Where Are They Now? Judith Klau, Former English Department Head, Founder, Jewish Community at Groton

 

It's still stories: not just reading the literary variety, but listening to and appreciating the ones told to me by dear friends, old friends. I teach short stories from the New Yorker magazine at the public library in Delray Beach, Florida and volunteer as a factotum at a collection of artists books at Florida Atlantic University.  In Boston, I am privileged to live in the South End where a group of activist seniors (aka "The Geezers") meets every Tuesday to discuss culture, politics, and poetry, and to appraise the many restaurants in the immediate vicinity.

 

Facebook is a marvel that lets me be in touch with many great Grotonians, and to remind me of how lucky I was to have been there when they were. My winters in Florida and my summer weeks in Maine with my appreciative partner are frosting on the marvelous cake of living in Boston.

 

 

The Chapel was of primary importance to me while I was at Groton, not only because of its metaphorical centrality to the life of the school, but also because Headmaster Bill Polk and Chaplain Jack Smith were men of integrity who trusted students.  Daily chapel allowed students to figure out their own maturation: Lower Schoolers would say "huh?" when you asked them if they had heard the chapel talks; Fourth and Fifth Formers could discuss them; and Sixth Formers grew up and gave the talks. Even if they were comical or unpolished, the talks were a forum for truth as it was perceived by that member of the community.  I loved my own opportunities to address the school, but my best memories are of the talks that others made.

 

To say that I was untutored in and uninterested in sports when I came to Groton would be an understatement; however, when Bill told me I would be helping with third girls field hockey, I borrowed some books from Kathy Leggat and tried (unsuccessfully) to learn about the game. There was an outside coach who did the work, and four days a week I dutifully stood around the outside watching over the pinnies.  One Thursday morning, the AD confronted me in the Schoolroom and angrily asked me where I had been on the previous afternoon when a team member (A.A., I apologize forever) had been hit in the head at a game at Andover and had to be hospitalized.  He was incensed that I had not been there to accompany the team home on the bus. I had thought that standing around the field in the cold and dark was enough; it never occurred to me that I was also supposed to go to the games.  Thankfully, I was never again asked to help with coaching. I hope I redeemed myself by taking on the job of arranging Saturday night activities, including my best invention (you can cheer now), the "Great Escapes,” [which took students into Boston for cultural excursions].

 

English departments in every school are notorious for being contentious; Bill warned me that Groton's was no exception.  I had no conscious idea how to fix the problem, but unwittingly I brought the opposing factions together by hosting as many dinner parties as I could to which I invited everybody. By the end of my tenure, my colleagues in the English department were very good friends, and I miss them all.  Department meetings were harmonious and fun and (I think) useful.  I guess the lesson is that good food and good wine. . . .