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EHS The Magazine
The History of Keeping in Touch
Before the days of email, texting, and even the telephone, EHS students kept in touch by mail. Letter-writing was practically an art form and the only way to share and receive news from home. Letters, eagerly anticipated, were read and re-read. Before student mailboxes were introduced in the 1930s, student mail was delivered to the dining hall.
Privacy was unknown, and commentary, such as on a girlfriend’s handwriting, was shared.
Initially, Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone in 1875 had little impact on EHS students’ keeping in touch with friends and family. While Episcopal was reachable by a telephone in the Headmaster’s office beginning in the 1880s, this phone was for official business, not student use. By 1958, the telephone situation had improved marginally, with three telephones located outside the dining hall for the School’s 250 students. An editorial in the Jan. 24, 1958, edition of The Chronicle described waiting in lines up to 40 minutes and 20 students long just to place a call. The editorial called for “… at least one telephone in each dormitory building. Ideally, one on each floor.”
Over time, the students’ voices were heard, and hall phones were installed, initially one per dorm and finally one per dormitory floor. Chair of the Board of Trustees Bailey Patrick ’79 recalls that, despite the telephone in his dorm, opening his box in the mailroom was an important part of his day:
“ …our communication with the outside world was very limited. Typically we had one payphone on each dorm, which rarely was not in use, so our only hope of knowing that we had not been forgotten was through mail. Mom could always be counted on to write frequently even with little to say. Dad was good for the occasional congratulatory or encouraging letter that had been dictated to his secretary and concluded in type – ‘Love, Dad.’ Arriving at an empty mailbox on the way to lunch was a real downer, while arriving to find a letter from your girlfriend would make your day. The students today don’t know how good they’ve got it!”
While the availability of a phone on each floor of his dorm was a significant improvement, Luke David ’93 remembers the lack of privacy. Whoever was walking past a ringing hall phone would answer. Luke remembers the excitement when college coaches called the hall phone to reach one of his teammates.
David wonders if there are drawbacks to today’s hyper-connectivity. “Keeping in touch is easier, so it is less appreciated,” he says. Another downside of electronic communication may be its ephemeral nature. While the EHS archives contain student letters going back as far as 1840, what will remain, years from now, of today’s incorporeal emails, texts, and social media posts?
