When Western Reserve Academy marked its Centennial in 1926, attendance and enthusiasm ran so high that the floors of a packed Chapel began to rumble, ultimately prompting an evacuation mid-celebration. Faculty Master J. Frederick Waring recalled the moment vividly:
According to The Plain Dealer, “large irregular cracks in the pine trunks supporting the chapel were widening…President Vinson was praying.”
Reserve has always had a remarkable story to tell. Forged in the Ohio wilderness of the Western Reserve, we began as an educational outpost with aspiration built into our DNA. The main doors of our original campus buildings all faced west; there was nothing stunted about our zeal for new horizons — on the land, in learning and in life. We were among David Hudson’s final legacies. We were called the “Yale of the West.” We would serve as a beacon of excellence and enlightenment. Though we didn’t officially call ourselves the Pioneers until the 1930s, we were trailblazers from the start.
And yet, it may be this enduring blend of pride and humility, of hardscrabble beginnings and intellectual ascendance, of lovingly local roots and tenaciously global reach — that has propelled us from there to here. We have been a rugged wilderness and an abolitionist’s platform; an observatory and a working farm; home to wartime heroes, fabled faculty, a first woman student, and a first woman Head of School. We have closed down and opened up. We have welcomed newcomers, sent graduates into the world, endured tragedy, and been buoyed by celebration. Vulnerable and resolute, our stories are endearingly individual and beautifully collective.
Now, we have the chance to celebrate them together, or as Head of School Suzanne Walker Buck likes to say, borrowing from sociologist Émile Durkheim, with collective effervescence.
Over the next two years, let’s shake the Chapel floors again, metaphorically speaking, by embracing our dichotomies, sharing our memories and advancing our future. And perhaps, now and then, let’s imagine what those two centuries from now will say about how we marked this moment. We have big shoes to fill and exhilarating trails to blaze. Much is planned to plant our proud stake in the ground for the next 200 years.
Oh, long may time these things preserve.
Save the Date!
Join us for an extraordinary Bicentennial Celebration Weekend! All alumni and friends of Western Reserve Academy are welcome back on June 4–6, 2026 as we mark 200 years in the making and take a bold step into our third century!