Carolina Friends School, from its founding

 

the way opens for a school

before me on the computer

sits a couple I have known about 2/3 of my life,

a husband and wife, a mother and father,

who moved to piedmont North Carolina in the late 1950s,

a time that should, and did, appall any

who realized the equality of all

in having the same touch of God within each of us,

from out of the calling of their Friends faith,

from out of the calling of their love for their own three children,

from out of the synthesis of both callings,

they joined with others who saw a  way that could open

to the founding of a new school,

a school that could live the charge that George Fox felt,

and that every parent feels deep in their souls,

the charge to make the world better,

to follow the better angels of our nature,

to live a life that opens the doors to possibility

for each student, each teacher, each parent, to walk forward,

to dare to belief in self,

to dare to believe in community,

and for near 60 years, Carolina Friends School

has done its best to be true to the revolution,

the revolution when we are so radical as to get back 

to the roots of what a school should be

when it sees and knows each student,

and does its best to structure itself to be what is needed:

daring to hold to what should not be changed,

daring to change and find a new way forward when needed,

thank you, Peter and Martha Klopfer,

for your vision, for your daring,

for your decades of loving labor

so that C.F.S., a child you helped to be born and to raise,

could survive and become the school its students need, 

the school the community needs.

by Henry H. Walker

June 29, ‘21