How This Beacon School Got its Name ...

Old Spring Street School bell dedication at Forrestal School, 1954

Miss Diane Murphy's (now the Beacon Historical Society's secretary) Fourth Grade class at Forrestal, including Marc Molinaro (see arrow), now candidate for governor of New York, shown in the 1984-85 school year.

An aircraft carrier or an elementary school--which of the two would Secretary James Forrestal have been more proud to lend his name? The warship, the USS Forrestal, and the school, the James V. Forrestal School, both were dedicated in separate outpourings of esteem for Beacon's most famous patriot-son in the year 1954, five years after the death of Forrestal, the nation's first Secretary of Defense. The aircraft carrier has long ago (1993) been scrapped; in contrast, every June fifth-graders of the J.V. Forrestal School still ring the old bell in front of the school in celebration of their graduation, a sign and sound of moving on ... like the thousands of Forrestal students before them. How did this school, which opened in 1953, get its name?

We look back to 1950, when the old Spring Street School no longer was a safe structure of learning for the children of Beacon's east end. In that year the Beacon board of education had purchased a tract of 12 acres off Liberty Street as the site of the proposed new school that would replace Spring Street elementary. A city wide referendum quickly followed, asking taxpayers to spend $994,000 on the construction of the Liberty Street school. By a lopsided vote of 1746 to 90, Beacon affirmed the need of a new, million-dollar school. But
what to call it ...

It was an old newspaperman, Morg Hoyt, writing in the Beacon News, who broached the idea of naming the school after native son James Forrestal. Some 40 years earlier Hoyt had hired a young Forrestal fresh out of high school as a cub reporter for his newspaper, the Matteawan Journal. In his teens Forrestal
distinguished himself with his writing ability and his ambitious drive to root out a good news story. Hoyt knew then the boy would go far in life. Hoyt also reminded his readers that Forrestal had graduated (at age 16) from Matteawan High School, later renamed Spring Street School--the same school about to be replaced. By coincidence it was learned that the school site on Liberty Street once was part of the farmland of Matthias Toohey, Forrestal's maternal grandfather. The board of education was of one mind in this persuasion and
agreed to name the new school, the James V. Forrestal School. The new school opened in September of 1953, and was formally dedicated in June of 1954, with written greetings and congratulations to Beacon from President Dwight Eisenhower. Soon after, the old bell from the Spring Street School was removed from the abandoned school and put in place in front of the new. Today, the bell's clear tones ring out for each retiring Forrestal teacher and for each student completing his sixth year of study in the school named after a patriot and local hero.

Photos: 1. . 2. Mary Forrestal, niece of James Forrestal, unveils her uncle's portrait hanging in the cafeteria of Forrestal School. 3. Old Spring Street School bell dedication at Forrestal School, 1954. 4.

Henry L.A. Forrestal, brother of James Forrestal, breaks ground for the new Forrestal School

Mary Forrestal, niece of James Forrestal, unveils her uncle's portrait hanging in the cafeteria of Forrestal School