The Founders: John Moore Pierce

[3/6/1958] John M. Pierce, Long-Time H.S. Co-Op Head, Dies

John M. Pierce, director of the Springfield High school Co-operative course from 1919 until his retirement in June of 1956, died suddenly yesterday at his winter home in Maitland, Fla.

Attorney Palmer D. Ainsworth received a telephone call late yesterday afternoon from John M. Pierce, jr.,[sic] of Plainfield, VT, who was visiting his father in Florida, announcing the death of the well-loved teacher, amateur telescope maker, musician and geologist.

Mr. Pierce survived by only a little more than a year his wife, Enid Crawford Pierce, well-known author and poetess, who died in Florida on January 28, 1957, two months after she and her husband had arrived there to spend the winter.

Funeral services for Mr. Pierce will be held Friday afternoon at 2 o'clock at the Davis Memorial Chapel in Springfield. The Rev. Richard Beyer, pastor of the First Congregational church, will officiate. Burial will be in Oakland cemetery in the Spring. The family said that friends may make contributions in memory of Mr. Pierce to the Vermont Heart Fund. (John G. Pappas is local chairman.)

Attorney Ainsworth said that it was his understanding from John Pierce that his father's death was sudden and unexpected. Friends in Springfield reported that he had written them recently, stating his health was good and that he had been visiting friends in various parts of Florida. Just recently he called on Mrs. Eben Fullam, who died Saturday in Mount Dora, Fla.

In all, Mr. Pierce was a teach for 49 years. Although the Springfield "Co-op" course was organized in 1913 for the training of skilled machine tool workers, it has expanded under Mr. Pierce's direction to include other trades - carpentry, cabinet making, sheet metal work, electricity, pattern making and auto mechanics.

Abut 800 "co-ops" were trained in the course after Mr. Pierce took over its direction. An indication of its effectiveness is given in the last survey which showed that over 80 per cent of the graduates of the machine tool course were employed in Springfield shops.

Mr. Pierce came to Springfield from Syracuse, N. Y., where he had charge of pre-vocational work in the school system. That was six years after the Springfield machine tool industries decide to co-operate in training its workers in the high school. The shops joined in planning the course and gave the boys actual practice while the school handled the teaching of the theory. The result has been skilled machinists who at the end of the five-year-high school course are trained and ready to enter the machine tool industry.

Mr. Pierce was a native of Indiana, Pa. He was educated in the public schools and the state Normal school in that community. He taught at the Normal school for a time and then decided to study architectural engineering at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N. Y., from which he was graduated in 1910. He taught in Texas, in Nevada, in California and in Syracuse. While teaching at the Indiana, Pa., Normal school he married, at her home in Syracuse, in 1912, Miss Enid Crawford, Syracuse university graduate, and the young supervisor of teaching in the model school at the Indiana Normal school. They went to Reno, Nev., where Mr. Pierce's teaching duties took them.

During World War I they moved to Syracuse, N. Y., where Mr. Pierce was engaged in defense work with the Franklin Automobile company which manufactured Rolls Royce engines for airplanes. He later taught in Syracuse and was serving in that capacity when he received a call from Superintendent of Schools Herbert Casey of Springfield to take over the co-operative course here.

Mr. Pierce previously had headquarters in the same building with a man named Hutchinson who came to Vermont to take a job with the state Department of Education. Hutchinson recommended Pierce for the post at Springfield. "He called me up one day and said I would probably get an offer from Springfield. He urged me not to throw it in the waste basket, but to give it careful consideration," Pierce told friends here. It wasn't long before Supt. Casey asked him to come to Springfield for an interview. "I did - and Springfield became our home", the co-op course director stated. For several years the Pierce family lived on Harvard street, later building their new home on Highland road.

Mr. Pierce formerly played the violin with the Vermont Symphony orchestra. After he first came to Springfield he became interested in telescope making. He joined with Russell Porter, an Elm Hill neighbor, in building the star shrine, Stellafane, on Breezy Hill, Springfield now the mecca of amateur telescope makers from many parts of the world. Mr. Pierce also had a small business supplying parts for telescopes to fellow amateurs.

He is survived by his son, John, professor of mathematics and science at Goddard college in Plainfield, and four grandchildren. Another son, Jerome, lost his life in a fall at Mount Washington, just as he was preparing to enter college a number of years ago. Mr. Pierce also has a brother and sister in Indiana, Pa.

(Photo caption : DIES IN FLORIDA - John M. Pierce, director of the Springfield High School Co-operative Course from 1919 until his retirement in June, 1956, died suddenly yesterday at his winter home in Maitland, Fla. His son, John, of Plainfield was with him at the time of his death. Funeral services will be held at the Davis Memorial Chapel in Springfield Friday afternoon. Story Page 1. This picture was taken when he retired from the direction of the Co-op Course in 1956.)

Source : "Springfield Reporter", 3/6/1958

Records : 1920, 1930, WWI, WWII

Club Activities

A local high school teacher, Pierce met Porter shortly after arriving in Springfield from Syracuse in the summer of 1919. It was at a neighborhood gathering and the talked turned to optics. On Thanksgiving, 1919 Pierce started his mirror which was completed that winter. While apparently not particularly outstanding it apparently struck Porter that it would be useful to start a class.

John Pierce meets Porter and catches the disease of making telescope and late in the winter of '19 discovers a barrel of antracite coal beneath a 10" speculum. Question? Started 1st mirror on Thanksgiving, 1919, as per notation on cellar door frame.

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