The Exeter News and The Ladd School News were newsletters produced by and printed at the Ladd School sporadically between the years 1955 and 1978 coinciding with the tenure of the institution’s second administration.
Apart from the hand-illustrated covers in the newsletter’s first-year run, materially, they are unremarkable, apparently printed on common office-grade stock with the help of a mid-century duplicating machine.
Substantively, however, they’re like a time capsule. At thirty issues spanning seven years, spread across 300 pages, they present a quaint but rich tapestry of compelling minutiae interwoven with historical insights into the daily life and operation of a 20th-century State School.
Highlights include: synopses of training programs and lectures; procedural overviews of the psychology and maintenance departments, the laundry facilities, and records room; news from the sewing room, the academic classroom, hospital, Colony, and boys’ industrial room; employee marriages, condolences, illnesses, and awards; and gossip from each the intuition’s dozen or so buildings. There are historical perspectives, holiday programs, construction announcements, lists of new books in the library, movies at the dormitories, parties for the employees, outings in the community, outbreaks of disease, and fires on the premises - all interspersed with a fascinating collection of aphorisms, proverbs, poems, prayers, stories, and local legends as told by Ladd School employees.
:JRC
Thirty issues of the Ladd School's newsletter
