The Quartermaster's hats

The day before my parents drove me to Hargrave to begin my junior year, I got together with two of my best friends and went out for a drive in the country, in southern Virginia. The primary aim of the outing was to find a barber shop and have a kind of ritualistic hair cutting in preparation for my upcoming two-year "exile" from the world as we teenagers knew it.

I had just turned 17 and my hair was nearly down to my shoulders. Deep down inside I always suspected that it was the "hair thing" that was at the root of my father's desire to send me off to military school. Yeah, there was the problem of my poor grades and the looming possibility that I might start to hang out with the wrong crowd in town. But I just knew that that long hair was the true source of the discomfort between me and my father. Hargrave offered the "final solution" to the hair issue.

My friends Richard, Mark and I took off one morning in my family's yellow Chevy Vega and drove toward Lawrenceville, VA. I wanted to take one last look at my old high school, Brunswick Academy, to which I had slowly developed an attachment and a high level of comfort during 10th grade. Brunwick was located down the road from the center of Lawrenceville.

As we drove through town, I noticed a small barber shop. I must have looked at my friends and said something like, "Okay guys, let's get it over with, let's do it." Of course, Richard and Mark were loving every minute of it. Both of them had long hair, and must have felt an element of fear and sorrow for me. However, they were going to milk this moment for all it was worth!

I sat down in the barber's chair, almost as if I were sitting down in the electric chair or laying my head beneath the guillotine. It gave me the shivers. It felt surreal, as if... "This really couldn't be happening to me... I'm going to lose my freedom AND my hair?"

Well, it felt like an eternity. But before long, the deed was done. Three-quarters of my hair was gone... on the floor. I looked like a freek! Short hair. Now, I definitely had to go to military school, because there was no way I could go back to Brunswick like this. I knew somehow it would all work out, but at that precise moment in time it seemed my life was over.

The next morning, we left early for Chatham. My whole family went. My parents, my brothers, my sister. They helped me settle in. My mother took me into town to buy some shelves for my stereo and books. We probably had lunch somewhere... kind of a "last meal" kind of thing. They were gone by late afternoon, and I was left in my room in the B Company barracks... left to ponder my fate and begin making the mental adjustments that I would need to survive and hopefully flourish in my new environment. My first roommate, Mike Miller, came in and introduced himself. We exchanged pleasantries.

Ultimately, B Company was little more than a weigh station, as I ended up in Band. I figured if I had to be in a military school, I would at least have some fun and play drums... not carry a rifle.

The next day, I received instructions for a range of things, I'm sure. At some point that day, I was guided to the quartermaster's shop (in the basement below the mess hall) to get outfitted with everything I would need to look like a cadet. My grey trousers and coat, my white dress trousers, my grey shirts, my white shirts, my black tie, my belt, my black wool jacket, my black shoes, my shoe polish kit, my insignias, and of course... my hat.

I searched around for several minutes for a hat that fit me properly. Must have tried on five or six hats before a kindly gentleman with a tape measure slung dangling around his neck came up and picked one out for me (kind of like the scene in Ollivadner's Wands from the first Harry Potter movie). I tried it on, but the hat was still too small. The quartermaster looked up at me above his glasses, which balanced on the end of his nose. He paused for a second and quickly decided the hat would do... "No, the hat will fit you fine son after you get your hair cut."

What? "But I just got a hair cut!" I thought to myself in disbelief. "You gotta be kidding me."

I quickly resigned myself. After all, to whom would I complain, reason with? I knew from that very moment that things were going to be pretty black and white. All those shades of grey that previously had given me some wiggle room were gone.

The quartermaster's name was Lt Col. John L. Beaver. Col Beaver died on June 1, 1980, a few years after I graduated from Hargrave in 1976.

Col. Beaver was born in Rowan County, North Carolina, June 8, 1915, a son of the late John Alexander Beaver and Florence Beatrice Eagle Beaver. He was a graduate of Wingate College and Elon College, and attended the American University of Shrivenham, England. He was a veteran of the US Army and spent most of his life in Pittsylvania County, teaching at Schoolfield High School and serving as a teacher, coach, and athletic director at Hargrave . At the time of his death, he was the quartermaster at Hargrave.