THOMAS HORNSBY FERILL/PART ONE
A simple piece of Graland history
Thomas Hornsby Ferril, a Colorado poet laureate, designed Graland’s first letterhead. It is simple, yet elegant: a faint glimpse of a mountain peak, the word Graland, and in small (not capitalized) letters, country day school in line two and denver, colorado in line three.
Here is one of his poems, “Two Rivers.” The poem is on a plaque in Confluence Park:
Two Rivers Two rivers that were here before there was
A city here still come together: one
Is a mountain river flowing into the prairie;
One is a prairie river flowing toward
The mountains but feeling them and turning back
The way some of the people who came here did.
Most of the time these people hardly seemed
To realize they wanted to be remembered,
Because the mountains told them not to die.
I wasn't here, yet I remember them,
That first night long ago, those wagon people
Who pushed aside enough of the cottonwoods
To build our city where the blueness rested.
They were with me, they told me afterward,
When I stood on a splintered wooden viaduct
Before it changed to steel and I to man.
They told me while I stared down at the water:
If you will stay, we will not go away.
Graland Country Day School
Graland Country Day School is a private school in Denver, Colorado, serving students in preschool, kindergarten, elementary, and middle school. Founded in Denver in 1927, Graland incorporates a rich, experiential learning approach in a traditional classroom setting, emphasizing the development of globally and socially conscious leaders who excel academically.
