Andrew Bella 

From Byram Boy to High School Principal

by Mary A. Jacobson

There aren’t too many residents of Greenwich who can trace their ties to the Greenwich Public Schools from their earliest childhood years at New Lebanon School to their retirement after a career spanning forty years. Such a man was Andrew Bella for whom Bella House at GHS is proudly named.

Andrew Bella.
Courtesy of the Oral History Project.

Andrew Bella was interviewed for the Oral History Project in the 1970s by Margaret F. French and Brooks Lushington. Born in 1907, Bella’s memories of his early life in Byram are vivid in his mind. “Byram was more or less a self-contained community . . . called East Port Chester in those days because without cars people did their shopping in Port Chester.” He was born into the German Lutheran Church - a “P.K.” or “Preacher’s Kid” - as he said. Most of his dad’s parishioners were immigrants who worked at Abendroth’s, the foundry in Port Chester. “. . . as kids we could look in there, and you could watch the red-hot molten metal being poured.” His dad would advise his immigrant newcomers, “Go to church, get your citizenship papers, and buy a home.” According to Bella, “Many of the homes on Mead Avenue in Byram . . . are still owned by the sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of those people who came here at the turn of the century.”
 
Bella’s description of his early school days at New Lebanon were far different from those experienced today. “We had a crowded school even when I was here, and we had to use the church on William Street for some of the classes.” Bella’s favorite game of baseball was played on a field where the ashes from the school furnace were disposed. “The playground actually was just the open field with stones for bases and ashes in the outfield . . . We passed the hat and made enough to buy the balls and bats and the equipment we needed. So that was the Recreation and Parks Department!” As Bella recounted, “No one had a car. My dad didn’t have a car till I was sixteen (in 1923). Cars and airplanes were a novelty. If you’d see a plane, everybody would look up.”
 
From New Lebanon School, Bella went to Greenwich High School, which was located on Havemeyer Place. However, for Bella, there was “no gym, no yard, no nothing.” For physical education, the students would do calisthenics in the third-floor hallway. “Weather permitting, we would run around the block.” There was also no auditorium. For assemblies, Mr. Folsom, the principal affectionately known as “Pop,” would climb on a platform in the corridor “and we would stand around him, and we’d have our assemblies there.” The year Bella graduated in 1925, however, construction began on the new high school on Field Point Road (now Town Hall).

Havemeyer School, on Havemeyer Place, eight years after its opening in 1892.
Site of the first Greenwich High School graduation in 1895.
Courtesy of Greenwich Library.

Despite the lack of facilities, “we managed, and I think we had an excellent faculty.” In particular, Bella extolled the science department. “We did have an excellent science department.” Bella excelled in physics and chemistry and enrolled at Yale, graduating as a physicist. However, “By then the Depression had struck, and no one knew what a physicist was, let along hire one.” His luck changed through a chance meeting with Pop Folsom. “I came home one vacation from graduate work at Yale and I met Pop Folsom who said ‘We have an opening in the physics department. Would you be interested?’ . . . So that’s the way I came back to Greenwich High School (in 1929 at age 22), by meeting Pop Folsom on the street one day.”
 
By 1940, with a master’s degree in educational administration from Columbia, Bella was named principal of Greenwich High School. During his tenure, until his retirement in 1969, the high school experienced much growth and development. “The athletic program evolved from football, baseball, and basketball into the complete spectrum of sports we have today (1977 at the time of interview), including lacrosse, tennis, and soccer . . . We developed ice hockey when the rink was built in Playland . . . We were the only out-of-state school that skated in Playland. Many times we were champs of the Westchester County Hockey League.”
 
Bella also supported increasing school services for students who had learning difficulties or were academically challenged. “The whole guidance movement developed during my tenure at the high school.” Bella was also particularly proud of a program developed in the aftermath of World War II. “Boys who had not finished their high school education were allowed to come back as veterans . . . they were the best students; they knew what they wanted to do.”
 
As the post-World War II baby-boom generation moved through the school, its facilities became cramped with some classes held in the auditorium and gymnasium. “Toward the end of my career at Field Point (now Town Hall), our proms were so large that we had to have two orchestras. We had one inside the girls’ gym and we had a tent on the front lawn, so there was continuous music inside and outside.” “Afterglows” (post-prom gatherings) were held at The Clam Box in Cos Cob so the students would have a place to go after the prom.
 
Bella fondly recalled an incident in which he was summoned to the second floor because there was a car in the hallway. “A crowd of maybe a hundred students followed me up and, sure enough, there in the corridor was this Volkswagen completely assembled . . . What they had done is, during the night, under blankets with flashlights, taken this car apart, and hoisted it up to the second floor . . . no gasoline . . . no scratches . . . They did it and they were fine students.”
 
Bella had definitive views about the value of discipline. “I think that discipline, if it’s fair . . . is something that students want . . . If they don’t have it, they’re going to look for it, and they’re going to look for it by doing something that demands discipline . . . Youngsters want to know what the lines are.”

Greenwich High School on Field Point Road in 1960.
Opened in 1925.
Now serves as Greenwich Town Hall.
Courtesy of Greenwich Library.

Bella’s tenure extended from the World War II era to that of the Vietnam War and the turmoil of the sixties. Through those years, he led with a steady hand. The present high school on Hillside Avenue opened in 1970, the year after he retired. Bella had championed for a new school to accommodate the swelling student population. A clandestine petition, signed by hundreds of students, requested that one of the houses in the new school be named Bella House after him, a recognition in which he took great pride. “I go to about three reunions a year and you get this outpouring of affection for the school . . . And that’s where you begin to feel the real quality and value of what went on at that time.”
 
The interview entitled “From Byram Boy to High School Principal” may be read in its entirety or checked out at the main library. It is also available for purchase at the Oral History Project office. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.