After much discussion, we the members of the male student body of St. Stephen's School would request the permission to wear clean Levis to school. Our reasons being that they are much neater and easier to keep clean; some of us have had laundry trouble with our kahki pants." Signed by 53 male students in 1951, founding Headmaster William Brewster accepted the petition, signed it, and dutifully filed it. The boys eventually won the right to wear clean Levis, but stories differ about the change. The petition is dated, even quaint, but the process is not. For almost five decades St. Stephen's Episcopal School has been a place where students have asserted their individualism and independence among adults who take their academic, athletic, and spiritual struggles seriously.

History tells us who we are and how we came to be. As part of the two-year celebration of the school's 50th anniversary, seniors in the St. Stephen's Oral History Project are bringing their study of history close to home by focusing on the early decades of the school's development. In the winter and fall of 2000 students enrolled in this project-based course read scholarly articles about oral history, its merits and its drawbacks as a source. Before conducting interviews students do research on the school in the Becker Library Archives, become familiar with the cultural and social history of the fifties and sixties, practice interviewing, and talk informally with veteran teachers and staff. Each student conducts interviews and writes a paper on a specific aspect of the school's early history. Selected interviews are transcribed and posted on this web site. All interviews are held by the Becker Library on the St. Stephen's campus. The students are also sharing their research with English teacher and playwright Clay Nichols who has been commissioned to write a play about the school's early years. Nichols' play will premiere during Reunion and Parent's Weekend, October 20-21, 2000.

Founding               Transcripts         More About the Project