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Mt Hermon - The Story Mt Hermon: The Story Darjeeling is a "hill station" in Eastern India (state of Bengal) that was used by the British to get relief from the heat of the plains in the summer months. (www.visit-darjeeling.com has more information on Darjeeling.) Darjeeling is 7001 ft. (2134 meters) above sea level in the foothills of the Himalayas. Mount Hermon School, as we know it now, was built around 1926. The actual town of Darjeeling is about 2 1/2 miles from MH. We were at the northern end of town so you had to pass through the lower end of the town to get to the road that led to Mount Hermon and other schools nearby. Mount Hermon is a Christian, co-educational, primary through high school founded in 1895. It started out in Queenshill on the edge of Darjeeling, as a girls school (with a small department for junior boys) but was changed in 1926 to include boys all the way through high school making it a co-educational school. It was primarily a boarding school for missionary children and European children from Calcutta, but there were also students from Bhutan, Sikkim, and other parts of India as well as a small percentage from Iran, Malaysia and Thailand. Families had to pay their own fees. It was a private school. History: The school was started by Emma Knowles (a missionary woman from the US) and was run by the American Methodist Church, until the 60's when the Australian/New Zealand Baptist mission took over primary responsibility for its running. It is now operated by the Methodist Church in India. In the 70's, the school averaged about 400+ students though it was in an expansion mode and has since become bigger (I hear). Most of the missionaries were gone by the end of the 60's because the government of India changed it's policies towards missionaries and had them all leave, post haste. The business climate towards foreigners also became much more unfavorable as Indian central government policies shifted to "self sufficiency" not reliance on foreign powers and people. There was a big exodus of companies like Mobil Oil, Coca Cola etc. Somehow, the Australian/NZ board was able to keep a trickle of teachers coming to Mount Hermon from their own country and from England. (That should be an interesting story too). More and more local (Indian) teachers have filled the staff positions, and the student body is now almost totally filled with Indian/Asian kids. The location of Mount Hermon, opposite Kanchenjunga and the Himalayan range is truly spectacular. The view of the Himalayan Range from MH is AWESOME in every sense of the word!! The 3rd highest mountain in the world, Kanchenjunga, (28142 ft) rises up above the rest of the range and is DIRECTLY opposite Mount Hermon....40 miles as the crow flies! It's twin peaks and the rest of the range falling off to the east and west of it made for fabulous viewing and picture taking when not enshrouded in mist and clouds. The best time to see the mountains is in February/March and late October/November. I would feel an ethereal glow and god like inspiration emanating from them when I gazed at the mountains in their year-long white splendor. The famous Scripture "I will lift up mine eyes to the Hills, from whence cometh mine aid, My help cometh from the Lord who made Heaven and Earth" truly came alive for me there. It was wonderful to wake up and look out at the sparkling mountains, especially on days when the fog had settled into the valleys below obliterating the steep, green, tea carpeted slopes affording us what looked like a magical white carpet over which you felt you could almost walk across to Kanchenjunga. So this was the setting for Mount Hermon School! Those of us "Hermonites" who graduated from High School there, feel a special bond to other Hermonites because it was our "family" for 9 months of the year. Also, many Hermonites spent most or all of their school life (10-12 years) there. Many arrived as little kids (4 and 5 years old) and didn't leave till they were 16 or 17! That's a long time to have the same friends and know the same staff, as you can imagine. The actual school itself, the main building, was built as a replica of some castle or other. The outside is made of all grey rocks with large cement corners. The windows are set back in the castle-like walls and there are even turrets on the top floor. It is in the shape of a square-U with the main entrance to the "castle" at the northern middle section of the U. We hope to have pictures of this up on the website, soon. The building is cold and dank and made of cement and rock inside. There are three main floors all of cement with bannisters (stairways) going up from the middle behind the front entrance area, the east end and the south east end. The fourth floor was actually the roof of the building and housed dormitories. The second and third floors also housed dormitories during our time, however they used to be class-rooms before the 60's when the school was 200+ students and must have been the main building for everything. Barbara (Nichols-Roy) T. with additional early information by Harriet (Lapp) Burkholder (Kindergarten through High School at MHS graduating 1931) By : Barbara (Nichols-Roy) T. Graduated : 1975 Date : 10/4/2002 12:52 |
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