Part I: How the Merger Came to Be

The 1960s and ’70s were a turbulent time in our nation’s history in terms of social change. In particular, traditional roles of gender were questioned, and one arena in which this struggle was played was education. As Banning Repplier, President of the DPH Board of Trustees at the time of the merger, pointed out, “Education was experiencing major changes, but most of these simply reflected the changes that society itself was undergoing, including different perceptions of male/female roles and relationships.”

Private single-sex schools such as Hopkins Grammar School and Day Prospect Hill were forced to reexamine their assumptions about the virtues of single-sex education in the face of growing cultural and economic factors that began to weigh in favor of what was referred to then as coeducation. The economic factors included the need to continue to attract strong student applicants when “the secondary-school generation was no longer willing to accept the validity of reasons once offered for all-male or all-female schools,” according to Repplier. In addition, both schools at the time were looking to expand their physical plant and programs, and a merger promised to aid in that process. “Day Prospect Hill needed space, and Hopkins needed diversification,” felt Shirley Krug ’40 DAY, who served as DPH Director of Admissions during the merger.

Different metaphors have been offered to describe the merger. Lisa DeAngelis ’73, one of the first graduates of the mixed school, described it as a birthing: “It was a difficult time, but like any birthing, the final result seemed to diminish the pain.”

A SLOW MARCH TOWARD MERGING

Tentative steps toward cooperation had begun earlier in the 1960s. A joint drama production of The Winslow Boy was put on in 1967. A DPH senior took German at Hopkins in 1968. The Hopkins Grammar Student Council planned a student exchange program with DPH in 1969–70.

In 1969, the two heads of school began informal discussions about other ways of cooperation, and several other joint committees of trustees and faculty emerged over the coming years to examine various aspects of working together. But after several alternatives were explored and ultimately abandoned, it wasn’t until the fall of 1971 when the merger took its first strides forward.

In September of that year, Hopkins set seventeen conditions for a merger with Day Prospect Hill. Despite some tense moments of negotiation, the Hopkins Committee of Trustees eventually voted in November 1971 to approve the merger contingent upon the sale of the DPH campus. On February 17, 1972, the Hopkins Committee of Trustees voted to approve the merger of the two schools, and on February 29, 1972, the DPH Board followed suit.

The first meeting of the joint Board of Trustees was held on March 13, 1972, where Louis Martz of Hopkins was elected to be President. Allen Sherk, the Headmaster of Hopkins Grammar School, was to be the first Headmaster of the new school, dubbed “Hopkins Grammar Day Prospect Hill School” (the School began referring to itself as “Hopkins School” in 1990). In September 1972, the School opened with a new, hastily constructed building named the Day Prospect Hill Building to house the Junior School, and a student body of 200 “ladies” and 367 “gentlemen.”

“TUMULTUOUS” FIRST YEAR

In her recollection of the first year of the merger, the Student Council President in 1973, Lisa DeAngelis, described it as a “tumultuous” time:


The struggles played out over issues such as the structure of the student government, the DPH class ring ceremony, caps and gowns versus white dresses for graduation, access to athletic facilities, and the names of student organizations. An HGS student, Philip Mancini ’73, recalled his experiences working on the yearbook. It was decided at the beginning that the book would have a new name altogether different from either of its predecessors, but “[t]he real battle came over the dedication and how it was to be decided. In the end, it was decided not to decide, and there was no dedication in our first yearbook.” For the boys, Mancini recalled, “[t]he year began full of optimism and anticipation... It was a year of much confusion brought on by a sudden influx of the opposite sex... Friendships, romances, and alliances took shape quickly...”

LEGACY OF THE MERGER

As time passed, more and more individuals in the school community understood the benefits of the merger. When the tenth anniversary of coeducation at Hopkins Grammar Day Prospect Hill (HGDPH) rolled around, many were caught off guard. From the perspective of a Hopkins Grammar School alumnus, teacher, and Director of Admissions at HGDPH, Dana Blanchard ’63 HGS, the controversy about the merger seemed “like a puff of smoke.” After ten years, the merger appeared as “the only natural thing that could have happened.” In that period, beginning with DeAngelis in 1973, three girls had been elected to serve as Student Council President. By 1989, the first woman headed the Hopkins Committee of Trustees, Noreen Haffner.

The administration of the school underwent a new invigoration. The concept of a working Board of Trustees with specified terms was a legacy of DPH brought over to the new school, as was the understanding of the value of a full-time fundraiser, hired by HGDPH in 1974. DPH’s Mary Brewster Thompson Scholar Award continued to be the highest academic honor the combined school granted (and still grants), and the DPH trophy for sportsmanship became and remains a testament to the strength and values of the girls schools. DPH faculty member beginning in 1960 and then HGDPH faculty member Heidi Dawidoff reflected after twenty years of coeducation that perhaps the two programs that benefited to the greatest degree by the introduction of coeducation were the arts and athletics. Since both became required at the new school, many stereotypes were challenged. She wrote in 1992 about new opportunities for boys in what had traditionally been regarded as the “feminine” province of the arts, while in athletics, “[b]oys don’t have to be and girls comfortably can be hot-shot athletes.” Dawidoff wrote elsewhere:

---

Our coverage in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the merger of Hopkins Grammar and Day Prospect Hill Schools continues in Part II: In Their Own Words - A Look Back

This article was originally printed in the 2023 Issue 1 edition of Views from the Hill.