Charles Edgar Sellers is a person you won’t find much about on the Internet. His death at age 41 from the ravages of tuberculosis left the documentary record sparse too. But colleagues and students were convinced after his 1934 passing that Charles’ spirit would persist on the Island.  Like all good teachers, he planted seeds with his students, “seed of fair-play, honesty, friendship and integrity” and delighted in watching these ideals take hold and mature hold in young people.  Andy Dowe, a Loomis Chaffee Physical Plant employee, never met Charles. But he knew that rescuing Evelyn Longman Batchelder’s bas-relief tribute to Sellers was essential. Carefully stewarding this bronze plaque for nearly six years in campus storage, Andy phoned me in the fall of 2004. His words were convincing: “I think there’s a better place for this.” Andy was right.

Originally set into a brick façade flanked by stone benches and placed in deep left field of the baseball field, the bronze plaque honors one of Loomis’ first teachers. Later the memorial was moved across the Loop Road and reconfigured into a spare brick structure into which the plaque was set. It was this that Andy saw dismantled in 1998 to make way for parking at the new admission building, named ironically, Sellers Hall, in honor of Florence, Charles’ wife and headmistress at the Chaffee School.

“Chick,” as Charles was known, was barely 20 years old when he came to Loomis in 1915. Here he grew into master teacher of science, a three-season coach and the first dorm head of Warham Hall. A fellow teacher remarked: “Chick immediately won his way into the hearts of boys and colleagues …with his irrepressible buoyancy…his tolerance of honest weakness, [and] his intolerance of meanness. From the start he was decisively upright and downright, sympathetic and understanding. He was lovable, dependable, indefatigable. He expected much of his boys; he gave infinitely more than he asked.”

Chick was especially glad to help students who, as he put it, “were trying hard but  ‘running in place.’ It didn’t matter to Chick whether a boy was wealthy or poor…an athlete or an esthete as long as he was sincere in his effort and loyal to his school.”

Chick was the most successful coach in the early years of the school because, as the Hartford Courant noted, he was a brilliant athlete but he was “even more successful in teaching others how to play the game.” In 1917 and 1918 50 boys—almost one half of the student body—tried out for his baseball team.  Sellers inspired his athletes to victory through a combination of athletic discipline, trust and respect.

After passing exams in early 1918 for service with the World War I Army Aviation Corps, Chick waited for enlistment orders. These finally came in May, a full month into the baseball season. For Coach Sellers’ last game, the team soundly defeated Westminster with a 17-1 score. The LOG reported that the Loomis team “fought with a determination to give him a cheerful send-off,” but, in fact, sadness reigned that day. Chick was sorely missed until his return in the winter of 1919, just in time for the first basketball game of the season.

Chick was ill with tuberculosis for all of his post-war years. Like many soldiers, he may have contracted the disease during his stateside training. The illness put him in the company of the infirmary’s stalwart resident nurse, Miss Edwards. Tuberculosis finally won its contest with Sellers. First, the disease took his voice and forced retirement in 1931. Three years later Chick passed away leaving Florence and their 5-year old daughter, Jean.

Less than a year after Chick Sellers’ death, Loomis alumni appointed Mr. and Mrs. Batchelder to design a memorial. Evelyn’s career as a prominent sculptor included grand, large-scale bronze memorials to college presidents and leaders of industry. On this more intimate commission, she decorated the bas-relief’s perimeter with acorns and oak leaves, perhaps symbolizing the ideals Chick planted in his students and the venerable truths they became in the boys’ later years. Latin teacher Knower Mills contributed the final verse of his eulogistic poem.  A Brooklyn, New York foundry cast the plaque, and the Loomis boys landscaped the memorial’s site. More than 400 people attended the dedication ceremony in June 1937.

With the generosity of David Metz ’50 and the work of many hands, the brick monument with its bronze plaque has been reconstructed once again in deep left field—safely in foul territory. Stone benches once again flank the historic bas-relief. David, who also never met Chick Sellers, unknowingly wore a tie decorated with acorns and oak leaves to the memorial’s May 2007 dedication. A coincidence or the indefatigable Sellers spirit at work?