An Educational Pioneer by Elsa “Midge” Bowman ’51

In 1945 my grandmother offered to send me to the Helen Bush School. I arrived at the front door in late August, a skinny little twelve-year-old with thick glasses and a love of reading. The wooden buildings looked a little like barracks (it had been Lakeside School initially) and there was a sign with the school’s name stuck rather haphazardly in the grass by the sidewalk. I was ushered into a small classroom and given a test. Before I left, they told me I was admitted and where to get a school uniform.

Mr. and Mrs. Bush ran the school, he as the business manager and she as the academic head. Mrs. Bush had a low, throaty voice—quite beautiful, really. She seemed uninterested in what she wore. All I remember were the perennial dark blue dresses, much like the one she wears in the picture by Walter Isaacs. Mr. Bush’s office at the end of the front hall smelled of cigar smoke, spicing the otherwise female atmosphere of the place.

At my young age, I didn’t realize Helen Taylor Bush was an educational pioneer, a student of John Dewey and experiential education. She believed in global travel, math and science for women, and the importance of the arts. She also believed that students should be apprentices and work with actual artists, writers, dancers, scientists, linguists, poets, actors, and athletes.

My first Bush Christmas program made an indelible impression. The gym had been transformed into a glorious medieval manor house with “stained glass” windows of cellophane and the smell of evergreen boughs and garlands everywhere. The whole school participated. As a Seventh Grade student, my part was in a dance choreographed by Miss King. The beauty of the pageantry was impressive to my small person, but even more important was the awe of seeing the whole school: faculty, students, and parents sharing this experience. It gave me a new sense of family and of how intertwined our lives had become. 

In 1948 Commencement was held in the gym, and we suddenly realized the seriousness of Mrs. Bush’s health as she was carried onto the stage. A diagnosis of advanced cancer had forced her retirement the year before, yet with great effort, she returned to give one last address to students, parents, and faculty. Ana Kinkaid, a Bush parent, wrote the following reminiscence:

“Too weak to walk in the graduation procession, she had to be carried into the gym and rested on a chaise lounge on the side of the stage. Mrs. Bush waited as others spoke, then gathered her strength and went slowly to the podium. At first her voice was shaky. But as she continued, her strength returned. She spoke without notes of what had motivated her through the years: an unfailing belief in the great ability of children.

As she continued to speak, many people there realized they were not listening to a farewell speech but an impassioned plea to believe in education as a beginning, a starting point from which to discover the wonder of life. Students who were present that day recall, ‘It just poured out of her. I remember being inspired. I can still hear her voice.’”

I too remember that day, not knowing that I would one day follow in her footsteps as Head of School. 

Note: This excerpt can be found in the Bush online Archive, in Elsa “Midge”  Bowman’s memoir, “In Action Faithful and In Honor Clear.”