A Landmark Change Recognized

My grandfather came into this world in 1903 amid an unusually cool New York summer, the same one that gave us Yankees icon Lou Gehrig. Bill Ramsden lived a life long enough to have overlapped that of current Pittsburgh Pirates’ rookie sensation Paul Skenes, the 22-year-old who was the starting pitcher for the National League in this summer’s All-Star Game. They shared this earth for exactly three months.

As you might imagine, Bill witnessed extraordinary change in his lifetime, and he enjoyed talking about it. I never considered him particularly progressive, but I understand now that his longevity granted him the perspective to see innovation and social breakthroughs through the lens of time, and he almost always embraced change. Bill’s mind was never governed by the tyranny of tradition. Sure, he could wax nostalgic about his youth – he was always a good-time guy – but as the stories wound down, he would sometimes become pensive for a moment before rejoining the present: “They call them the good old days … well, they can have ’em!” he’d declare. “These are the good old days.” The way Bill saw it, time and a general bent toward progress had conspired to correct a great many errors over his long lifetime.

I’m quite sure, then, that he would’ve enjoyed a seat at the ceremony in May when Lawrenceville dedicated the Battle-Fitzgerald Atrium, named for Lawrenceville’s first two Black students — Lyals Battle ’67 and Darrell Fitzgerald ’68 — inside the new Tsai Field House. I had previously considered what these two men faced as young teenagers in the fall of 1964 as they navigated their uncertain futures, but I’m not sure I fully appreciated the weight of the past that each brought to the Circle. “From my perspective, failure to graduate would’ve not only let down my parents, who were so proud to see me come here,” Lyals gravely recalled, “but also my ancestors, including the slaves who had toiled long and hard in the cotton and rice fields of America under the cruelest form of slavery known to man. I was determined not to let any of them down.”

I will never forget those words. The crushing weight of that responsibility, carried on the shoulders of a child, is beyond my imagination. But here he was, along with the one Lawrentian who could truly relate, sixty years later, surrounded by cherished classmates from those days, to receive an acknowledgment of their bravery and perseverance. Lyals and Darrell survived and thrived. “Lawrenceville changed my life forever,” Darrell explained, “and we in turn changed Lawrenceville forever.”

All the best,

Sean Ramsden
Editor
sramsden@lawrenceville.org