eventually did become the best baseball player at the school. Pursuing this goal with the same fierce, single-minded determination he had demonstrated in making the boomerang, he practiced every spare moment. “If I could not get anybody to play with me, I’d throw a tennis ball up against the side of a building. Or I’d spend hours and hours heaving rocks at telephone poles to perfect my arm, so that I could become captain of that baseball team. . . . I did develop a deadly aim and great speed with a baseball and had a high batting average. So, in spite of my awkwardness, I became Number One man on the baseball field. The pitcher was the hero in those days. I became pitcher, and I finally made captain.”
The school was Burr and Burton Seminary, in Manchester, Vermont, and when Bill started there in 1909, a new world opened for him. Established in 1829 as a training school for ministers, Burr and Burton quickly became a coeducational institution for general education. The semiprivate academy still serves as the main high school for the Manchester-Dorset area. The main building, with its load-bearing walls of thick gray limestone, was already more than 75 years old when Bill attended the school, and is still in service.
Bill traveled from East Dorset to Manchester by train, boarded at school five days a week, and went home for weekends. As one of Bill’s classmates remembered, Bill “had to hike [about two miles] to Burr and Burton from the station. That was a jaunt. The kids won’t do it nowadays.’’
Manchester, just south of East Dorset on the Rutland Railroad, had long been a fashionable resort town; its famous Equinox House could rival similar grand hotels in Saratoga or Newport. Manchester is built on the foothills of Mount Equinox and is still known for its marble sidewalks and streets shaded with stately maples and elms. Summer tourists have been coming to Manchester ever since the post-Civil War era. They have included Mrs. Abraham Lincoln and later her son Robert Todd Lincoln, who established his summer home, Hildene, there. One of Manchester’s two country clubs is the elegant Ekwanok Country Club; its 1899 founders included the fathers of Lois Burnham and Ebby T., two important people in Bill’s life.
Ebby T. was the son of a family that had been prominent in Albany for three generations and kept a summer home in Manchester. He and Bill first met in 1911, when Bill played ball in Manchester. Later, Ebby was a classmate of Bill’s for one season at Burr and Burton. Their friendship was a significant one for Bill and for Ebby.
Bill’s years at Burr and Burton were happy and successful. Popular with his schoolmates, he was elected president of the senior class. He was fullback on the football team, and became the school’s best punter and drop kicker. He was first violin in the orchestra. His academic record was good, and he was proving that he could be Number One in almost anything he set his mind to.
A few items from the Manchester Journal of that period: April 18, 1912 — “Shakespeare in Manchester — Pleasing rendition of ‘As You Like It’ by students of Burr and Burton. The audience surely showed their appreciation of the singing of William Wilson, appearing as Jaques.”
April 25, 1912 — “Gymnasium Exhibit at Burr and Burton Seminary — The fourth number was the high jumping by the boys. The top mark was set by William Wilson, followed by Derwin and Bennett. Wilson’s mark was four feet and six inches.”
May 9, 1912 — “Burr and Burton Seminary Notes — On Wednesday last, as announced, Burr and Burton played Proctor, and was defeated 4 to 0. The game was a good one, being a pitchers’ battle, Eskaline having 15 strikeouts and Wilson 14. The pitcher whom the Burr and Burton boys faced was the hardest one they will meet this year.’’
May 16, 1912 — “Burr and Burton Seminary Notes — On Saturday the Seminary team played Bennington High at that village and suffered defeat, its worst one so far this season. The score was 13 to 1 for the home team. Wilson pitched his worst game of the season and his support the poorest yet displayed by the team. The poor pitching was due to a lame arm and was a misfortune rather than a fault.”1
Bill’s life now had everything — except romance. “At this juncture, despite my homely face and awkward figure,2 one of the girls at the seminary took an interest in me,” he recalled. “They had been very slow to do that when I first appeared, and I had a terrific inferiority respecting the gals. But now came the minister’s daughter, and I suddenly found myself ecstatically in love.
“Well, you see, at this period, now that I am in love, I am fully compensated on all these primary instinctual drives. I have all the prestige there is to have in school. I excel — indeed, I’m Number One where I choose to be. Consequently, I am emotionally secure; my grandfather is my protector and is generous with my spending money; and now, I love and am loved completely for the first time in my life. Therefore, I am deliriously happy and am a success according to my own specifications.’’
The girl was Bertha Bamford, daughter of Manchester’s Episcopal minister. A beautiful, popular girl, Bertha was senior class treasurer at Burr and Burton and president of the Y.W.C.A. As Bill remembered, Bertha “made a profound influence on everyone.” It was a mutual love, and Bertha’s parents also liked Bill and welcomed him in their home. Bertha made the summer and early fall of 1912 one of the happiest, most ecstatic periods in Bill’s life.
Then came a blow as cruel and unexpected as the separation of his parents. On the morning of November 19, a Tuesday, Bill hurried into chapel and took his place with the other students. Bertha was away in New York City with her family. There was nothing to prepare him for what was to come:
“The principal of the school came in and announced with a very grave face that Bertha, the minister’s daughter and my beloved, had died suddenly and unexpectedly the night before. It was simply a cataclysm of such anguish as I’ve since had but two or three times. It eventuated in what was called an old-fashioned nervous breakdown, which meant, I now realize, a tremendous depression.”
Bertha’s death was reported in the Manchester Journal on Thursday, November 21: “The many friends of the Rev. and Mrs. W. H. Bamford of this village learned with great sorrow on Tuesday morning of the death of their daughter, Miss Bertha
D. Bamford, following an operation at the Flower Hospital in New York City. The removal of a tumor was successful, but the young lady died during the night from internal hemorrhage. Her untimely death at the early age of 18 has thrown the school into mourning. The funeral will be held at Zion Church on Friday afternoon at two-thirty, and the remains will be placed in the receiving vault, to be taken on to Jeffersonville, Ind., Mrs. Bamford’s home, for interment.”
The details of the funeral were reported in the Journal a week later: “The funeral of Miss Bertha Bamford was held from Zion Episcopal Church Friday afternoon. The remains were placed in the vault at Center Cemetery. The ceremony was particularly impressive because of the attendance in a body and the marching to the cemetery of more than 70 students of Burr and Burton Seminary. The bearers were Principal James Brooks and W. H. Shaw of the Seminary faculty, William Wilson and Roger Perkins of the senior class, of which Miss Bamford was a member, and Clifford Wilson and John Jackson.”
The loss of Bertha marked the beginning of what Bill remembered as a three-year depression, the second such period in his life. “Interest in everything except the fiddle collapsed. No athletics, no schoolwork done, no attention to anyone. I was utterly, deeply, and compulsively miserable, convinced that my whole life had utterly collapsed.” His depression over Bertha’s death went far beyond normal human grief. “The healthy kid would have felt badly, but he would never have sunk so deep or stayed submerged for so long,” Bill later commented.
With the onset of depression, his academic performance dropped. “The upshot was that I failed German and, for that reason, could not graduate. Here I was, president of my senior class . . . and they wouldn’t give me a diploma! My mother arrived,
