By Bud Brooks
St. Mark’s School of Texas is widely considered to be one of the preeminent college preparatory schools in the country, specializing in the education of boys in a rigorous curriculum of academics, arts, athletics, and community service, with general courtesy and consideration for each other. The school prides itself on the concept of teaching boys to become men, a theme that has remained constant as it has spanned the decades and centuries through a few different iterations during its existence. The school consistently ranks near the top of virtually every measuring stick used to qualify and quantify the success of private schools around the country.
St. Mark’s legendary alumni community and programs help maintain the standards as one generation passes the torch to the next, while always allowing itself to be “home” to every one of its thousands of graduates. This exceptionalism permeates all aspects of school life creating an indelible impression on all who walk its hallways.
In understanding the family tree of St. Mark’s it is more complicated than what is seen on the surface today as the school morphed through a variety of mergers and reorganizations, leading to the St. Mark’s of today, officially founded in 1950.
Some of those maneuvers were treacherous, and especially during the war years of World War II, the future of the St. Mark’s predecessors was tenuous. However through hard work, determination, some bad luck, and also some fortuitous turns of events, the schools survived well enough to make it to 1950.
St. Mark’s traces its history back to the 1906 founding of Terrill School for Boys, led by its founder and headmaster, Menter B. Terrill. Sometimes called Terrill Prep, the all-boys, college-prep day and boarding school became synonymous with wealthy families, Dallas power brokers, rigorous academics, strict discipline, and strong athletics. It quickly gained a reputation for preparing its graduates for acceptance into the elite private and public universities of the country, especially those on the East Coast such as the Ivy League and comparable schools. Terrill’s history of its own has proven to be extraordinarily rich and yields countless stories, amazing facts, and endless connections from yesteryear to today.
In 1933 a competitor to Terrill School opened its doors, Texas Country Day School, with some gentle assistance prior to that from Menter Terrill himself, the Terrill School’s founder but by then no longer associated with the school. While Terrill School was stationed in East Dallas, the original “suburb” of Dallas, TCD parked itself at the edge of the countryside north of Dallas, outside of the Dallas city limits, befitting a school with the word “Country” in its name. TCD, lead by its headmaster Kenneth Bouvé, sought to offer an alternative to Terrill, embarking on the same path of a college preparatory education for boys with both day and boarding students. TCD grew quickly despite coming out of the Depression-era starting gates, then running headlong into World War II seven years later. But after the War was over, TCD gained more solid footing and began to earn its reputation as a prominent all-boys prep school through the latter half of the 1940s.
Meanwhile in 1941 in Austin, Texas, a group of men associated with the Episcopal Diocese there decided that Texas needed an Episcopal-affiliated prep school for boys in Texas. From that came St. Luke’s School, a day and boarding college preparatory school located to the east of Austin close by to the Colorado River led by its headmaster, Walter Littell. St. Luke’s opened its doors just 11 weeks before Pearl Harbor and while it got off the ground adequately, it had a hard time getting its legs under itself that first year. Meanwhile in Dallas, as World War II came to a close, Terrill School was suffering mightily as struggled with declining enrollment late in the Depression years and through the War. By now, Terrill was located in an Episcopal Church in East Dallas and the Diocese in 1946 decided to close Terrill and restructure into a brand-new Episcopal-affiliated all-boys prep school. The twist was that the Diocese, now overseeing St. Luke’s full time, decided to fold St. Luke’s into Terrill as well and from that merger was created Cathedral School for Boys, opening its doors in the fall of 1946. Cathedral was led by the Bishop of the Dallas Diocese, Rev. Avery Mason.
Through the balance of the 1940s, Cathedral and Texas Country Day operated independently, but both with the goal of educating boys in a college-prep academic environment. However, the headwinds remained strong for both schools, especially for Cathedral as it never really obtained solid footing. With the alarm bells ringing, some of Dallas’s most prominent businessmen stepped forward and proposed a merger between Cathedral and TCD, and that was finally announced during the 1949-50 school year. The two moderately rival schools would unite under the new banner of St. Mark’s School of Texas, with plans to open its doors in the fall of 1950, and that’s exactly what transpired.
From those cumbersome early days during the first half of the 20th century, St. Mark’s was born to open up the second half of the century. While the first few years took some time to come together, eventually, the right leadership, commitment, financial resources, and other factors helped establish St. Mark’s to what it has evolved today. The overall family tree is filled with many fascinating stories, stories that will resonate to most who follow Dallas history.
