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Play hits home
at Pomfret School
POMFRET — This year’s spring play at Pomfret School tells the memorable story of one of the school’s own, a young alumnus killed in Vietnam in 1970. “70lbs of Books” will be presented at 8 a.m. at the school. It’s free and open to the public.
Pomfret Arts Department Chair and Theater Director Chip Lamb, who also authored the play, said that the germ of an idea for “70lbs of Books” began with a school announcement on Veterans Day 2010, widely ignored, and a recently deployed nephew to Iraq. On that day a fellow teacher spoke briefly to the students about the meaning of Veterans Day. “There was very little recognition and support,” Lamb recalls. “I found myself wondering, ‘how might our students come to a deeper understanding of the sacrifice that was being made on their behalf?’”
That took Lamb to the School’s Clark Chapel, where alongside the list of the World War I and II casualties, he found a much smaller plaque, with “Vietnam” at the top and just two names: one of them was Loring Bailey Jr. Lamb went back to his computer and began to investigate. From one or two Google hits, Ring’s story, beginning with an article from Veterans Day 2000 in the New London Day, began to unfold: native of Stonington, only child, a graduate of Trinity College in Hartford; English major, aspiring writer, avid reader, young husband. There are many poignant images to Ring Bailey’s story; but the one that seems to have captured, for Lamb, the loss and the legacy was that, as the article in the Day reported, “Seventy pounds of books and a roll of film were among the belongings sent home [to Ring’s parents] by the Army.”
According to school records, Ring was the last Pomfret School student to die in the line of duty. Through interviews, articles, and acquaintances Lamb began to piece together a portrait of the young soldier — including a first-person account, from Ring’s platoon leader, of “that terrible day in March 1970, when Loring lost his life.” The determination to write the play came when he realized that even though “I had the snippets, I was waiting to hear his voice.” Wrapping his playwright’s arms around all of this, Lamb began working on the play in earnest in April 0f 2011.