Achieve The Honorable

Friday, August 13th, 2010
by frank.callahan

Though vastly different, Worcester Academy and Hollywood High School share the same school motto “Achieve The Honorable.” Worcester is an eastern boarding school with an historic campus that draws students from all over the world; on the western edge of the country, Hollywood High School is the public high school in the world’s most famous (ZIP) Code. Worcester’s New England climate has four seasons compared to sun-drench Hollywood. So why the same motto?

It turns out that it is not a coincidence.  Roughly a century ago, Hollywood High School started using the motto and it remains on the school crest.  The Hollywood version of the phrase is in English which is a significant part of the story.

The maxim was instituted by William H. Snyder, an early principal of Hollywood High School.  Snyder had previously taught at Worcester Academy, but left in 1905 when his wife’s poor health dictated a move to a warmer climate.  Within the next few years, he became the principal of Hollywood High School, and in 1910 ground was broken on a new building.  Hollywood High School became a model for public education California with the result that Snyder was recognized as a leader in that field

In building the school, Snyder wanted a phrase that would set the goals and guiding principals for the school, so borrowing the motto of Worcester Academy must have been an easy solution.  About ten years later, a former colleague from Worcester Academy visited Snyder at Hollywood High School and questioned him on why he used the Worcester slogan.  Snyder gave a long answer that is at least… well, plausible.  Basically, he replied that when he taught at Worcester Academy the school motto was in Ancient Greek lettering or ??????? ??? ?????.  Snyder asserted that either he did not know or simply forgot what the phrase meant in English.  The colleague should have pressed further as the school colors are the same also!

The motto was coined by Daniel Webster Abercrombie, the Principal of Worcester Academy from 1882 until 1918. Abercrombie was a Greek teacher and he coined the phrase not simply to motivate the spirit of the students, but to demonstrate to the public that Worcester Academy was a strong academic institution whose graduates had a fine moral purpose.  More subtly, the phrase was a retort to the negativity that some outsiders felt about the school prior to Abercrombie’s tenure.  When he arrived, the Academy was not a strong school and he had to overcome a legacy of poorly-trained graduates.

Because he transformed Worcester Academy into one of the top boarding schools in the country, Abercrombie is considered the most important person in the history of the school.  He is best known for building the historic main campus of Worcester Academy, but what is not so well-known is that he built the school spirit by creating the motto and selecting the school colors, which are the same as his alma mater, Harvard.

Principal Daniel W. Abercrombie

Snyder came to teach at Worcester Academy right around the time of the first appearance of the motto in the Academy Weekly in 1889.  Snyder taught science at Worcester Academy, when the classrooms and laboratories were located on the top floor of Walker Hall, which displays the motto on the crest above its front entrance.  In 1894, he left for Harvard graduate school; then returned two years later while the Kingsley Laboratories were being built.  Abercrombie had high regard for Snyder and made him the Master of Science in charge of Kingsley in his second tenure at the Academy.  Because the Classical curriculum was not taught there, the school motto was not installed on Kingsley, so it is in his defense that he did not see the crest as often as other faculty.  Moreover, the science curriculum was its own special department which prepared its students heading for scientific institutions, particularly WPI.  Snyder even lived in a house provided by the school next to the Kingsley Laboratories, so he did not visit the other buildings on campus as often as the other Worcester Academy faculty, as he was busy running what was tantamount to a separate school at the back end of the campus.  Though he ate his meals with his young family at home, Snyder did attend chapel and important school functions, such as the term dinners, which were held in Adams Hall, the school’s Gothic style dining hall, which has the motto on the entrance and above its ornate fire place.

William H. Snyder

Original Worcester Academy Crest with Motto in Greek

Popularity: 6% [?]