page_title: Claude Fuess
section_title: Phillips Academy
hierarchical_section_title: Claude Fuess / Career / Phillips Academy
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Alfred Stearns, 9th Principal of Phillips Academy Andover 1903-1933.
context_page_description: Claude Moore Fuess was an American author, historian, educator, and 10th Headmaster of Phillips Academy Andover from 1933 to 1948. After attending Amherst College and earning a Ph.D at Columbia University, Fuess taught English at Phillips Academy from 1908 to 1933. As Headmaster he successfully guided the school in a new era as it faced the Great Depression and Second World War. Concurrent with his teaching and Headmaster roles, Fuess led a successful writing career spanning several decades. He is credited as the author or editor of over 30 books and articles and well known for his biographies, including those of Caleb Cushing, President Calvin Coolidge, Rufus Choate, Daniel Webster, and Carl Schurz.
context_section_description: Fuess spent a substantial portion of his career at Phillips Academy, a coeducational secondary boarding school which was at the time an all boys school. Fuess received an invitation from the current headmaster Alfred E. Stearns to a position in the English Department.  At first he declined, convinced he would join the faculty at Columbia University.  Stearns knew their English Department was short one teacher and needed someone in the area with a college degree.  After making a convincing job offer, $1200 a year with room and board, and receiving a telegram from a professor at Columbia urging him to take the job, he accepted.  He began his tenure in the fall of 1908 living in Draper Cottage.
  As an English teacher he focused on teaching his students to articulate themselves and nurturing their natural instincts of curiosity and a desire to learn.  In 1913 he assumed editorship of the quarterly publication Phillips Bulletin.  In the summer of 1918 he was asked by John Pershing to commission 200 of his students as Second Lieutenants to serve in the First World War, which he did.  That September Fuess himself was commissioned as a Major in the Quartermaster Corps at Camp Johnston in Jacksonville, Florida.  He soon caught influenza and was honorably discharged in January 1919.  He soon became a popular figure among the younger alumni who knew him and known as one of the best English teachers of his time.  John U. Monro, Class of 1930 and later Trustee of Phillips Academy, found himself throughout his life "dependent for survival" on the "solid growing pleasure he takes in the use of language he traces back easily to Jack Fuess."
  In March 1933, Alfred Stearns was forced to resign in the midst of a scandal.  He was a widower and married his housekeeper, someone "beneath his social class."  Upon the resignation of Alfred Stearns, Fuess was appointed acting headmaster of the school which had just begun a new era.  The successful banker Thomas Cochran had worked closely with architect Charles Platt over the past several years to transform the campus and construct a number of new buildings, notably the Addison Gallery of American Art.  At the same time however, the Academy was in the middle of a traumatic moment in its history.  Professor and Judge James Hardy Ropes, President of the Board of Trustees, died suddenly; Thomas Cochran, now considered a driving force of the school, was in poor health among others on the Board of Trustees.  Similar to when Fuess accepted the job as an English teacher in 1908, he was reluctant.  This time he was interested in a job as Professor of Biography at Amherst College, which would allow him to continue his writing career more freely.  For the next month, the Board of Trustees interviewed a number of candidates for Headmaster outside of the school.  They soon concluded to "stick with someone whom they knew and respected, someone, furthermore, who knew Phillips Academy thoroughly and whose election would reassure the Andover community." On May 28, 1933, Fuess was formally elected 10th Headmaster by the Trustees.
  During the first few years of his administration Fuess worked to acquire funds to renovate Bulfinch Hall to house the school's English Department.  In the past it had served as a gym and at that point a dining hall.  With a gift totaling $725,000 from Edward Harkness he was able to renovate the building and install English classrooms as well as provide five teaching foundations including on-campus residences for each.  "My heart is very full over these gifts from Mr. Harkness," he said announcing the project at Commencement in June 1936.  The gift sparked a boost in morale for the school amidst the Great Depression.  By the time if his retirement in 1948 the English Department had grown from four to sixteen faculty members.
  As Headmaster, Fuess received mixed reviews from the student body.  Some had much respect for Fuess while others less so.  One student said the following of him:
  "We thought Claudie was born to be a college president...and I think we admired him for putting up with the l
caption: Alfred Ernest Stearns
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