Textual analysis of the “Per Aspera ad Astra” (through adversity to the stars) letter does not give the full story concerning the bell’s removal, which was precipitated in haste in response to new student demands presented in the wake of the George Floyd incident and while the School’s campus was rather isolated from its larger community by the pandemic…
By a letter dated August 11, 2020, to the Belmont Hill Community under the heading “Per Aspera ad Astra” (through adversity to the stars), Jon Biotti, President of the Board of Trustees, and Greg Schneider, Head of School, announced the removal of the Belmont Hill bell from the campus…
My father recorded the arrival of the Belmont Hill bell (Memories, p. 17):
“It was also in either the second or third year of the school that the big bell near Bolles arrived. Mrs. Atkins arranged to have it shipped…
The Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre, Jr. ‘32, longtime Dean of the National Cathedral (1951-1978) and one of the first recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award (1962), entered the School in 1925.
On the occasion of her 80th birthday in 1940, Mrs. Atkins received from the citizens of Belmont the following tribute (H.A. Claflin, A New England Family.