Falmouth Enterprise, Friday, April 05, 1957, Page 9

Knute Andersson Is Named Bourne Athletic Director

On an exposed piece of ground in Indian Neck Road in Wareham a well-fashioned homemade house resists the persistent winds that blow off the Wareham and Agawam rivers. Alongside the house a maze of blueberry bushes testify that the last hurricane has not broken the spirit or determination of the family inside.

Inside, the family of Knute Andersson sets about its Individual tasks. Andy, 8, busies himself with free hand sketches of gulls or model bridges; Priscilla, 13, admires a paper mache study of a casual collegiate she has just completed. The entire house is permeated with the odor of freshly-baked coffee cake turned out by Mrs. Andersson's mother, Mrs. David Warner.

For Mr. Andersson the number 13 appears to be a lucky one.

Thirteen years ago he left the Bourne School system after developing winning teams from 1940 through 1944. This Fall he will return to the Bourne School system as athletic director, assistant coach to Lucien Bachand and physical education instructor on the elementary levels.

I admired the willingness to work to perfect skills exhibited by the Bourne youth when I was in the system, he remarked, and the cooperation given the athlete and his coach by parents in town. He expressed his eagerness to return to Bourne.

He was graduated from Springfield College in the same class as Clayton E. Campbell, principal of Peebles Elementary School, but he has also served in areas remote from the Cape.

He coached track, cross country, swimming, and soccer as well as instructing in physical education at the University of Connecticut before moving on to a high school assignment in Witchlta Kansas High School in the depths of the Depression. His path back to Cape Cod lead to Jewett City, Connecticut before he accepted a job in the Normal School at Hyannis near the outbreak of World War II. He did graduate work at New York University as well as Bridgewater State Teachers College.

After leaving Bourne in 1944 he was employed as a coach and instructor in Montpelier, Vermont and Arms Academy in Shelburne Falls, Vermont before being named Dean of Men at Bridgewater State Teachers College in 1949. Since 1950 he has been a coach, physical education instructor, and classroom teacher at Bridgewater High School.

Mr. Andersson Is not the onlv member of the family directly involved in coaching and physical education lnstmctiun. Mrs. Andersson is supervisor of the girls physical education in grades three through 12 in the Wareham school system. Their oldest daughter, Miss Alma Jane Andersson, is a sophomore at Bridgewater State Teachers College majoring in physical education.

The Anderssons appear to be as nearly a self-sufficient unit as exists in America today.

Nearly three-fourths of the blueberry farm, started on land that was purchased by Mrs. Andersson's father, the late David Warner, then retired professor who served ably at the University of Connecticut and as shop instructor at Bourne High during World War II, was destroyed in the last hurricane. Today more than 2,000 well-cared-for bushes await the rush of Spring. The family is happy to have its roots down in Cape soil.