Nevertheless, let's go into the well-traveled sociological territory of college admissions. I went through the worst of that rat race in the 1960s, and my impression is borne out by the later opinions of writers like David Brooks. Falk, though, was in one of the earliest postwar cohorts to whom selective admissions applied, so my guess is that standards wouldn't even have been as stringent in his case as they were later.
First, there was, and continues to be, a rigid hierarchy of schools, with the Ivies and half a dozen others at the very top. Somewhat farther down were "safety schools", which appeared close to the bottom of each applicant's aspirational list -- if you couldn't get into Harvard, Stanford, or whatever, you also applied to schools that the counselors assured you would accept you without a doubt. (Mine was Gettysburg.) Kenyon College, based on my memories of the rat race, was widely felt at the time to be another on the safety list. Lawrence wasn't even on the screen, at least on the East Coast.
But the sociological studies also point out that the prestige schools have a separate set of admissions criteria for the children of potential major donors. The Falk family would almost certainly be in that league. If those applicants also prepared at private schools, they're even more advantaged. This fit Louis Falk as well. I went to an Ivy, and my sense was that there was a two-tier system throughout, not just in admissions. (I kept wondering why this or that guy had the same surname as _____ Hall, but never completely figured it out at the time.) However, the sociological studies also point out that even the Ivies have standards, and if John D Hackensacker V just can't make it no matter how far you bend the rules, some other tactful arrangement is made.
So I'm still left with the question of why Falk III didn't go to Yale. The possibility that he might have gone to Kenyon in fall 1953, frankly, looks more likely -- for whatever reason, possibly grades or test scores, Yale felt it had to forego even the potential of Falk money, and Louis was steered to a still-somewhat-prestigious safety school. But then, disaster of some sort strikes. Falk and his bride intend to return to Gambier, but things don't work out, and he finishes up at Lawrence College, a little down the scale from Kenyon, but summa cum laude. Of course.
My overriding impression is that Louis III's life, at least until he found the ACC, was marked by a series of disasters, mitigated by family money. Something happened to interrupt his college career, and it wasn't the draft. But somehow it's fixed. Then he gets an astonishing fast track in The Episcopal Church -- becoming a rector of a prestigious parish right out of seminary is highly unusual. Something, I've got to assume, facilitated that.
But then there's another disaster; Falk lasts only a little more than two years in that prestigious rectorship (and the problems presumably began to boil up well before he left). Unmitigated disaster, almost certainly not the first for the guy. I can only assume that Falk family resources were involved in setting up generous structured settlements and non-disclosure agreements that kept the business more or less quiet.
So he gets out of Wisconsin, where Falk is a very prominent name, perhaps at the urging of the family, and sets up in Iowa. I believe someone who fails as spectacularly at the priesthood on an initial try, as Falk appears to have done, would normally conclude that he simply didn't have an authentic vocation. Certainly the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac was of that persuasion. Indeed, if I discovered I had problems at the priesthood but did well in mall management, I'd take it as a message. But for whatever reason, Falk seems to have decided the Congress of St Louis was another good opening.
He'd gotten himself on an Episcopalian fast track, possibly using resources available to his very prominent family. Now he seems to have gotten on an even faster track with the Anglican Catholic Church. I would guess that family resources were available for that, as well.
What might have happened with "continuing Anglicanism" if Falk hadn't been involved? What if James Mote had made a serious background check when Falk turned up, figuratively speaking, at his doorstep? The answer is probably that "continuing Anglicanism" was always something of an alternate universe filled with wishful thinking from the start, and it was simply never the sort of place where anyone made serious background checks -- a place like Yale could think things over and turn down serious money if it absolutely had to. James Mote and the ACC were never in that league. The Episcopal Church could reconsider; the ACC could not.
