Hap Hinman

By Judith Solberg, Director of Archives and Special Projects

All of us recognize the name of Cardigan founder Harold P. “Hap” Hinman, whose enormous impact shaped our School. Yet Hap’s personal story is less familiar.

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The sixth of ten children in North Stratford, NH, Hap’s father was a “farmer, livery man and hotel keeper,” who died in 1908 when Hap was still in college. Hap’s mother, a former teacher, died a year after Hap’s 1910 Dartmouth graduation. After college, Hap worked in the lumber business briefly with his brother John (another Cardigan benefactor), before marrying Marion Hutchinson in 1913. He then moved into the granite industry where he would stay for the rest of his business career. The Hinmans raised a son and daughter in Barre, VT, but in 1938 returned to the Blodgett House in Marion’s hometown of Canaan.

By the time Hap fully retired from the granite business in 1946, he was a prominent and deeply respected industry leader. Hap was keenly aware of, and grateful for, the privileges he and his family enjoyed. Like his father, he volunteered in a dizzying array of organizations, and this tireless drive and focused energy made him an ideal organizer for the Cardigan experiment. Indeed, he had been interested in education as early as the 1920s (even, according to friend Robert Hopkins, toying with the idea of becoming a school principal himself).

But there was another, more personal drive behind his idea to establish a school for boys. In 1931, Hap and Marion’s 16-year-old son Harold Purman Hinman, Jr., had died suddenly of infantile paralysis. Purman, an Eagle Scout, had fallen ill while traveling on a Sea Scout cruise; Hap and Marion had to travel to Virginia to retrieve Purman’s body for burial. As Robert Hopkins later wrote in Cardigan’s first formal history, after losing Purman, Hap “became more interested than ever in observing the development of boys to responsible manhood and the methods which different organizations used to this end.”

“No idea is worth a hoot until you do something about it. Cardigan Mountain School is no longer a biological embryo; it is a husky, live youngster, and is far from being old vinegar in a new bottle. It was founded on the horse sense of youth education and will thrive on the composite wisdom and help of men whose dreams and educational freshness have not been stagnated—insofar as these men will remain active in its behalf.”

Hap Hinman, 1944

Hap’s vision for Cardigan may have helped turn the pain of loss into something productive; he used his considerable drive and forceful personality to push through (and push others through!) the growing pains that Cardigan faced in those first decades. His investment in its success verged on micromanagement, and occasionally toppled directly into it, as he provided the School’s board and its heads of school with detailed and extremely directive guidance. As he once acknowledged, he could be “a tough hombre to get along with.”

Yet he inspired great respect and admiration from those around him, perhaps because under-lying everything was a tenderness for Cardigan’s students. Hap delighted in the boys. He took them out on Sundays for soda and ice cream, advised them on college plans and career paths, and sometimes became a life-long friend and advisor. Early alumni were always invited to gather at Hap and Marion’s house on Canaan Street. Hap’s affection was returned; when illness kept him from taking part in alumni weekend, the boys sent him a “beautifully decorated cake” with their best wishes for his improved health.

Hap’s 1964 funeral was held in Cardigan’s newly-built chapel on The Point’s growing cam-pus. A Chronicle tribute noted, “To talk with [Hap] was an experience. There was one subject: Cardigan Mountain School and his plans for its future.” A man who always looked forward, Hap would no doubt warn against dwelling on the past and press us to work toward Cardigan’s future. Yet we pause now to celebrate Hap Hinman, the man, as well as the legacy he created in Cardigan Mountain School. He was himself an example of what he hoped Cardigan boys would become.