AMERICAN FARM SCHOOL
BRUCE LANSDALE MEMORIAL
PART I
THE INSTITUTION MADE THE MAN AND THE MAN RE-MADE THE INSTITUTION
Introduction
Two years ago, on February 2, 2009, Bruce Lansdale, Director of the American Farm School from 1955 to 1990, died. We honoured him on Psycho Sabbato – the day when Greece remembers those who have passed – at the American Farm School when many gathered for a special service at the school’s Greek Orthodox Church and to plant a memorial tree for their loved ones.
February 11 was Bruce’s birthday and this was the reading in Daily Word to be found at www.unity.org:
HARMONY
I am filled with the love of God and live in harmony with all humankind.
When I am in harmony with myself, I am attuned to the spirit of God. I am aware of my connection to higher consciousness, and I face challenges with a positive attitude. To maintain this inner harmony, I practice prayer and keep a conscious connection to Source. Maintaining my own internal harmony allows me to reach out to others with kindness and understanding. I develop compassion and create connections with those around me.
With my intention set on peace and harmony, I honor differences and share love with all. I am filled with the love of God and live in harmony with all humankind.
Make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
Philippians 2:2
Bruce’s father was Director of the YMCA in Greece during the 1930s and built the YMCA building opposite the international fairground in Thessaloniki. Bruce grew up in a family endowed with a higher consciousness.
When Bruce decided to make the American Farm School his life’s work he had a five-year overlap with the outgoing Director, Charlie House. This was necessary because the American Farm School was founded by a Missionary and the institute itself was endowed with a higher consciousness. It was only after Bruce had become thoroughly attuned to the spirit of God working through the American Farm School and only when he could maintain inner harmony through the challenges that lay ahead and only when he could live in harmony with all humankind that he could be entrusted with the directorship of the school. He was then ready to remake the American Farm School to fit the post-war era.
How the American Farm School was founded
John Henry House, the founder, wrote circa 1925:
“In 1872 I went to Ski Zaghra in European Turkey expecting to give my life to evangelistic work, but in 1874 by a vote of the mission we were transferred to the Theological School in Samokov. I accepted this decision as the will of God for me, although it was contrary to my desire.
As the Theological School grew the preparatory school developed, and the institution became what might now be called a Junior High School, with a theological course attached to it.
In studying the situation I found we were taking village boys who were learning to despise the village life they had left. Our mode of education was wrong if we could not convince our boys that it was not degrading for an educated man to work with his hands. We must teach our boys to use their hands, as well as books.
Our school was in a city so agriculture seemed out of the question. I chose printing and carpentry, printing because we had been presented with a small printing press, and carpentry, as a trade that would always be of use.
As many of our students were poor boys, and supported by benevolent friends it was decided that all the students should be allowed to work to reduce their school tax, but that the stipendiants should be required to work two hours a day.
This plan proved a great success and before long I had the pleasure of seeing a boy in the graduating class rolling a wheelbarrow through the street in his shirt-sleeves.
As the department grew, we were able to add first water power, and later a motor to run a larger printing press and the machinery in the carpenter shop.
Long after I had left the school for other departments of the mission’s work, the printing department was transferred to the School, and the wood workers were able to make furniture for the Queen of Bulgaria.
The story of this work in Samokov is mentioned here, because it was the first step on the way to what I considered my ideal of missionary education. The School of which I had dreamed was to be realized later.
In 1894 I was sent by the Mission to Macedonia, and the center of our work was the historical city of Salonica, the Thessalonica of the Bible.
In the closing years of the century there came the pressing need of a Boys’ School for our Evangelical communities in the large province where we were working, and my associates, Rev. E. B. Haskell and Rev. T.T. Holway, joined whole-heartedly in the plan to found a school that should be built on a farm, and where we could gather boys still in the plastic age, that is from twelve to fifteen years old. The boys were to study from books for half a day, and had work lessons the other half.
During the working hours they were to be occupied with farming, gardening and all the affiliated industries of a model village and these were to be coordinated with their studies as far as possible, so that they might have a realistic rather than an artificial education.
As our Mission Board felt unable to support such a school, we succeeded in organizing a separate Board of Directors to stand back of the Institution, which was incorporated under the laws of the state of New York, as the Thessalonica Agricultural and Industrial Institute. The course of study for five years would carry out the idea of a junior High School, but practically it was far more than this because of the sturdy responsible character developed, through the education of the heart, the head, and the hands.
Of necessity this became a work of faith. It was necessary for us to borrow the money to buy the first 52 acres of land. This was in 1902, but the Institute was not incorporated until 1904. By that time our debt had been cancelled, and the school started with twelve orphan boys.
Our faith in our Great Master has been wonderfully honoured as the story of the many providences that have followed each other all the way along in our history has proved.
We were obliged to begin in the humblest way with an Abrahamic plow, a yoke of oxen, and a village farmer. There was also a young man for a teacher, as I was carrying on my regular missionary duties, and could only go out two or three times a week to oversee the work.
The boys lived in one room sleeping on the floor, and rolling up their bedding in the morning so that the room could be used as a school room, as well as a dining room, when the weather did not permit of dining on the porch.
The land we had purchased was a desert-looking waste with no water upon it and a doubtful possibility of finding any. A school like this in a land where work with the hands was considered degrading by the educated, might well have been considered a desperate experiment even under the most favourable conditions, when there was well-watered and fertile land, with a kindly climate, but under the desert conditions in which we were placed, some of our friends felt sure we were doomed to failure. But we were working with faith in a great Master who had said, “All things are possible to him that believeth.” It was indeed a small beginning but it was a work of faith and love.
A little over twenty three years have passed, and that barren spot is now a beautiful village, with orchards and vineyards, vegetable and flower gardens, and grainfields, barns, workshops, electric and water plant, with pure blooded cattle, pigs and fowl.
There are dormitories, residences with equipped infirmary, a fine hall with library, natural history museum, and laboratory.
The farm is equipped with reaper and binder tractors, seeder, and other necessary machines. So it is that all these nearly ninety students and a fine staff of teachers, supervisors, and other workers form a model village, an education in itself for all the country around.
The plant is worth more than $117,000 and there is a small endowment.
The Institute has an enviable reputation in Greece, with graduates and pupils who have gone out to prove the value of this kind of education, while new and important opportunities are developing all about us. The arrival of over a million refugees in Greece and Macedonia, many of them settled about us, has opened up new avenues of service.
President Bayard Dodge of Beirut University writing of our Institute says, “Few people in America can realize what tremendous movements are shaking the timeworn traditions of the Near East. The great hope for these people is agriculture so that the School just happens to find itself in the midst of an overwhelming evolution in which it has a tremendous part to play.”
We believe that we could not have found a better way than this Institution for building a sturdy Christian character, with high ideals for service.”
The American Farm School Creed
I believe
in a permanent agriculture, a soil that grows richer, rather than poorer from year to year.
I believe
in living not for self but for others so that future generations may not suffer on account of my farming methods.
I believe
that tillers of the soil are stewards of the land and will be held accountable for the faithful performance of their trust.
I am proud
to be a farmer and will try to be worthy of the name.
John Henry House (circa 1910)
Bruce Lansdale’s decision to work at the American Farm School
It was after the Second World War that Bruce decided to make the Farm School his life’s work. He describes his decision in these words: “I returned to the United States for schooling, and after completing an engineering degree at the University of Rochester, was assigned as an interpreter for the Allied Mission for Observing the Greek Elections. I found myself in a country torn apart by all the conflicts between “East” and “West”, recovering from the devastation of World War II, the German Occupation, and Greece’s civil war that followed. Alone at the Menelon Hotel in the market town of Tripolis in the central Peloponnesos, I received a telegram from my parents on 11 February 1946. ‘Congratulations on 21st birthday and for making Phi Beta Kappa.’ I lay in bed and wondered where, as an engineer who enjoyed working with people, I could invest the rest of my life. A strong inspiration came to me, ‘Go to the American Farm School.’ A few days later I flew up to Thessaloniki in a British Army two-seater airplane to share my vision with the director and his wife, Charlie and Ann House. It was there that all the nostalgia of my childhood flooded back, confirming my decision. The school that had so intrigued me as a boy held many challenges for me as a committed young man. I was eager to train Greek village youth.”
Bruce Lansdale re-made the American Farm School for the post-war era
This is the address by the President of the Republic Mr. Constantine Tsatsos on the occasion of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the American Farm School, in Thessalonika on October 27, 1979.
“I did not intend to speak, but this visit is a challenge, and I must speak.
All things come from God, and all lead back to God. And the road which we cover from beginning to end is a road of mission.
This work here is the work of a missionary soul, who started out from America and came to this land, then under Turkish rule, to do good works. Seventy-five years have passed since then, and today we marvel at the harvest of that sowing. First of all, I want to express my gratitude to the founder, to his successors, and to today’s President and Director of the School. The work which is done here with the help of the American state is an educational work of great importance like other American initiatives in the development of cultural relations between the two peoples, as is Athens College in Psychiko, as is Pierce College, and many other manifestations. The Greek people do not forget, and even when they are embittered, they do not forget how many enterprises have come about in this country with the help of American initiative. The possibilities in the educational field are still very great. We await them, we want them. Cultural relations are something beyond time – temporary problems do not disturb them.
I have been speaking of those on the American side who helped to accomplish this work, and I want also to thank the Greeks who have cooperated with them for its fulfilment. But now I will address my words to the young people of the School.
I took the podium to express these thanks, but above all, I wanted to speak to you, my children. I am going to say something that may impress you. Not only am I happy with you, but I am ashamed in your presence. Because I am one of those of whom Bruce Lansdale spoke: “I have a big head, and I do not have calloused hands.” I wish I did have calloused hands, and I wish I had the honor, the high honor, of being able each evening to eat my bread with calloused hands, smelling of the soil, the Greek soil. This honor has not been given me. I was born in a city. I studied. I pursued learning. But this beautiful nature that God has given us, I view it with longing from afar. I may have some scholarly qualifications, such as they are, but I do not know this joy of immediate contact with primitive creation, this creation which the earth gives us – the animals, the plants, the flowers, the trees.
Bruce said these things, and I am going to say them again. We used to think that the most important thing for the peasant, should we earn a few pennies, was to make his child into a lawyer or a doctor; he would have been ashamed to be a farmer. I am here to say that this philosophy of an evil hour has passed. Today the proletariat are those who have many diplomas, and the top people are those who work the land. That is why I said earlier that I am ashamed in your presence. I would have wished to be one of you. And if, with the mind I have today, I had the choice whether to be President of the Hellenic Republic or a peasant in a village on the Macedonian frontier, I would choose the second. I want to emphasize that nothing is more important than this contact with the soil. The soil on which we are standing, the soil for which we fought wars, the soil which we work in times of peace, the soil which will some day be our grave.
Surely for this hands are needed, but, lest I offend my dear Bruce, brain is also needed. At one time the cultivation of the earth was the work of the hands only – now it is a collaboration of hand and brain. You are not, as you were once called, manual laborers. You are the intellectuals of agriculture. And this is fundamental. The aim of this school is to give you the hands and the brain to work the land as it should be worked. Cultivation of the land which was once practical has now become scientific.
I have known of cases in which we have made this farmer, this manual worker, into a scientist. Let me tell you of one such incident. Among my many American friends who have come to Greece was a missionary named Packard. He had come in 1959-61 (at that time I was Under-secretary of Coordination). He tried to start the cultivation of rice in Greece. He went to the farmers and told them how it should be done. He met resistance, and then somewhere in Sperchiada, if my memory does not mislead me, he himself personally undertook the cultivation of rice. He took an area and planted rice in a sub-saline soil. Our peasants round about made fun of him. They followed his efforts ironically, saying “Nothing will come of that.” But when the rice began to come up, when he had his first harvest, and the rice went to market, the shrewd eye of the Greek farmer lighted up, and he began to say, “Something good is happening here.” And today, as you know, we have an economic sufficiency of rice throughout Greece. What this American did then you here at the School are learning to do for your village and your home. And that is why I have said to you that the period when you were manual laborers is gone – gone is the period of big hands and small heads. Now are needed both big hands and plenty of brain.
Today we have made for you a Lyceum. You have entered into the area of scientific education. It is a useful thing, I respect it and esteem it and laud it, but I want something more. I want what Bruce has spoken of, and spoken so well. It annoys me a little that I shall not say it so well as he did.
Into this project which ties you to the Greek earth, to your Greek fatherland, to your roots, I want you to put not only your mind which I ask for, not only your hands which Bruce wants – I want you to put into it also your soul. Why have we got ourselves killed for our freedom? Why do we say “NO” to anyone who dares lay claim to a Greek stone or a drop of Greek water? It is because we love this earth, and love is not just theory and thought. It is action, and the action for you is the increase of this earth by cultivation. From now on you will be like the Junkers in Northern Germany in olden times, who from generation to generation for a thousand years carried on the work of the farmer, and thus became feudal lords, the great aristocrats of the world.
From father to son, stay with the land, do not be afraid of it. Love this land and in your villages teach all those who are looking toward the cities and the diplomas making them proletariats of law and medicine that the land is the holy step in Greece.
If you do this you will have done more than any other Greek. I wish you good luck.”