A R O U N D C A M P U S
Workshop Kicks Off Gilder Lehrman Institute Partnership
During their study of American history, sixth graders visit
the Gilder Lehrman Collection, housed at the New-York
Historical Society. There, they closely examine artifacts and
original sources from among the more than 70,000 important
historical documents housed in the Collection.
During the year’s kick-off workshop for sixth graders and
their parents, James Basker, President of the Gilder Lehrman
Institute of American History and Richard Gilder Professor
of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University,
led a discussion in the Otto-Bernstein Performing Arts
Theatre, “Why Documents Matter.”
Why are they important? After Mr. Basker posed the
question to the boys, one sixth grader noted, “We keep these
materials to contextualize where we are now compared to a
past event.” Another posited that documents provide insight
into what people were thinking at a given time. Mr. Basker
reminded everyone that because they serve as a way to
remember what has happened in the past, printed documents
also give us strongly rooted memory, which is key to our
identity. The workshop continued with an examination of
several documents in the Collection, such as Paul Revere’s
Boston Massacre, the Declaration of Independence, and a draft
of the United States Constitution. Analysis of each resulted
in some surprising, elucidating information.
A high point of the workshop was a discussion of Black
Hours and Narrow Escapes, a new book published by the
Gilder Lehrman Institute that features the World War II
experience of Bombardier Robert L. Stone, father of Saint
David’s alumni Robert Lewis Stone Jr. ’68 and Peter Lee
Stone ’69.
The book contains letters that Mr. Stone wrote home from
the front as a way to maintain a connection to the cause for
which he so bravely fought. His wife, Sheila, who was at the
workshop, discovered the letters in a box after Bob died in
2009. As she noted in the book’s introduction, it is her hope
that the documents, “will bring you closer to Bob and how he
felt during those crucial years when he and his fellow soldiers
saved our democratic way of life.”
Exploring a Wigwam
Second graders visited Inwood Park’s Natural Classroom
to build on their knowledge of the Lenape tribe, indigenous
peoples to this area. The trip links their classroom study to
a physically engaging experience.
Winter 2020 • 37