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The 1950s was a time of sock hops and drag racing, soda fountains and poodle skirts, but Knox, an all-girls boarding school, was a relic from another era. Knox girls’ days were strictly regimented: from wake-up, room inspections, and a proper breakfast to dinner, evening study hall, and lights-out. The curriculum was traditional: music and history, Latin and French. The girls started the school year in summer uniforms, and no matter the weather on the last day of October, they were required to switch to their winter equivalent: navy blue blazers sporting the school’s insignia and motto, Semper ad lucem—Always toward the light—and itchy wool skirts that hung modestly below the knee. They all wore white cotton socks that slouched around their ankles and scuffed lace-up saddle oxfords. Every night, the girls had to change into matching dresses for dinner. Bonnie hated the dinner dresses and thought they looked like waitress uniforms. The dining room was paneled in dark wood, with fireplaces taller than the girls’ heads flanking each end. Old hunting prints and more muted oil portraits covered the walls. Through the French doors that overlooked the terrace, students could glimpse the beach at Stony Brook Harbor. Meals were plain and hearty. Seated at the head of each table, schoolmistresses carefully scrutinized the use of each knife and fork, as well as the topics chosen for conversation. Every meal, but especially dinner, was a lesson in deportment.

Miss Mary Alice Knox had founded Miss Knox’s School for Girls in 1904. The daughter of a prominent Presbyterian minister in Elmira, New York, she had been impressed by her father’s early championing of higher education for girls. He served on the board of trustees of the Elmira Female Seminary (now Elmira College), which was the first institution in the United States to grant college degrees to women. Miss Knox (as she became known), who studied at Elmira, became a prominent educator, first teaching history at Wellesley, then taking over as headmistress of the Emma Willard School, the first private college preparatory school for girls in the United States. In the early 1900s, Miss Knox was such a prominent educator that she was listed in Who’s Who in America. Higher education for girls, considered radical in the 1870s and ’80s, had quickly gained a broader appeal, and schools for young ladies, often named after the woman or women who founded them, were proliferating. At the age of fifty-three, Miss Knox left Emma Willard to found her own school along the Hudson River in Briarcliff Manor, New York; Miss Knox’s School for Girls promised to provide “water from artesian wells, courses taught by specialists, and rooms with or without private bath.” Mary Alice Knox envisioned a school that would be rich in music and art and close to the cultural life of New York City. When the school was founded, on the bluestocking principles of the Emma Willard School, it was considered modern—even daring. The well-rounded curriculum, including physical education, was designed to educate the modern woman, building a strong mind, body, and character.

But Miss Knox would remain in charge for only seven years. One Saturday afternoon in 1911, the headmistress and her students were returning from a performance of the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan when they were caught in a devastating train wreck. Several of the students were killed, and Miss Knox, who survived the accident, was so distraught that she “succumbed a short while later.” Louise Houghton Phinney—a widow, and an 1891 graduate of Smith College—was appointed to replace her.

For more than forty years, Mrs. Phinney ran the Knox School. Her imposing bearing tamed generations of girls. Her manner and style of dress, even in the 1950s, suggested the Victorian. The school had weathered significant changes during her tenure. First, in 1912, the school in Briarcliff Manor burned to the ground; though no one was hurt, the school had to move to a new location in Tarrytown. Then, outgrowing that facility in the 1920s,