The flood of November 1927 surprised many at Loomis. Not since 1854 had the Farmington River spilled over its banks with such force and, as Mr. Batchelder noted, “we were not used to fall floods.” Howard R. Morse, Loomis’ first and longest-serving business manager, commemorated the event with a cast bronze high-water mark of his own design. While the floods of 1936, 1938, and 1984 are legendary in Island lore, only this earlier event inspired an artistic — and playful — tribute, and it remains mounted on the side of the Power House today.

Mr. Batchelder described the flood in his end-of-year letter to alumni. He wrote of the rising waters and returning from a Saturday afternoon Loomis football game at Deerfield to observe “the highway fence on the front road entirely disappeared from sight, and the street lamps were only a few feet out of water. … [T]he baseball field was covered.” Overnight, the waters overtook the football field and the ground level of the Power House. The cellar of Mrs. Batchelder’s art studio flooded with several feet of water, and, as Mr. B. recounted, “still the waters rose.”

While other parts of New England, especially southern Vermont, suffered tragic casualties and extensive flood damage, Windsor, according to Mr. B, saw “no real suffering.” But the flood did interrupt school life. The football team practiced among the stately elms in the quadrangle (now known as Grubbs Quadrangle) while water receded from the playing field. The school’s central heating system failed, and for a few days Island residents, according to Mr. B, “hovered around open fires in the dormitories.” Two enterprising students, Rushmore Mariner ’28 and Ripley Swan ’31, borrowed Mrs. Batchelder’s three-person row boat and on a Sunday afternoon ran a ferry service between campus and the center of Windsor. Mr. B. nicknamed this the “Loomis Navy.”

Nearly three decades later Howard Morse recalled in a LOG interview that each of the three early 20th-century floods “really put us out of commission.” Fortunately, according to his grandson Trip Morse, Howard could make light of difficult situations with his great sense of humor and unfailing kindness, and these surely must have come in handy in the days of the ’27 flood. 

Howard fashioned a plaster model for the high-water mark in the months that followed the flood. The design reflected his playful sense of humor and featured a Noah’s Ark bearing elephant and giraffe passengers. This whimsical nod to the November flood appeared in the 1928 spring Loomis Art Show alongside works by renowned sculptors Daniel Chester French and Evelyn Longman Batchelder, the aforementioned Mrs. Batchelder who loaned out her row boat.

Howard Morse and his 40 years of service to the school are honored with a large bronze portrait medallion, created by Evelyn Longman Batchelder and installed in the east end of Founders Hall. His place as a luminary in the early school’s history is unquestioned as is the spirit with which he helped Loomis take on — and fondly remember — all that came with what Mr. B called in 1927 “the highest water we have known.”