JULY 21-27, 2011 I VOLUME 14 I NUMBER 38 BROWARDPALMBEACH.

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O
n the day Hank Battle came to town in January,
possibility was in the air at Pine Crest School.
Construction crews jackhammered away at a
new upper-school wing on the Fort Lauderdale
campus; lower-schoolers at a second campus in Boca
Raton walked in green-and-white uniforms through a
building less than 2 years old.
The 49-acre campus in north Fort Lauderdale is an
admissions-brochure dream: ten tennis courts and an
Olympic-sized pool, a New-England bell tower at the en-
trance, Jeffersonian quadrangles and cloistered walkways.
Extracurricular programs include a literary magazine,
ballet, and rowing crews for both sexes. The school boasts
champion swim and lacrosse teams, and average SAT scores
in last years graduating class were 1949 out of 2400, far
higher than those of local public schools. The Fort Lauder-
dale campus hosts 1,600 kids in prekindergarten through
high school; a satellite campus in Boca Raton serves 875
students who attend grade eight and below.
Battle arrived on campus to be the schools fifth presi-
dent. He would be the first outsider to assume this posi-
tion. Rather than rising through the ranks by years of
service to the school, he had just spent 12 years as head-
master of a private school in North Carolina.
On the Friday before Martin Luther King Day, Battle
appeared at a faculty meeting. Walter Banks, then-chair-
man of the board of trustees (and owner of the Lago Mar
beach resort), stood to introduce him. Battle, fit and 54,
with gray hair and a handsome face but a bit of Steve
Buscemi from the side, began to speak.
His microphone didnt work. He fiddled with the
equipment clipped to his shirt, then addressed the teach-
ers without amplification.
According to several people who attended that meet-
ing, he said good things about the school and the board
of trustees. He said good things about himself and his
decades of academic leadership. He said he wanted to
make Pine Crest the best independent school in the na-
tion. To hear Battle tell it, he was the finest fundraiser
in all the land.
One teacher, who asked to remain unnamed, recalled
that he identified some challenges in running the school:
too many layers at the top, too much inefficiency.
Battle took a moment to answer questions. He ad-
dressed a rumor, admitting that he had almost turned
down the job because the move would be hard on his
wife and three children.
The teacher recalled a foreboding moment when a
close colleague of mine, a phenomenal teacher, raised
his hand and said, What can you tell us about contracts?
We have families to take care of. Battle would not answer
the question.
Still, the faculty and staff were generally optimistic.
Vince Arduini, then an assistant dean and offensive co-
ordinator for the football team, said, [Battle] indicated
to us that he would be starting on February 1. It was a
wait-and-see kind of thing. Youre always respectful of
people in those positions as they come in.
What Battle didnt let on in that meeting was that his
marriage was failing and that when he did move, hed
be in the market for an oceanfront bachelor pad at the
schools expense. He didnt mention that the man who had
brought him to town and sold him to the board of trustees
was an old colleague. And despite the euphemistic talk
of inefficiency, nobody predicted the all-out shitstorm
of rumor, job losses, and litigation that Henry Marriott
Battle Jr. would bring to town.
T
his summer, 19-year-old Brandon Knight walked
onto a bright stage in Newark and shook hands
with the NBA commissioner, accepting a job as
point guard for the Detroit Pistons. In a Pistons
cap and a shy smile, he looked awfully humble for the
NBAs eighth overall draft pick. Hed just blasted his way
through one year at Kentucky, scoring more points than
any other freshman in the country.
BYSTEFANKAMPH
>> p10
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Knight had worked hard in high school
too at Pine Crest. As a 2010 graduate,
Knight was the product of an athletic pro-
gram that was as good as its ever been
in the history of the school, according to
Jim Foster, the schools athletic director.
Knight may be the most recent alum-
nus bound for greatness, but hes not the
only one. Wayne Huizenga, the Waste
Management magnate and chief Fort Lau-
derdale benefactor, went to Pine Crest. So
did Frasiers Kelsey Grammer and avant-
garde jazz musician John Medeski.
The parent roster is a virtual register of
Florida muckety-mucks, including David
Stern, the foreclosure lawyer whose robo-
signing practices helped kick thousands
of people out of their homes; Ed Pozzuoli,
president of the Tripp Scott law firm; and
Boston Red Sox owner John Henry.
Tuition for the high school is $22,650,
and pre-k costs $18,525, according to the
schools website. On top of that, the list of
donors is generous and broad-ranging.
A woman named Mae McMillan founded
Pine Crest in 1934 as a winter tutoring pro-
gram for vacationing kids, then continued
to teach on a makeshift downtown campus.
When the school moved to its current site in
1965, McMillans son Bill took over as head-
master. Mae died in 1985, and in 1988, Bill
(who still teaches) passed the heads chair to
Dr. Lourdes Cowgill, a longtime faculty mem-
ber. This first handover to a non-McMillan
passed with little controversy and broad
support, according to parents and alumni.
The next transition wouldnt be so smooth.
According to several people connected
to the school, Cowgill began to face trouble
in 2010. Some of the most powerful among
the 24 members of the board of trustees
including Pozzuoli and Marc Bell, the
multimillionaire owner of Penthouse and
AdultFriendFinder.com sent their chil-
dren to school at Pine Crests Boca campus.
Cowgill, on the other hand, was a prod-
uct of the Fort Lauderdale campus. She
had joined the school before it acquired
Boca Raton Academy in 1987. As the sat-
ellite campus grew, there was pressure
from Boca parents for more represen-
tation in the administrative ranks.
Some Boca parents that were on the
board [wanted to] get rid of [Cowgill] so they
could put somebody in as basically their
puppet, says one former administrative
employee, echoing a theory voiced by several
parents who spoke to New Times. Some
of the trustees and parents that had a lot of
money in Boca wanted academic require-
ments to be reduced, because they were
scared that their kids wouldnt be able to get
into the [Fort Lauderdale] high school.
Whatever the reasons they discussed be-
hind closed doors, the board ushered Cowgill
out of the presidents office at the end of the
2009-10 school year. The board said in a pre-
pared statement that this was the product of
an established succession plan with which...
Cowgill had assisted several years ago.
Cowgill is still working with the
school as a guidance counselor and did
not reply to requests for comment. But
multiple sources say she left the posi-
tion much more quickly than expected.
To replace her, the board needed
someone who was both a distinguished
educator and a capable figurehead for the
school as well as a savvy fundraiser.
The new president would need to deal
with some tricky finances. For all its prestige,
Pine Crest faced a growing fiscal crisis at the
start of 2011. Despite the five-digit tuition, the
school was more than $80 million in debt.
The former employee estimates that more
than $40 million of that was related to new
construction on both campuses. He says that
Pozzuoli was chair of the finance committee
and that the entire board [was] responsible
for taking on debt when it decided to move
forward with the construction projects. But
despite the shiny new facilities this invest-
ment produced, he says, they didnt add
any more classrooms, so [the construction]
is not going to bring in any more revenue.
The board hired one of the best-known
recruiting firms in the country, Heidrick and
Struggles, to find a new president. The man
at the helm of the search, according to people
close to the process, was a principal with the
firm named George Conway, a white-haired
former chaplain, teacher, and headmaster.
Of the three final presidential candidates
Conway brought to campus, he pushed one in
particular, says the administrative employee.
Hank Battle was headmaster at Forsyth
Country Day School in North Carolina,
where in 12 years he had grown the full-time
student body from around 600 to 900 and
increased revenue through additional la
carte schooling programs. His most visible
achievement at Forsyth was adding the John-
son Academic Center, which offers tutoring.
This was one mechanism behind For-
syths increase in student population: The
admissions department relaxed its stan-
dards somewhat for applicants with family
members already at the school. The school
stood to benefit from the new students
tuition dollars, and if the students were
academically lagging, they could receive
tutoring at the center. No longer a stringent
requirement for admissions, academic
advantage could be offered for a fee.
It was certainly a great recruiting tool
for families at the school, says David Mar-
tin, chair of Forsyths board of trustees. I
could say, Look, I can take care of all your
children regardless of their academic abili-
ties. Dont worry about academics.
Battle also oversaw a reputed tenfold
growth in Forsyths endowment money
thats invested to produce revenue through
interest payments every year through
fundraising and other measures.
Battles accomplishments must have
impressed the Pine Crest board. Although
Pine Crest is a nonprofit organization like
most prep schools, at least two board mem-
bers have interest in for-profit education.
Andy Rosen is CEO of Kaplan Inc., a $2.6
billion test-prep and tutoring outfit. And
Jonathan Hage, another board member,
owns a company that manages a string of
charter schools across Florida under the
Charter Schools USA banner as well as
numerous limited-liability corporations
with names like Fishin 4 Schools. Hages
corporations list fellow board member
Pozzuoli as their registered legal agent.
Moreover, says the administrative
worker, The Boca trustees thought
Hank was a guy from whom they
could get anything they wanted.
Conway, Battle, and the board sealed the
deal. Battle resigned from his position at For-
syth, sending the school into an accelerated
search for a new headmaster. He left behind
his wife and children on a quiet, tree-lined
street across from a country club and moved
to Florida, where lavish rewards awaited him.
B
ack in 2007, Battle made news in
a Wall Street Journal article called
Prep-School Payday for be-
ing paid more than $300,000
in salary and bonuses at Forsyth.
His new, exorbitant contract at Pine Crest
went far beyond that. It netted him just un-
der a million bucks a year and guaranteed
five years of pay, according to the former
employee. And that was just the base salary.
A clause of the contract allowed
Battle yearly bonuses tied to the amount
of money he brought in through
fundraising, the person says.
This practice would violate the ethical rec-
ommendations of the Council for Advance-
ment and Support of Education (CASE), a
body that provides guidelines for
From the 2011 Pine Crest yearbook: Hank Battle poses with students; his associate David Bowman came with him to serve as Pine
Crests vice president of operations.
Losing Battle from p9
>> p11
Pine Crest School/Yearbook 2011
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school fundraising. In its recommendations,
CASE advises that bonuses should... not be
expressed as a percentage of individual gifts
or aggregate giving, since doing so would
constitute a commission... [which] will
encourage inappropriate conduct by fund-
raisers anxious to secure gifts at any cost.
Board member Pozzuoli would not discuss
Battles salary, but he does concede that the
school also agreed to provide Battle with a loan
to buy a home in South Florida. His eventual
choice? A 2,000-square-foot condominium
on the 19th floor of the Ritz-Carlton right
on Fort Lauderdale Beach (David Stern, the
foreclosure lawyer, owns a penthouse on the
24th floor). A copy of a contract addendum
obtained by New Times shows that Battle was
prepared to pay $1.3 million for the condo and
an additional $185,000 in remodeling fees. The
addendum does not show whether the deal
went through, but Battle told several people
who spoke to New Times that he was living at
the Ritz, and public records list the property
as his residence through May of this year.
In January, Battle established a Florida
limited-liability corporation called HMB
Property Enterprises. Pozzuoli, who is listed
as the companys legal contact, says that Bat-
tle intended the company to be an investment
vehicle to purchase residential property.
While Battle drank from the schools
largesse, he and his team began to mull deep
cuts to the schools current staff. Rumors
began to circulate that longtime teachers
wouldnt have their contracts renewed.
The process was as opaque as anything
could be, says Barbara Grosz, a biology
teacher who retired voluntarily this year,
so everything [we knew] was rumor.
Several parents and a faculty member say
that Battle recruited a leadership group of
high school students who met with him about
once a week. Grosz says he also convened an
early-morning class in which he spoke can-
didly with students. Teachers heard that he
used students opinions of them to make deci-
sions on whose contracts would be renewed.
He was speaking to students and not
to teachers at all, says Grosz. Many of
us never physically saw him. I dont think
I ran across him on campus one time.
We were completely in the dark, says an-
other teacher. We had students coming up to
teachers, putting arms around them and saying,
Dont worry, Ill put in a good word for you.
Among the students, Battle was a fre-
quent presence. One female high school
student says, Mr. Battle was always walk-
ing around campus. A lot of us met him. At
first, she says, he seemed like the coolest
guy ever. He treated students as peers and
rescinded a recent change to the dress code
that had prevented girls from wearing skirts.
She recalls that in meetings with Battle,
including one night when he had dinner with
her athletic team, he would ask kids to name
teachers who are great, and who arent great.
Kids were recruited not only to provide
feedback but to meet with new prospec-
tive faculty members. Grosz remembers
overhearing one of her students say before
class, Its really weird when youre asked
to escort someone around campus and you
know that eventually youre going to run
into the [teacher] hes going to replace.
One evening, the high school student was
attending a home basketball game with a few
of her friends when Battle approached her.
He was standing in the student section, she
says. He knew my and all my friends names,
but he didnt know who the teachers were.
He made me point my finger at the teachers
[in the crowd] and tell him their names.
At one point during the game, the student
says, her father called her cell phone. Let me
answer, said Battle, taking the phone from her.
She remembers Battle telling her fa-
ther, You have an excellent daughter.
Before he left, she says, Battle made a
proposal to the group of students: How
would they like to go to Washington, D.C.,
with him to attend the conference of the Na-
tional Association of Independent Schools?
I want you kids to come and show
them how great you are, the student
remembered Battle saying. Well ride
in a limo, eat in nice restaurants. They
would leave the following Monday.
The girls mother was furious: I
marched into [Battles] office and
Pine Crest alumnus Brandon Knight, just 19, was the NBAs eighth overall draft pick,
landing him a spot with the Detroit Pistons.
>> p14
Losing Battle from p10
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said, How dare you ask my kids to go on a
trip without asking me? she says now.
She did not give her daugh-
ter permission to go.
T
ension among the teachers increased
throughout the spring. Teachers at Pine
Crest work on one-year contracts that
need to be renewed each year if they are
to keep their jobs. This year, they were told
that no contracts for the following year would
be issued until April 1 too late for them to
comfortably apply for jobs at other schools.
During that February period, a lot
of us were looking for jobs in advance
of the decisions, says one teacher.
The kids really noticed, she
says. We just all lost our energy lev-
els. It was depressing, and we didnt
know who was going to go next.
The student who declined Battles
travel invitation agrees, saying that Battles
cool-guy persona soon lost its charm. All
the teachers were so stressed, so upset,
she says. We all love our teachers.
Jim Foster, the athletic director who
had watched Brandon Knight develop from
a talented kid to an NBA-ready phenom
under the athletic program he had largely
built from scratch, found out in February
that he would lose his job. The replace-
ment? John East, the athletic director at
a small Christian school in Georgia.
They called me in on Sunday morn-
ing, about 10, says Foster. They asked
me to meet them at noon. Were not
renewing your contract, they told me.
[East] was already on campus, I think.
Foster says that he met East once and
that they had a cordial conversation.
Foster welcomed East to come by his of-
fice to talk about the job, but the new
recruit never took him up on the offer.
They asked me to stay on till the
end of the school year, says Foster.
East would take over on July 1. Fos-
ter remained to serve out the year.
One by one, some teachers learned that
their contracts would not be renewed.
Although the school did not provide New
Times with a comprehensive list of teachers
and staff who were let go, one parent cir-
culated a document by email claiming that
100 percent of lower-school administrators
lost or left their jobs and that 27 percent of
the lower school lead teachers did so.
Meanwhile, Battle was moving ahead
with plans to build an academic center at
Pine Crest, much like the Johnson Academic
Center he had built at Forsyth. Some cur-
rent teachers and administrators were slated
to be reassigned to the academic center.
Battle presented his concept to
the board. At a breakfast with par-
ents in Boca in April, he distributed
a two-page summary of the plan.
Pine Crest is known for being aca-
demically rigorous, and many students
seek tutoring outside of school when they
fall behind in classes or need to prepare
for a test. Battles idea would capture the
market for those services, making them an
integrated if costly part of the schools
normal operations. Tuition for the academic
center would be an extra $15,000 per year.
Parents say Battle also pitched the center
as an aid to siblings of current students who
did not meet traditional academic require-
ments. Some wary parents did not like this
idea because they thought it translated into
a dumbing-down of an elite institution.
Battle finessed these concerns in his presen-
tation. Despite rumors to the contrary, there
are no changes in our admission policy, he
wrote, before adding that whenever possible,
we do not want to split families at Pine Crest.
This unease about the schools future
only further upset those who were already
distressed about the exodus of teachers.
Some of the dismissed teachers were close
to retirement age and didnt get any explana-
tion of why their contracts were not being re-
newed. David Bowman, a business partner of
Battles who had followed him down to Pine
Crest to serve as his vice president of opera-
tions, broke the news to some of the teachers.
Ray Anastas, a popular social studies
teacher, said that Bowman... told me that
he did not know me and did not know the
circumstances but that a group of administra-
tors had decided that I would be offered a...
severance package. Anastas, who is 63, said
nobody told him why. Another teacher, Nor-
man Williams, 61, said Bowman... gave me no
reason for the nonrenewal of my contract.
Six other employees age 54 and older
(teachers, assistants, and a maintenance
worker) had similar stories. Meanwhile, the
teachers say, the school was recruiting younger
teachers to fill their positions. In March,
the first of the eight dismissed workers ap-
proached William Amlong, a Fort Lauderdale
lawyer with experience in age-discrimination
lawsuits. The others followed soon after.
Amlong filed charges with the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission,
claiming age discrimination. The charges
stated that each employee was dismissed
solely based on age, without regard to perfor-
mance on the job. If no settlement could be
reached, the next step would be a lawsuit.
Then Amlong, a former newspaper
reporter, called the Sun-Sentinel.
W
hen news of the discrimina-
tion complaints made it into the
paper complete with lively
quotes from Amlong, who called
it an elder massacre on April 27, the
schools veil of privacy was torn open.
I think probably a big turning
point came when the Sun-Sentinel re-
ported that teachers were suing for
age discrimination, says Grosz.
Comments poured in to the online version
of the article, giving voice to rumors and la-
ments that had previously been only whispers.
Alumni mourned Lourdes Cowgills tenure
as president, criticized the board of trustees,
questioned Battles competency, and worse.
Two days after the story was pub-
lished, a Pine Crest parent started a
Yahoo! discussion group. Some parents
began to dig deeper into his past.
Parents discovered that Battle had more
than a passing acquaintance with George
Conway, the recruiter who had brought
him to the Pine Crest board. The two had
worked together at St. Annes-Belfield
School in Virginia: Conway was headmas-
ter from 1982 to 2006; Battle worked at the
school from 1983 to 1991, first as a history
teacher and then as assistant headmaster.
Although the board may have been
aware of this association, to parents look-
ing for behavior to criticize, the relation-
ship seemed too close for comfort.
There was no search, says the former ad-
ministrative employee. Conway played Pine
Crest. He sold Hank Battle to those trustees,
and they bought him. Conway did not re-
spond to repeated requests for comment.
Additionally, business records show
that Battle had an interest in side ven-
tures that started as early as 1999. Three
months after beginning his job at Forsyth,
he started his own educational consult-
ing firm, called Marriott Consulting.
In 2004, Battle changed the business
name to NewSouth Associates NS Inc. He
stayed on as president until 2008, when
the firms director, Christopher Perry, as-
sumed control. The most recent filings
available for the business list its address as
that of Forsyth Country Day School, where
Perry himself worked until recently as a
consultant and taught economics classes.
A top expert in the educational recruit-
ing field who did not want to be named for
professional reasons said he was aware that
historically, Hank has always done work
on the side. He said such a combination of
interests was not typical, to say the least.
Two legal cases provide some insight into
the fallout from Battles tenure at Forsyth.
In 1999, a lower-school guidance counselor
named Dinah McCotter sued Battle person-
ally for breach of contract, alleging that he
arranged for her to be fired when he was
working as a consultant in the months before
he became headmaster. Both parties volun-
tarily dismissed the lawsuit in December 1999.
Another lawsuit could be on the horizon.
Margaret Bennett, a teacher who was fired
from Forsyth last year under Battles direc-
tion, has filed an age discrimination charge
against the school. Negotiations continue; if
they cannot reach an agreement, Bennett may
sue the school by August, her lawyer says.
When Battle left Forsyth Country Day, the
school scrambled to hire a new headmaster
by July 1. A job posting suggests that Forsyth
faced an uphill battle in convincing people
that even with the la carte academic cen-
ter, the school was academically rigorous.
Forsyths primary focus is to provide a
first-rate college preparatory education to
students of average to superior ability, but the
successful establishment of the [academic
center] programs as an adjunct to the primary
mission may be contributing to some confu-
sion in the broader community, read one part
of the job listing, which a parent posted to the
comments section of the Sun-Sentinel article.
Another, carefully worded brochure to
recruit a new headmaster, obtained by New
Times, reads: The previous Head of School
presided over an exciting era of growth
and innovation... While [Forsyth] has been
immeasurably enriched by the many initia-
tives he launched, members of the school
family are now ready for a breather.
A
s the Yahoo! board filled up with com-
ments and questions about Battles past,
another group of concerned Pine Crest
alumni started a separate online discus-
sion, this one accessible only to members.
One of the groups members, a 1972 alumnus
named Michael Lee, circulated an email called
Recipe for Disaster. It was a wry, two-page
outline of steps he said the school had taken,
such as Hire headhunting agency featuring an
apparently biased rep who presents and cham-
Fort Lauderdale lawyer William Amlong filed age-bias charges against the school.
Losing Battle from p12
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pions his new candidate for headmaster and
Install candidate as new headmaster mid-year
for no apparent reason, creating the appear-
ance of a coup detat and sending a message
of instability to the parents and community.
The tenor of the anti-Battle con-
versation became more vicious, with
parents spreading gossip that Battle
was dating several students moth-
ers during his tenure at Pine Crest.
While he had initially represented
himself as a happily married family man,
court records show that Battles wife sued
him for child custody and filed a tem-
porary restraining order on April 1, sug-
gesting that their relationship is broken.
Parents contacted for this article and a
neighbor in North Carolina say his family
never followed him to Fort Lauderdale.
Grosz says of the information that
was circulating on the internet: Weve
always frowned on gossip, so... to have all
this be public, it was embarrassing and
hurtful, and some of it was not true.
In a meeting on Tuesday, May 10, in
a room full of anxious faculty, the board
called it quits for Battle. Dana Markham,
a longtime teacher and administrator at
the school, stood and made the announce-
ment: The board had decided unanimously
to place Hank Battle on administrative
leave (sources suggest that his contract
prevented an outright termination).
Markham would become acting president.
The room erupted in cheers. My col-
leagues called me right from the meet-
ing so I could hear the commotion,
says Grosz. Another teacher says that
in the 30-minute meeting, there were
seven standing ovations for the board.
When they walked out of the room, the
teacher says, they were giggling. She says she
saw a familiar custodian standing in the hall-
way. Wow, something good happened, he
exclaimed. Yall look completely different.
All of the teachers contacted for
this article made it clear that despite
the troubles with Battle, they still ad-
mire and love the school itself.
Grosz explains: We all understood very
well that there had been changes made that
couldnt be reversed, but there was still
a lot of optimism... The heart and soul of
that school is the supertalented faculty.
But it was too late for Vince Arduini,
the associate dean and football coach.
Enticed by another offer, Arduini had
already decided to take a job as athletic
director at St. Johns School in Houston.
During the meeting, I was in football
practice, he says. By that time, I had al-
ready decided to leave anyway. After prac-
tice, I went to my car and headed home.
T
hats the worst part, says the high school
student who spoke to New Times:
the people who wont come back.
Some of the greatest teachers I ever
had left, she says, mentioning Arduini by
name. The best ones are all gone now.
When Battle was ousted, David Bow-
man left the vice-president post, and
John East declined the athletic directors
position after all. The school reversed
course: It contacted Jim Foster, the long-
time athletic director, and asked him to
stay on for one more year. He agreed to
remain at his old job on a one-year tem-
porary basis. But things arent the same.
Im dealing with a mess, says Fos-
ter. People left. The cross-country and
track coaches, the boys soccer coach
Some people left because of the East and
Battle thing; some are moving on because
I wasnt going to be there or because
they have no confidence in the place.
He adds, Pine Crest will never be
the same as we knew it. It will either
be better or worse. We need strong
leadership to move forward.
Battles plans for a new academic center
have been scrapped. Communications Direc-
tor Karla Dejean writes in an email that the
school is continuing a developmental learn-
ing program to meet each childs unique
needs without building a new center.
Amlong, the lawyer for the dismissed
teachers, says the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission agreed to
conduct site visits at Pine Crest and
analyze employee rosters to look for
discrimination. A settlement or a law-
suit could still be in the works.
Hank Battle did not respond to requests
for an interview. He has taken a job as a
consultant with a teacher recruiting firm
in Dallas called the Education Group.
The companys president, Mary Kesler,
calls Battle someone Ive known for a
number of years. Kesler says Battle has
not moved to Dallas and works indepen-
dently out of his own home in Florida.
Battle continues to fight with the
school over the rest of his $5 million
contract, according to sources familiar
with the situation, who say that ending
it prematurely is not going to be easy.
In June, Ellen Ramm, a retired Pine
Crest teacher who coincidentally happens
to live two doors down from Battles old
house in North Carolina, received a call
from a private investigator. The woman said
she had been hired by a law firm working
for the school, Ramm recalled. It seemed
to Ramm that Pine Crest was looking for
signs that Battle might have misrepresented
himself before signing the heavy-duty con-
tract in particular, the fact that he was
not happily married, as he had claimed.
Ramm said she occasionally saw Linda
Battle but rarely spoke to her. She knew
Forsyth teachers and parents who had griev-
ances about Battles tenure there, but none
of them wanted to talk about it. This silence
is a common theme now, as both schools
recover from Battles whirlwind influence.
As this story goes to press, the History
section of the Pine Crest website features
a near-beatific painting of founder Mae
McMillan beaming like a benign matron
over the bell tower, the cloisters, the trees.
It also contains a notable inaccuracy.
Dr. Cowgill succeeded [Bill] McMil-
lan on September 1, 1995; she retired in
January of this year, the page reads. Dr.
Dana Markham became the schools acting
fourth president the following month.
Dr. Dana Markham actually became the
schools acting fifth president in May, not
February. Just like that, the 99-day tenure
of Hank Battle is neatly erased from history.
Its a period the school would rather forget.
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