Headmasters

Mount Hermon. "Who killed Elliott Speer?" was just as baffling a question last week as it was on the evening when a fatal volley of buckshot spattered through the study window of the headmaster of the Mount Hermon School for Boys (TIME, Sept. 24). Police of Northfield, Mass., had scoured every foot of the campus. A local judge had held a secret, ten-day inquest, examined 63 witnesses, only to report that young Headmaster Speer had died by the hand of "a person unknown." Last week Mount Hermon's trustees got down to the business of picking as new headmaster a close friend of Mr. Speer. David Richard Porter. A onetime Bowdoin footballer. David Porter first won fame by catching a Harvard kickoff behind his own goal line, running it back 107 yards for a touchdown. Athletic and youngish at 52, he is an active Y. M. C. A. worker, author of several religious books. First and most popular thing he did last autumn, after Mr. Speer called him to Mount Hermon as head of the Bible Department, was to enter the student-faculty tennis tournament, win every match. His educational creed: "Much of our secondary and college education has become efficient without being sufficient. The refreshingly new techniques of our day are never complete for the challenging world's life unless informed and kindled by the goals, the discipline and the resources of a vital Christian faith."

Peddie's longtime Headmaster Roger Williams Swetland died of ripe old age last autumn. In 36 years he had covered the campus at Hightstown, N. J., with new buildings, made his school the pride of U. S. Baptists and a major feeder for Princeton. Last week Peddie, too, got a religious, athletic new headmaster in the Rev. Wilbour E. Saunders, Secretary of the Rochester (N. Y.) Federation of Churches, onetime pastor of Brooklyn's Marcy Avenue Baptist Church. Peddie trustees knew they were choosing a man whose study at Cambridge had given him a strong enthusiasm for the atmosphere and methods of the English public schools.

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