Taft's Third

To tell one New England prep school from another is "sometimes terribly difficult," says Taft's Headmaster Paul F. Cruikshank. But the name of his small (360 boys) school--an ivied Gothic campus in Watertown, Conn.--is hardly forgettable. It evokes the massive figure of President William Howard Taft, whose slimmer brother, Horace Button Taft, founded the school in 1890. A score of other Tafts* have since passed through; but these days another name makes Taft just as memorable--Cruikshank.

Yaleman Cruikshank, who succeeded the founder in 1936, had himself started another school near by after a teaching stint at Hopkins and The Gunnery. But the Taft job looked better: a no-frills school stressing math, Latin, plain hard work, with Taft family money to keep it improving. In Cruikshank's years, this formula has educated more than 2,000 boys, most of them rock-ribbed Republicans, though Taftmen also include such fugitive Democrats as New York City's Mayor Robert F. Wagner. Academically Yale-feeding Taft is as solid as ever, with 40% of its boys taking advanced placement college courses. It is rich enough (endowment: nearly $2,500,000) to have a first-rate faculty, an indoor hockey rink and a new $650,000 science center, and to give scholarship aid to 25% of its boys. This week Headmaster Cruikshank, 64, announced his successor: 34-year-old John Gushing Esty Jr., a Deerfield alumnus who went to Amherst ('50) and is now associate dean there. As for Cruikshank, he says with a straight face that his retirement plan is "to operate a gas station in a remote part of Idaho where there isn't much business."

* Including the late Senator Robert A., Diplomat William H. Ill, Lawyer Charles P., and freshman Congressman Robert Jr.

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