My father, a very serious mechanical engineer, decided in the early 1960’s, as I was entering my high school years, that I needed some professional educators to get my attention and stop what he called my “scorching around” when it came to my studies. He found what he viewed as just the place—an all-boys Jesuit college preparatory school in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts called Cranwell.
In 1939, two newly ordained Jesuit priests opened the school, a former and present estate and golf course, to some 200 young men and a dedicated faculty of Jesuits and laypersons. One of those two founders, Rev. Hubert Cunniff (aka “Herb”), an old-school priest from suburban Boston who was born in 1908, got and held my rapt attention until I graduated in 1965. I can still see him today, wearing an old-fashioned Roman collar, rimless glasses, and jauntily walking every square inch of the 800-acre campus—seemingly everywhere at once, maintaining his—and the school’s—standards of behavior. But, as it turned out, he also impressed the sons of mostly wealthy Catholic families who attended, of the importance of empathy. But, first and always, he was the judge, jury, and executioner.
Standards of behavior (e.g., no smoking, imbibing alcohol, scatological language), mandatory attendance (classes, meals, three hours of daily study hall, Saturday classes, compulsory athletics, daily mass, and an annual retreat at the nearby seminary Shadowbrook), dress (jackets and ties—no khakis aka “karkies” allowed and weather-appropriate wear (e.g., galoshes when it rained and gloves and jackets in the Berkshire chill). Everyone took their turn waiting on tables—serving their classmates food and cleaning up the male mess. One was not free to leave until Fr. Herb approved of one’s clean-up efforts. Grace before and after meals was heralded by the command “Face Mecca”—the huge crucifix high above us.
The school rules were not suggestions—they were mandatory and contained in a compilation called the “C Book,” which spelled out offenses and demerits for each. Each day, a list of those with demerits was posted prominently. A few examples: 35 demerits and loss of two days’ vacation for smoking; 10 demerits for missing any requirement or disrespect; and 2 demerits for being late. Demerits had to be worked off at the rate of 2 ½ per hour under the watchful eye of Fr. Herb during what was called “Jug” from the Latin “jugum”—to be burdened, which included raking leaves, shoveling snow, and other campus clean-up. If your name appeared on the Jug list, you appeared, or you collected 10 demerits for your absence. And, not to ignore the academic angle, if one’s demerits remained unworked at the end of the week, for whatever reason (e.g., inhospitable weather), one had to learn vocabulary words (20) for 2 hours rather than attending the weekly movie. I remember to this day my “Jug” vocabulary friends that appeared on the verbal SAT exams. I was not a regular Jug attendee—I had one 6-week session of “indefinite Jug”—raking, shoveling, and vocabulary words six days a week until Fr. Herb decided I had enough. More of that during Fr. Herb’s empathy discussion below.
Fr. Herb’s efforts to detect rule violations were legendary, with sometimes serious consequences. To enforce the anti-alcohol rules, he was known to meet the post-vacation trains from NYC to Pittsfield and discover any students who possessed or had consumed alcohol. For those who had, the punishment was expulsion. On the other end of the spectrum, in the dining hall, he was known to enforce table manners by calling out Latin expressions: “non licet civilare in monastero” (no whistling in the refectory) and “frange panem, manibus non dentibus” (break your bread with your hands not your teeth).
Notwithstanding Fr. Herb’s relentless catching and punishing rule violators, there were events that amazed me and others. During my freshman year, our Latin teacher/cross country coach’s (Fr. Borgo) mother died in nearby Pittsfield. On the evening before her funeral, we went to her wake. Fr. Herb herded us onto a bus—after inspecting our dress—pressed, clean shirt, tie, jacket, and polished shoes and a run-through of what to say to family members in the line and how to react to the open casket—a first such experience for many of us. The funeral home was packed.
After Fr. Herb led the group in praying the Rosary, he spoke from the heart about how Margaret Borgo, the decedent, had helped Cranwell feed its students during the war ration years, delivering Crisco and other food stuffs obtained from her connections in the large Italian American community. His warmth, humanity, and tears from someone I knew as the Prefect of Discipline with his demerit pad left me with my mouth literally hanging open. Rather, he was the consummate Jesuit preaching good deeds. There were few dry eyes in the house after he spoke. It dawned on me why he held the position he did in the community.
My other later experiences with him also left me speechless. In the summer of 1964, he joined a tour of central Europe led by the school’s Austrian Jesuit and a group of students, including myself, who were going to give our German skills the acid test. As part of the summer at the Gymnasium, we visited two camps which had been the site of Nazi atrocities during WWII. What we saw left us—the 16-year-old participants—upset and able to express our horror and disbelief only with great difficulty. His empathy for the victims of the camps we saw was palpable and helped us find a voice for our disbelief in what human beings had done to other human beings.
The trip overflowed with object lessons—we spent an afternoon with Kurt Schuschnigg, Austria’s Chancellor during the Anschluss in 1938, in which Austria was handed over to the Nazis—some thought by him. The discussions were all “auf deutsch” and horrible for us. Father Herb spoke not a word of German. But his outrage knew no bounds when Herr Schuschnigg repeatedly blamed Hitler for everything that happened in those awful years. Father Herb urged each of us to ask Schuschnigg why he, who had attended a Jesuit boarding Gymnasium like Cranwell, had not done more to prevent the Nazi take-over.
On Fr. Herb's 50th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, a celebration was held at Holy Cross, my alma mater. While Cranwell had long since closed, many of the school’s alumni attended that day. Fr Herb's jaunty walk to the altar was, as Yogi Berra said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”
In the reception line after Mass, we all wore name tags. When I got to the head of the line, he studied my name tag and said, “Morrison! I did business with you.” I agreed and reminded him of my offense back in 1962, for which I served 6 weeks of Indefinite Jug. My offense was to write and post a poem, in perfect iambic pentameter, using each faculty member’s nickname—the headmaster was “Janus” because, in my 15-year-old mind, I thought that he was two-faced—especially when he would read our grades in the presence of the whole class in study hall each quarter. Father Herb smiled at the memory of the poem. “I remember thinking that it was well done, and 6 weeks of Jug was enough.” And “As I told you then, I had to punish you for the immaturity, but it was a serious piece of work.” His nickname in the poem was “Herb”—an expression of affection as I look back.
