Lucinda's Arsenal

Lucinda's Arsena

In the crowded ballroom of St. Louis' Statler Hotel one day last week, a heavyset, greying woman rose at the speakers' table, eyed her luncheon audience ap-praisingly through horn-rimmed glasses and began: "You're not going to like anything I say, but I don't care, so long as you listen."

Then for 20 minutes Dr. Lucinda de Leftwich Templin, fiftyish, principal of Radford School for Girls in El Paso, Tex., waggled her finger and told St. Louis Rotarians what was wrong with U.S. parents and education. According to Dr. Templin, too many parents "pass the buck. Fathers alibi too much . . . take the path of least resistance, are too indulgent . . . lack integrity, brag at home about business deals, even though those deals have a tint of shadiness to them . . . It shows up in the children, who view ethical wrong as getting caught, ethical goodness as getting by." Parents let religious education slide, "teach about Caesar in the home . . . but not enough about Paul."

Concluded brisk Lucinda Templin: "Character is the glue that holds society together. It has been allowed to dry out. We'll come unstuck right quick if we don't do something about it." Her audience listened and liked it.

Light Fires. To document her position, Dr. Templin could call on the experience of 22 successful years as principal of Radford School. Missouri-born-and-raised, she got her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Missouri. In 1927, when she took charge of what was then the El Paso School for Girls, it had an enrollment of 74, a 14-teacher faculty and a $45,000 mortgage. Today Radford (twelve grades) rates as one of the best girls' boarding schools in the Southwest, has a limited enrollment of 150 students, 23 on the faculty and a $500,000 endowment.

Last year Dr. Templin decided to spend a few weeks in barnstorming each year, trying to light fires under "parents with alibis," by telling them about the educational ideas that had worked for Radford.

"Any moron can spend money," scolds Dr. Templin, "but it takes brains and ingenuity to get along without it." Parents of Radford girls, many of them wealthy Texans, are asked to give their daughters only $1 a week for "diversion money." The girls are required to keep their own checking accounts at the school bank from fifth grade on, are marked for proficiency in keeping track of where the money goes. Dr. Templin has no patience with parents who prefer their daughters to "marry a white-collar moron instead of an intelligent well-paid artisan." Homemaking has first priority; girls begin learning to sew in the third grade, to cook in the fifth. "I don't see how any boy has the nerve to get married today on what the average girl expects," says Dr. Templin. "A large number of our appalling divorces result from the wife's failure in homemaking."

Especially Taxi Drivers. Next on Radford's priority list come good manners: "Today's geography and science may become useless tomorrow but good manners are always an asset."

Intellectual training, third on the list, is no cut & dried affair. Radford teachers on vacations and sabbaticals are advised by Dr. Templin to travel and "get new ideas, new enthusiasms" instead of taking graduate courses. "You can learn from anybody," contends Dr. Templin, "especially taxi drivers."

To stir students' imaginations she has assembled her own Templin-type museum, ranging from Napoleonic memorabilia to 300 autographed photographs of contemporary world figures and a flag which flew over General MacArthur's headquarters in the Philippines.

Visitors to Radford find a bristling array of German, American, Japanese and Italian artillery directed at them from the school lawn. The miniature arsenal is meant to "teach the future mother what war means."

Rough & Ready. With Radford parents. Dr. Templin can be rough & ready. An invitation to luncheon with the headmistress is tantamount to a command, and Texas fathers usually "come out meek as Moses" (as Dr. Templin says) to get a periodical going-over. One father who was annoyed because she had corrected his daughter's table manners got a typical Templin snapper: "Your daughter is the only girl I have ever seen who butters her bread with her thumb, and I won't have it."

Last week Dr. Templin sent out the last barrage of her latest tour, which had covered service clubs from Conshohocken, Pa. to Harvey, 111. As she prepared to put up her guns and go back to Radford, she hoped that a few of her shots had hit and that "some fathers" might go home and "do something about it."

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