Old West Academics Thrive at Orme School

Academic Excellence, With an Old West Twist

TEXT BY KATHLEEN BRYANT PHOTOGRAPHS BY TERRENCE MOORE ABOUT AN HOUR NORTH OF Phoenix, tree-lined Ash Creek flows between three lavacrowned mesas. Here Old West meets new West. High, rocky cliffs shelter hawks and challenge rappellers. Massive cottonwood trees hide ancient grinding stones and shade young campers. Trails once traveled by ancient traders and pioneering cowboys are now traversed by hikers and mountain bikers.

For the past 75 years, this place between the mesas has been both outdoor classroom and idyllic escape for young people attend-ing The Orme School, a college preparatory high school founded as a grammar school in 1929 by Charles, who was known as "Chick," and Minna Orme. The school grew right along with Arizona, rooted in the same pioneering philosophy that built a state.

Chick, whose father settled in Arizona Territory in the 1870s, met Minna when they were students at Stanford University. They left his family's ranching and farming business in Phoenix to take their chances on the Quarter Circle V Bar, located about a dozen miles off the Black Canyon Highway, a rocky, steep route that climbed from Phoenix to northern Arizona.

Ranch buildings included an old frame house and barn, a prefabricated bunga-low, some poultry pens and a bunkhouse. Strong believers in the value of a good edu-cation, Chick and Minna immediately went to work transforming the bunkhouse into a classroom for their children's schooling.

For their son, Charles “Charlie” Orme Jr., the move was a transition from boyhood to young manhood. “Mother and I took our Ford truck over to the Dugas Ranch, where the school had closed,” Charlie remembers. “Fred Dugas and I used a crowbar to pull up the desks, which were attached to railroad ties. We loaded them onto the truck and hauled them back to the ranch.” It washard work for a 12-year-old, though he was big for his age.

For the next half-dozen years, Charlie, his younger siblings, Morton and Kathryn, and the children of ranch employees and neighbors gathered in the bunkhouse to study the basics-reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and history. A woodstove heated the small classroom during the winter, and a generator powered a single lightbulb.

Before long, Stanford friends of Chick and Minna asked if their children could enroll. The ranch's grammar school expanded to include a summer camp, and the Ormes built a guesthouse for families who came to enjoy the rugged scenery and temperate 4,000-foot elevation while their children attended classes or improved their horseback riding skills. Every child had a task, and the lessons outside the classroompersonal responsibility and the satisfaction of a job well done-became as important as those inside.

Like other Arizona ranchers, the Ormes struggled to keep their land during the Depression. They raised turkeys and grew carrots, with schoolchildren and campers helping to gather eggs, milk cows and

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Armes's diverse student Ore Adobe, 1939

Chop weeds. Dollars from the school and camp helped supplement the meager ranch income. "The price for a yearling then was $1.25," recalls Charlie. "The school was the way we stayed alive."

During World War II, Mort left his studies at Stanford to serve in the Pacific. Charlie, turned down by the Navy because of his poor eyesight, took over the management of the summer camp. In 1945, Chick asked Charlie to take on the school's operations. So Charlie-a Stanford honors graduate and a member of the victorious 1941 Rose Bowl team (known as the "Vow Boys," who defeated Nebraska in an upset with the first "T-formation" offense)-sank his roots even deeper into central Arizona.

At the time, two young sisters from California enrolled at Orme to sharpen their riding skills. Concerned about the school's remote location, their mother asked the girls' older half-sister, Mimi Royce, to accompany them.

Mimi went to work in the headmaster's office, organizing paperwork for taxes. She spent long days in the company of Charlie Orme, the newly appointed headmaster. Despite all their hours together, she couldn't tell if Charlie's interest included romance.

"There was no time for hanky panky," Mimi declares, but her mother must have thought otherwise. That lady was soon packing for Arizona herself, prepared to deliver an ultimatum: Either Charlie would marry her daughter, or she'd take her home. Coincidentally, mere days before her mother's arrival, Charlie popped the question, and their partnership is now approaching 60 years.

Through the decades, Mimi acted as dean of girls and taught grammar, dancing, music appreciation, typing and shorthand. With career and family dependent on the school, Charlie focused on Orme's growth. Advertisements in Eastern magazines targeted parents with children suffering from asthma. Orme expanded to become a college preparatory high school, its first senior class graduating in 1952.

Chick and Minna's influence continued, and alumni recall them fondly. "They took this lost and lonely little chick under their wings," says Sharon Olsen, an Arizona resident and archaeology buff who attended Orme's summer camp during the late 1940s and early '50s. At first, she was so homesick she sprinkled water on her letters home, hoping their tear-stained appearance might convince her parents to fetch her back.

By her last summer, Sharon so loved the ranch and the Ormes that she refused toleave, even after a horse kicked her, putting her in a cast from ankle to thigh. Forbidden to participate in the annual gymkhana, she convinced a friend to sign up for her. When Sharon crossed the finish line of the bareback barrel-racing competition, the camp nurse awaited with a scolding.

Mixed with mischief was sadness. Kathryn Orme died before finishing her degree at Stanford. In 1955, Mort Orme entered a Phoenix hospital for routine surgery and died after a transfusion of the wrong blood type. "From the moment Mort got up in the morning, kids surrounded him," Sharon Olsen remembers. "He was the bricks and mortar of camp and school."

In that fall's alumni newsletter, Charlie wrote how his younger brother's strength of body and spirit grew out of the ranch's natural surroundings, inspiring family and students alike. Near the Old Main House, a chapel was built in Mort's memory, its strong, clean lines designed by architect Dick Jessup, a 1941 graduate who'd gone to Orme for his asthma.

Like other campus buildings, many designed by Jessup, the chapel utilizes local materials, harmonizing with the landscape and historic ranch structures. These have been carefully maintained and adapted for new uses. The original barn is now the Horse Collar Theater. A classroom Chick built in 1936, the Old Adobe, boasts a new coat of mud over original adobe bricks. Every student at Orme attends a class there before graduating, a reminder of the school's humble past.

During Charlie's 42-year tenure as headmaster, he and Mimi traveled extensively on behalf of the school, which turned

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nonprofit in 1962. After meeting potential donors at social events, Charlie sent letters inviting contributions. A graduate in the steel industry donated materials for a gymnasium. A new dorm built by Jimmy Stewart honored his stepson Ron McClean, class of '63.

Stewart may have been thinking of Ron, killed in Vietnam, as he narrated a film about the school, stating that graduates learned “to cope intelligently with a world they never made and may have to remake someday.” Another father, Ronald Reagan, gave a rousing commencement address to his daughter Patti's 1970 class, defending his generation and challenging the graduates to surpass their parents' accomplishments.

Whether your father was a governor or movie star, chief financial officer or farmer, you were an equal member of the Orme family. When Steven Bogart, son of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, invited his parents to an Orme barbecue, Bacall packed only shorts to wear. To ease Steven's embarrassment, Mimi loaned the actress a cotton skirt so that Bacall could dress like other moms.

Orme's diverse student population has included kids from inner cities, Indian reservations, Japan, Europe and the Middle East. More than a third receive some kind of financial aid. And every Orme graduate, without exception, is accepted into college.

Wherever they hail from, Orme students return home with a sense of the West. During the annual school caravan, students and faculty leave campus for weeklong adventures that might include backpacking along the Mogollon Rim, visiting California's Spanish Colonial missions or refurbishing a school in Hermosillo, Mexico. Caravans often have a community service focus.

About 150 students attend Orme as day students or residents, and nearly every faculty member lives on campus. Each faculty member advises a small number of students, who are welcomed into this teacher's home on a weekly basis.

Every February, students participate in a weeklong arts program, founded by Dot Lewis and led by visiting artists. Orme athletes compete with other schools in the Arizona Interscholastic Association. Equestrians test their skills in events sponsored by the American Quarter Horse Association, 4-H and other organizations. Students participate in self-government, often gathering in the Frontier Village, the spittin' image of an Old West main street.

Of all Orme's programs, alumni's fondest memories are often the humblest chores-picking apricots, milking cows, watching turkeys or raking the rodeo arena. Charlie Orme believes that having a job to do, no matter how simple, makes children feel needed and helps them build confidence.

This might explain why so many Orme graduates return as instructors, camp counselors, parents or board members. Arizona Highways contributor Jeb J. Rosebrook, class of '53, has been all of the above, plus granddad to two third-generation Orme campers. A prolific author of everything from screenplays to books to articles, Jeb is at a loss for words when it comes to pinpointing how the Orme tradition continues. He says simply, “There's a real bond.” The Orme extended family about 2,500 alumni plus hundreds of parents, faculty and friends stretches from Arizona around the globe. Many still send Christmas cards and letters to Charlie and Mimi, now in their 80s. As Mimi says, “We met some of our best friends through the school.” Friendships and memories are made here, surrounded by a supportive “family” and embraced by the land. The Bradshaw Mountains' jagged peaks form the western horizon. To the north is Mingus Mountain, and east and south are the Verde Rim and The New River Mountains. As you cross Ash Creek and enter the main gate beneath the Quarter Circle V Bar brand, a mesquite bosque transitions into walnut and cotton-wood trees, interspersed with rosebushes and fruit trees, many from pioneer stock.

The deep porch of the Old Main House offers a shady welcome, where you can sit a spell and listen as the school bell and shouted greetings mix with the hammering of new construction. The sounds tell the story of fam-ily, friendship, hard work, book learning and a life outdoors. It's a story of grit and good-ness, those necessary qualities for growing a state, building a school or loving a child.