Alumni Network

It was hot in Rome that summer. The War (back then there was only one that didn't have to be referenced by name) had ended a year earlier and Europe was still in the early stages of recovery. Homeless people, covered in tarps, were living in Roman ruins, and a carton of cigarettes, purchased at the Army PX for stateside prices, was exchangeable for a Leica camera. I was seven and, as an only child, sorely in need of friends.

Though I was only vaguely aware of it, I was also in need of a school. There were, of course, Italian schools but I did not yet speak the language and my experience with one of those a few months earlier had been, as they say, "difficult," resulting in my being home-schooled, with marginal success, by my mother.

As luck would have it, though, my parents had experience in creating a school from scratch, having participated in the founding of the Downtown Community School in Manhattan three years prior. And the United States Army, still very much a presence in war torn Italy, was in temporary possession of a sports stadium.

The Foro Mussolini (soon, for some reason, to be renamed "Italico") was an ideal location for an instant, do-it-yourself school. Built to host the ill-fated 1940 Olympic games, the campus included, in addition to what amounted to a well-appointed adult-sized playground and swimming pool, an administrative building, a section of which the Army handed over to be used as classrooms. 

And so teachers were hired, materials purchased, and in just a few months a school was conceived, brought into the world, and set in operation. There were a few peculiarities. No one could be found to run the school, so for that first year my mother, absent any relevant educational background, served as Principal – a circumstance received by me with equal parts astonishment and dismay. Some of the textbooks, having been donated by the Army, were a bit unusual as well. I distinctly recall one that taught me to read while also attempting to teach me how and when to use a gas mask.

The sojourn at the Foro Mussolini lasted just one year. In the summer of 1947 another scramble ensued and eventually space was found at the Villa Torlonia, on the Via Nomentana. (The ubiquitous Mussolini re-emerged: the classes were actually located in a small villa that had served as the residence of his mistress a few years before.)

My memories of AOSR (it was just "OSR" when I was there, there being no reason to distinguish it from other "overseas" schools) are, I'm sorry to say, few and fragmented. I do recall as one of the highlights of that first year one of my classmates coming to school with a live round of ammunition which he claimed to have found on the playground. Needless to say, we were all chagrined when the teacher confiscated it. That "playground," by the way, was huge and surrounded by marble statues of athletes, all of whom seemed to bear a remarkable resemblance to Benito himself, competing in various track and field events. 

Coincident with the move to the Villa Torlonia, the school hired a professional Principal, who memorably instituted an administrative structure modeled on British feudalism, complete with an elaborate hierarchy of responsibilities, rewards and punishments. Every student was assigned to one of four positions, ranging from Serf to Knight, and given a badge of a specific color depicting his or her rank. These roles came with special privileges and duties, and the key to the system was that through one's behavior one could move up or down in the hierarchy. Looking back on it, this system seems absurdly strict and regimented but at the time, for me at least, it seems to have worked. I recall being demoted from Knight to Herald for some minor infraction and as a consequence being forbidden to take out sports equipment during recess. I don't recall whether I ever got back my exalted rank.

Did I actually learn anything at the school? I must have, but there's a funny thing about learning – after you've done it you don't remember having done it. Today, in my eighties and after 22 years of formal education, I know lots of things; how and where I acquired that knowledge is, more often than not, a mystery. I do recall two memorable learning experiences, however, that I associate with those years in Rome. Somewhere along the way I learned the difference between the contraction "it's" and the possessive pronoun "its" and when to use each. At another juncture, and perhaps less usefully, I seem to have memorized a description of the Mediterranean climate ("Warm Wet Winters With Westerly Winds").

I'm sure there was more – never mind, I have fond memories of my time at The School (I left in 1950) and am ever so proud and happy to see what it has become!