Curtis School, founded in 1925 by Carl Curtis primarily as a swim school, has seen many changes in nearly nine decades of existence. Foremost among those changes, Curtis became an academic school for students in the primary (and later, secondary) grades. In the course of its long history, Curtis has had several homes. From its first campus on Beverly Place near Fairfax, the school moved to St. Victor’s Church in West Hollywood, and from there to a site in Culver City, before settling on the spacious Santa Monica mountaintop it occupies today. At one time, the junior high resided apart from the lower grades, in the San Fernando Valley. Curtis has graduated thousands of children through the years. But however different the eras and campuses through which they passed, traditions and threads of shared experience connect students of the past to the Curtis of today. Some traditions have continued and the essence of others still resonates in new ways. The Curtis Oral History Project has been created to capture and document the history and traditions of our school and to preserve them for the future.
Comments on the Curtis Oral History Project
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by David Pappin
Special Advisor for Alumni Outreach
I have had the honor and privilege of working at Curtis for nearly 30 years, and during that time I got to know many of the people who were instrumental in making Curtis the school it is today. During the past 18 months, I have been interviewing some of those individuals, and I look forward to sharing their memories with you.
Certainly the strongest link to our past is through former Headmaster Bill Badham. Known to all as “Baddy,” Bill was a fixture at Curtis from the time he graduated from USC in 1948 until his retirement in 1992. Baddy shared with me his personal memories of Curtis, including those of Carl F. Curtis, second headmaster and nephew of founder Carl Curtis. “Carl taught me a lot of things,” recalled Baddy. “He believed in P.E. every day and strict academics. Respect was always important to him.” Baddy also shared stories of school ski trips, swimming and boxing instruction in the early days of the school, and the many transitions in culture and campus sites that have helped form the traditions experienced by generations of students and families.
One of the most enduring traditions Baddy started was that of getting to know each child personally by greeting him or her at the school gate each morning. From his very first day as headmaster, Baddy would personally greet all children as they arrived on campus. He would reach out to shake a hand or give a hug and a kind word for the child to carry throughout the day. It was a perfect blend of love, personal attention and enthusiasm. Reflecting on Baddy, former student, parent, and Board Chair Bob Tuttle—now Robert Holmes Tuttle, U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James’s—recalled, “I remember, when I started in Kindergarten, Baddy greeted me every morning in front of the school. I was amazed that by the second day he knew my name and my classmates’ names.” In his conversations with me, Baddy described those greetings as a way to prepare himself for the day when those children would graduate, as he wished to be able to contribute a personal remark about each student while handing out diplomas. To this day, this cherished tradition continues with our current headmaster, Stephen Switzer.
Going forward, we’ll explore a new slice of the oral history of Curtis School on the website each month. Together, we will be able to go back in time and relive the moments and traditions on which our own fond memories are built. I encourage you to share your stories about Baddy’s morning greetings and graduation comments. You may email your stories directly to us by clicking on this link: curtisoralhistoryproject@curtisschool.org. We plan to post your stories about these traditions on our website. We look forward to hearing from students, parents, and others associated with Curtis who can help us memorialize and enrich the chronicles of Curtis’ past.
