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About NMH Northfield
Seminary alumni return to say goodbye
Saturday, September 10, 2005
By JANET BOND, The Recorder
NORTHFIELD — Marge Fields Bruno did not want to talk to a
reporter about why she had come up from Florida for “Celebrate
Northfield.”
“It’s too sad,” said the tiny, white-haired, 1939 graduate of
the Northfield Seminary for Girls.
Bruno was talking about the consolidation of Northfield Mount
Hermon School’s two campuses into one, the Mount Hermon campus
in Gill. In September, the students began their first year at
NMH on the Gill campus. Friday, 175 alumni gathered for a formal
transition through the weekend — a transition that will include
alumni carrying the torch from the Northfield campus to the Gill
campus.
Bruno, 85, was the most senior of the alumni gathered for the
series of talks and activities to celebrate the school that was
started in 1879 by D.L. Moody as a school for girls, intended to
give them an education of heart, mind and hand that they would
not otherwise have access to.
Moody started the Mount Hermon School for Boys in 1881, with
the same purpose in mind.
Bruno’s family lived in Windsor, Vt., but they were
“depression people,” she said.
“My Girl Scout leader made the arrangements for me to go to
Northfield,” recalled Bruno. Her family had no money to pay for
a high class education for her.
“Northfield started my life,” said the nurse, who went on to
study at the Vassar Hospital School of Nurses before joining the
Army Corps to become a nurse in Normandy during World War II.
“They accepted me as a poor student and gave me a future,”
Bruno said before the next speaker continued the celebration.
Karen Falb’s review of the architecture of the Northfield
campus began with a reference to the Victorian Renaissance man,
John Ruskin, who said that “two strong conquerors of the
forgetfulness of men … (are) poetry and architecture.”
With that, Falb began a review of the architectural roots of
the Northfield campus, which took her as far east as Japan and
to the early churches of Europe.
Like the best of research, Falb’s pointed out how much was
not known of the school’s origins.
That vacuum is being remedied by a gift from several alumni
to make a “cultural inventory” of the school’s assets. The
Pioneer Valley Planning Commission has been hired to begin the
work of the “cultural landscape inventory.”
You can reach Janet Bond at: jbond@recorder.com or (413)
772-0261 Ext. 263
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