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Senior year WRA graduation
photo in 1891 |
No stranger to Western Reserve Academy, Homer O. Sluss had come to our campus from Louisville in Stark County to complete his undergraduate education, and graduated with the class of 1891. He went on to Western Reserve University in Cleveland where he earned a bachelor’s degree, played football for three years, was on the editorial board for student publications, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and served as class president for his senior year. He then returned to Hudson as a member of the small faculty of Western Reserve Academy, then in its “hardscrabble” days. Sluss was a teacher of Latin and Greek, was coach for both baseball and football, and was a dorm master. As one of the WRA publications stated, “In the classroom, on the athletic field, and in the prayer room the influence and enthusiasm of Mr. Sluss have been equally felt”. In Lucien Price’s classic booklet,
Hardscrabble Hellas, Sluss is the “heroic schoolmaster” who made those years golden despite the shopworn condition of the campus and its buildings.
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| The WRA football team of fall, 1895, when Mr. Sluss was coach and manager. |
When the school closed in the summer of 1903, Mr. Sluss found his services were sought by Governor Dummer Academy in Massachusetts, reputedly the oldest boarding school in the country. He taught German and the classics at this school for a year, then returned to Ohio where he taught in Cincinnati. Eventually he became Superintendent of Schools for Covington, Kentucky, with authority over three high schools. When his old alma mater reopened in 1916, he was contacted about returning to Hudson, but remained in Covington until the crisis over a Principal at WRA persuaded him to take the position. He arrived in Hudson in the spring of 1917 and served as Head of the school until he was dismissed in 1924.
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Homer O. Sluss as
Principal of WRA in 1917 |
Homer O. Sluss was just as popular among the students and faculty as he had been when he was a teacher some years ago. Even the yearbook,
The Academic, was dedicated to him in 1924 citing his “understanding, justice, and cheerfulness”. But these were difficult years of transition, and the Board of Trustees decided they were looking for a leader with fresh ideas when they told Mr. Sluss that he was to be replaced by Ralph E. Boothby. Sluss was a married man with two young children when he found himself without a job in the late spring of 1924. James W. Ellsworth, the school’s great benefactor, was reluctant to see Sluss leave, and made sure that the Board provided him with a year’s salary and an opportunity to earn a master’s degree at Columbia University. After completing his degree, Mr. Sluss took a teaching job in Cincinnati where he had met his wife, Rose, but died suddenly in 1928 at the age of 57. The WRA trustees eventually extended a scholarship to the son of Homer O. Sluss, William Blackstone Sluss, who graduated with the class of 1934 and began college at Haverford. While he may not be ranked among the most effective Heads of Western Reserve Academy, Homer Oscar Sluss attained an air of immortality through Lucien Price’s little book,
Hardscrabble Hellas, where he will always be the Olympian intellect and athlete and the “hero schoolmaster” to many WRA alumni.
