K-U-A is a special place because it's in its own piece of the world that makes it an extraordinary
place to be.
You know when you're at Kimball Union when you see the flashing yellow light at the bottom
of the hill on 120.
That's when you know you've arrived on campus and it's such a wonderful feeling.
That light, for me, means I'm home.
What makes Kimball Union a special place is its people.
We have years of history in a unique setting but there's nothing like the people that
are drawn to the place and the people who are drawn to the place are unique.
It's the environment, it's the culture and it's the faculty and the staff to the students
and how they come together in a community makes it very special.
It is one of the oldest chartered academies in the United States of America.
Under the leadership of 18 headmasters, 275 trustees and over 800 teachers, Kimball Union
Academy has inspired the young minds of more than 11,000 students for 200 years.
The core mission of Kimball Union Academy is mastery, creativity, responsibility and
leadership.
It's mastery of relationships, it's mastery of information, it's mastery of creativity.
Over the centuries, it has grown to almost 40 magnificent buildings, a far cry from
the solitary structure that stood on the hilltop in 1815.
Kimball Union was born out of spiritual necessity but in time would adopt a more progressive
vision and begin to provide opportunities to a wider variety of students during a time
when society had not yet considered them worthy of an education.
It's a balanced student body.
There are kids from every walk of life, the kids get to know diversity.
Like the nation itself, Kimball Union would endure great wars, economic depressions and
devastating fire.
It would confront issues of race, gender and equality.
But the real story of Kimball Union Academy is the story of teachers and students, headmasters
and trustees.
It's virtues reflected in the lives of thousands of alumni.
It is a story of aspiration, determination and love for an institution that would be
transformed again and again in a collective effort to keep it relevant in an ever-changing
world.
We're standing on the shoulders of people who have given their time, their talent and
their treasure to make Kimball Union stand tall and stand tall always and our permanence
really comes from the generosity and the wisdom of those who came before us.
We all had the KUA experience.
It's the cornerstone of who we are.
It really is like coming home.
October 21st, 1812.
He had enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in the state of New Hampshire
a seminary for the purpose of assisting in the education of poor and pious young men
for the gospel ministry to be denominated the Union Academy for preparing youth for
colleges in the United States.
The Council of the New England Churches.
Early American schools were founded to meet the spiritual needs of a new country.
And in 1812, an ecclesiastical council of New England churches drew up a plan for a
new seminary to be built near Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
Three Dartmouth professors were on the council, laying the foundation for what would become
a lifelong relationship between the two schools and setting a standard of educational excellence
for the new seminary to follow.
One council delegate pledged an immediate $6,000 and promised the remainder of his estate
upon his death.
His name was Daniel Kimball.
There are no known images of Kimball, a Miller's son who had served as a sergeant in the Revolutionary
War in Quebec and Ticonderoga.
In 1777, Daniel had married Hannah Chase of Cornish, New Hampshire, who would later
become as important to the Academy's development as her husband Daniel.
On June 16th, 1813, the Governor of New Hampshire signed the charter creating Union Academy named
after the Union of New England Churches that gave it life.
One and a half years later, on January 9th, 1815, the Academy building was dedicated.
Built largely by Kimball's own hands on a hilltop on his own land.
The school started as a place for students to come together to grow and to learn.
It started small and it started with boys and girls.
The very next day, the Union Academy was in session.
Otis Hutchins was the school's first principal.
Both boys and girls were allowed to enroll.
The following year, six boys graduated.
Four girls also completed the same courses, but were not yet allowed the same privilege.
I imagine it was a pretty spartan existence and it must have been tough.
Long cold winter days here in, you know, Northern New England, getting up early in the morning
doing chores, going to classes.
In 1817, Daniel Kimball suddenly became ill and died of what was believed to be pneumonia.
In his honor, trustees changed the institution's name to Kimball Union Academy.
A few years later, his estate donated the $34,000 he had originally promised to the school.
Then, in 1824, the school burned to the ground.
It had to be a setback.
The War of 1812 ended in 1815 and you would like to think that no wars on the horizon,
no serious foreign policy issues at that time, that you could concentrate on developing and
expanding the school as enrollment grew.
By 1825, a more impressive brick building stood where the older wooden one had been.
And the years that followed would be marked by expansion on virtually every level.
1835 saw the appointment of Kimball Union's fourth principal, Dr. Cyrus Richards, an 1831
graduate of the school.
He would hold that office for 36 years.
In 1839, Daniel Kimball's wife, Hannah, carried on his vision by pledging $10,000 to help
start a separate female seminary for young women.
But at the urging of trustees for a coeducational facility, a new addition was added to the
existing academy.
The new program commenced in the fall of 1840 and within a few years time, it was filled
with 154 young women.
It was almost like a separation of the sexes and the sense of the activities on campus.
Pretty much you have a girls department and a boys department.
A few years later, the doors would open even wider.
The first student of color would be invited to attend, a young man named Augustus Washington.
In the years following his graduation, Washington would become famous as an African American
Degura typist, best known for a photograph he would take of the nation's most notable
abolitionist, John Brown.
Other black graduates were succeeding as well.
Jonathan C. Gibbs, class of 1848, would become Secretary of State in Florida, the first African
American to hold that state office.
And Ernest Everett Just, class of 1903, who would become an internationally renowned Doctor
of Zoology.
I think the important thing about the legacy of Kimball Union alumni is that no matter
how far and wide they spread, they go out and do big things in the world.
In the 1850s, Kimball Union began to grow as local buildings were purchased to make
more dormitories.
A campus began to form.
The United States was expanding too.
Countless Americans were heading west, and Kimball Union alumni were among them.
Men like Frederick Billings from the class of 1840, who later would become president
of the Great Northern Pacific Railway.
I think Kimball Union graduates have a global mindset.
They have a wanderlust.
They have a sense of adventure, and a lot of it was because of their experience here.
The future only seemed bright for Kimball Union Academy.
But in 1861, America's Civil War began to tear the nation apart.
From a class of 75, over 25 students immediately enlisted.
Two hundred and fifteen Kimball Union men ultimately would heed the call to arms, serving
as officers, surgeons, chaplains, provost marshals, soldiers, and in several instances, as officers
of the Confederate States of America.
Daniel Foster, class of 1836, led the 37th U.S. Colored Regiment into battle.
And at the Battle of Chaffins Bluff, Virginia, Foster was shot by Confederate forces.
As he lay dying, he asked his men to turn him around.
As I have vowed, he said, that I would die facing the enemy.
He and twenty more Kimball Union students never came home.
Thirteen more would eventually die from the injuries they had sustained.
And I can see where a faculty member looking across at a seat in the library or at a morning
meeting or in a class saying, that's where so-and-so said.
I taught him U.S. history and now he's off and he's killed defending his country.
It's got to be an emotional experience.
After the war, Kimball Union kept on expanding on all fronts.
In 1881, it enrolled a 23-year-old Native American man named Charles Eastman, a Sue Indian.
Eastman would go on to Dartmouth College, earn a medical degree, and distinguish himself
as the first doctor to arrive at the last armed conflict of the Indian Wars.
The 1890 massacre of the Sue at the Battle of Wounded Knee.
Kimball Union has always been ahead of its time to create new opportunities for enrollment,
to create new opportunities for interaction, to create new programs at the academy.
Kimball Union has always made every effort to be out in front of that.
Back in New Hampshire, despite the momentum the school was gaining, trouble lay ahead.
New local public school systems began to attract more students and Kimball Union Academy soon
faced a rapid decline in enrollment.
The rural population that had always supported it began to move away to find jobs in larger
cities.
Six different principals would struggle with the school's financial difficulties over the
next three decades.
The academy's future was in jeopardy.
In 1890, a former Kimball Union teacher named Myra L. Everest proposed what came to be called
the $100 Plan.
A student would pay only $100 for room, board, and tuition in exchange for one hour of manual
labor each day.
The plan took off, enabling students of all economic classes an affordable opportunity
and literally saving Kimball Union Academy.
They do rub shoulders with kids from all backgrounds and I think that's the essence of it.
Having that available here I think is wonderful preparation for getting out into life and
getting rid of many of the biases that perhaps kids had from a financial point of view and
from kids of color.
It's a healthy environment.
Kimball Union has always been ahead of its time with a sense of commitment to the underserved,
whether it's the $100 Plan or whether it's $3 million worth of financial aid for 325 students.
We make sure that Kimball Union is true to its roots and its founding.
On March 4, 1890, the Meriden House on campus was destroyed by fire and only one year later,
KUA's third Academy building also burned to the ground.
But the school kept moving forward.
New structures took the place of the ones that were lost and after the turn of the century
with the help of numerous supporters and alumni, Kimball Union expanded to accommodate an
ever-growing student population.
Bryant Hall, Dexter Richards Hall, Hall Farm, Baxter Hall, Samuel Powers Field and the Charles
Lewis Silver Memorial Gymnasium.
In 1892, the Kimball Union baseball team played its first interscholastic game.
In 1893, a young man named Charles Alden Tracy graduated from KUA.
By 1913, when the Academy celebrated its first 100 years in existence, Tracy had become the
school's headmaster.
He marked the occasion by putting on a centennial pageant called the Pageant of Meriden.
In its first century, more than a half dozen buildings had been integrated into the Hilltop
campus.
Its student body stood at 123.
Thousands of students had gone on to higher education at Dartmouth College and other institutions
across the country, becoming clergymen, state governors, college presidents, foreign missionaries,
doctors, judges, scientists, even members of Congress.
On April 6, 1917, the United States entered World War I, and a military draft summoned
men over the age of 21 into the armed services.
Soon after that, Congress dropped the draft age to 18.
I've thought at times of our kids here going off to war, 18, 19, 17 years old.
It's like sending your own son off to war.
200 KUA students ultimately found themselves in uniform.
Among them was Matthew Ankel, also known in his native Sioux language as Istakisaka Iskahula.
13 Kimball Union men made what headmaster Tracy called the supreme sacrifice, including
Matthew Ankel, who died after being gassed by the Germans.
He returned after the war.
The Hilltop campus added a new library, an infirmary, a swimming pool, and amphitheater.
Sports programs exploded on campus, football, basketball, and eventually ice hockey, soccer,
and lacrosse.
Then in 1929, the nation sank into the Great Depression.
5,000 banks failed.
Millions of Americans suffered.
Enrollment immediately began to decline and continued to shrink over the next 10 years.
The majority of dropouts were girls.
Because of their financial setbacks, many families chose to send their sons to school
and keep their daughters at home.
Taking note of the dwindling number of girls in attendance, in 1935, headmaster Tracy and
the trustees agreed that Kimball Union, like a growing number of other schools, should
actually phase out coeducation on campus.
The school and the trustees simply felt that with the depression going on, they wanted
to focus on just on boys.
I think it was felt that it had been a sacrifice to send a girl to school and with public education
really being very strong that it was an economic situation with a lot of parents.
It would remain an all-male institution for the next 39 years.
Michael Brewster, the then headmaster, who people equate with having kept the school
alive and well during the depression, he ran a summer camp called Birch Rock.
And many of the students at that time came to KUA because of their Birch Rock experience.
If parents could afford to send their kids at those days to summer camp, perhaps they
also could have afforded to get their kids into a private school at that time.
The Great Depression would continue to dominate American life throughout the 1930s until the
Second World War began.
Once again, Kimball Union Academy would send young men to fight overseas.
A total of 509 men enlisted, along with eight members of the faculty.
Sixteen students perished on battlefields all over Europe and the Pacific Islands.
The post-war era at Kimball Union once again was marked by explosive growth.
The headmasters, Chief Brewster in the 50s, going into Fred Caver in the 50s, and he went
into the 60s.
It was a place that there was a lot of nurturing going on here, and the school's reputation
was increasing.
In 1957, the daughter of alumnus Charles Ransom Miller, class of 1867 and former editor of
the New York Times, donated an unprecedented $1 million to Kimball Union Academy.
And with the help of other alumni, trustees and benefactors, one building after another
would begin to appear on the hilltop.
In the 1960s, the American cultural landscape was changing.
The civil rights era had begun, and along with it came a great social revolution, a
new empowerment for young men and women.
I came to KUA in 1969 from the South Side of Chicago at a particularly tumultuous time
in the history of the United States.
The worlds were light years away when I got there.
But I think from the day I stepped on that campus that everyone who was connected from
the administrative standpoint and the faculty wanted me to succeed.
At Kimball Union, headmaster Frederick E. Carver kept his students insulated from the
unrest.
In 1969, he retired after 17 years of dedicated service.
And as the new headmaster John Cotton took charge, the revolution of the 60s took hold
on the hilltop.
Students sought to have a say in how their school should operate and how they should
live in its dormitories.
They spoke out against policies they felt outdated and they exercised their ability
to protest issues even at the expense of their educational responsibility.
And a controversial war in Vietnam was now sending young Americans off to combat by the
hundreds of thousands.
Vietnam was a personal experience for me.
I lost a few students in Vietnam, students who were in my classroom.
I had one boy who was on my JV basketball team who went off and was killed in battle
in Vietnam and I took it hard.
I still do when I think of the two or three boys that we lost in Vietnam.
As the Vietnam War came to an end, a great transformation began to take root at the academy.
Under the direction of the school's next headmaster, Tom McCoola.
Coming out of the 70s, Kimball Union was primarily looking for stability.
They found in Tom McCoola a real taskmaster.
Someone who understood kids and understood faculty and understood schools and knew what
the school needed to be back on track.
And that is a period of growth for Kimball Union.
Through continuing discussions between students, faculty and former administrators, many long
established and sometimes outdated policies of Kimball Union Academy began to change.
Most importantly, young women were finally permitted to return to the hilltop for the
first time since 1935.
By 1974, 11 girls were attending.
I became a student here at KUA and I was in the first class of boarding girls.
So a tradition that has been long in our family continued with me attending and then now my
two daughters have attended.
We are a very proud KUA family.
I think one of the greatest changes over the past 40 years is diversity.
Most of all, having girls there, what they didn't have when I was there, I think that's
very important.
The international side of the school has just grown fabulously and the ethnic diversity
over the past 15, 20 years.
I think in this world today, without that experience, it's hard to think that you can
get a very solid education if you don't have encounters with people from different parts
of the world.
In the 80s and continuing into the 90s, with Tim Knox at the helm, KUA offered even more
for its students, a campus with additional amenities, brand new courses in computer science
and environmental science, an increased focus on the arts and broader athletic programs.
As you go from the 80s into the 90s, the sports program was radically altered, but we tended
to pull away from that aspect and more emphasis was given to the arts and music.
Tim and his wife Liz were dedicated to bringing the new Flickinger Arts Center to life.
Under Knox's leadership, students with a serious commitment to the arts could participate
in one season of theater or dance instead of athletics.
Despite all the changes, 200 years of celebrated tradition would remain as the solid base of
Kimball Union's foundation.
I think you go all the way back to the very, very, very beginning of this institution,
that it has been a matter of, we are going to present you with challenges.
How you meet those challenges, it's a team approach.
You and I, and I'm going to help you meet those challenges.
You'll never feel alone here.
We teach with our heads, but we also teach with our hearts.
When we had the search for now, Mike, one of the stories I was told when the search
firm came up to interview the students, the first thing the students who were here then
said, don't bring anybody in here who is going to change the culture of the school.
As the Academy prepared to start its third century, the Board of Trustees decided to
look forward to the future, not just celebrate the past.
Together with the new head of school, Mike Schaeffer, in 2009 they launched the Impact
Capital Campaign.
The underlying goal is to give Kimball Union the financial foundation that allows it to
do its next hundred years, and hopefully the next hundred years after that.
I mean, it's as simple as that.
Where is Kimball Union going?
One might want Kimball Union to stay exactly the same, and one might think after 200 years
of history that it should, honoring our traditions and our people and our place.
But Kimball Union can't stand still.
We need to continue to move forward to address changing educational emphases, the way students
are learning, the way students are yearning to learn, or preparing students, not only
for college, but for life and for leadership.
KUA's mission is to prepare young men and young women to be leaders in the world, to
achieve the greatest dreams that they have, and to have them contribute to not only their
own communities, but we hope the world in a broad sense.
And I think that that mission really did start decades and decades ago, and it's continued
today in a different fashion, and I think in many ways an improved fashion.
It's mind-boggling to imagine how a small school in a little village with one blinking
yellow light can reach around the globe.
In this year's class, we have 22 countries represented in the student body.
Of the 5,000 alumni who are still with us, the countries represented, I would have to
imagine, is somewhere in the neighborhood of 70.
How does that happen?
It's amazing.
I think it's something like, yes, it's going to be incredible.
...
...
...
...
I'm going to show you what I'm going to show you.
I'm going to show you what I'm going to show you.
I'm going to show you what I'm going to show you.
I'm going to show you what I'm going to show you.
I'm going to show you what I'm going to show you.
