Marblehead High settles on quotation plaques for entrance

MARBLEHEAD-Marblehead High has had a change of plan – actually a change of plaque, thanks to some literary detective work by the chairman of the School Committee.As a class gift this year?s graduating class is presenting the school with two plaques to fill the empty spaces left when a controversial piece of artwork was removed from the entrance.In a school-wide election in December quotes by Martin Luther King and Ralph Waldo Emerson were selected, beating out quotes by Erasmus and Albert Einstein.The King quote, “Intelligence plus character n that is the goal of a true education,” will stay. School Committee Chairman Amy Drinker checked that quote with a call to the King Center archives and learned that King wrote it in 1947 in an article in the Morehouse College newspaper, the Maroon Tiger.Trying to locate a source for the Emerson quote, “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail,” was another matter.The quote appears in several sites on-line, but no source is ever listed and the quote does not appear on Emerson?s website. Emerson scholar Joel Myerson said the quote does not appear in any of Emerson?s writings.Rather than attribute a quote to “anonymous” the senior class replaced it with the Albert Einstein quote that it defeated: “The important thing is not to stop questioning.”Not so fast. Drinker checked several Einstein sources and found the quote in a 1955 LIFE Magazine interview n but it was worded differently.The quote on the front wall at the high school will read “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”Class Vice President Wes York said the corrections have been posted and there haven?t been any protests.Drinker?s investigative work, detailed in a two-page report to the committee, impressed her colleagues. Superintendent of Schools Paul Dulac called her “a true truth seeker.”Drinker told them how impressed she was with the research librarians she spoke with. “They?re phenomenal,” she said. “They?re devoted and very helpful.”