Free Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child by Noel Riley Fitch Page B

Tam’s 2,600-foot peak. There were fall and spring outings to the beaches (Bolinas, Stinson, Newhall) for swimming, marshmallow roasts, and beach parties, a Halloween party, and Field Day at Seminary Field for competing on Mr. Youngman’s horses. Before Christmas each girl carried her lighted candle through the orchard and up the hill to carol under the lights of the giant central cedar tree. There was the Senior Dance (canceled her senior year because of a mumps outbreak), for which Miss Branson had to approve each gown, and Play Week, and May Revels, with strings of flowers and a maypole.
    Play Week brought all classes to a halt for a week of creative expression and hard work. The play was chosen in early spring, complete with tryouts for the roles, and lines memorized, and a professional drama coach brought in. Everyone served on at least one committee that built sets or wrote programs and invitations, acted or prompted. Because of her height, Julia always played the man or the fish, she remembered, and when as “John Sayle” she had to embrace the leading lady in Pomander Walk , everyone got the giggles, until the final performance for trustees and parents. She also starred in Michael, the Sword Eater and in The Piper . The final plays for the spring of 1930 were Dickon Goes to the Fair and The Admirable Crichton .
    During her senior year, after mumps canceled both the Senior Dance and the spring holiday, Julia took a memorable trip to San Francisco with Roxane Ruhl. When the ferry landed at Fisherman’s Wharf, they had artichokes with hollandaise sauce and cinnamon toast oozing in butter. At the City of Paris shop they bought lipstick and Prince Matchabelli perfume (“We thought we were so elegant,” she remembers). On Market Street at the army-navy store they bought white sailor pants, a daring adventure in an era when neither girls nor women wore slacks. “We wore them with great glee during vacations,” said Roxane. “I suspect the other Branson girls our age were more interested in attracting boys than being like boys.”
    At her graduation under the cedar tree, Julia garnered all the awards: captain of the Blue Bonnets, captain of the basketball team, Vagabond Chief, member of the track and swimming teams, jumping center, and president of the student council. Not surprisingly she was voted unanimously for the White Beret—the highest honor that can fall to a resident girl. When at graduation they brought out the School Cup for presentation to the “School’s First Citizen,” no one was surprised when she was called forward. Miss Branson had the last words on record: with her standard of perfection, she thought Julia’s academic work was “moderately good,” but her “genuineness” was “excellent.” Then she listed Julia’s assets: “integrity of mind and heart, joyousness of spirit, kindliness, refreshing naivete, understanding, generosity—a thoroughly lovable and perfectly delightful girl.”
    Though Babe Hall was convinced that she and Julia were sent to girls’ schools so that they would become more feminine, Julia had attended a private liberal arts school because it was a tradition in the Weston family to be sent to boarding schools. She gained self-confidence, learned leadership skills, and was not distracted by the presence of boys. A recent Mount Holyoke College study shows that girls are overlooked and undervalued in most coeducational classes, especially in math and science. Years later, as if to justify her private high school, Julia noted that “girls’ academic achievement at fourteen or fifteen drops drastically when they discover boys.”
    It was not surprising either, in the tradition of her family and the girls of KBS, therefore, that she would plan to attend Smith College, where both her mother and her father’s sister Annie were alumnae. Nearly all the KBS girls went to college, either directly or after another year of study or European travel. Julia would go to Smith,