in the orchestra. His academic record was good, and he was proving that he could be Number One in almost anything he set his mind to.
A few items from the Manchester Journal of that period: April 18, 1912 — “Shakespeare in Manchester — Pleasing rendition of ‘As You Like It’ by students of Burr and Burton. The audience surely showed their appreciation of the singing of William Wilson, appearing as Jaques.”
April 25, 1912 — “Gymnasium Exhibit at Burr and Burton Seminary — The fourth number was the high jumping by the boys. The top mark was set by William Wilson, followed by Derwin and Bennett. Wilson’s mark was four feet and six inches.”
May 9, 1912 — “Burr and Burton Seminary Notes — On Wednesday last, as announced, Burr and Burton played Proctor, and was defeated 4 to 0. The game was a good one, being a pitchers’ battle, Eskaline having 15 strikeouts and Wilson 14. The pitcher whom the Burr and Burton boys faced was the hardest one they will meet this year.’’
May 16, 1912 — “Burr and Burton Seminary Notes — On Saturday the Seminary team played Bennington High at that village and suffered defeat, its worst one so far this season. The score was 13 to 1 for the home team. Wilson pitched his worst game of the season and his support the poorest yet displayed by the team. The poor pitching was due to a lame arm and was a misfortune rather than a fault.”1
Bill’s life now had everything — except romance. “At this juncture, despite my homely face and awkward figure,2 one of the girls at the seminary took an interest in me,” he recalled. “They had been very slow to do that when I first appeared, and I had a terrific inferiority respecting the gals. But now came the minister’s daughter, and I suddenly found myself ecstatically in love.
“Well, you see, at this period, now that I am in love, I am fully compensated on all these primary instinctual drives. I have all the prestige there is to have in school. I excel — indeed, I’m Number One where I choose to be. Consequently, I am emotionally secure; my grandfather is my protector and is generous with my spending money; and now, I love and am loved completely for the first time in my life. Therefore, I am deliriously happy and am a success according to my own specifications.’’
The girl was Bertha Bamford, daughter of Manchester’s Episcopal minister. A beautiful, popular girl, Bertha was senior class treasurer at Burr and Burton and president of the Y.W.C.A. As Bill remembered, Bertha “made a profound influence on everyone.” It was a mutual love, and Bertha’s parents also liked Bill and welcomed him in their home. Bertha made the summer and early fall of 1912 one of the happiest, most ecstatic periods in Bill’s life.
Then came a blow as cruel and unexpected as the separation of his parents. On the morning of November 19, a Tuesday, Bill hurried into chapel and took his place with the other students. Bertha was away in New York City with her family. There was nothing to prepare him for what was to come:
“The principal of the school came in and announced with a very grave face that Bertha, the minister’s daughter and my beloved, had died suddenly and unexpectedly the night before. It was simply a cataclysm of such anguish as I’ve since had but two or three times. It eventuated in what was called an old-fashioned nervous breakdown, which meant, I now realize, a tremendous depression.”
Bertha’s death was reported in the Manchester Journal on Thursday, November 21: “The many friends of the Rev. and Mrs. W. H. Bamford of this village learned with great sorrow on Tuesday morning of the death of their daughter, Miss Bertha
D. Bamford, following an operation at the Flower Hospital in New York City. The removal of a tumor was successful, but the young lady died during the night from internal hemorrhage. Her untimely death at the early age of 18 has thrown the school into mourning. The funeral will be held at Zion Church on Friday afternoon at two-thirty, and the remains will be placed in the receiving vault, to be taken on to Jeffersonville, Ind., Mrs. Bamford’s home, for interment.”
The details of the funeral were reported in the Journal a week later: “The funeral of Miss Bertha Bamford was held from Zion Episcopal Church Friday afternoon. The remains were placed in the vault at Center Cemetery. The ceremony was particularly impressive because of the attendance in a body and the marching to the cemetery of more than 70 students of Burr and Burton Seminary. The bearers were Principal James Brooks and W. H. Shaw of the Seminary faculty, William Wilson and Roger Perkins of the senior class, of which Miss Bamford was a member, and Clifford Wilson and John Jackson.”
The loss of Bertha marked the beginning of what Bill remembered as a three-year depression, the second such period in his life. “Interest in everything except the fiddle collapsed. No athletics, no schoolwork done, no attention to anyone. I was utterly, deeply, and compulsively miserable, convinced that my whole life had utterly collapsed.” His depression over Bertha’s death went far beyond normal human grief. “The healthy kid would have felt badly, but he would never have sunk so deep or stayed submerged for so long,” Bill later commented.
With the onset of depression, his academic performance dropped. “The upshot was that I failed German and, for that reason, could not graduate. Here I was, president of my senior class . . . and they wouldn’t give me a diploma! My mother arrived, extremely angry, from Boston. A stormy scene took place in the principal’s office. Still, I didn’t get that diploma.’’
He failed to graduate with his class (although school records now list him with the group). Following a summer of agonizing depression, he went to live with his mother near Boston and completed makeup work that qualified him for college.
What had caused Bill to change from a high achiever to a helpless depressive? As he saw it, the major problem was that he could no longer be Number One. “I could not be anybody at all. I could not win, because the adversary was death. So my life, I thought, had ended then and there.’’
1. The lame arm may have been from too much practice. Said Lois: “I saw this game, and although I didn’t know Bill yet, I nevertheless felt sorry for the pitcher, who was evidently rattled by something.’’
2. Early pictures of Bill show that he had anything but a homely face, and his awkwardness was clearly well under control, if one is to judge from his athletic record.
Chapter Two
“I don’t know how I ever got through the next summer,” said Bill of the period following Bertha’s death. “It was spent in utter apathy, often running into anguish, in compulsive reflection, all centering around the minister’s daughter.’’
Yet the summer of 1913 was more active than his memory of it suggests. He made up his German class work. He met Lois Burnham (although their courtship would not begin until the following summer). And he went with his grandfather to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for the 50th anniversary of the Civil War battle.
The Gettysburg reunion was a spectacular undertaking, directed with meticulous care and efficiency by the state of Pennsylvania with the cooperation of the War Department. Bill and Fayette probably stayed in the Great Camp, a tented city that the War Department had erected on farmlands leased near the battlefield to house the thousands of aged Union and Confederate veterans who poured in for the event. Bill toured the battlefield with Fayette, who showed him where Vermonters had out flanked Pickett’s charge and helped determine the outcome of the battle. The hot days at Gettysburg were packed with speeches and exhibitions, climaxed by President Woodrow Wilson’s address on Friday, July 4.
Meeting Lois was the high point of that summer. The oldest daughter of a respected New York physician, she and her family took their summer vacations a few miles from Bill’s home, at Emerald Lake in North Dorset. She was not only attractive, intelligent, and charming, she was, to Bill, a member of a different social class: “She represented areas in which I had always felt a great inferiority. Her people were of a fine family in Brooklyn. They were what we Vermonters called city folks. She had social graces of which I knew nothing. People still ate with their knives around me; the back door step was still a lavatory. So her encouragement of me and her interest in me did a tremendous amount to buck me up.”
As