RE Log Spring 2018

which have served to preserve both. “The creed of yesteryear will enable the school to maintain its tradition of excellence through whatever crises may lie ahead,” Anderson wrote in a letter includ- ed in a book celebrating Ransom Everglades’ 75th anniversary in 1978. It was that creed that guided Anderson as he helped lead the school through near-bankruptcy after World War II. That creed pushed him to travel to the Adirondack campus before it was closed to personally dig up the old photos that now highlight the school’s extensive archives. And it helped him steer his fellow board members through the turbulent ’60s and ’70s that saw the sailing program and Pagoda threatened. “He doesn’t brag as some people might. He doesn’t toot his own horn. His agenda is not Harry Anderson,” said Eric Buermann ’69 , a former president of the RE Board of Trustees. “He approaches everything in a very quiet manner. He does things in a very gentlemanly reserved, behind-the-scenes way. “I think that is why Harry is very respected and beloved. It’s not the Harry Anderson show. It’s about his deep love for the school. Whenever the school needs him, he is there.” Schoolboy days at the Adirondack-Florida School Anderson hailed from a family of means and stature. He took pride in being a second cousin, five times removed, of Aaron Burr. Arthur Curtiss James, a great yachtsman and railroad specula- tor who was one of the world’s wealthiest men in the 1920s, was another cousin. Anderson’s great-grandfather married into the family of John D. Rockefeller’s brother William, claiming a stake in the Standard Oil fortune. Born in Manhattan, Anderson grew up in Roslyn, N.Y. His father, Henry Hill Anderson ’11 , a Yale graduate, second- generation sailor and third-generation lawyer, attended Ransom Everglades – then called the Adirondack-Florida School – as did Harry’s two brothers. As a student at the migratory school with its summer campus near Saranac Lake, N.Y. and winter campus in Coconut Grove, Fla., Harry Anderson thrived. In his last year, he received the school’s most coveted academic prize: the Medal for Scholarship. “I knew I couldn’t compete with him so I decided to make my own path,” said his brother David Anderson ’41 . “He was a highly disciplined, bright student – he modeled himself after my father.” Harry Anderson served as an editor of the Hickory Log maga- zine. Having learned to sail from his father, he helped the sailing team to its first ever appearance in an interscholastic champion- ship. His conduct and grades were always sufficient to earn him weekend cruises on the school’s schooner. “There was much more freedom at the AFS than at comparable schools,” said Anderson, “since groups of students could wander off campus many miles on fishing or hunting trips, canoe and camp overnight, cruise to the Keys or sail over to Key Biscayne and trek to the ocean side for skinny-dipping.” He still recalls the details of the over- night sailing excursions, when he and his classmates would drop anchor on their way to the Keys. “We’d chase whip rays and harpoon them,” he said. “They give quite a surface fight… You had to learn teamwork. You learned a lot of skills.” Anderson remembers classes of a half- dozen students or fewer, demanding lessons and heavy discipline. His Latin teacher Paul Abbott captured the rigor of the curriculum at that time. “If you stumbled in your delivery,” Anderson said, “he’d throw an eraser at you. Or a piece of chalk.” 8 Ransom Everglades LOG FALL 2016