EDITOR'S LETTER

editor's LETTER Jimmy Stewart, Sandra Day O'Connor, Ronald Reagan ...

I could feel the presence of those who'd been there before me. And the significance of the place in which I was standing. I wasn't apprehensive, but as I settled in behind the understated lectern, that song from Sesame Street kept playing in my head. One of these things is not like the others. What's worse, I had to follow a brilliant quintet from Vietnam. Like nightingales or summer tanagers, their melodies filled every hollow space in the midcentury memorial chapel.

The singers were students at the Orme School, where I'd been invited to be the keynote speaker at vespers. The school, like this magazine, is almost a hundred years old. Its history overlaps ours, and through the years, we've published dozens of stories about it. I'd always been intrigued by those stories, and by the tales I'd heard from friends who'd attended the illustrious school. But I'd never been. So, when Landy Douglass, the dean of faculty, reached out, I immediately said yes. Like a shy boy being asked to prom.

I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon.

The dirt road to the main gate is only a few miles long, but, if you'll let it, it'll take you back to another time. To the late 19th century, when George Whitson showed up, sank some roots and established the Quarter Circle V Bar Ranch, which is nourished by Ash Creek and sheltered by a canopy of massive walnut trees and cottonwoods. The same trees were there in 1929, when Charles and Minna Orme purchased the ranch.

They'd been farmers in the Salt River Valley - on the site of what is now the Phoenix Country Club - but they were tired of the heat, and wanted a more temperate place to raise their children: Charlie, Mort and Kathryn. The ranch, located at an elevation of 3,875 feet, gave them frost on the pumpkins and all the other dividends of four seasons. What it didn't have was easy access to a good school. Or any school. The closest option was in Mayer, a 12-mile footslog through a rangeland that even determined Herefords found rude and uninviting.

"Now what?" Minna said to Charles. Or Charles said to Minna. The answer was simple. If they couldn't send their children to a good teacher, they'd bring a good teacher to their children. Her name was Mrs. Maders. She lived in Dewey, but stayed on the ranch during the week. The county supplied the books and a $10 per student stipend that made up Mrs. Maders' modest salary. In addition to the Orme children, the children of Juan Almanza, the ranch foreman, attended the school. Like all good ideas, this one took off, and it wasn't long before some of the Ormes' old classmates from Stanford, look-ing to send their own kids off to boarding school, asked if the ranch could accommodate a few more. The Ormes opened their arms, and by the 1950s, enrollment had increased to 35 boys and girls who studied hard and worked hard - they all had chores to do.

The students came from all over, and some came with marquee surnames. Steven Bogart, the son of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, was among them. One weekend, as the story goes, he'd invited his parents to the ranch for a barbecue, but his mother, thinking it was casual, packed only shorts. To ease Steven's embarrassment, the Ormes loaned the actress a cotton skirt so that she wouldn't feel out of place.

There were other celebrity students, including the granddaughter of J. Paul Getty and the children of Mary Tyler Moore, Ronald Reagan, Dick Van Dyke and Hope Lange. Jimmy Stew-art's stepson was an Orme student, too. He graduated in 1963. That's when the man who played George Bailey had his turn at the understated lectern. He was on campus to give the commencement address.

Sixty years later, I was on the same stage, talking to 140 high-schoolers - the entire student body - all dressed in their Sunday best. I'd been asked to recount the history of the magazine. And our coverage of the school. The kids were polite, but not bowled over. One of these things is not like the others. I knew I was in trouble when I asked if any of them had ever heard of John Wayne, and only a few hands went up. I probably should have told them about the time I interviewed Taylor Swift.

There was a lot more dialogue at dinner, where I sat with Hassina, Linh, Tri and Ava, who talked about the opportunities of going to school at Orme. And the unconventionalities. But we didn't talk for long. It was a school night, and it gets dark early on the Quarter Circle V Bar, which sits in the shadow of the Bradshaw Mountains.

Like Jimmy Stewart, Sandra Day O'Connor and Ronald Reagan, I had the privilege of sleeping in the original ranch house, a treasure built in the 1880s. Other than the addition of indoor plumbing, and a few other modern conveniences, the house hasn't changed much in its life span. Neither has the school in general. The core is what it's always been. And if you'll let it, it'll take you back to another time. It did for me. And for that I'm much obliged.