"Perge sed caute be damned," said Don Roberts when he introduced this year's Father's Dinner speaker. Evelyn Halpert is the first woman ever to address the St. Bernard's fathers and faculty, and she left them all wishing they had daughters to send to the Brearley School, of which she is the head. Excerpts from her speech are printed below.

When Stuart Johnson called to invite me to address this distinguished gathering, my first reaction was to think that there must be some mistake: the St. Bernard's Father's dinner as I remembered it from my sons' early years at the school was an occasion so rooted in traditions of male bonding that even the ladies on the faculty did not begin attending until the early 1970s.

Of course, as the mother of two St. Bernard's Old Boys, my next and most important reaction was to feel honored and delighted to be given this special assignment, since there is no institution of learning--lower, middle, or higher learning--for which Ed and I and our boys feel a greater sense of gratitude or affection.

In fact, our gratitude even predates Ed's and my affection for St. Bernard's since Jimmy was admitted only after he had been rejected--or at least deflected--by three other well-known New York independent schools to which we had foolishly and unsuccessfully tried to consign him before St. Bernard's took us in hand.

First, there had been School A (as I shall refer to it, to avoid even the appearance of special pleading), which turned Jimmy down when he was a mere 2 1/2-year-old. School A was an on-going school with a pre-school program that accepted 3-year-olds and let them stick around for as long as fifteen years, offering us the vision of cradle-to-college security without the need ever to put Jimmy through the whole ghastly admissions process again until he was old enough to vote and to serve in the armed forces. What we overlooked, of course, was that School A offered the identical vision to several thousand other canny New York families, and he received his first well-worded rejection letter.

In our next attempt at school admission it is perhaps more accurate to say we were turned off rather than turned down. This attempt occurred two years later when we applied to School B, a well-known boys' school with a kindergarten. At that time, School B filtered all admissions inquiries through its receptionist, a lady of cultivated diction and imposing authority who explained to me firmly, when I rang up to inquire, that unless I could name several influential members of the School B "Family" to vouch for our respectability and suitability, we shouldn't even think of applying. We didn't.

Instead we waited one more year and applied to School C, another boys' school which offered a 12-year run before college entrance. This time, we thought Jimmy had at least a fighting chance, but he hadn't. The Great New York Teachers' Strike began that September, bringing the independent school alternative to the attention of New York parents as never before, and the one boys' school in New York that every worried parent had heard about that year was School C, where the only son of a famous person had just entered in September.

At this point, however, destiny took charge. Ed and I rang up St. Bernard's, where we received a warm welcome and a tour of that magical little rabbit warren of a building, as it was then, which struck us as the perfect place for a small boy to begin his intellectual, artistic, and athletic career. We were introduced to Mr. Westgate, who seated us under his Balliol oar and told us that he liked to play the cello (an instrument Ed also happens to play) as often as possible at school music assemblies because he played rather badly and thought it was important for the boys to know that you don't have to be a great performing musician to get great pleasure from making music with friends.

That did it: we knew then and there that we were onto a good thing. To our great relief (and great joy) Jimmy was admitted, David was able to follow him three years later and they both went on to be taught by the likes of Mr. Bazarini, Miss Lea, Mrs. Gridley, Mrs. Kennedy, Mr. Savarese, Mr. Bechlof, Mr. Lord, Mr. Millhouse, Mr. Austin, Mr. Caslon, Mr. Westcott, Mr. King-Wood, and, in the first year of his career, Mr. Stuart Johnson. Who could ask for more?

What stands out most vividly from those years? For Ed and for me, the friends our children made at St. Bernard's, and the friends we made among their teachers and their friends' parents. For me, as a teacher of girls, the difference between the way girls learn and boys learn at an early age. I came to realize that there really is a substantial difference, and that it makes coeducation a less satisfactory and less successful option for many boys and girls at the elementary level than separate schooling.

For David, our linguist and journalist, the gift of writing and the fun of playing with words, to which he was first and most memorably introduced at the tender age of six by Rosemary Lea. For Jimmy, our civil rights lawyer and one-time teacher of French history, the French language, and (in English) the art of public speaking, first learned in presenting the alligator and later polished in countless game reports recording the exploits of St. Bernard's athletes on the playing field.

For both boys, making music and reading Shakespeare. For David, aged twelve and thirteen, studying classical Greek with Denis Caslon. Years later, after adding Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Mandarin, and some German and Serbian to the Latin and French he had begun at St. Bernard's, he went on to study Japanese as well and discovered that of all of his languages Greek was the one that was most valuable to him, not because there is any link between ancient Greek and modern Japanese but because the two languages have grammatical structures so complex that a knowledge of one makes the other more accessible and less daunting from the start.

But of all the marvelous experiences our boys had at St. Bernard's, the one that stands out most memorably in our minds is probably Jimmy's ninth grade year. The ninth grade at St. Bernard's had only been going for a few years when Jimmy and a large group of his classmates decided to stay. It was one of the best decisions he ever made: that year of growing up, taking on new challenges and a new kind of independence, exploring New York, singing and even dancing (after a fashion) as a cowboy in a production of Oklahoma at Chapin (thanks to the interschool program), studying Italian at Spence (under the same auspices), playing squash on 86th Street and sitting at the feet of some of the best teachers he has ever known, in the company of close friends who will remain good friends for the rest of their lives, made it a truly extraordinary year--far more exciting and far more rewarding than anything Jimmy was to run into again before college.

Beyond that, I believe that all things being equal, most fourteen-year-olds, whether girls or boys, are better off at home than away, and many fourteen-year-olds who go away to school too early also go to pieces, in a variety of ways. So do many fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, from my observation (and my sons'), so I can only rejoice in the trend I see emerging at St. Bernard's, as at other New York schools, toward staying at home, and in the city, for those formative years.

And since this occasion really is a bully pulpit, I hope I may be forgiven for using it to put in a good word for New York--this extraordinary, complex, exhausting, cosmopolitan city we live in--as one of the greatest educational environments in which to bring up a son or daughter.

We all hear more than enough about the troubled state of our cities, and New York is surely no exception to the general rule. But it is almost unique in that here the center does still hold, and the inner city in which we live and work and send our children to school is still economically vital, residentially viable, and educationally and culturally magnificent. What other city has museums or concerts or opera or theater to hold a candle to New York? Where else can high school students attend lectures or take courses at an array of renowned university programs like the ones which open their doors to interested students here in this city? Where else can an aspiring young scientist find laboratory jobs and professional encouragement on a level that is routinely offered to students in New York? Of course, New York has big problems, but so do many smaller communities which offer none of the richness and glory we find on our doorsteps.

Stuart Johnson and I recently returned from a conference addressed to the question of "The Real World: Do We Need It or Want It?" As we went off to hear this weighty question discussed, it struck me that need it or want it, we live in the real world, and our children will live in it in future years. If we want them to be able to cope with a world of gritty reality, complexity and change, the best preparation we can give them is not to close them off in ivory towers but to help deepen their understanding of the intricate reality around them so that it will be comprehensible to them as they grow up, and so they will be able to put their education to work to make it a better place.

I returned from the conference Stuart and I attended to find a letter waiting for me from a friend who runs a great school in London, and who had written, after a visit to New York, about the challenges of running a school in a great and difficult city: "They are legion, are they not," the letter concluded, "but so are the great pleasures and satisfactions of being in touch with so much useful intelligence and aspiration. We are very lucky!" We are all very lucky, those of us who run schools and those of us whose children have enjoyed the great privilege of attending a school which raises their sights, expands their horizons, and gives them the skills, the discipline and the useful knowledge to match their intelligence and aspirations. Thank you for inviting me back to celebrate that good fortune with you.

Evelyn J. Halpert

No. 4, Fall 1990, page 6