The story of Far Brooks One and Two
There are two Far Brooks. One is the 75-year-old bastion of progressive education that occupies 9½ acres in Short Hills. It is a collection of red buildings, playground, ball field and half-swamp that is held dear by the thousands of children and their parents who have been part of its community.
The other, the mythic Far Brook, was an actual stream. It was, legend has it, the small waterway a half mile from campus that gave the school its name. This stream was not big or important enough to have an actual name. Its moniker describes its distance from the school. It was not the small stream that still runs through campus, nor even the one a ways on from that. It was the third stream, the far brook, as it were.
The stream was long ago paved over by development, all but lost to history. It lives in the memory of Brad Wiley, who was a third grader at the school’s founding 75 years ago. He took walks and school trips across what were then empty fields to that stream of long ago.
Now it also lives in a book dedicated to the school, to Wiley and to all that Far Brook is. Its title is The Far, Far, Far Brook. “Not far from the big city, just past the South Mountain, there’s a land with short hills and long valleys,” the book begins. “Along the side of one of those hills is a cluster of little red buildings – a magical place called Far Brook School.”
The book was written by two men from Maplewood. Doak Sergent, who sent his son and daughter to Far Brook, is a trustee. His co-author, Roberto Olazagasti, who also illustrated the book, is not just a Far Brook parent. He is the school’s art teacher. In the small world that defines so much of Maplewood and Far Brook, the two men have been friends and neighbors for more than 20 years, starting in Manhattan and including moves to Brooklyn, to Maplewood and then within Maplewood.
L: Roberto Olazagasti is co-author and illustrator of the book as well as a Far Brook parent and the school’s art teacher. R:Doak Sergent is a co-author of the book, sent his son and daughter to Far Brook and is also a trustee.
The book follows three boys, the leader named Brad, on an adventure to the far brook. Along the
way they discover and identify several types of trees, skunk cabbage and tadpoles. They spy a chipmunk, a frog and water walkers. They find their way back by following the footprints they’ve left in the soggy wetland. When asked what he wanted the story to say about Far Brook, Sergent talks about the kids’ sense of adventure, their ability to solve problems to find their way home and their resilience, all skills the school emphasizes. One of the most important lessons, however, is the setting. “Part of Far Brook’s philosophy is that kids get outdoors,” Sergent says.
“They’re outside all day long,” says Far Brook Head of School Amy Ziebarth, the fourth person and third woman to lead the school in its long history. The small red buildings do not have hallways; they all open to the outdoors, so kids need to walk through the weather to get anywhere.
One sunny morning not long ago, Wiley ambled through what is now called the wetlands – Far Brook is one of only a handful of schools in the country with a designated Schoolyard Wetlands Habitat, awarded it by the National Wildlife Federation in 2002 – searching for the kindergarten class that was even then out with an expert from the Great Swamp Outdoor Education Center in Chatham, who had come to talk about animal homes with the kids. It’s a small wet land, hemmed in on all sides by suburban sprawl. In Wiley’s day, everything was wilder and more expansive. What is now the parking lot was the soccer field. On the ball field, which still sits where it did then, the hazards were natural ones, the swamp in left field and the blackberry briars in right. There were two sports: soccer and softball. The school was so small that both teams were co-ed. (Now, as then, all students play on the teams, sing in the choir and perform in the plays.)
Still, if Wiley squints, it all looks familiar. “It’s enough of a similarity I can still imagine what it was like then,” he says. His Far Brook consisted of only a couple of the little red buildings. Now there are many, including those surrounding a courtyard dedicated to Wiley and his long-ago classmates. One of the rooms in the new courtyard is the art room, a large, expansive space with a wall of sliding door s that can completely open to the wetlands beyond.
“My classroom backs up to the woods,” Olazagasti says. “I’m constantly surrounded by changing colors, changing textures.”
It was the vibrancy of his surroundings that inspired Olazagasti’s illustrations in The Far, Far, Far Brook, bold but not brash drawings that have a Suess-like whimsy. He did them in watercolor pencil. “It’s as quiet or as loud as you need it to be,” he says of the medium. “It ... captured the mood.”
The mood this day includes not only the kindergarteners squealing in the wetlands but the class of 3-year-olds hanging out on small playground equipment in the courtyard, a group of 7th and 8th graders perfecting Bach in the music room, and a group rehearsing a play based on the works of Toni Morrison.
It all feels familiar to Wiley who, throughout his adult life, has made periodic pilgrimages back to this spot. He has owned a vineyard in California for many years and also spent decades in New Jersey, working in the family-owned business, Wiley publishing.
Wherever he has been he has come back to Far Brook to honor the place that made him who he is. It gave him everything, he says. The focus was on educating the whole child, “not just the skills in reading, writing, arithmetic, but also personal behavior and attitude toward the community.”
He remembers the first school director telling him “It doesn’t make any difference if you lose. The important thing is teamwork and being a good sport.” He didn’t buy it. She shrugged off his competitiveness. She also shrugged off his suggestion, years later, to sell the property and move farther west, where they might get more land. “I’m really glad [she ignored me],’’ he says now. “That was bad advice.” Instead, the little school has become more ingrained in Essex County. It is home now to a wider range of students, thanks to a growing endowment and a commitment to tuition assistance.
And every summer it opens its doors to lots of the area’s children through its summer and sports camps. Sergent first heard Wiley’s memories about walking to the far brook at morning meeting, the whole school gathering that starts the day and occasionally includes stories told by alumni.
Sergent realized Far Brook’s 75th anniversary was the perfect opportunity “to gather these stories that are totally relevant to the school and make a tribute.” The book has been handed out at events during the last year and remains for sale on the school’s website.
Wiley, ever anxious to avoid being the center of attention, says the precise journey Sergent and Olazagasti tell in the book never happened and deflects his being the hero of the story. “I was not the leader. It really was the teaching staff.” “Doak’s version is a myth,” he says, before quickly adding, “and myths have a value of their own.” Especially when they are about a boy and a brook from far away and long ago.
Tia Swanson grew up in northwestern Pennsylvania, where small streams also are named after their relation to something else. Her brothers fished the Four Mile, so called because it was four miles from the confluence of the South and West Branches of the Tionesta Creek. The Tionesta flows into the Allegheny River, which joins the Ohio in Pittsburgh, flowing west until it empties into the Mississippi. All of those bodies of water are, thankfully, still with us.
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