Phillips Academy

This piece of footage anchors the chronology of this reconstructed itinerary: it is the first, after the boat trip from Bremerhaven that brought the Ross family to America’s shores (see the reel Amerika Reise - Von Europa nach New York; New England), to show  Colin and Lisa Ross in the company of their son Ralph Colin. So this visit to the Phillips Academy must have taken place in the winter of 1938-1939, more specifically in early January. In his account of this American journey Ralph Colin Ross writes that his parents arrived in Chicago “in Dezember”, no doubt after Ross, Sr.’s visit to Washington, D.C. in the first week of that month (see Permission requested), to pick him up for a cross-country trip. Ralph tells that he managed to convince his parents to wait out the Christmas holiday before setting out. He mentions that they drove eastward via Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Nevertheless, his  description is too sketchy and imprecise to be completely reliable. It has been plausibly established, though, that they took a northerly route (see Madison and Watertown). The footage itself supports the conclusion that this visit took place in the winter of 1938-1939. First of all, most of the trees on the Academy’s premises are leafless. Secondly,  and most clinchingly, the footage shows that classes are being taught, as students carry briefcases and notebooks; if the Ross’s had left right after Christmas, they would have arrived at a deserted Academy during its Christmas recess, which lasted from December 20, 1938 to January 9, 1939.¹

Support also comes from the well-researched account of Colin Ross’s biographer, who lists a series of Ross’s speaking engagements around this time. He places him in Chicago as early as December 11, when he lectured for the Deutsch-Amerikanischen Berufsgemeinschaft (DAB).² On January 3, 1939, Ross appeared at the prestigious Foreign Relations Council, also in Chicago. A speaking engagement  scheduled for January 5, in St. Louis was cancelled, although he did give a talk that day to the Columbia Woman’s Club, in Chicago.³ And his next engagement was on January 14, in New York,⁴ it is reasonable to assume that the Ross family left Chicago for their cross-country trip on or shortly after January 5, 1939. This would have given them enough time to visit the Phillips Academy before arriving in New York City; after the New York engagement, they had a long trip ahead of them down the east coast to Florida and from there across America’s south to San Francisco, where in mid-March they boarded a ship for Japan. This would have allowed them little or no margin of time to go from New York to the Academy first and then retrace their route.