The Gunn Cross Once Again Atop Numeral Rock

This article is about the recent rebuilding of the Gunn Cross, which had, until recent years, stood atop Numeral Rock since 1929. It was erected as a memorial to Charles Berry Gunn, Jr., who died in February 1928, late in his Sixth Form year during a flu epidemic at the School.

A recent online Kent news article, “A Silent Sentinel Restored on Numeral Rock,” recounts how the Gunn Cross came to be and the roles played by the Gunn family, Gunn’s classmates, and the wider Kent community. While it touches on some of the same history, this article looks more closely at Gunn himself and the close-knit family he belonged to.

Gunn was no stranger to Kent School when he arrived as a Fourth Former in September 1925. He was born in New Haven on March 10, 1908 (sharing a birthday with Fr. Sill), and apart from summers and holidays, lived in Scarsdale, New York. Most of his summers were spent at the Skiff family homestead on Skiff Mountain (very close to the former Kent Girls’ School), which had been (and still is) in the Skiff family since it was built in 1766. Fr. Sill, in a remembrance published in the Kent News, recalled how Charles, before entering Kent, would come down to campus to play tennis with his father and students spending the summer at Kent.  

As a new student, Charles quickly entered into the cultural, athletic, spiritual, and social life of the community. He sang second tenor with the Glee Club and played for his form’s hockey team. The Kent News’ coverage of the annual fathers vs. sons baseball game in May 1926 mentions Charles playing right field and his father playing third base. During his Fifth Form year, he rowed on the Fifth Form crew, and in his Sixth Form year, stroked the combined Fifth and Sixth Form crew.

He exhibited a strong artistic and sensitive nature. The same weekend he and his dad competed on the ball field, he played piano in a concert for the fathers. The pieces he played were a Chopin prelude and Percy Grainger’s “Country Gardens.” A Kent News review of the concert said that while “critics are supposed to be bored by everything,” this was not the case that evening. The critic confessed to enjoying the performance and hoped Charles “will play more before the school in the future.” In the fall of his senior year, he provided piano accompaniment to the School orchestra and soon after played piano during a school orchestra performance in which Fr. Sill played the fiddle.

A treasure found by Charles’ mother in his room at Kent shortly after he died was sheet music for a piece he composed, but was not able to finish, called “The Bobolink Waltz.” The cover for the music is his drawing of the bird known as a bobolink. According to Charles’ niece, Dr. Katherine Kane, both Charles and his sister Margaret took drawing lessons from the famous ornithologic artist, Rex Brasher, who lived in Kent. A number of beautiful drawings by Charles survive in addition to the bobolink. A pencil sketch titled “Hupmobile,” is a perfectly rendered drawing of a car Charles clearly loved, with a figure hunched behind the wheel with a farm (Skiff Homestead?) receding in the distance. For auto buffs, the Hupmobile was built by the Hupp Motor Car Company of Detroit from 1909 to 1939.    

Charles was the eldest of four siblings: Katharine Ely Gunn (Polly), Pauline Day Gunn (Betsy) and Margaret Gunn (Margie).  The current steward of the Skiff Homestead, Dr. Katherine Skiff Kane, is Margaret’s daughter and an invaluable source of information about the Gunn family. Charles’ mother often called him “Sunny,” while in his sisters’s letters to him he is often called “Bub.”  The many pictures and letters from Charles’ early days show a close-knit family, resilient in the face of tragedy. Photos give glimpses of their life on Skiff Mountain surrounded by pets (dogs, cats, horses, hens, and the Tobin’s turkeys), and enjoying sledding, skiing, and the more mundane matter of studying.  

Fortunately, letters written to and from Charles from his sisters and mother survive, as do several from Charles to Fr. Sill. The letters exude mutual concern and affection, chronicling the joys and struggles of teenage years. In a letter from Charles’ mother to him during Fifth Form year, she tells him she would like to send him on a trip that summer to watch the Kent Crew compete at Henley (the first American schoolboy crew to do so.) This trip was in part to help heal the wounds created by Charles Gunn Sr’s. untimely death the previous October.  His mother suggests a family friend, Charles Dunlap, as a possible traveling companion. She wrote: Hush!!! Don’t breathe it aloud!! He is very prominent here in Polly’s (Charles' younger sister) life. She is going to a hockey game with him Saturday. They write constantly and I want to know all I can about him.  There is no way to get acquainted so well as traveling together.

While the two made the trip that summer, we do not know if the desired dossier was compiled and shared.

Another letter reveals Charles’ empathetic side. Charles wrote Fr. Sill on Saturday October 17, 1925 (less than a month after entering Kent), as the latter had been away from the School and was, as had been reported at the usual Saturday night assembly, homesick and yearning to return to School. Charles reported on recent athletic contests and says he, as well as the entire school, missed "Pater" and that Charles liked “to know you are around looking after things, and lecturing us when we are bad, and smiling when we are good.”

In a diary entry from January 1928, Charles wondered whether a girl he liked would want to go to an upcoming house party weekend with him. She did! Among the letters found in Charles’ room by his mother after his death was one from an old family friend named Barbara McGlashan, postmarked February 1, 1928. Barbara had grown up on a farm next to the Skiff Homestead and her mother and Charles’ mother were best friends. Her family owned the farm that would eventually become the Kent Girls’ School. Barbara’s daughter was in the first Kent Girls’ School class.  

Charles had known Barbara since early childhood and his invitation to the house party made perfect sense. She wrote: “I think it was awfully nice of you to invite me to Kent ... it was an awfully nice party—I’m really very glad I went. Thanks loads for having me—and all that you did for me.”  She said that when she returned home on Sunday she didn’t feel well, possibly due to a lack of sleep. She said at the end of the letter, “Hope none of us left any scarlet fever germs.”  She discussed whether she would be able to attend a glee club competition at Town Hall in New York City that Kent will compete at, being held February 4. While Barbara did not go, Charles did with the Glee Club.  The day following the Glee Club’s return from New York City, he was admitted to the school’s infirmary, where he died of pneumonia on February 13, 1928.  

Rebuilding the Cross

At some point during the Covid-19 crisis, the writer of this article learned the cross which had once stood atop Numeral Rock was no longer there. This set in motion a series of discussions and meetings leading to the School’s decision to rebuild the iconic memorial.

In the summer of 2024, Facilities Director John Bergin asked if any of his staff was interested in rebuilding the cross. Mike Rost, who had worked at the School for two years as a master carpenter, volunteered. While he had extensive experience in residential construction, he viewed the challenge as unique, but within his skill set. Fortunately, drawings and photographs of the original cross were in the school archives and made available to Rost. The original cross was designed by Roger Bullard, father of one of Charles’ classmates and architect for St. Joseph’s Chapel.  The wood used for the new cross is white oak and was purchased from New England Naval Timbers in nearby Cornwall, Connecticut, a firm providing timber for renovation of historic sailing vessels.

While the actual design and construction could fill a book of its own, here are a few highlights:

The original concrete base built in 1929 was still usable. Rost estimates the original base required over 100 bags of cement at 80 pounds, each as well as 150 gallons of water. Most of the supplies needed for the original cross were carried to Numeral Rock by students in what was a compelling example of love and self-reliance.

Over a nine-month period during construction, Rost applied linseed oil to the cross every day to make it more resilient and less prone to splitting.

The main upright weighs an estimated 400 pounds and the crossbeam, an estimated 200 pounds.

One of the most challenging parts of the project was constructing a “jig” that would facilitate drilling a 2 1/2-inch hole through the center of the upright, in which a galvanized steel pole was inserted and attached to the base.

In April 2025, members of the School’s Facilities Department cut a trail up to Numeral Rock, and sections of the cross were latched to universal terrain vehicles, and, with some difficulty, were brought up to Numeral Rock. On April 23, 2025, the Facilities crew secured a new base to the existing one on Numeral  Rock and installed the main beam. The final horizontal piece was added the next day.

“A huge thank you to Michael for the time and dedication he put into building the cross, and to the entire Facilities team who helped make this restoration possible,” says Bergin. “Everyone took great pride in bringing this piece of Kent’s history back to life.” In addition to Rost, the project team included: Jeff Anderson, Luke Anderson, Willie Gawel, Charles Hayes, Eric McAllen, Robert Meley, Teddy Miner, Mark North, Josh Smith, and Kyle Summers.