Blair students often have the best intentions….When David Cruz ’98, John Rocco ’98 and Alvaro Gonzalez ’97 roomed together in Mason Hall, they felt strongly that the all-boys dorm could use a little more unity. So, they approached Mrs. Conforti-Browse, the dorm head, with an ambitious plan to raise everyone’s spirits: They would throw a holiday party and decorate a Christmas tree themselves. “They thought it would be a great bonding event,” Mrs. Conforti-Browse recalls. The plan? “The entire dorm would venture out on the golf course together and, with faculty supervision, cut down a tree, with each student taking a ceremonial swing.” 

The group of roughly two dozen boys set their plan in motion, and in true teenage fashion, decided it would be more fun to carry out this adventure at midnight. So, in the dead of night, they trudged through the snow and successfully cut down the largest tree they could find—a magnificent 40-foot pine. “Unfortunately,” Mrs. Conforti-Browse recalls with a laugh, “no one had thought about how to get a 40-foot tree into Mason.” 

At 2 a.m., after carrying the towering pine down Route 94, the group decided the best way to get the tree into the dorm intact would be to remove the dorm’s front door. Once inside, the bigger issue became how to secure the tree. Fortunately, one of the dorm’s occupants was a whiz at outdoor skills. “He pulled out a grappling hook and with a heave-ho, they used a pulley to tie that tree to the railing. They did bond over it,” she recalls, chuckling. “It was a crazy bonding experience.”

Blair’s 175-year history is filled with a mix of well-documented facts and time-honored legends passed down through generations. From ghost stories and wartime mishaps to cows mysteriously appearing in dorms, we’ve teamed up with the School's historians and storytellers to uncover some of Blair's most enduring tales. Join us next Monday for the next installment of the Legends & Lore of Blair.