I moved to Aspen in the summer of 1958, and that fall began second grade.
My childhood and schooling were idyllic, but my mother had always told me that when ninth grade came around, I was heading “back east” to boarding school, to be, as she put it, “polished.” When I reached that scary age, I came to Colorado Rocky Mountain School (CRMS) for an interview with Wells Kerr, who had been the dean of Exeter, one of the most prestigious Eastern boarding schools. He was a Shakespearean scholar and had been John Holden’s teacher at Exeter. Ironically, Wells had expelled John from Exeter, but when the Holdens started CRMS, John so respected Wells that he hired him as a faculty member in 1959, at the age of 75.
Wells Kerr, born in 1895, was just shy of 80 when he invited my mother and me into his apartment for our interview. I spoke with Wells for a bit, and then he sent me off with John Holden to tour the school. John knew I had a horse, so he showed me the stables and talked about the riding program. As we walked into the tack shed, there was a pack rat insouciantly running into the back room. John grabbed a .22 caliber rifle in the corner and took a quick shot at the rat. We then went back to the main house, and I was assigned to a work crew. Our crew climbed into the back of the green truck and headed up to Pizzatti Peak, which was the CRMS ski area, just this side of Spring Gulch. We grabbed clippers and scythes and climbed the ski hill, working for a couple of hours cutting and cropping the bushes and grass. Twenty students and me, grooming our own ski hill with its one rope tow.
I came back for dinner with my mother and Wells, and was asked to be a waiter (all dinners were sit-down). After dinner, I donned a waterproof apron and washed dishes. Then we shook hands with Wells, thanked him, and said goodbye. On the way home, my mother asked me what I thought, and then said, “How would you like to go to CRMS instead?” The next fall, my mother, my horse, and I arrived at CRMS. Leaving home in 1965 was frightening — on the heels of a presidential assassination, with two more assassinations to take place while I was a student there. It was scary and unsettling to witness the unfolding corruption of the Vietnam War, and to watch the explosion of the civil rights movement on small, grainy, black-and-white TV screens.
My father, a bomber pilot in WWII, loved a quote by the novelist Nikos Kazantzakis, “We are soldiers reporting to our commanding officer on a mortal mission — to live life honorably.” He tucked this notion away, knowing that, amid life’s ups and downs, this simple mantra could tether him to decency and sanity. As a teenager at CRMS, I began to appreciate my father’s sensibilities, and Wells Kerr became my answer to what it might look like to live a life tethered to decency, to idealism.
Our mortal mission at CRMS was fleshed out in Wells Kerr’s Shakespeare class, where the full spectrum of humanity was put on vivid display. Wells used to say that if you want to learn about who you are, and who you might want to be, read Shakespeare. Wells’ personal integrity and warmth allowed him to look into our adolescent eyes and see courageous souls struggling honorably for decency and dignity. On my first Spring Trip, we piled into the back of the green truck, burrowing into nests amongst all the packs for the long drive to Canyonlands. Dinner that night was cooked by students, and when it was finally served, hungry students rushed to the front of the line. Wells stood and waited until all the students had been served before getting his plate of dinner. And I noticed. I told myself that evening that I wanted to be like Wells, the teacher who persuaded my mother to send me to CRMS.
Hopefully, we all have people in our lives like Wells Kerr: people who offer a warm, quiet humanity for us to follow. Decency is a small word that suggests so much more, a perfect mantra reminding me to thank Wells daily and to remember that decency, wedded to kindness and mercy, is the source of true power. This predisposition to decency, if not the cure, is our north star through these scary times: a brilliant, ever-reliable beacon that our self-serving leaders can’t see. Infused with the disease of greed, they voraciously steal, with a diabolical disregard for decency, fairness, or moral constraints. Their cynicism bewilders the human spirit. Yet the power of decency is being piqued by their thuggish behavior and will rise … Shakespeare and Wells Kerr told me so.
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
– “The Merchant of Venice,” Shakespeare
Wells died in 1976, beloved by his entire community and generations of students and colleagues. On his page in the CRMS yearbook, students sent him off with a bit of Hamlet, “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince.”