Legends & Legacies
Aspen Country Day School 1976 graduation: Helen Bonzi, Sarah Hoyt, Annie Kruckman, Stephanie Shellman with Edgar Stern presenting diplomas. Photo Courtesy Aspen Historical Society-Aspen Times collection
Reaching the 50-year milestone for ACDS elicits many perspectives from present and former students and families, and from the community in general. My time there spanned a quarter of those years, the early ones. One of the valuable components of a silver anniversary is to step back from the day-to-day, or for a school the annual school year cycle, to look back and reflect on institutional memory.
The location of the school has helped shape its personality. In the early years there was a love-hate relationship to the site. The campus donated by R.O. Anderson to the Music Festival in 1965 was a good location for practicing musicians whose hours of practicing scales in town raise local ire. But having a school out of town ( at that time) meant students couldn’t walk or bike to school made the choice to send children there more complicated. (solved later by having a bus).