Thornton Academy Postscripts Alumni Magazine Spring 2015 | Page 18

1811 Society
Raymond Shorey
’49 talks about the
long walk home and
how a Headmaster’s
kindness changed his
life.

“We’re going back a long ways

here. I lived in Dayton when I was
growing up. Of course, we had a
one-room school for grades 1-8
and there was no high school. It
was a normal thing to go to TA.
Freshman year, I caught a ride
to school with two brothers who
had a family car. I wanted to play
football. Before TA, I had never
even seen a football! So, a couple
of other kids and I went out for
freshman football. I kind of liked
it.
“In ’47, the only way I could get
to school was to catch a ride with
a millworker at 6 AM. My parents
were dirt poor farmers with one
beat-up car; there was no way I
could use it. In the fall, it started
getting dark early. I had no ride
home. I walked to Route 5 and
started walking and hitchhiking.
I ran awhile, then walked the 14
miles to my house. I got home
about 8 PM or so and I was
starving. Same thing next day.
“There wasn’t the traffic in those
days. Not a car passed me. The
third day, it poured rain the whole
way home. I was kind of disgusted.
I couldn’t see any other way.
“I told my parents, I was going to
18

Ray Shorey enjoying Reunion Day
2014 with his daughter, Susan.

quit school. It was normal for the
eldest to help support the family in
those days. They didn’t oppose it. I
started work at a sawmill the next
day. The next week, when I arrived
home from the sawmill, a car was
sitting in the yard. It was Porter C.
Greene, Headmaster. ‘Raymond, I’ve
been told you quit school,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir, I had no transportation. I
could get there, but not home.’ ‘Do
you want to go to school?’ he asked
me. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Then pack your
clothes. Tell your parents and come
live with my family.’
“I went from a farm with an
outhouse to the Headmaster’s House.
I stayed there three winters. If I had
not finished school, God knows
where I would be now. He influenced
me.
“I graduated in ’49, went into the
service [Army], got married and all
the time I didn’t recall thanking the
Greenes. After retirement, in 2000,
I thought: I never thanked them
personally. I travelled to Morrisville,

VT, Porter Greene’s home town.
I knew Mr. Greene had passed,
but I went to the oldest person
I could find and asked to find
Mrs. Greene. Eventually, folks
at the Senior Center sent me
to Stowe, VT where Mrs. Alice
Green stayed in assisted living. I
drove right there and found Mrs.
Greene. It had been 50 years;
at first, she walked by me, then
stopped, turned around, and said,
‘Raymond what are you doing
here?’ I almost flipped. She said
to her aide, ‘He used to steal my
chocolate chip cookies.’ I finally
got to thank her.”
Although in his eighties, retired Lt.
Colonel Raymond Shorey works as a
salesman for TRC (Texas Refinery)
and visits with a couple dozen deer in
his back yard each day in Oquossoc,
Maine. Ray Shorey is a member of the
1811 Society because he, along with
many others, has named Thornton
Academy as a beneficiary in his estate
planning.