Excerpt from UNREQUITED TIME, James McCurrach

Excerpt from UNREQUITED TIME, James McCurrach

Jim finally overstepped the boundaries on the bus ride home for the Thanksgiving break in 1977. He brazenly lit up a marijuana cigarette in full view of a bus full of students in the middle of the day. Totally foolish, of course, but also unnecessary in that within only a few hours he would have been out of the school jurisdiction and in the safety of his own home. Leniency wasn't going to work in to this instance- especially since he had already had several warning related to circumstantial situations. This time he had gone too far and was terminated from Berkshire.


...Whatever, young James now required even more serious attention since Berkshire had become ancient history. I was ashamed of him as well as myself.. I needed to get Jim relocated as quickly as possible without, hopefully, making wrong move. Eventually, I heeded the advice of some experienced educational people and we later settled on the Hyde School located in remote part of the state of Maine. This turned out to be a bad mistake although it made sense at the time as it had a good scholarly reputation combined with a stern discipline program. It was actually more like boot camp and in my later judgment it was more discipline than anything. Certainly, Jim needed strong hand but Hyde School went too far... The Hyde school at the time had a reputation for straightening out the miscreants and with drugs becoming more and more widespread, any school with a strong disciplinary program was attracting genuine interest.

Unfortunately, my oldest son lasted less than month at Hyde. I realized much too late that the school discipline was too extreme as it bordered more on hazing and physical punishment. Seniors and the student governing board of the school were the groups in charge while the faculty largely turned a blind eye to any mistreatment. Jim protested to me early on but I largely ignored his pleas hoping to avoid any further problems. I largely put the onus on him, emphasizing that he needed to redeem himself in my mind. There were also logistic considerations as the Hyde location was much further away than Berkshire. I was certainly at least partially guilty of using the school as a dumping ground and not very receptive to hearing bad news. Not a very constructive plan of action and eventually James gave up and actually ran away from school. Not only highly irregular but also it gave rise to it case of a 24-hour period of near panic. A call from the school one spring morning informed me that Jim was nowhere to be found. He had gone missing from the breakfast roll call and nobody could remember seeing him after the evening bed check. Police had been alerted but so far he had not turned up. In the end, a whole day and night went by before he called... As he explained it, he had just fallen asleep near the side of the road after hitchhiking as far as the Main/New Hampshire border. He had left school only as a last resort because he could no longer tolerate the excessive physical treatment.