Heely Scholars Study Lawrenceville’s World War I History

What was it like to be a Lawrentian during World War I? To be Lower School boy, watching Fifth Formers head off to fight in Europe? Or to be on the front lines yourself in France? Earlier this summer, Lawrenceville Heely Scholars explored the Stephan Archives to find out.

Heely Scholars are rising Fifth Formers who have demonstrated keen interest and ability in the study of American history. This year’s topic—Lawrenceville during World War I—allows the Scholars to place the history of the School into the context of an era defined by both a global war and a pandemic. 

Ashley Cohen, Kate Feiner, Zoha Khan, Arthur Li, Victor Park, Dylan Pinkins, Michael Sotirescu, and Angel Zhang are the 2021 participants, led by history teacher Anne Louise Smit. They will continue their studies and independent research in an advanced research seminar. Their work will be shared with the School community at the end of fall term.

Students had a wealth of historical resources to choose from, from yearbooks to literary magazines to one of the true gems of the Archives: Percival Chandler Norris’ personal collection of letters, postcards, photographs, and newspaper clippings concerning his students. Norris, a former Latin and mathematics teacher, compiled these resources into monthly “War Letters,” which he shared with Lawrentians in the service.

The letters gave Sotirescu ’22 an entirely different perspective on the War. “It was just a historical event to me; it felt very distant, because my only experience with it was learning about it in a classroom. Upon reading the letters in the archives, World War I became much more tangible. I became engrossed in the stories and backgrounds of Lawrentians who served. Being a Lawrenceville student in modern times lends an interesting perspective while reading about the experiences of Lawrentians 100 years ago,” he said.

The unfiltered letters provide surprising insights. “A lot of Lawrenceville students described their service as ‘monotonous’ or ‘boring.’ One specific quote that stood out to me was from a letter from Lawrenceville student Joseph Samuel Young (Class of 1915) to Norris written in September of 1917, where Young writes, ‘Monotony is feared more than bullets by the average soldier,’ recalled Khan.

Others were more poignant, as Li noted, saying. “I was blessed to read a very sad account of a soldier’s experience while he worked in an ambulance unit in France. His descriptions of wounded soldiers evoked waves of emotion from within me, moving me to such a point that I was slightly expecting to see a few tears roll down my face.”

The letters also reveal some campus history. Cohen was moved to learn Thomas House is named for Gerald Provost Thomas (Class of 1915), a lieutenant in the U.S. Seventh Aero Squad. In August 25, 1918 letter to his parents, Thomas wrote to his parents, “I am not afraid to die, but life is so full of many beautiful things that I have neither seen or experienced and there are all of you so dear to me, that I want to see you and be with you again. I want the opportunity to show you my appreciation for everything that you have done for me, and I want to live as I have never lived before. That is why I am going to fight my hardest and use all the skill that I possess to bring me out of it safely, both for your sake and my own.” Thomas, who had hoped to attend Princeton, was killed in battle less than a month later.

“I think that the study of history can sometimes feel distant and disconnected from the present - we recall the series of events but forget that real people lived through them,” said Cohen. “Reading the letters in the Archives gave me a more human perspective on World War I and Lawrenceville's history. I realized that the Lawrentians away at war were students just like we are today.”

The Scholars will pursue individual area of research interest in the fall seminar. Zhang, for example, said the archival materials “really solidified my perception of Lawrenceville at the time to be an institution for the upper class and a true preparatory school for college; this was especially prominent when I read through the student files of the Lawrentians.” She will now look to primary documents from other schools to see if wartime climate was similar.

Park will concentrate on the effects of new technology used in the War. “I was shocked to see the number of Lawrentians who lost their lives as a result of an aviation accident or the new shells prevalent in World War I,” he said.

Sotirescu was intrigued that so many Lawrentians expressed hatred for Germany in their letters to Norris. “[My] next step will be researching the ways in which the boys came to have these thoughts— what exactly motivated them to go to war?” he said.  

Li chose to focus “on the presence— or rather, near-absence —of anti-war sentiments, dissent, and pacifism at Lawrenceville during the War.” He said his work as a Heely Scholar was “enticing” for two reasons. “Working with primary sources is an invaluable, underappreciated experience. For instance, in the same way that looking at photos of the Washington Monument isn’t the same as taking elevators to its top, reading historians’ secondary work, no matter how comprehensive it is, can never be the same as examining media or artifacts from any given historical period. The other main reason was that being a Lawrentian myself gave far more meaning to the prospect of working with archival material about past students, many of whom would’ve been my own age when they went to war.”  

For additional information, please contact Lisa M. Gillard Hanson, director of Public Relations, at lgillard@lawrenceville.org.