John Burroughs School

Founded in 1923, John Burroughs School (JBS) is a private, non-sectarian preparatory school with nearly 600 students in grades 7-12. Its 47.5-acre (192,000 m²) campus is located in Ladue, Missouri (USA), an affluent suburb of Saint Louis. It is named for U.S. naturalist and philosopher John Burroughs.

Alumni

• Christine Bertelson: editorial page editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper.
• William S. Burroughs, '59: novelist, Naked Lunch.
• Sarah Clarke, '89: actress, 24.
• Leo Drey, '35: timber magnate, conservationist, philanthropist. Was Missouri's largest private landholder until 2004, when his $180 million gift of land to a conservation foundation made him the U.S.'s sixth-most generous benefactor. http://slate.msn.com/id/2112694/fr/rss/. Leases land to JBS for outdoor education.
• Joe Edwards, '64: owner, Blueberry Hill restaurant and bar in U. City.
• Edward T. Foote II: president, University of Miami (1981-2001); helped design St. Louis' desegregation plans.
• Martha Gellhorn: combat journalist, novelist, and Ernest Hemingway's third wife. He dedicated For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940) to her; she called him her Unwilling Companion in Travels With Myself And Another (1978).
• John Hartford, '68: Grammy-winning folk musician, Gentle On My Mind.
• Walter L. Metcalfe Jr., '56: lawyer; chairman of Bryan Cave, one of the world's 35 largest law firms; chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
• Gordon Philpott, '51: chief of surgery, Jewish Hospital in St. Louis; professor emeritus of surgery, Washington University medical school.
• Jane Smiley: Pulitzer Prize-winning (1992) novelist, A Thousand Acres.
• John Stix, '38: theatre-movie-television director (1983's "Family Business"), Juilliard professor, Actor's Studio member.
• Thomas H. Stix, ca. '42: Plasma physics pioneer (wrote 1962's seminal The Theory of Plasma Waves), Princeton professor.
• Katie Wheeler: New Hampshire state senator in the 1990s.