The Winchendon School is a private day and boarding school located in Winchendon, Massachusetts.[1] Winchendon was founded in 1926 and is a college preparatory day and boarding school for boys and girls in grades 9 through post-graduate. The Winchendon School, a coeducational multicultural community, provides college-bound students of good character and promise with the essential study skills and learning strategies that propel each student to achieve academic success.
 
History
Williams College alumnus Robert Marr’s seasoned prep school experience at Deerfield and earlier at Vermont Academy provided the perfect combination of skill and energy to take the School into its permanent home. As new Headmaster in Newport during the 1959-60 and 1960-61 academic years, Marr maintained the Hatch tutorial model while introducing his own leadership brand. Finding a new campus location emerged as an increasing focus for the new Head. “Now and then, taking a day off from school, we left Newport early in the morning to begin our search,” Marr wrote. His odyssey criss-crossed New England, visiting a fabulous farm-estate near Williamstown, potential farm compound setting in the Berkshires, properties in Royalston...while, finally, serendipitously coming across Winchendon’s present 220 acre campus-the former legendary Toy Town Tavern. “Then, simply by chance and a long shot phone call, we came to Winchendon to look at what we once knew as the Toy Town Tavern, for a long time a nationally known resort place.” Marr persuasively took his case to Simplex Time Recorder President Curtis J. Watkins, civic-minded owner of the resort. A lease- purchase option deal was struck. The school moved in summer 1961 to the spectacular setting-with its majestic views of Mount Monadnock, Lake Watatic, as well as its own Donald Ross 18 hole golf course. Thanks to a major donation in 1963 by Winchendon’s 1962 graduate Walter Buhl Ford, III (1943–2010) great-grandson of Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford, the School purchased the property and began its current 50 years of vibrant success at this location (1961–2011).
 
The Winchendon campus’ legendary history is also the stuff of local lore—the first farmhouse (the front portion of Ford Hall today) was built in 1786 by Simeon Stearns. The property subsequently became the Wyman Farm before its 1899 acquisition by the town of Winchendon’s world-renowned wooden toy magnate and philanthropist Morton E. Converse, who converted the farmhouse in 1912 into an expanded children-friendly resort, which gained fame throughout the East and attracted such guests as President William Howard Taft, Thomas A. Edison, Joseph P. Kennedy and family from Brookline, MA, and artist Norman Rockwell and wife.
 
The opening of the freshly relocated and newly renamed Winchendon School in the fall of 1961 seemed seamlessly managed. Superb teachers like the late Charles Dillaway (Bowdoin graduate and Maine campus hold-over) and English teacher Clifford Eriksen provided colorful teaching in the traditional Hatch mold. The seasoned leadership of Bob Marr and his able Assistant Head (and former Vermont Academy colleague) Frederick L. Zins enabled newly arrived students like me to sense the great traditions of Wassookeag School and Hatch-Newport – while also experiencing the exuberance of a revitalized school and its own incomparable setting.
 
Marr’s pivotal tenure (1959–1973), was followed by Lewis V. Posich (1973–1982), Stephen V.A. Samborski (1982–1988), J. William LaBelle (1988–2008), and current Head John A. Kerney. Each succeeding distinguished School leader has made enormous contributions, displaying great character, resilience, and educational innovation. Separate articles on each leader’s tenure will be forthcoming.