or a disciplinarian,” remembers Bob Carpenter. “He was our all-time favorite,” says Ed Bulmahn. King McKee remembers, “we adopted him. He was wonderful and kind, but he could blow his top in class!” For years, Mr. and Mrs. Fasken held a Christmas party at their home for the Class of ’49, and later included their wives, cementing the friendship.

Of Lathes and Libraries

“The old wood butcher,” Mr. Bob Jardine, held sway in the lower campus woodshop until the late 1960s. A central Californian by birth who boarded with the family of Dick Hughes ’46, he was “a big old guy, and really lovable,” according to Jud Breslin. He taught mechanical drawing for high school and woodshop to the elementary classes, and was very strict about the dangerous tools in the shop. “He was gruff and a character, and seldom praised anything,” says John Ridland, “but I still have the walnut bookends I made in elementary school and they are beautifully finished — still glossy.” During the War, the boys made wooden airplane models used to train anti-aircraft spotters, and according to Ridland, “You really felt you were part of the war effort.”

Miss Louise Gusweiler taught elementary school beginning in 1937 and founded the Prep library in 1938. Located above the pool, the library was stocked through hotly-contested class book drives, and served as an after-school study hall, also supervised by the imposing, matronly “Gus”. “I remember her smell,” says John Ridland, who attended Prep in both elementary and high school. “She was a smoker — large, enveloping and tough, but warm. We loved her.”

Another boarder at the Hughes’s was Mr. Theron Horning, a true Flintridge Prep character. He was a brilliant teacher, under five feet tall, with one leg in a brace. “Not a handsome man but an amazing mind,” remembers Bob Carpenter. “His personality shone through and filled the whole room. As freshmen we thought about his very obvious handicaps for maybe about a week, then accepted him.” King McKee calls him “the favorite.” As class adviser, Mr. Horning gamely accompanied the Class of ’47 on ditch day “to Malibu, dinner in Hollywood, and a semi-naughty show at The Blackout, starring Marie Wilson,” chuckles Robin Baldwin. Other students remember the culture club he founded for lovers of classical music. Campus architect Thornton Ladd ’43 built a house for Mr. Horning in the hills above Flintridge.

Carroll Vaniman was the mathematics teacher for just six years (1939-45) but so dedicated that he taught a class (college-level algebra) to just one student, Warren Cutting. Ben Earl says, “He was a cool person — for a test he’d give us five problems that he’d never seen either, then work alongside of us.” Mr. Earl Mathews is also remembered as a talented math teacher, “a genius at getting concepts of mathematics across; it was a fantastic base,” says Bob Carpenter.

“Don Felipe” Philip Acosta came in the early ’50s and would become another faculty member with decades of service.

A passionate golfer and Spanish teacher, he is fondly remembered; Jud Breslin says, “we were good friends.”

Good Sports

No roster of the Prep faculty in the first quarter century would be complete without a mention of the remarkable sports program and its two pillars, Vernon “Bud” Lyndon and Jim Wood. It was no wonder that the school put such emphasis on sports under Doane Lowery’s watch — he had been a YMCA administrator before he was an educator. His first investment in the campus — a pool — was to prove prescient.

The pool, grandly called “the plunge” in recruiting literature, is not remembered very fondly. Shorter than regulation at 25 yards and only four lanes wide, alumni admit that “you couldn’t always see the bottom” and even Mr. Lowery called it “a bathtub.”

But the necessity of making extra turns in the Highlander pool “drove the other schools crazy,” says Robin Baldwin, and the Prep boys, on the team or not, swam all year. King McKee remembers the workout by heart: “Kick a mile, pull a mile, swim a mile, sprints and get out,” and the subsequent scuffle around the heaters on the deck on cold days. “You tried not to get branded!” he laughs. Mr. Lyndon, who left full-time employment at Prep in 1945 to work at the Pasadena Athletic Club (and coach Olympians) was “fierce” and a “great coach.”

As Lyndon was transitioning off the faculty, Jim Wood joined Prep, bringing with him “a well-rounded athletic program,” says McKee.

Wood coached everything, and superbly, with limited facilities, including an undersized, rocky football field, an outdoor wooden basketball court, and that tiny pool. “Everybody played something and we were always in training, so we were pretty disciplined,” reports Jud Breslin, who proudly wore his gray knee-length letterman’s sweater to school every day. “There wasn’t much drinking or smoking or fooling around.”

Prep was a swimming powerhouse, with teams regularly beating much larger schools. Football, once instituted at Prep, brought the Highlanders consistent honors; success in basketball and softball, later baseball, was sporadic.

Sports played a big part in the boys’ lives year-round. Tennis courts and a riding school were for years just across Crown Avenue, and golf was to be found at private and public courses. If you weren’t playing something, you were cheering on your classmates.

The Sportsmanship Trophy, voted annually by the students, honored not just prowess but, as Doane Lowery instilled in his students, character. The first winner was Peter MacGowan ’38. In Mr. Lowery’s memoirs, he extols the talented Stan Morner ’53 as Prep’s finest athlete.

In 1946 he writes of that year’s winner, Peter Redwine ’46: “This lad, in spite of leg injury, necessitating crutches, permanently, plus defective hearing, won the respect and admiration of all who knew him. His spirit was unbeatable; his smile was infectious. His election for this coveted trophy was a foregone conclusion.”

Democracy, Demerits, and Ditch Day

Mr. Lowery’s belief in a well-rounded education included leadership; he let Prep’s student governance (and parent support groups) emerge organically. The system of elected Commissioners was in place by 1936 and they meted out routine student discipline. Ten demerits were usually good for a Saturday work session raking leaves around the school, though demerits could be reduced upon a plea (often relating to Mr. Smith’s over-strict interpretation of correct classroom behavior).

Students took over as teachers on Student Government Day (earlier called Boys’ Day). The task was taken seriously by everyone. Upperclassmen prepared for and taught chemistry, physics, algebra, and trig; parents would be in on the act, phoning the “headmaster” to ask for a tour. Warren Cutting says the classes ran smoothly under the seniors’ tutelage because “the younger kids would be good; they wanted to be teachers the next year!”

Student relations among the classes were usually harmonious, probably due to the small size of the campus. Though freshmen sported mandatory navy beanies and “had hell to pay” if they did not wear them, sports teams could bring all four high school years together on a varsity team, where the students learned teamwork and cooperation. An exception was the yearly Interclass Competitions. Featuring seasonal sports matches, the book drive, the spelling bee, and essay contests, they were hard-fought each year. The seniors, with their athletic and academic prowess honed by years at Prep, usually were victorious. In a surprise upset, the Class of ’49 won as freshmen.

And there were perks due to the graduating class. Spring’s Senior Ditch Day required that all seniors be off campus within five minutes. Tradition held that if just one senior was caught (that is to say, tackled) by a junior, the whole class would be held back — and the juniors would ditch. Warren Cutting was enrolled in junior English in his senior year and can’t remember how he escaped, but does remember that the seniors spent the day luxuriating in Balboa at the home of Fay Penberthy ’39

Each year as many as twelve boys boarded on the top floor of Skillen House, with a housemaster, often a local college student, who looked after them. The program ended in 1958 — changing building codes would have made expensive upgrades to the old residence necessary. Though students wore Levis or chinos and collared shirts or Pendletons to classes, coats and ties were de rigueur at the boarders’ nightly sit-down dinners.

If John Ridland had not been a boarder in the great snow of 1949 there would have been no photographs of Prep in the snow — San Gabriel Valley traffic was paralyzed.

Jay Midgley ’58 remembers sneaking down to the kitchen for a loaf of bread in the dead of night and devouring the whole thing. Robin Baldwin still complains that his roommate, Rob Jackson ’47, snored.

Boarders would sometimes climb over the fence that surrounded the school; there was a rather un-Prep-like code of silence about transgressions. One boarder, the only Catholic at the time, was dropped off at Mass while the rest of the kids went on to Protestant services each Sunday. Mr. Rose never knew that the boy slipped right through the church and met his girlfriend for an hour, innocently reemerging with the rest of the congregation to be picked up and taken back to Skillen House.

Swing Swing Swing

Off-campus fun for all Highlanders was often centered around organized or pickup sports. The La Cañada soda fountain on Michigan was a place to meet after school. The beach was a popular destination for Easter, summer, and weekends; the desert was another getaway, and local skiing was popular. One weekend, with classic California panache, Warren Cutting and his friends “made it a point to go bodysurfing in Balboa one day and skiing at Mt. Waterman the next.”

Cars were an obsession, and many of the boys spent free time and money on hot rods; Earl Jorgensen ’54 was a particularly gifted mechanic, as was Mansfield Smith ’48, who had a restored Model T complete with bud vases and a speaking tube. Francis Cobb ’48 left school at lunch to get his license and drove proudly back to school — where he was given his first ticket by the cop who followed him from the DMV. Wartime meant creative usage of coupons, accessing secret stashes of gas, and even, in Robin Baldwin’s case, driving in reverse all the way down Lake Avenue after a paty in Altadena.

And there were parties aplenty — holiday parties, after-football parties, and dances at girls’ schools, reciprocated by Prep both in the large classroom and at the Pasadena Athletic Club. In some eras, it was an unwritten rule that Prep boys dated (and married) girls from Anoakia in Arcadia; other classes dated more freely, and sisters with plenty of girlfriends were in demand.

Swing and big band music was popular throughout the 30s and 40s and  any boys learned how to get into the Rendezvous Ballroom in Newport for just 35 cents. If you knew the ropes, you could take a date to the Cocoanut Grove for under $6 (parking on 7th Street, free; cover charge, $1.50 each; planters’ punch, $.75 each; tip, $.50). The class of ’54, with only 13 members, went there after graduation courtesy of Earl Jorgensen’s father. Universally loved: Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller; universally (though genially) hated: Frank Sinatra. As Warren Cutting says, “our girls didn’t swoon over him—or they weren’t our girls!” In the 1950s, Elvis, Buddy Holly, and Chuck Berry rocked the Highlanders and their dates.

Post-War Boom

With the ’50s came growth; Prep’s reputation was solid, backed by Mr. Lowery’s integrity and years of graduates who had gone on to prestigious colleges and distinguished careers. Finances were sound, the faculty was one of the finest in the area, and enrollment was growing with the postwar boom in Southern California. In 1951, 109 students were enrolled; by 1958 there were 240 students.

Prep’s first-ever building drive was in the planning stages by 1952; in December, 1953, a total of $35,000 was pledged in one evening. In all, $370,000 was raised for new classrooms and a gym. The 20s building, with eight classrooms and a fully-equipped chemistry lab, opened in October, 1954. The gym was completed in September, 1957, with a new football field and baseball diamond finished in 1958. The silver anniversary of Flintridge Preparatory School for Boys was celebrated in the new gym, on March 8, 1958. The Mothers Club organized a tribute to the school presented by the host of the popular TV show “This is Your Life.”

Doane Lowery writes of 1957-58, “This was a year of good fortune. A year of conquest of obstacles. One might say, we attained the unattainable, explained the inexplicable, and unscrewed the inscrutable.”

He might have said the same about Prep’s first quarter century. The shared vision of administration, faculty, alumni, students, parents, and friends that had kept Prep on a steady course from its founding day would prove critical in the next 25 years, as the school faced three major challenges: continued growth, the changing of the old guard coinciding with a shift in American culture, and, towards its 50th anniversary, the advent of co-education.

— Mel Malmberg

This article appears in Flintridge Prep's Winter 2007-08 PrepTalk magazine.