The celebrity link - What attracted so many famous people to the MacJannets’ humble orbit?

By: Dan Rottenberg (Les Entretiens - Spring 2014)

What did Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jawarlahal Nehru, Risë Stevens and Audrey Hepburn (above) have in common?


All were world-famous figures of one sort or another. And all— not to mention dozens of other notables, including corporate executives, diplomats, generals, admirals and writers— entrusted their children to the egalitarian and frugal hands of two educational revolutionaries, Donald and Charlotte MacJannet.


Rise Stevens
1913-2013
Operatic Mezzo-soprano

The impressive sampling of noteworthy MacJannet parents listed below is matched only by an equally remarkable catalogue of accomplished MacJannet alumni— from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to Britain’s Prince Philip to India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to the leveraged buyout pioneer Thomas H. Lee.

Audrey Hepburn
(1929-1993)

Yet the MacJannet American School, which operated at St.-Cloud outside Paris from 1924 to 1940, never enrolled more than 60 students at any one time. Camp MacJannet never housed more than 80 campers during its summers on Lake Annecy from 1925 to 1963. Both were the sort of institutions where, as former junior counselor Maria Robinson puts it, “the bread was bought to last for more thanone day, and we were exhorted to ‘think of the millions of starving Chinese’ when some child would turn up his nose at some part of the meal.”




Jawaharlal Nehru
1889-1964
First Prime Minister
of India

In their day, the MacJannets’ operation inadvertently enjoyed a virtually unique niche: The MacJannet School at St.-Cloud was the only co-ed, predominantly American progressive country day and boarding school in Europe, and the MacJannets’ summer camp served as an extension of the school. The school enjoyed a strong track record for Ivy League college admissions and College Board score performance. (At one time, every member of the MacJannet School board was a Harvard graduate— except for Donald, who had graduated from Tufts.)

The camp, similarly, was the only American-style overnight summer camp in Europe, and consequently it served as a convenient and even economical place for sophisticated American parents to park their children while they toured the Continent. (The Camp MacJannet fees were so low that, as my mother once pointed out,it actually cost less to send my brother and me to Camp MacJannet— even including the airfare— than to send us to camp in the U.S.)

Potter Stewart
(1915-1985)

Associate Justice

US Supreme Court

(1958-1981)

In retrospect, the MacJannets devised an educational formula that caught on within a circle of knowledgeable parents who possessed the confidence to take educational risks— and whose confidence was reinforced by their peers’ experiences with the MacJannets.

Today, similarly, the Tufts European Campus in Talloires draws adventurous high school students to Tufts University and adventurous Tufts students to Talloires, where the MacJannet principles of “learning by doing” in a foreign environment are pursued every summer.

The products of the Tufts programs will be worth examining soon. For our purposes here, the roster of Mac- Jannet parents and students— listed roughly in chrono- logical order— should suffice. Impressive as it may be, it barely skims the surface.

General William W. Harts (1866-1961). After service in the Spanish-American War and World War I, he was appointed military governor of Paris and military aide to President Woodrow Wilson duringthe Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. From 1926 to 1930 he was military attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Paris. His daughter Cynthia Harts Raymond (1913-2011) was a counselor at the MacJannet Camp in 1930 and, years later, a longtime trustee of the MacJannet Foundation.

Henry Latrobe Roosevelt (1879-1936)was assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy (1933-36), like his cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt before him. When he was European manager for Radio Corporation of America (1923-28), he sent his two sons, William and Henry, to the MacJannet American School at St.–Cloud.

V.K. Wellington Koo (1887-1985), a prominent Chinese diplomat, represented China at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919;served as an ambassador to France, Great Britain and the U.S.; was involved in the founding of the League of Nations and the United Nations; and sat as a judge on the Interna- tional Court of Justice in The Hague from 1957 to 1967. He also served briefly as acting premier and interim president of the Republic of China, 1926-27. His sons Wellington Jr. and Freeman attended the Mac- Jannet School at St.–Cloud in the late 1920s while he was China’s ambassador to France.

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964). Paramount leader of the Indian Independence Movement; he ruled India from its establishment as an independent nation in 1947 until his death in office in 1964. He sent his only child, Indira, to the MacJannet Camp in 1929 (see below).

Dhan Gopal Mukerji (1890-1936), author of adult and children’s books, the first successful Indian man of letters in the U.S. and winner of the Newbery Medal (for children’s books) in 1928 (for Gay Neck, The Story of a Pigeon). His half-Indian, half-American son Dhan attended the camp in 1928 or 1929, and later wrote the MacJannets: “It was at camp that I discovered who I was. I had been very worried before. Was I white? Was I dark? Was I Indian? American? What was I? And then I came to the camp. I loved everything Mr. Mac said, and the way he ran the camp, and all the bunch of boys and girls. The people called the American camp. And I said this is the American spirit, and this is what I want to be. Why shouldn’t I be? I’m an American.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969). The future World War II commander and U.S. president was sta- tioned in France after World War I as head of the U.S. War Monuments Commission. In 1925, when Donald MacJannet opened a branch school for younger children opposite the Trocadero Gardens in Paris, Eisenhower sent his son John there. John later became a U.S. Army major and historian. “The first day, when my mother dropped me off [at the Trocadero school], I howled and screamed,” John recalled in his 1974 autobiography, Strictly Personal. “But when she came by to pick me up that evening, I refused for a while to go home.”

Robert D. Murphy (1894-1978) played an important role in American diplomacy from the 1930s through the 1950s. During World War II he was considered the State Department’s spe- cialist on France and was instrumental in prepa- rations for the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942. His three daughters attended the MacJannet School and Camp for four years in the 1930s when Murphy was the American consul in Paris. (See Rosemary Murphy below.)

Miki Sawada (1901-1980). Mitsubishi Motors matriarch. After World War II she devoted 37 years to orphanages that she financed in Japan for more than 2,000 children of African- American GI’s abandoned into what was then an overtly racist Japanese society. Her three sons, all then under ten, attended the MacJannet Camp in 1932, when her husband was second in command at the Japanese Embassy in Paris, and later they were enrolled in the Mac- Jannet School as well. A 1981 book about her efforts— The Least of These: Miki Sawada and Her Children, by Eliza- beth Anne Hemphill— includes an introduction by Donald MacJannet.

Munro Leaf (1905-1976). Author/illustrator of whimsical children’s books, like How to Behave and Why, Brushing Your Teeth Can Be Fun and The Story of Ferdi- nand [the bull]. His son Gil Leaf attended the MacJannet Camp in 1955.

George W. Anderson Jr. (1906-1992). U.S. Navy Admiral; Commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, 1959-61. His son George and daughter Nan attended the MacJannet Camp in 1959.

Buster Crabbe (1908-1983), Olympic swimming champion who also played the title role in the movie seri- als Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. He also played the title role in the 1950s TV series, “Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion.” His son Cullen, known as “Cuffy,” attended Camp MacJannet in 1954 and later appeared in the “Captain Gal- lant” series as the legion mascot.