SYDNOR HARBISON WALKER
1891 - 1966
Miss Sydnor Harbison Walker, Vassar alumna, faculty member,
trustee and Assistant to the President, died December 12,
1966, at her home in Millbrook, New York, at the age of 75.
She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of Walter
and Mary Sydnor Perkins Walker.
After attending Louisville schools, Miss Walker came to
Vassar and was graduated in 1913 with honors. Economics
was her major interest and she returned to Vassar to teach
it in 1917, with an M.A. from the University of Southern
California. Professor Emeritus Mabel Newcomer, a young col-
league at the time, writes that "her quick wit and gaiety
made her well liked among students in the residential hall
where she lived ..... as a teacher she exhibited these same
qualities, combined with clarity of thought and expression
.... although she could be sharply critical of the careless
and the dilatory."
In 1919 Miss Walker decided that she needed some practical
experience and went to work for a pioneering firm of indust-
rial relations consultants where she wrote their weekly
news letter. Three members of this young firm became college
presidents and some years later Miss Walker herself was on
the way to the presidency of a prominent college for women.
A fourth member of the firm was Beardsley Ruml.
In 1921 Miss Walker engaged in the relief work of the American
Friends Service Committee, first in Vienna and later in Russia.
In a letter to President Emeritus MacCracken, she vividly
describes her experience.
"We are now feeding about 15,000 a week through our depots,
and we are supplying clothing to nearly 3,000. Our work is
done on an individual case basis, which we think to be the
soundest, not only from a social point of view, but because
we believe that method essential for the creation of a spirit
of international good-will - at no time a secondary object
in our program... In addition to the feeding and clothing....
we are teaching mothers to care for their babies through the
welfare centers; we are supporting a score of hospitals and
other institutions for children; we have restocked farms
with poultry and cattle and are helping farmers to build up
permanent food resources for the city; and we are assisting
materially in such constructive Austrian enterprises as the
building of suburban land settlements and the creation of a
SYDNOR HARBISON WALKER — continued
market abroad for the art work of many gifted persons...we
feel that we are a real part of the life of the city and
not a superimposed group of relief workers."
It is not hard for those who knew Miss Walker to visualize
her presiding over relief work in the Imperial Palace of the
Hofburg, whose stately corridors were cheerless and deserted
save for these activities.
Returning to America in 1924, Miss Walker combined her inter-
ests in industrial relations with social welfare and educa-
tion by becoming a research assistant at the Laura Spelman
Rockefeller Memorial Fund in New York. In the meantime she
received her doctorate in economics from Columbia University
in 1928 with a dissertation on "Social Work and the Training
of Social Workers."
When the Rockefeller Foundation absorbed the Spelman Fund in
1929, Miss Walker began her association of twenty years with
the Foundation. She moved from the research department to
the position of Associate Director of the Social Sciences
Division and finally became its Acting Director. While there
she developed a program of international relations involving
considerable travel in Europe and South America in very respon-
sible positions. In 1933 she collaborated in the preparation
of the report of President Hoover's Committee on Social Trends,
contributing a chapter entitled, "Privately Supported Social
Work."
In 1939 Miss Walker was proposed for trustee of Vassar College
by the Faculty Club and she was elected by the board. Again
quoting Miss Newcomer, "her contribution as a Vassar trustee
was very real….Her experience on the faculty and as a student,
and her current work in the Rockefeller Foundation, had given
her a real understanding of the problems of the college and
enabled her to offer constructive criticism and suggestion for
change."
Her resignation as trustee occurred in October 1942, and came
because of a crippling illness which led eventually to her
permanent confinement to a wheel chair. A friend and fellow
alumna described her long battle against mistaken diagnoses,
official predictions of helplessness and the end of her career.
"Sydnor simply rejected the idea of permanent immobility....
for a person who never knew what fatigue meant, who never
could understand inactivity, either mental or physical,
SYDNOR HARBISON WALKER - continued
nothing could have been more tragic than paralysis."
When Miss Walker realized that complete recovery was impossible,
on her own initiative she went to one of the first rehabilitation
clinics in New York and learned to help herself to a remarkable
degree. Also she wrote, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation
published in l945, a report entitled "The First Hundred Days
of the Atomic Age."
In 1948 another opportunity to serve Vassar came to Miss
Walker when Miss Blanding named her Assistant to the President.
She returned to live in Metcalf House and became an active
participant in Vassar's development. Miss Blanding knew her
as "a brilliant woman who never lost her zest for life nor
her interest in things of the mind. She was a voracious
reader and stimulating companion."
After Miss Walker's retirement in 1957, she bought a large
colonial house in Millbrook, reminiscent of her native Kentucky.
There she continued her vital interest in Vassar and in the
many friendships she had made throughout her rich and colorful
life.
Respectfully submitted,
Josephine Gleason
Clarice Pennock
Verna Spicer
Winifred Asprey, Chairman
XVIII 334-336