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Delbarton School
With four months to create, the infrastructure of a boarding school, to recruit students and assemble a faculty, Abbot Patrick appointed Father Augustine Wirth as the first headmaster of Delbarton School. Quickly, he and his principal collaborator, Father Claude Micik, set about preparing the building and canvassing for students through the summer months.
Despite the lingering effects of the Great Depression and the uncertainty caused by the renewal of war in Europe, their efforts bore fruit. In September of 1939 Delbarton School opened with an enrollment of twelve boarding students in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.
At the end of that first school year, in June 1940, Father Augustine proudly announced in the New York Times Delbarton’s first commencement of eight boys from the eighth grade.