Family Affair

The new trick in picking prep-school headmasters seemed to be to find a chip off an old block. Milton Academy had chosen Arthur B. Perry, nephew of Exeter's retired Lewis Perry. Last week two more prep schools elected young men of name and family:

P: The Rev. Seymour St. John, 35, nephew of Yale's President Charles Seymour and son of Choate Headmaster George C. St. John, succeeded his father.

P: Shaun Kelly Jr., 33, nephew of Groton's Headmaster John Crocker, was appointed headmaster of Virginia's Woodberry Forest School.

Both the new headmasters are practicing partisans of the kind of muscular Christianity for which the independent schools have long been famed. St. John prepped at Choate (six St. Johns have taught there), played hockey for Yale, was ordained an Episcopal priest, served as a Navy lieutenant commander (civil affairs) in Europe. He returned to Choate to take up "teaching and preaching."

Kelly, a "Grottie" like his uncle, was captain of the 1935 Harvard football team, studied at Oxford, taught history, football and Bible at Exeter, was a communications officer in the Navy. Modest Headmaster-elect Kelly doesn't feel he is ready for his new job. He plans to take next year off, to attend Harvard's Graduate School of Education--and learn how to be a headmaster.

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