Frederick. W. Chesson                                           File: SJART.HTM 
Waterbury, CT  06710                              		Cpr FWC 1994,95 
         
         
         
                    THE RISE AND FALL of SAINT JAMES SCHOOL
				     or
                          "Good Intentions Gone Awry"       
 
     In this era of troubled youth, fragmented family life and paralyzed 
public education, many concerned parents are searching, if not grasping 
frantically, for any port in today's educational storms.  Any school 
offering "Traditional/Conservative Values" seems worth looking into....   
     Back in 1955, when the Rock Era was little more than the discordant 
thump of "Rock Around the Clock," anxious parents were also seeking schools
that could motivate an indifferent or sullen Johnny into a college-bound 
academic winner. That year, the pages of the prestigious Porter Sargent 
Private School Directory listed a new possibility: Saint James School, 
in the quiet little town of Berlin, Connecticut, some ten miles south of 
Hartford. 
     The announcement offered moderate rates and almost full-time involvement  
for the reluctant learner over a wide grade range:  
 
     Boys, 7-15, Grades 1-9, $1,500 Boarding & $450 Day.  Faculty 12.  
     "For the student not performing according to his known potential."  
     Math, Science, History, French, Music, Latin, Religion, Dancing.  
     Summer School at Camp Leo. Tutoring. Roman Catholic. Established 
     1936. Leonard W. Francis, BE, Yale, Headmaster. 
 
     Not mentioned then were certain other aspects of student life at Saint 
James, which, by the spring of 1961, would have one parent declaring....    
     "Why, Mr. Francis even shows us the hairbrush he uses...!"  
      So stated the mother of a student, one of a dozen parents who had 
gathered at a home on Sunday, April 16th, 1961.  They were expressing  
support for headmaster-founder Leonard Francis. He had just been arrested 
for using excessive corporal punishment against numerous pupils at his now 
seven-year-old boarding school, and would soon face additional charges. 
      Her affirmation of the headmaster's disciplinary philosophy was 
seconded by a former Marine from New York City, who succinctly stated: 
"Stern discipline and a good licking once in a while never hurt any healthy 
boy!"  Interestingly, his own son may well have triggered the disciplinary 
upsurge, two years previously.... 
       
     The personality inspiring these sentiments was a native of nearby 
Southington. Leonard W. Francis (1918-1992) was a descendent of Robert 
Francis (1629-1705) an early resident of Wethersfield.  His extended family 
included many carpenters and house-builders, and his late father, Harry B. 
Francis, had once been the town's leading electrical contractor.   
     The 1936 Southington High School Class Book shows young Leonard as a 
very serious seventeen-year-old, 11th in class rank. The school Debating 
Team seems to have been his sole activity, hinting at a most litigious 
future in years to come. Youth Service, as a vocation, came early, as he 
led a Western outing for local boys while still in school. Ahead, however, 
lay World War II and an illness-plagued duty with the 35th Sea Bees in 
the fever-ridden Russell Islands. Evacuation to Guadalcanal was followed by 
a protracted convalescence in New Zealand. Here, he may well have been 
influenced by the small nation's "More British than the British" ethic,
with long-held conservative attitudes, including youth education.
     Mustered out in mid-1944, he entered Yale's Timothy Dwight College 
to study electrical engineering, but soon was pursuing a Master's Degree
in Education. By his own admission in one of his many courtroom actions,
he admitted that he had not completed the required thesis. Nevertheless,  
in 1945, he managed to acquire a vacant Boy Scout camp on Manning Lake, 
New Hampshire. By chance, the nearest town was Gilmanton, which, a decade 
later, would be home to author Grace Metalious of "Peyton Place" fame.  
He also organized Cub Scout Pack No. 24 at Saint Joseph's Church in New 
Haven. Fr. Keating, the popular pastor, named the new camp after Leo XIII, 
a late-19th Century Papal social reformer, and soon the Leo Foundation 
was incorporated as a tax-exempt operating entity. 

			The Camp Leo Connection 

     Camp Leo opened in July, 1946, with Pack 24 as its cadre. The first 
catalog, designed to give the impression of a well-established institution, 
was replete with photos appropriated from other camps, plus a largely non-
existent staff roster.  Subsequent editions claimed a 1912 origin, based 
upon the original Scout camp's founding, a long-continuing deception.  
.

.
	In the Camp Leo Catalog for circa 1948, three boys are shown busy
at shop-craft projects. Not only are the campers posed, but the lad at the 
old lathe is handicapped by the apparent lack of any motive power, as the
lathe's pulleys are barren of any driving belts!
.
     Despite an initial heavy turnover in staff, campers and operating goals  
(as seen through early catalogs and news letters) there was soon a large, if
mainly New York Area, clientele.  1951 enrollment reached 144, with a staff 
of two dozen, mostly Brothers and seminarians. Amenities included horse-back 
riding, travel to Canadian shrines, nightly movies, plus float-plane and 
speed-boat rides for the well-behaved. 
     From the start, Camp Leo was marked by such academic trappings as 
dress uniforms, (navy-blue cheviot shorts and knee-socks, with English 
school caps) heavy tutoring, weekly report cards, daily Mass and religious 
education, plus military-type ceremonies with white-glove cabin inspections 
and a Camp Police Force. Corporal punishment was also featured, later to 
be carried over to St. James School. 
     "While Leo's official colors were yellow and blue," one former camper
explained, "I soon found out that black and blue were more to the point. 
Much in vogue was a ping-pong paddle, applied sandpaper-side down to bare 
bottoms, the culprit being held down firmly across Mr. Francis' lap." 
     Gary, who spent most of the 1960s at Camp Leo, recalled his first trip
on the vintage Flexible bus from New York City, Francis at the wheel. 
     "LWF made an immediate impression on us. About an hour into the trip,
he called one of the kids to the front, slapped him and made him kneel 
next to him until we got to St. James School, where others joined us. 
The last year I was there, he caused a stampede of our horses prior to an
outting to Weirs Beach, when he fired a pistol several times in the air as 
a signal to the kids to board the bus. It took me quite a while to round up 
all those spooked horses. He often had run-ins with older campers, especially 
around 1964. It was more good luck than good management that someone didn't 
get killed, as the kids were always working with heavy machinery. That summer
we were to go to Mt. Washington. The old bus was out of commission, so he had 
boards bolted across the back of the dump truck and about 30 of us sat in the 
back with nothing to hang onto. All the trips seemed hap-hazzard, with roll 
calls rarely if ever taken."

     John, a young camper of 7 or 8 recalled having a small skin rash below 
his left knee.  "Francis instructed me to go down to the shower room located 
in the basement of the office and wait for him.  He came down and told me to 
undress, including my underwear.  Even as a young boy I thought it strange.  
He then commenced to clean the impetigo wound while I was totally bare.  
Very telling behavior for a person when my injury could have been treated 
while still wearing shorts."
     No doubt the Director would have claimed that he was looking for other
signs of the contagious infection....

     Bobby, aged 12, was at Camp Leo as a preliminary to attending St. James.
He complained home about unduely short shorts and even skimpier bathing suits.
When questioned by his mother, Francis declared that he was out of uniforms
in Bobby's size. Things came to a head when, after one confrontation with LWF,
he received a belting with his own leather belt. Bobby's cabin mates teased 
that a lot worse would happen once he got to school.  If their plan was to
also frighten away a potential St. James student, they were successful, as
Bobby finished his primary education in a local parochial school.
     Another camper recalled Francis' "Badge of Office" being a long switch, 
which he regularly carried about camp. "If you were sent out to cut a new one, 
you knew you were in for Big Trouble." 

     Such "Physically-Oriented Discipline" may have been necessary, as some 
of the boys were delinquents, whom Francis had personally chosen to "turn 
around," through "Camperships."   
     One veteran camper recalled helping frisk an especially rough crowd of 
New York City kids. "We took away switch-blades, brass knuckles...even zip 
guns." He remarked that the prohibition on knives led to the slow death of 
a favorite riding horse when it strangled on its bridle during an over-night 
trek. "We had to dig a big grave by hand to bury the poor thing...." 
     This "tough bunch" ethic was openly flaunted in the Official Camp Song: 
   
     "We're the Boys of Camp Leo, you hear so much about.   
      The ladies hide their pocket-books, whenever we go out!   
      We're noted for dishonesty in every thing we do.   
      All of the people hate us, and we know you'll hate us, too!"   
   
     Ironically, the defiant verse would one day come to typify the St. 
James School student body, as well. 
 
     Despite the stresses of camp management, Francis soon was operating
subsidized off-season tours to Williamsburgh, Florida, Canada and Bermuda 
for both campers and friends.  For these events, all boys wore the Camp Leo 
short pants dress uniform, plus monogrammed jackets over dress shirts and 
neckties. This English School facade may have resulted from his New Zealand
sojourn as a model for Post-War American youth. He also visited Europe and 
England, receiving a rosary at a Papal Audience.
     He often expounded in Camp Leo newsletters on the advantages of an
"unhurried boyhood," typified by the "shorts-to-knickers-to-long trousers"
ethic of his own day. Perhaps he saw this affectation as a counter to the 
forced-draft maturity imposed on his own generation during The Great 
Depression and World War Two. 
     How Francis supported himself all this time is unknown.  Presumably, 
his electrical engineering training at Yale could have furnished a living, 
if not a career. Only once, though, in 1949, did the Southington City 
Directory list him as an "Engineering Consultant." Other income sources 
mentioned were from a patent on aluminum ladders and heavy subsidizing 
by his mother, Maryellen Jordan Francis.
    By 1951, over two dozen scholarships had been made for campers to 
attend private schools, the majority to Cheshire Academy, where Francis 
had taken a college preparatory course in late 1936.  The school's long-
time headmaster, Arthur N. Sheriff, was honored with his portrait in Camp 
Leo's 1951 catalog. 
     In early 1952, plans to open a school at Camp Leo that fall were 
announced in the May edition of the Camp Leo News. Boys in Grades 6-10 
would be accomodated, with operations supervised by the Catholic University 
of America. The effort was premature, however, due mainly to a lack of 
winterized quarters.   
     But then, just two years later, the very-long-term goal was realized.  
It came in the form of the sudden demise of a once-flourishing boarding school
in Berlin, only a few miles east of the Francis family home in Southington. 

   			A SCHOOL DIES AND IS REBORN 
     
     In April of 1954, the Merricourt School on Hudson Street had been in 
quiet existence for almost 25 years. Founded in 1920 by former a missionary 
couple, it offered a home-like environment for children too young to 
accompany their evangelistic parents into primitive and often dangerous 
territory. Over the years, it branched out to include a local kindergarten 
and general boarders, aged three to thirteen years old. Among the latter
was the late William Gaddis, author of such noted works as "Carpenter's
Gothic" and "J.R." The growing school had, in fact, just enjoyed its first 
graduation.
     But now, "Father" Marsden E. Whitford, head-master and owner since 
1948, was facing some twenty charges of sexual assault on his young male 
pupils. Accusations included his transportation of boys into New York State 
"for gross immoral purposes." He was also suspect of similar crimes in Ohio 
and Rhode Island, and had renounced an Episcopal Church ordination in 
Illinois due to "the consequences of his problem."   
     On April 29, 1954, Whitford pled guilty to three charges, at least 
having the decency to spare his young victims from the further trauma of 
testifying. He was at once sentenced to State Prison in nearby Wethersfield
for a term of 6 to 12 years. 
 
      Hence, when Merricourt reopened in September, 1954, it was as Saint 
James School. Through his Leo Foundation, Leonard Francis had purchased 
it for $124,000 in July. The new name cae from St. James' RC Church in 
Stratford, home of the foundation's vice-president and main fund raiser. 
It also suggested an English "Public School" ethic, replete with Camp Leo's 
already British traditions of: An all-male student body, uniforms with short 
pants and corporal punishment. 
     As most of the fifty boarders and some of the dozen day students were 
also Camp Leo veterans, presumably they were already acclimated to Francis'
regime, and knew what disciplinary routines lay ahead.
     Thus, it was time for School To Open....