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Title: Ascheri, Carlo, 1936-1967 -- Memorial Minute: . .
Creator: Domandi, Mario
Description
Date: [After 1967]
Text: _¢ ‘z ._._ i"iM I Ox . CARLO ASCHERI \ » \- l936 - 1967 Carlo Ascheri was born in Ventimiglia, Italy on February 16, 1936. After attending the schools in his home town, he went to study philosophy at the Scuola Normale of Pisa, and then at the University of Heidelberg, where he was also a Lecturer in the Italian Department. His main intellectual interest was the social philosophy of the Hegelian left, particularly the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach. When he came to teach at Vassar in...
Show more_¢ ‘z ._._ i"iM I Ox . CARLO ASCHERI \ » \- l936 - 1967 Carlo Ascheri was born in Ventimiglia, Italy on February 16, 1936. After attending the schools in his home town, he went to study philosophy at the Scuola Normale of Pisa, and then at the University of Heidelberg, where he was also a Lecturer in the Italian Department. His main intellectual interest was the social philosophy of the Hegelian left, particularly the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach. When he came to teach at Vassar in 1963, he tried to pursue those studies, but soon found that the materials available here were very inadequate. Though he was very happy here for personal reasons, professional considera- tions forced him to return to Germany; there, a Thyssen fellow- ship allowed him to work on Feuerbach uninterruptedly for two years. In that time he wrote a number of things of such high quality that he came to be considered one of Europe's leading scholars in his field. The Meiner Verlag had commissioned him to edit the first two volumes of a new edition of the complete works of Feuerbach. His German article entitled "Notwendigkeit einergveranderung" established the basis for a new interpreta-I tion of Feuerbach's early thought. He was invited to address international conferences and seminars. By the spring of 1967, he felt he was well along enough in his work to accept an invita- tion to return to Vassar the following fall -— especially since he had now started studying on translating the works of Herbert Marcuse, many of whose disciples are in this country. ‘ That sumer, Mr. Ascheri married Heidi Osterloh. They arrived in Poughkeepsie in September, and had barely finished setting up a delightful apartment in Keyes, when a sudden cerebral hemorrhage carried him away on November 29, 1967 at the age of 31. . Carlo Ascheri, the young scholar, has received academic recogni- tion worthy of men twice his age. His notes have been gathered, and will be published as books and articles by friends working in the same field. His nearly finished translation of Marcuse has been completed by his wife and will appear this summer. A Fest- schrift in his honor was published a few months ago, and included contributions by outstanding European scholars. But for Carlo ¢ CARLO ASCHERI (Continued) Ascheri the man, the gentle, honest, completely integral man, the sensitive loyal friend, there can be no adequate eulogy. Respectfully submitted, Mario Domandi
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Title: Baldwin, James Fosdick, 1871-1950 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Griffin, Charles, Miller, John, Campbell, Mildred
Description
Date: [After 1950]
Text: JAMES FOSDICK BALDWIN 1871 - 1950 James Fosdick Baldwin was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1871. He died in Poughkeepsie, New York, on Thurs- day, Qctober the fifth, 1950. During forty-four of the seventy-nine intervening years, he was a member of the Vassar College faculty in the department of history. Hence it is to a fellow gildsman of long service that we now pay respect and honor. As Mr. Baldwin, setting about his most recent task of writing a history of the college in its modern era...
Show moreJAMES FOSDICK BALDWIN 1871 - 1950 James Fosdick Baldwin was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1871. He died in Poughkeepsie, New York, on Thurs- day, Qctober the fifth, 1950. During forty-four of the seventy-nine intervening years, he was a member of the Vassar College faculty in the department of history. Hence it is to a fellow gildsman of long service that we now pay respect and honor. As Mr. Baldwin, setting about his most recent task of writing a history of the college in its modern era, sifted with trained eye and hand the boxes and volumes that constitute the college archives, - Presidents' cor- respondence, faculty minutes, committee reports, reports of departmental chairmen, and old files of the Miscellan News that recounted gala skits of Founder's Day, Ee must often have run across his own name and his own handwriting, for he had a zest for life and was ever an active partic- ipant in all that was going on about him. His courses in English history introduced him to large numbers of stu- dents and his circle of friends and acquaintances among alumnae was wide. His interest in every part of the col- lege was marked, - one could mention for instance certain of our library treasures, rare for a college of this size that are here because of his scholarly discernment and his initiative. Engrossing as was the campus to him, however, Mr. Baldwin did not forget that there were pleasures and obligations outside of it, that he was a resident of the town of Poughkeepsie, a citizen of Dutchess County and of his state and nation. He took a lively interest in public affairs to which his approach was that of a humanitarian and a liberal. Better also than some of us, he was able to transfer the field of his specialized interests to the scene at hand. Hence the student of constitutional origins in a distant age and place found ways of making Dutchess County origins exciting to his friends and fel- low townsmen. He held office repeatedly in the Dutchess C t Hi t ri i t ° l f i oun y s o cal Soc e y, and in 9h2 was o fic ally honored with the title, Dutchess Count Historian. Other community activities enlisted His support. His lifelong interest in music, found expression in his work as an organist in one of Poughkeepsie's churches, a post which he filled for years. After his retirement many of these interests were continued. Indeed, there was true gallantry in the way Jmnes Baldwin set about to explore Q 28 JAMES FOSDICK BALDWIN (Continued) the resources within himself in order to make his retirement a period both useful and happy. And it was a source of pleasure to his friends that neither old_ age nor adversity dulled his salty wit nor dimmed the twinkle in his eye. But beyond these memories left with friends and assoc- iates, James Fosdick Baldwin in his early manhood created a more lasting memorial through his contribu- tion to historical scholarship in a highly selective field, that of the Ehglish Medieval Constitution. His book on the Kin 's Council in En land Durin the Middle A es published §n Uxford In I§I§ was Hailed By scholarly journals on both sides of the Atlantic as charting new ground and superseding previous treatments of the sub- ject. It led to his election at once to membership in the Royal Historical Society, and gave him a place among the best scholars in the field in his own country. Even now after almost forty years it still remains a recognized authority. Hence, as Poughkeepsie notes the passing ofia good citizen and neighbor, and Vassar Col- lege a friend and colleague, medieval historians in both Europe and America record the passing of a respected member of their fraternity, the author of The King's Council. Charles Griffin John Miller Mildred Campbell XIII - 1&3
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Title: Baldwin, Jane North, 1876-1975 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Bergeret, Ida Treat, Gooding, Velma, Stevenson, Jean K., Daniels, Elizabeth A.
Description
Date: [After 1975]
Text: 4l”v"'~. _I .4 JAI*l“l NORTH BALDWIN -— 1876-1975 Attachment #1 ; L. At a Meeting of the ‘ Faculty of Vassar College held ' December seventeenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-five, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Dr. Jane North Baldwin lived for ninety-nine full and intense years before she died in Poughkeepsie, New York on May l5th, l975. She was born in Keeseville, New York on February l0, i876, the daughter of George W. Baldwin, who was a professional...
Show more4l”v"'~. _I .4 JAI*l“l NORTH BALDWIN -— 1876-1975 Attachment #1 ; L. At a Meeting of the ‘ Faculty of Vassar College held ' December seventeenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-five, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Dr. Jane North Baldwin lived for ninety-nine full and intense years before she died in Poughkeepsie, New York on May l5th, l975. She was born in Keeseville, New York on February l0, i876, the daughter of George W. Baldwin, who was a professional photographer, and Margaret Hargraves Baldwin. She was one of the early women enrollees and graduates of Cornell University Medical School, taking her M.D. degree in l900. She interned at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in l9Ol-O2 and came to Vassar College as Assistant in Physiology and Assistant Physician in l905-O6. From l905 to i930 she served the college as physician in the department of Health and Hygiene, and in l93O she was promoted to Professor of Hygiene and College Physician, a position she held until her retirement in l9H6 after Al years of service to the college. She is permanently honored by the college infirmary, Baldwin House, which was completed in l9hO and named for her. Dr. Baldwin auspiciously started life in two counties. One day when she was a little girl--so the story goes--her mother took her to New York City from Albany on the dayliner to visit a sick friend in a hospital. Jane Baldwin determined there and then to become a doctor. Although not very much is on record about her preparation for her career in medicine, one presumes that the struggle to get ahead and establish herself in a man's world was no easier for her than for the other women struggling shoulder to shoulder at the beginning of the twentieth century. in accordance with the custom of the time, she entered medical school without attending college but was, however, retroactively adopted as an honorary member of the class of l92l at Vassar. At various times Dr. Baldwin did graduate work--in physiology at the Harvard Medical School in the summer of l905, in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins in l9l6, and at the New York Post Graduate Medical School in i922. She was associated with MIT as a research intern in Public Health in the summer of i935. During her career Dr. Baldwin was on the staff of the Vanderbilt Clinic of Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, where she was an assistant attending physician in endocrinology; and she was also on the courtesy staffs of Vassar Hospital and St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, many times presiding over the emergencies of Vassar students. She played an active role beyond the college in the medical affairs of Dutchess County. A member of the Dutchess County Medical Association and the American Medical Association, she was at various times a vice- president of the then American Student Health Association and president of the then New York State Student Health Association. She was an honorary member of the Women's Medical Association of New York City and of the Visiting Nurses Association of Poughkeepsie In l950 she was honored by the Medical Society of the State of New York, and in l95l by the Dutchess County Medical Society, in Attachment #l Page 2 recognition of her fifty years of the practice of medicine in Wew York State. Dr. Baldwin did not limit her activities to Vassar College in any narrow sense although she served Vassar long and well. She - was a pioneer in local social service work. She was president of the board of directors of Lincoln Center for a time and was active in her retirement in senior citizens groups. She was a director of the Dutchess County Association for Senior Citizens and a A member of the Gay 90's Club, -- one of the few members whose age marked the distinction of the name. g Throughout her career, Dr. Baldwin had a very strong feeling for her vocation. Her efforts to improve the health education and the health service at Vassar resulted in the modern facilities and in the enlightened attitudes characteristic of her administration. The Vassar Alumnae Maqazine of July l, i936 quoted Dr. Baldwin, when asked for the story of her life, as replying that Vassar needed a new infirmary. A new infirmary was finally built at the time of Vassar's 75th Anniversary and named in her honor. ln i933 the doctors‘ offices, previously crowded into the front Southwest wing of Main Building, had moved to the old gym space in Ely which was made vacant by the opening of Kenyon Hall. In the new quarters in Ely there were fourteen consulting and waiting rooms--including a separate one for colds in the head. There were four physicians (including one psychiatrist and one pediatrician) and nine nurses. But Dr. Baldwin was not content with the total situation since she persisted in thinking that the infirmary, a beautiful New England reproduction built in l90l with funds donated by the family of Charles Swift, was badly adapted for desired improvements in infirmary care. As the saying was “Swift Infirmary, quick recovery.“ She pushed, therefore, for the modern facility which was designed by Faulkner and Kingsbury and built and dedicated in l9hO. Dr. Baldwin was friendly, outgoing, concerned, intense, serious and humorous. She was a woman of high moral standards and of great humaneness. She put herselt out for others. in l9H5, (for example) she spent her summer vacation on the staff of Vassar Brothers Hospital in order that a regular staff doctor might be released for rest. A typical Baldwinian act! The Class of l92l, her adopted Alma Mater, officially celebrated her 90th birthday with a banquet. At that dinner the story was told that Henry Noble MacCracken cited Dr. Baldwin for bravery. Dr. Baldwin, he recalled, was the younger assistant in her first years of Dr. Elizabeth Thelberg, her rather more formidable female predecessor, known as Dr. T. One fall year the two of them - Dr. T. and Dr. B. - were,as usual, examining freshmen in the annual initial medical examination lineup. Recording a student's family history, -Dr. Thelberg asked the frightened freshman - "And what was the cause of your grandfather's death? ' - Freshman; He was assassinated. Dr. T.; Good Heavens, child, what did he do? Freshman; He was president--President Garfield. Dr. T.; (turning to Dr. B.) Did you know this? Dr. B.: Of course. Dr Then why didn't you tell me? Dr (quietly): You didn't give me a chance." ED—'l 1 i l l - -t Attachment #l Page 3 Dr. Baldwin's driving became part of the folklore of College Avenue in her later years. All the affectionate residents knew enough to drive to the side of the road and stop when Dr. Baldwin honking her horn as she came, pulled out of her driveway. She was still driving her car with gusto, pleasure, and indiscretion in her nineties. » . . For all generations, Dr. Baldwin has been immortalized in certain Vassar class songs, among them three sung by two members of this Memorial Committee. The first: "Where Oh Where are the Verdant Freshmen?“ . Where oh where are the verdant freshmen? Where oh where are the verdant freshmen? Where oh where are the verdant freshmen? Safe now in their trundle beds. They've gone out from Baldwin's hygiene, They've gone out from Lockwood's English, They've gone out from Dicky's music Safe now in their trundle beds. The second: “The Hygiene Song“, arranged by Martha Alter '25 from words and tune originally composed by the Class of l9l9. Oh we never used to bathe - Till we heard the Doctor rave In the lectures that she gave - How to behave Now we take our daily bath - Even tho we miss our Math. ls; How in the world do you know that? She told us sol ,--T:-:.-.-....~*\ Q... In this case, as in many others, the song was reworked by the ingenious ad-lib inventions of subsequent generations of students, but it did not take too much ingenuity occasionally to substitute Dr. B. for Dr. T. as the song sank deeply into the college's musical folklore. ln l927, then, the song could include: When we heard from Dr. B. Of our ancient pedigree Traced back to the Cambrian Sea Much impressed were we, . Though they say man and baboon are but a minute in a long afternoon How in the world do you know that? She told us so. The post-Darwinian Doctor of hygiene has now become Dr. B.rather than Dr. T. And finally in the song “Matthew Vassar's Generous Heart“ composed by the Class of 1935 to the tune of “It Ain't Gonna Rain No More," we have Dr. B. coming into her own as the original dedicatee of the lines in the second verse: Attachment #l' Page A Matthew Vassar's generous heart Found a brain in every lass, So he made his beer and college here ' h ood of the Freshman class. For t e g “Hygiene, hygiene, hy," said the Freshmen, “Thank you, Dr. B. I know all about the scurvy and the sanitary survey and the inside parts of me.“ Ida Treat Bergeret Velma Gooding Jean K. Stevenson Elizabeth Daniels J M... ..._. M. '\-<
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Title: Ballintine, Harriet Isabel, 1864-1951 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Makemson, Maud M., Mosscrop, Alfreda, Foster, Frances A.
Description
Date: [After 1951]
Text: HARRIET ISABEL BALLINTINE 186k - 1951 The Faculty of Vassar CO1lege wish to pay tribute to the memory of Harriet Isabel Ballintine, who died on February 9, 1951 at the age of eighty-six. Her early experience of rigorous farm living in LeRoy,, near Rochester, taught Miss Ballintine habits of hard work and the necessity of cooperation; it also inspired in her the desire to explore openings where women could stand on their own feet and develop their abilities. After attending schools in LeRoy...
Show moreHARRIET ISABEL BALLINTINE 186k - 1951 The Faculty of Vassar CO1lege wish to pay tribute to the memory of Harriet Isabel Ballintine, who died on February 9, 1951 at the age of eighty-six. Her early experience of rigorous farm living in LeRoy,, near Rochester, taught Miss Ballintine habits of hard work and the necessity of cooperation; it also inspired in her the desire to explore openings where women could stand on their own feet and develop their abilities. After attending schools in LeRoy and a gymnasium for women in Rochester, she went at twenty-five to Harvard Sumer School for further training, and two years later graduated one of a dozen students from Dr. Sargent's School for Physical Training. To finance herself, she taught at LaSell Seminary and Bennet Street Settlement House. She came to Vassar in 1891 as Director of the Gymnasium, which had been built two years before, and supervised the individual exercises for several hundred students, teaching seven periods a day. In 1913 the college recognized the value of her work by setting up a depart- ment of Physical Training and according her the rank of Assistant Professor; six years later the department was renamed Physical Education and she was made Associate Professor. _ Miss Beldmng, who succeeded her as chairman of the de- partment, wrote: "Her vision and leadership made pos- sible the introduction of those sports and activities which are so universally accepted, but which in the early days were innovations, and even daring experhments, allowed only under definite restrictions." Four years after it was invented, Miss Ballintine introduced basket ball played in the open air. Deand for further open air sports led to the organization of an Athletic Associa- tion, and in November 1895 was held the first Field Day. So successful was this that she was asked to teach athletic training at Harvard Summer School the next sum- mer. At about the same time, golf was introduced as a third open air activity. And in 1901 she persuaded Miss Applebee, whom she had met at the Harvard Summer School, to teach the English game of field hockey to the Vassar students. Dancing was one of her chief interests; she enrolled in Mr. Gilbert's first Aesthetic Dancing class, and four years later started teaching it at Vassar. In HARRIET ISABEL BALLINTINE (Continued) short, when a new activity appeared, Miss Ballintine first learned it herself, then taught it to her stu- dents. with the expansion of the work, the Gymnasium, which in 1889 had seemed "the best equipped Gymnasium for women in the country" became crowded, and a section was added for offices. Impressions of these early days are very clearly given in Miss Ballintine's History of Physical Trainin at Vassar Colle e publishe or e iftiet Knniversary; except that Her characteristic modesty prevented any mention of her own part in the advance. In the 1920's when the department had outgrown the Gymnasium, she planned for the new building, and then in 1930 characteristically retired so that the building might be built under the direction of those who were to use its She enjoyed her retirement, living quietly in Williams Hall. She liked the contact with old friends who came to look her up, and with the young people who lived near her. From her early days at LeRoy her vision had gone out toward progress, and all her life she did what she could for women suffrage, for the education of the less privileged, and for opening up opportunities for women. She had the patience to watch quietly for the right moment and the tact to produce results. She could always be counted on to keep track of issues of public policy and to perform the duties of an alert citizen. We the Faculty of Vassar College wish to express our appreciation of the pioneer qualities in Miss Ballintine, which for forty years she put at the service of the col- lege. Maud M. Makemson Alfreda Mosscrop Frances A. Foster XIII — 197-198
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Title: Barber, Lelia, [unknown]-1984 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Askew, Pamela, Carroll, Eugene, Drouilhet, Elizabeth, Hunter, Mary Alice, Murphy, Joan
Description
Date: [after 1984]
Text: All-4i urn!‘ ‘ll Minute for Leila Barber >Leila Cook Barber, who died on December h, l98h, at the of 8l, was a member of the Vassar faculty for 37»years. taught in the Art Department, which she joined in l93l, tH her retirement in I968. Of that generation that in its youth placed more value iod D. I €fl t0 the personally creative than on conformity to professional xy, Leila Barber could and did say of herself: "I am piece. I've never published anything. I have no donlt know why...
Show moreAll-4i urn!‘ ‘ll Minute for Leila Barber >Leila Cook Barber, who died on December h, l98h, at the of 8l, was a member of the Vassar faculty for 37»years. taught in the Art Department, which she joined in l93l, tH her retirement in I968. Of that generation that in its youth placed more value iod D. I €fl t0 the personally creative than on conformity to professional xy, Leila Barber could and did say of herself: "I am piece. I've never published anything. I have no donlt know why they kept me.“- Generations of stu- s, however, and department members, colleagues and col- administrators knew exactly why she was invaluable to College, why it can be said that she has not left her Simply because formalized professional ambition was Leila Barber, this minute, to record her contri- ion to Vassar College must go beyond the framework of academic vita. A phrase often used by Leila to characterize others was bbrm I er and shaker.“ Leila was not a shaker, but she was a r and shaper. And it is the shape of things that she If cared to fashion and foster, or encourage and sup- that became incorporated into the mainstream of learn- enhancing its quality and affirming at the same time values of larger social enterprise. What she gave shape may, perhaps, be traced to her study of philosophy and logy as an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr ﬁollege, from ch she received her B.A. in I925, and to her study of history, begun under the famed Giorgianna Goddard King. earned her M.A. in art history in I928 at Radcliffe, re she did further graduate work until l93l. Related to these fields of study, and what might be d to lie at the heart of Leila Barber's accomplishments ra fundamentally domestic ideal. "Domestic" is not meant the narrow sense here -- not at all implying a channeling energies to private ends -- but signifying that personal where what is within can be ordered and arranged, ex- and controlled, -- to visible effect. It was the from which an inner dynamic of energy radiated out- in many directions: a base from which a response to late surroundings was extended to a critical concern a larger environment -- with working spaces, archi- re and landscape. It was the launching point for a ectory of thought that carried personal compassion into al action -- in her later years to serving meals on ls, to recording for the blind. The domestic core was hstone not only for personal social life, but for Ial responsibility, including her vigilant concern for qual' ' . ' ty of campus life And it was the source of the s reach of her truly liberal point of view which u>forward looking and positive a way embraced every tive idea that could potentially bring about greater -2- understanding, more perceptive knowledge or pleasure, or improved social condition. The operative pattern of her gifts and dedication emerges clearly in her contributions to Vassar College. Part of each summer she worked on student rooming with the College warden, Mrs. Drouilhet; by l9hO she was head resident of Josselyn House; and from i955 on, house- fellow at Josselyn. During the Second World War she helped plan and inaugurate a college system of cooperative living in which household tasks formerly done by maids and white angels were rotated among the students in each dormitory. In addition to getting the work done, this, she thought, brought students of different backgrounds together, and induced a sense of communal responsibility and an active participation in the care for one's environ- ment. She was also chairman of the wartime faculty com- mittee called the Key Center of information at Vassar, which, by appointment of the Office of Education, served as a distribution center for information about the war and postwar problems to six neighboring counties. She represented the Key Center on the Vassar Coordinating Council for War Activities, and served on the council's advisory panel of faculty members who helped students to. choose individual programs of preparation for war service. She also chaired the Emergency Committee, which formu- lated the College defense program. Her committee service for the College, however, en- compassed the entire range of academic process, from visiting schools and talking with prospective students, to the Committee on Student Records, to the Curriculum Committee, to the Board of Residents which advised stu- dents in each house -- lHO in Joss -- to the advising of majors in Art History. She was chairman of the Art De- partment from i965 to i968; and following her retirement, she was briefly Acting Dean of Studies. Her advising, house-fellowing and teaching brought her into touch with an exceptionally wide range of students, with countless of whom she formed enduring friendships. She was master- ful at bringing along the C student; she was a bulwark to those having a difficult time in college, and she was a fearless defender to parents of individual freedom as F. Scott Fitzgerald realized when Leila Barber took him to task for his views concerning the social life of his daughter. In another vein, she was both awe-inspiring and for- midable: formidable in the authority, strength of voice and definitive manner in which she expressed her views; awe-inspiring in her presence, which was stately, ex- ceptional in grandeur and beauty and impeccable in every detail from coif to couture. Today she would be called a"role modelﬂ indeed she inspired a student who saw her 4 ! < I l l -3- alecture last winter to write of her "perfectly seated re,“ finding her "marvelous," and evoking more genera- mm of students than she realized when she wrote, "Perhaps was the child in me that caused the memory of Leila Bar- to become forever crystallized within me." But the phrase "role model," which now verges on empty rgmm is one that Beila Barber would not have used except etiously. Abstraction was not something that experience ted into, but something drawn from it. For this reason, g others, she excelled in the art of teaching. Many hers reach their students; but singular was Leila's le, projection of voice and logically sustained develop- t of analysis and idea. What she said made an indelible ression, and not least because of her invention of Hking, witty and vivid turns of phrase often drawn from commonly shared worlds of food and fashion. Dazzlingly iculate, and lucidly clear, she was able, just in the ling, to raise every work of art that she projected on screen to a higher power, or to consign it to a limbo inferiority where the works of those who misunderstood styles of others seemed rightly to belong. She made history itself a profoundly aesthetic and human--as l as historical-- discipline. k When Leila Barber joined the Art Department, she became third member, teaching twelve l05 conference sections a course in ancient art. It was she who shaped the intro- tory survey course, writing and revising its extensive labus. Printed annually, it was a booklet eagerly t after and cherished by graduate students at other in- tutions long after it ceased to be produced. There was, idly a historical period in the survey course that she not at some time taught herself. She taught American hting as well, and on the advanced level, medieval art iuaiéan Renaissance art from Giotto to Tintoretto beyond, though Tuscan painting of the Fourteenth and teenth Centuries was her special field. With growing ialization in the discipline, no one else in the de- rmwnt could do all that Leila Barber could do, or with intelligence and knowledge that she did it. No one before, and certainly no one has since. Covering the Md, shaping the developing discipline through the curri- lum at Vassar, she was absolutely integral to that llence of teaching and training for which the Vassar Department was so widely renowned in mid-century. A rof the Renaissance Society of America and the Col- Art Association of America, she was well known in art historical world, and it was well known by her. Her shaping of programs extended, moreover, beyond the department. In the Forties, she was a staunch advocate the three-year plan, participating in it. This was an ative arrangement of semesters and of curricular _4_ offerings that enabled students in the war years to gradu- ate in three rather than four years. Part of the raison d'etre of the plan was its potential for encouraging stu- dents to go on to graduate work, to have already launched themselves on a course of advanced study within the canonicm four years. Study in the form of seeing, knowing first hand and re-viewing the works of art that she taught early establishw a regular pattern of summer travel. It was not altogether uneventful. In l936, in Spain with J. B. Ross from the History Department, she was trapped in the bombing of Gran-i ada at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The New York Times photographed them and headlined their ‘Escape by Plane from Rebel Stronghold in Spain.“ They were rescued in a H-seater piloted by the Comte de Sibour, for whom Leila characteristically, held the map that guided them to Tangien In her teaching years she traveled mostly to the Continen including Russia, but especially to Italy; and in the years of her retirement she spent long intervals in Greece and made repeated trips to England.i Although she traveled ex- tensively with undiminished interest in all visible mani- festations of life and civilization, she had a great spiﬂt socially for those enterprises on the local seene, including the League of Women Voters, to whom she gave her enthusiasﬂc support. An alumna who had enjoyed Leila's l05 lectures some years earlier returned to work at Vassar. Still regarding Leila with the awe inspired by their earlier teacher-studan relationship, it was some time before she could stop ad- dressing her as ‘Miss Barber.“ However, in the years ﬁﬂlow-% ing Leila's retirement, they shared many happy times to- gether. These ranged from the concerts and opera workshops in Skinner, and the Drama Department productions, to Honi Cole and his tap-dancing troupe in concert at the Bardavon. Leila's great capacity for enjoying a variety of experi- ences, and her witty comments on the proceedings, made these evenings and many another outing to museums in Williamstown and New Haven a delight. A strong and loyal supporter of the arts in Pough- keepsie, Leila Barber could be seen at virtually every im- portant cultural event. After her retirement she regularly attended concerts, plays and lectures at Vassar and at the Bardavon. She was a major supporter of the Bardavon and a patron of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. A great film buff, she became the first member of the Bardavon Film So- ciety. She also supported Vassar's Friends of the Art Ga lery and Barrett House. With her unfailing enthusiasm for budding talent, she never missed an audition for the Young Artists Competition, and she played a vital part in guiding a local student play- t,l l l l I 1 l i i J 1 ’ l l 4 4 l 1 l l l 1 l ti fl l 1 § f l I 1 I l l 4 $ l '1 J l x l ! ii i 1 l 1 i l l I _ 1 l 1 .4 E 1 1 i l i -5- roduction, "Mass Appeal " Her personal involvement the arts was boundless No wonder she was heard to "It makes me weary to think of all I shall have done weeks from now." nt, Bill C. Davis, in creating his successful Broad- a ' .' ' D For all that she did do for the College and Art De- fl. af l * ent, art history and the community, we are deeply u . " Respectfully submitted, Pamela»Askew Eugene Carroll Elizabeth Drouilhet Mary Alice Hunter Joan Murphy \ l I l l I l 1 l l l § l v l ll ll | l M w l l J ll ill 7‘! ii !. i l 4 I I 1 I l P l F
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Title: Barbour, Violet, 1884-1968 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Campbell, Mildred, Olsen, Donald, Rappaport, Rhoda
Description
Date: [After 1968]
Text: ,/ 61/ VIOLET BARBOUR 1884 — 1968 Violet Barbour was a member of the department of history at Vassar from 1914 until her retirement in 1950. Those who knew her best remember her for her combination of intellectual toughness and personal delicacy. One of her students has described her as "just slightly Jane Austen, though at the same time New Yorker chic." To her friends she was warmhearted, witty, and stimulating. To everyone she was kind, though her charity towards a person did not...
Show more,/ 61/ VIOLET BARBOUR 1884 — 1968 Violet Barbour was a member of the department of history at Vassar from 1914 until her retirement in 1950. Those who knew her best remember her for her combination of intellectual toughness and personal delicacy. One of her students has described her as "just slightly Jane Austen, though at the same time New Yorker chic." To her friends she was warmhearted, witty, and stimulating. To everyone she was kind, though her charity towards a person did not necessarily extend to his opinions. She had wide interests, ranging from civic matters to sport. To the end of her life she was an ardent baseball fan and would regularly journey with friends to Brooklyn to watch and cheer the Dodgers; reluctantly, she transferred her devotion to the Mets when the Dodgers moved west. But Miss Barbour's overwhelming passion was scholarship. As an undergraduate at Cornell University, her interest centered in history, enriched by the social sciences and literature. Cornell, where she continued through the Ph.D., acknowledged her intellectual prowess with both undergraduate and graduate fellowships. Recognition of this kind was to continue through many years in the form of prizes, awards, and other honors. Her first book, Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, was awarded the Herbert Baxter Adams prize by the American Historical Association in 1913, and remains the standard authority on the subject. She was the first woman ever to receive a Guggenheim fellowship, in 1925. B She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in England, and later, when her interest in the seventeenth century broadened to include Dutch history, was given honor- ary membership in the Historische Genootschap, a distinction B rarely granted to foreign scholars. Her Capitalism in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century, published in 1950, has since, as Miss Barbour herself once put it, acquired "the dignity of paperbackery"; more significantly, it is used to introduce students at the University of Amsterdam to their own economic history. Her many articles in professional journals in America, England, and The Netherlands have made her as well known abroad as she is in this country. Indeed, one of her Vassar colleagues once had difficulty correcting an English scholar who spoke of Violet Barbour as "one of the most distinguished of our English women historians." 6Y7 VIOLET BARBOUR (Continued) Teaching provided a further arena for Miss Barbour's skills. She delighted in intellectual sparring, in challenging and being challenged by her students. Her original mode of expression, personal warmth, and infectious humor found full play in the classroom. She was shy by nature, but lost her shyness when she found herself, as she once remarked, "facing a group of fresh- men more frightened than I was." She was, however, a teacher not for the many, but for the few, though she tried to help the many if they sought her help. For intellectually gifted students, she was the teacher and they remained her friends for life. One has recently recalled the "discussing, pondering, and questioning" that was continually underway in her classes, the "excite- ment," and the "great good humor." Another student, herself a well-known historian, wrote: "Her style was beautiful, her vocabulary also, but always so underplayed that it took a sharp ear to hear what she was saying . . . she was a mistress of irony, but . . . a kindly irony, not the usual sharp and cutting academic skepticism . . . Tough and delicate. You'd think she must be spared, but . . . she never spared you, to your ultimate improvement and growth. I left Vassar knowing how immeasurably I had been changed by her --in every way." Miss Barbour did not talk a great deal in faculty meetings, but strong convictions on important matters would bring her to her feet. Her concern with educational policy was genuine and based on thoughtful study. In connection with our cur- rent re-examination of the curriculum, it may be of interest that in 1925 Violet Barbour was arguing for: "A realiza- tion of the coherence, the dimly seen unity of knowledge, instead of the isolation by which academic departments guard their autonomy. "Scholars," she wrote, "should always be trespassing upon one another, always making peaceful forays into one another's territory to learn what is afoot there and bring the news to astound the folk at home." She believed that "a general plan of education valid for each and all" would always elude, but "if knowledge is not to fall into complete incoherence and our horizons collapse on our heads, the liaisons between studies must be developed and strengthened." VIOLET BARBOUR (Continued) Miss Barbour's broad interests and sympathies found expression in her scholarly work in a discipline which she found neither narrow nor confining. Referring to a piece of her own research, she once wrote: "the project is not one of earth—shaking importance, but it has a great deal of human nature knocking about in it and I find it quite absorbing." Hers was the kind of scholarship which combined imagination, sympathy, and perspective. Mildred Campbell Donald Olsen Rhoda Rappaport
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Title: Bean, Achsa Mabel, 1900-1975 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Stevenson, Jean, Timm, Ruth, Tait, Marion
Description
Date: [After 1975]
Text: J ;*>;u~,»,.. I I 55¢ MEMORIAL MINUTE ACHSA MABEL BEAN l9OO - l975 Achsa Bean was a member of the Vassar faculty from i938 until her retirement, as College Physician and Professor of Hygiene, in l963. She was a down—easter, born and bred, and retired to the house she and her life-long friend, Dr. Barbara Stimpson, had de- signed and built in Owl's Head, Maine. She died there in March l975. Her life was unusually rich and varied. She was a fearless woman, not afraid to tackle anything,...
Show moreJ ;*>;u~,»,.. I I 55¢ MEMORIAL MINUTE ACHSA MABEL BEAN l9OO - l975 Achsa Bean was a member of the Vassar faculty from i938 until her retirement, as College Physician and Professor of Hygiene, in l963. She was a down—easter, born and bred, and retired to the house she and her life-long friend, Dr. Barbara Stimpson, had de- signed and built in Owl's Head, Maine. She died there in March l975. Her life was unusually rich and varied. She was a fearless woman, not afraid to tackle anything, and part of that surely came from her upbringing in Maine. She took her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Maine, but she had to interrupt her course of study to earn money; so she taught at the Kenneybunkport High School and ran the town library. She spent six years on the University's faculty as Assistant Professor of Zoology and Dean of Women - stepping-stones to her on the way to realizing her determination to become a physician. She finally was able to begin the study of medi- cine at Radcliffe College and completed her M.D. at the University of Rochester. She came to Vassar in l938 as Assistant Physician and Assistant Professor of Health and Hygiene. Three years later, in l9Al, she answered the call of the Red Cross for volunteers to care for civilian and military casualties in England. There she stayed until late l942, having been sworn into the British Army Medical Corps as a lieutenant, one of the first two American women doctors to serve in that corps. (The other was Dr. Stimpson, her old friend, who later practiced in Poughkeepsie as a distinguished orthopedic surgeon.) She served in various military hospitals and as a member of the honorary staff of the Royal Free Hospital in London. This was the year of the blitz and she was frequently under fire; in fact she was bombed out of her house in London: as she used to say, with some nostalgia, just as she was heading for the luxury of a rarely come by deep bath, the bathroom was blown up. She had been promoted to major‘s rank before she re- turned, briefly, to Vassar - coming back because, she said, she “wanted to play on the home team“. In early l943 she became one of the first women physicians to join the Women's Reserve of the U.S. Navy, and was one of the first WAVES to be ordered overseas. She was sent to Pearl Harbor as Senior Medical Officer for enlisted Waves in the lhth Naval District. Three years later, in l9h6, she ended her naval career with the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and came back to Vassar as College Physician and Professor of Hygiene - to what must have seemed to her then a trivial series of illnesses and ailments. Not that one would ever have known that from her. But those who worked closely with her could easily imagine it, for though she was infinitely patient, generous, and kind with the truly ill and truly disturbed — student, employee, faculty member - she gave notoriously short shrift to “gold-brickers“. "I might just as well be down at the corner of Main and Market casting for bass“ was one of her tart comments on the malingerer. Her no-nonsense approach created a most bracing atmosphere around her and Baldwin House. 5.9 F’ -2- ACHSA MABEL BEAN I900 - I975 In this she was helped by her physical presence: she was a woman built on a large scale and had a voice that could match it. She was impressive, not to say intimidating, without the uniform; with it, she must have seemed like a dreadnought to some poor Tommies and Waves. But behind all that facade was a most sensitive, per- ceptive, and warm human being, and an almost uncannily astute diag- nostician. Among all her professional colleagues she was noted for that skill: in Poughkeepsie, in Rochester where she taught at the Medical College for many years, and at Columbia Presbyterian where she served one day a week in clinic all the years she was at Vassar. Among her most respectful and devoted students were a whole series of Vassar College physicians, psychiatrists, and administrators. Everything about Achsa Bean was on a large scale: herself, her hearty sense of humor, her gargantuan appetite. She loved people, dogs, music, flowers, food - in about that order. She had a splendid voice and for years was a prized and popular ham in Faculty shows. She was never without dogs and one of her most endearing traits to dog-lovers was that occasionally, as a rare privilege to a trusted friend, she would allow a dog to accompany the afflicted to Baldwin House. She was a green-thumb gardener and always had flowers about her, and she was a superb cook. But most of all she loved people and she spent her life, in and out of her profession, serving them. In Poughkeepsie she worked on innumerable medical and hospital boards, the New York State and American College Health Associations, and many local committees. She was in demand as a speaker to local groups, where she defended, always in a fresh and lively fashion, such causes as the nursing profession, cancer research, planned parenthood, and understanding the adolescent. In Owl's Head, in her retirement, she was no less active: she was the local school doctor, a State Inspector of nursing homes, a con- sultant in Health and Welfare, a member of the town's Planning Board, and, to top it off, a Deaconess and member of the Music Committee of her Congregational Church. Achsa Bean was a tough-fibred New Englander. She inherited ideals of loyalty and service and she gave her life to furthering them. In moments of crisis she reverted to the typical New England habit of understatement. Dr. Stimpson tells of her classic remark durin the thick of a submarine attack on their voyage to England in l9EI. Dr. Bean came down to her stateroom, she says, and gently but firmly roused her with the words: "Get up - I think we're having an incident". - Submarines, like other problems, were just the incidents of Achsa Bean's life. _ i Jean Stevenson Ruth Timm Marion Tait I
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Title: Beckwith, Cora Jipson, 1875-1955 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Fahnestock, Edith, Smith, Winifred, Brooks, Richard, Sague, Mary Landon, Kempton, Rudolf T.
Description
Date: [After 1955]
Text: coma JIPSON sscxwma 1375 — 1955 Members of the college comunity were saddened to learn of the death of Cora Jipson Beckwith, profes- sor emeritus of Zoology. Following a number of years of ﬂail health she died in Washington on January 9. 1955, in her eightieth year. Miss Beckwith joined the Zoology Department as an assistant in 1900, upon her graduation from the University of Michigan. With the aid of leaves she completed her graduate study while serving at Vassar College, receiving the...
Show morecoma JIPSON sscxwma 1375 — 1955 Members of the college comunity were saddened to learn of the death of Cora Jipson Beckwith, profes- sor emeritus of Zoology. Following a number of years of ﬂail health she died in Washington on January 9. 1955, in her eightieth year. Miss Beckwith joined the Zoology Department as an assistant in 1900, upon her graduation from the University of Michigan. With the aid of leaves she completed her graduate study while serving at Vassar College, receiving the doctorate of philosophy frm Columbia University in l9lh. She was chairman of the department at the time of her retirement in l9hO. Throughout her career Cora Beckwith was an outstanding teacher and member of the college community. She was quiet, dignified and unassuming. She was interested in people. Her lifelong tenure at Vassar was devoted to the well-being of the college in all its aspects. She expected, and obtained, precise thoughtful work from her students; she herself was capable of careful detail, prodigious amounts of work, and withal showed nice qualities of judgment. She contributed much to important comittees, notably those on the curriculum and research. In addition, for three years in her earlier days she served as an associate warden in Strong House. The teaching of histology, embryology and cytology, which she carried on over a long period of years, calls for the training of students in precise and delicate techniques, and at the same time for the development of difficult concepts. »Her natural qualities of dexterity, easiness of movement, and clarity of thought contributed to her success as a teacher. Her own shinin example was frequently the light which illuminated difficulties for the students. Her research was along cytological lines, especially associated with the lateral line organs of Amia calva and the cytology of the germ cells of the hydroids. She was elected to many scientific societies, and was a life member of the corporation of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, where in her younger days she CORA JIPSON BECKWITH (Continued) spent many summers. While in he later years research and visits to Woods Hole were not feasible, she always retained her interest. She encouraged and aided members of her department to share these interests. After her retirement from teaching in l9h0 she con- tinued to live in Williams Hall, and during this period was deeply concerned with the welfare and interests of her friends and associates. Later, in 1950, she moved to Washington to be with her two sisters who had retired also. Those who were able to visit her there sensed her solicitude for her sisters, and realized that this was another manifestation of a principle which had guided her throughout her life. The people with whom she came in contact, the college and the department of zoology particularly, owe her a deep debt of gratitude. Edith Fahnestock Mary Landon Sague Rudolf T. Kempton XIV - 31
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Title: Beckwith, Martha Warren, 1871-1959 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Peirce, John, Smith, Winifred, Brooks, Richard
Description
Date: [After 1959]
Text: 78 MARTHA WARREN BECKWITH 1871 - 1959 Martha Warren Beckwith, Research Professor Emeritus of Folklore at Vassar College since 1938, died at her home in Berkeley, California, on January 28, 1959. Born in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1871, Miss Beckwith spent her childhood in Hawaii ("the blessed islands," as Padraic Colum called them in his book ded- icated to her) and early became interested in the folklore and folk tales of Polynesia, a field which she made her...
Show more78 MARTHA WARREN BECKWITH 1871 - 1959 Martha Warren Beckwith, Research Professor Emeritus of Folklore at Vassar College since 1938, died at her home in Berkeley, California, on January 28, 1959. Born in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1871, Miss Beckwith spent her childhood in Hawaii ("the blessed islands," as Padraic Colum called them in his book ded- icated to her) and early became interested in the folklore and folk tales of Polynesia, a field which she made her own after graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1893 and taking a doctorate at Columbia University in 1912. After teaching at Mount Holyoke, Elmira, and Smith, Martha Beckwith was Instructor of English at Vassar from 1909 to 1913. She joined the faculty again in 1920 as Research Professor on the Folk~lore Foundation and as Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, the latter title be- ing dropped in 1929. Her chair as Research Professor of Folk-lore was probably unique in the history of American college education - and perhaps is even to this day. It was made possible by the generosity of a Mr. and Mrs. Alexander of Hawaii, was arranged by them anonymously through a lawyer so that even President MacCracken did not know the identity of the donors until fter Miss Beckwith's retirement, and was given solely for Miss Beckwith. Even in this day of giving to colleges and universities by foundations we might remark this practice for serious consideration. After her return to Vassar Martha Beckwith gradually built up courses in folklore, greatly encouraged by President MacCracken, who also raised funds for field work by Vassar students to collect folklore in Dutchess County. The Vassar College Folk-lore Foundation published fourteen numbers be- tween 1922 and 193M» and of these the first ten have the subtitle, "Vassar College field work in folk-lore." Martha Beckwith wrote nine of these monographs, four of which were reprinted by the American Folk-lore Society; her students wrote the others, sometimes in collaboration with her. These studies and her other monographs ranged over a wide field, for in her several leaves of absence Martha Beckwith collected tales, riddles, and songs from Hawaii, Jamaica, Cuba, the Mandan and Hidatsa Sioux, and the Kwakiutl Indians. She published a translation of the Hawaiian romance of Laieikawai in 1918, an edition and translation of Kepe1ino's 79 MARTHA WARREN BECKWITH (Continued) Traditions of ﬁawaii in 1932, and six books of scholar- ship on folﬁlore Between l92h and 1951. Three of these dealt with Jamaican folklore and tales, one with Mandan and Hidatsa myths and ceremonies, and two with Hawaiian mythology. The crown of these and of her scholarship is The Kumuli 05 A Hagaiian Creation Chant, which she trans- lated, ediied, and wroF3_a pene€ratTEg_Eomment on, and which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1951. Reviewing this book in the Journal of American Folk-lore, LXIV (1951), h29-h32, Katharihe Luomala of-the University of Hawaii described Miss Beckwith as "the author of several major works on Hawaiian mythology and its relationship to that of the rest of Polynesia" and said of the book, 'the publication of her translation is a milestone in Polynesian research, and for folklorists and anthropologists who wish to learn of Polynesian chants and their function in cul- ture, this book on the most famous chant of all, is a fas- cinating introduction to the subject." She was an inspiring teacher of the comparatively few students she recognized as promising, but she was no more interested in the average student than she was interested in the politi- cal and social problems of modern life. She had many warm friends, however, who appreciated her single-minded devotion to scholarship and her courage in the many difficulties of research in her chosen field. She was a charming and beauti- ful woman, the best type of Victorian lady and scholar. John Peirce Winifred Smith Richard Brooks, Chairman XV - 86
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Title: Belding, Alice Hamilton, 1886-1960 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Ellis, Ruth, Richey, Elizabeth, Sague, Mary, Drouilhet, Elizabeth
Description
Date: [After 1960]
Text: ‘>5’ ” ALICE HLYILTGH BELDIKG _( 1ese;1eeo Alice Seldisg's some still vividly recalls to those wto knew Per an imaginative person full of enorsy, truly generous, and with s contagious enthusiasm for all sports. i ._ -JO Born in Poughkeepsie in l8$6, Fiss Beldinp received her A.8. degree from Vosssr is 1907 and her training in Ptysicsl Educa- tion ct the Ssrsent sctool the following year. In 1908, she west to Rssdclpk-Tscon College wtere she served es Frofessor of Ftysicel Education,...
Show more‘>5’ ” ALICE HLYILTGH BELDIKG _( 1ese;1eeo Alice Seldisg's some still vividly recalls to those wto knew Per an imaginative person full of enorsy, truly generous, and with s contagious enthusiasm for all sports. i ._ -JO Born in Poughkeepsie in l8$6, Fiss Beldinp received her A.8. degree from Vosssr is 1907 and her training in Ptysicsl Educa- tion ct the Ssrsent sctool the following year. In 1908, she west to Rssdclpk-Tscon College wtere she served es Frofessor of Ftysicel Education, Chairman of the Deosrtment, and else as Counsellor of Tones. In 1926, ste returned to Vesssr es Pro- , fessor and Chairmen of the Department of Physical Education. In i937, she retired end spent her recent years at Yellfleet on Capo Cod. tiss Eelding was lsryely responsible for the desiqn of Kenyon Fell. ﬂaring e semester's losve, she visited new cysessiums . throughout the country; then worked with the Trustees and architect to plan Kenyon to meet the needs not only of the Eepertmcnt but also of recreational sports for students and their guests, a new ides st that time. If not the first, Kenyon was certainly one of the earliest of women's gymsssiums to provide dressire rooms for men, sod shoes and equipment for their use. This was enough of an issovstion for the §etIYerk Herold Tribune to quote her: "In mixed recreation the college egsin approximates the condition of society - - ~ men like women who are in sympathy with their sports interests." Fenyon pro- vided not only facilities for men, but also en opportunity for ﬁiss Balding to extend the departmental program to include more of the individual sports which students could continue to enjoy after college ~ bowling, squssb, badminton. Ste started "Faculty Eights" in Kenyon, end for many years had the faculty competing in badminton for a Trophy she presented. As Secretory, Vice President, and President of the Eastern ﬁssocistion of Physical Education for Colleqo tomes, she was sole to extend her influence beyond Vassar, and sfter her retirement elected to honorary mem- bership in the Association. A Eiss~3elding's extracurricular activities, too, were not confined to the campus. In Poughkoopsio in 1933, she organized a series of lectures for the unemployed in cooperation with the Yayor's i Committee; she was closely associated with Lincoln Center, giv- ing full—timo to this work during 1937-33; in tellfleet, where she directed a summer camp from 1913-1925, she later organized a summer recreation program and was instrumental in establishing‘ "tellflcet Associates" to develop better relations between the tOWﬁSpGOpl6 and summer residents. 7 ;LIc"s: HAYZ? ~ BELDIZTG (Continued) _ ( “‘ ‘"3->~ -=1. .-.1‘ ¢-w-¢~. Z ; l I I v 1 1 l ,- '~ I . 1 _.--¢-- .1-. Q \ S \ 95 r -l £1 9 A popular teacher arousing interest in her field even among the most nonatbletic; an atklote whose baseball throw record remained unbroken for many years; a friend and cqlleague skar- in: For boundless energy and lively imayination; a citizﬁn continuously verking ta improve conditions and relations among people, Alice Gelding ttrougkout Yer life gave qoncrously of herself to family, to student, to friend, to collége, and to community, ‘ - Ruth Ellis l Elizabeth Rickey Kary Segue Elizaboth Drouilhet 1 ‘ XV - 2&1;-2145
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Title: Birdsall, Jean, 1895-1935 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1935]
Text: JEAN BIRDSALL 1895 - 1935 In the untimely death of Jean Birdsall the college suffers the loss of one of its most beloved and talented teachers. Coming into the faculty in 1927, by reason of manifest ability she was rapidly ad- vanced to the rank of Assistant Professor and later to that of Associate Professor. Whether in the field of ancient or of medieval history, her interest in the reconstruction and interpretation of social life, as her pupils testify, was spontaneously imparted to other»...
Show moreJEAN BIRDSALL 1895 - 1935 In the untimely death of Jean Birdsall the college suffers the loss of one of its most beloved and talented teachers. Coming into the faculty in 1927, by reason of manifest ability she was rapidly ad- vanced to the rank of Assistant Professor and later to that of Associate Professor. Whether in the field of ancient or of medieval history, her interest in the reconstruction and interpretation of social life, as her pupils testify, was spontaneously imparted to other» As a productive scholar her contributions were finding a place in noted publications; a study of the English Manors at Caen being contained in the Anniver- sary Essays in honor of Charles Haskins, while a translation of the fourteenth century chronicle which was left unfinished is still expected to be printed in the Columbia Records of Civilization. To the in- tellectual activities of our academic societies she gave unstinted support, having been a devoted member of the Classical Club, at one time President of Phi Beta Kappa, and continuously Vice-President of the Faculty Club. At the same time membership in such onerous cummittees as that on Admissions, on Students‘ Records, and the Board of Elections gave evidence of uncomon efficiency in the administration of affairs touching the student body. For the same reason, especially in maintaining a good rapport between the older and the younger members of the comunity, her recent services as Head Resident of Josselyn Hall are acknowledged to have been most valuable. Without seeking popularity, or apparently being con- scious of any such attribute, Miss Birdsall neverthe- less comanded it in an unusual degree. So expressive a nature was likely to enliven any company wherein she might be found. In ordinary cdnversation her dis- position was o timistic, dwelling with discrimination upon that whicg was enjoyable and commendable, delight ing in the frank interchange of opinions, while the less amiable trends of discussion found her silent and indifferent. Moreover a ready wit without sharp- ness was an instrument which served to brighten and clarify whatever it touched. With no inclination to be exclusive she evinced a marked capacity for friend- ship, whereby she became a merry copanion in the JEAN BIRDSALL (Continued) recreations of the campus and countryside. All these traits and activities are remembered as the spontane- ous overflow of an abounding spirit within. But alas that rare mental endowments were cast in a frail physical frame, and that a life so full of promise has been thus cut off at the beginning of a brilliant careerl The college has truly been enriched by her presence, the memory of which will long remain. James F. Baldwin IX - 271
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Title: Bister, Ada Klett, 1897-1965 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Hofrichter, Ruth, Zorb, Elizabeth, Hillis, Mary, Corcoran, Mary B.
Description
Date: [After 1965]
Text: ADA KLETT BISTER 1897 - 1965 Ada Klett Bister, Professor Emeritus of German, died on November 21, 1965 after a long and lingering illness, less than five months after the sudden death of her beloved husband, Andreas. To the Vassar comunity the departure of the Bisters for their native Germany in l96O signified in many respects the end of an era. For twelve years their apartment in Kendrick was a place of warm and generous hospitality, beautiful music, discussions on literature and art with...
Show moreADA KLETT BISTER 1897 - 1965 Ada Klett Bister, Professor Emeritus of German, died on November 21, 1965 after a long and lingering illness, less than five months after the sudden death of her beloved husband, Andreas. To the Vassar comunity the departure of the Bisters for their native Germany in l96O signified in many respects the end of an era. For twelve years their apartment in Kendrick was a place of warm and generous hospitality, beautiful music, discussions on literature and art with books of every description, wild- life at the windowsill, and an ever sympathetic ear for students and colleagues alike. One sensed in their company the fullness and excitement of life and, what the German calls "Gemﬂtlichkeit" which is such a rare thing today. To both Ada and Andreas Bister we pay tribute, for indeed dur- ing the years of their marriage they were one in spirit and one in the hearts of their friends. Mrs. Bister came to the United States from Berlin in l923. She received her M.A. from the University of Nebraska in 1928 and her Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin in l936. In 1937 she came to Vassar on a one year appointment as an Exchange Assistant Professor of German from Scripps College. She then returned a year later to begin a long and fruitful career as a member of the Department and as Chairman for her last two years before failing health required her early retirement in 1960. These are but the bare facts of her academic training and professional status. Behind these facts sparkles Ada Bister's ever ready smile, her boundless enthusiasm for her work, her delightful, slightly roguish sense of humor, and her unparalleled valor and good spirits in the face of years of constant pain from which she could find no relief. She was able to forget and rise above her infirmities because of her varied interests and her deep sense that every moment is important and should be savored fully. Those of us who visited the Bisters in Germany found that she still had in her last months this undaunted spirit even though her health was completely deteriorating. Her letters too were filled with coments about books just read, the pleasures of visits from friends and relatives and the enjoyment of her lovely home and garden in Eutin, Holstein near the Danish border. To have known Ada Bister is to have 2&5 ADA KLETT BISTER (continued) known a vital and courageous woman. Teaching was Mrs. Bister's first love. Colleagues and stu- dents can attest to her tireless, joyous pursuit of this, her profession. She was never too busy to help a beginner whom most others would have sent to a tutor and never too preoccupied with her own projects that she would not share her knowledge and insight with an advanced student seeking inspiration or guidance. We will always remember Mrs. Bister for her delight in talking and those of us who knew her were well aware that behind what often seemed to be chit chat rolling from her nimble tongue was a genuine concern for ideas and causes. Her teaching was by no means limited to the classroom. In her office, in the German Club meetings and in her apartment she gave of herself and eagerly received stimulation from the young. For years she directed the German Christmas Play in the Chapel, having compiled it herself from several German medieval nativity plays. Students who took part in it under her direction gained a new sense of the real meaning of Christmas. Though her interest in German literature and culture was varied,she was first and foremost a passionate Goethe scholar. Out of her dissertation came her major publication, an anno- tated bibliography of Goethe's Faust, Part II, published in 1939 under the title DER STREIT UM FAUST II SEIT 1900 with the aid of Vassar's Salmon Fund. In a newspaper article of August, 1949 upon the occasion of Goethe's bicentennial, Mrs. Bister mentioned the influence the poet had had on Albert Schweitzer who had gone to Aspen, Colorado as one of the guest speakers for the event, and there she quoted Goethe, saying that Schweitzer might well have had these lines in mind whenever he explained what Goethe had meant to him. We give them here, believing that they not only express the philosophy of life of Goethe and Schweitzer, whom Mrs. Bister admired so much, God God God God God God ./ the the the in in in in in the but also her own: hidden law, that fools call chance, star, the flower, the moondrawn wave, snake, the bird, and the wild beast, that long ascension from the dark, body and the soul of man, uttering life, and God receiving death. Ruth Hofrichter Elizabeth Zorb Mary Hillis Mary B. Corcoran
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Title: Borden, Fanny, 1876-1954 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Barbour, Violet, Lockwood, Helen Drusilla, Gleason, Josphine M.
Description
Date: [After 1954]
Text: FANNY BORDEN 1376 - 195k Fanny Borden, a New Englander from Fall River, Massachusetts, joined the freshman class of Vassar College in September l89h. The college discovered that she was a young woman of good parts. Her teachers liked the pleasure she showed in enquiry and knowledge, the respect she early acquired for scholar- ship. Student chronicles name her among officers of college and class organizations, on important com- mittees, as chairman of a hall play, captain of '98's...
Show moreFANNY BORDEN 1376 - 195k Fanny Borden, a New Englander from Fall River, Massachusetts, joined the freshman class of Vassar College in September l89h. The college discovered that she was a young woman of good parts. Her teachers liked the pleasure she showed in enquiry and knowledge, the respect she early acquired for scholar- ship. Student chronicles name her among officers of college and class organizations, on important com- mittees, as chairman of a hall play, captain of '98's basketball team, holder of records for the 120 yard dash and the 220 yard run. We who knew her later can also tell about a many-sided person. We saw her elegant skating, good horsemanship and tennis game, careful riding of the only Columbia chainless bicycle on the campus. Some of us recall a Founder's Birthday that under her direction became a lovely English May Day the whole day through, the campus over. we remember her as a poet whose pen could commemorate in ballad or free verse the quandaries that beset a college Faculty from time to time. We knew her concern with affairs of the world, and could count on her getting to the heart of a question in a few, quiet, undisputatious words. (When she had nothing to say on a topic, it was her habit to say nothing, a rare and disconcerting practice.) The center of her life was the Vassar College Library for the thirty-seven years of her librarianship and through her retirement. She came to the library in 1908 after professional training at the New York State Library School and positions at Bryn Mawr and at Smith. Three years before, the library had moved from its small quarters in the Thompson Annex of Main Buildig to the Thompson Memorial Library. The Librarian, Adelaide Underhill, had already made the decision, so important in Vassar's history, to continue the "open shelves". F.B. joined her in the task of building the kind of college library that many of their con- temporaries elsewhere believed could not exist. Pro- fessor Amy Reed wrote her observations of their work: "they had very large, very enlightened ideas about the future function of a college library, and very little money to work with. With almost incredible patience, persistence, FANNY BORDEN (Continued) and determination they made the right decisions; with tireless industry they took the right measures to place the library in its proper relation to the stu- dents and the teaching faculty". Our library reflects the labor and generosity of many people. One of the persons it most reflects is F.B.: her knowledge of many fields of learning, the fine quality of her discrimination; her gift for perfection, her energy, her understanding of scholars, teachers, students. It hardly needs saying that Vassar's method of teaching from the sources depends on the kind of library she had so large a share in making. She found, often made, opportunities to build up rich collections of materials, valuable both to the mature scholar and to the undergraduate. A true scholar herself, she, with her colleagues, ensured to the students the free- dom of a library where they could take their own first steps in independent research. Her wise spending of funds, her success in securing further endowment, and in suggesting to alumnae and friends gifts that were no less appropriate to their interests than to the needs of the library, attest the high quality of her librarianship. Among gifts by Alumnae who shared her love of the library are the 1898 Fund, which her classmates wished to name in her honor; the manuscripts and rare and beautiful books that Rebecca Laurence Lowrie of 1913 has been giving in honor of her since her retirement. But the interest in the college that she communicated to others encompassed more than the Library. To some of the alumnae she has been Vassar's best interpreter. Her classmates and friends are now supporting generously a project that they know she had much at heart; a chair in American History to commemorate the teaching of Lucy Maynard Salmon. Miss Borden compiled two bibliographies that found wide use: one on Trusts and Monopolies in America, the other on College and University Government and Administration. Since her retirement in 19h5 she has arranged and in- dexed the Library's collection of the papers of Benson J. Lossing, local historian, biographer of Matthew Vas- sar, trustee of the college. She has collected source materials for a history of the Library, and made indexes FANNY BORDEN (Continued) for early publications of the college. These are now d f rea y or the Centennial historian. XIII - L940-1.1141 Violet Barbeur, Professor Emeritus Helen Drusilla Lockwood Dorothy Plum Josephine M. Gleason
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Title: Bracq, Jean Charlemagne, 1853-1934 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1934]
Text: JEAN CHARLEMAGNE BRACQ In view of the resignation and approaching departure of Dr. Jean Charlemagne Bracq, John Guy Vassar Professor of Modern Languages, we, his fellow members of the Faculty, wish to put on record our appreciation of:- his long and faithful service as head of the French Department; his loyal interest and cooperation in all that pertains to the general development and welfare of the college; and his untiring labors in the world beyond the college bounds to unite more closely...
Show moreJEAN CHARLEMAGNE BRACQ In view of the resignation and approaching departure of Dr. Jean Charlemagne Bracq, John Guy Vassar Professor of Modern Languages, we, his fellow members of the Faculty, wish to put on record our appreciation of:- his long and faithful service as head of the French Department; his loyal interest and cooperation in all that pertains to the general development and welfare of the college; and his untiring labors in the world beyond the college bounds to unite more closely the land of his adoption and the land of his birth. And we would express our hope and desire that in the years of active life still before him, which we trust are many, he may continue to do most effective work, with tongue and pen, in the cause of humanity and of religion. VI - 262-263, 1913
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Title: Bracq, Jean Charlemagne, 1853-1934 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Reed, Amy L., White, Henry S., White, Florence Donnell
Description
Date: [After 1934]
Text: JEAN CHARLEMAGNE BRACQ 1853 - 1931; Jean Charlemagne Bracq, who died December 18, l93h at his home in Keene, New Hampshire, at the age of eighty-one, had served Vassar College with distinc- tion fro 1891 to 1918, at first as John Guy Vassar Professor of Modern Languages, afterwards as head of the Department of Romance Languages and Professor of French. Although he came to America at the age of eighteen, he remained always a loyal son of France in his sympathies and in all his varied...
Show moreJEAN CHARLEMAGNE BRACQ 1853 - 1931; Jean Charlemagne Bracq, who died December 18, l93h at his home in Keene, New Hampshire, at the age of eighty-one, had served Vassar College with distinc- tion fro 1891 to 1918, at first as John Guy Vassar Professor of Modern Languages, afterwards as head of the Department of Romance Languages and Professor of French. Although he came to America at the age of eighteen, he remained always a loyal son of France in his sympathies and in all his varied activities. He took an especially warm interest in the little town of Bertry near Cambrai which was his birthplace, keep- ing in touch with its schools and its library, which he had helped to found. One of its streets now bears his name in recognition. A graduate of the McGill University and of the Newton Theological Seminary, he carried on further theological study in Edinburgh and in Paris at the Sorbonne. He was secretary of the McAll Association in Philadelphia for six years before coing to Vassar. Later in life he received honorary degrees fron.Colgate and McGill. In his twenty-seven years at Vassar he built up from small beginnings a strong department of Romance Lan- guages, in which the study of French was transformed from the mere learning of a language to the study of a civilization by modern methods. He was eager to interpret the spirit of France to young Americans and readily placed the resources of his learning at the disposal of American research students in France. As an anti-militarist he worked untiringly to further international understanding and was three times a delegate to international peace conferences. In his book, France Under the Re ublic (1910), he showed himself an enthusiastic defender of the Third Republic and of governmental policy in French colonial expansion. His paper on French Ri hts in Newfoundland furnished the historic basis for tée settiement of oer tain long disputed questions concerning the Newfound- land fisheries, and he took a prominent part in defend ing the French government at the time of the separation of church and state. He lectured and wrote on a variety of subjects and published articles and pamphlets too numerous to be listed in this place. JEAN CHARLEMAGNE BRACQ, (Continued) Many honors came to him: he lectured before the Lowell Institute; was decorated Officer of Public In- struction and Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; he was elected Laureate of the French Academy and Laure- ate of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, Paris. When he retired in 1918, he was subsidized by the Canadian Government to travel and study French- Canadian history and social life, the fruit of which research was another important work, The Evolution of French Canada (l92h), which was later translated Into French and for which he was awarded a gold medal by the Franco-American Society. A tireless worker, he left unfinished at the time of his death a very con- siderable manuscript. In his life as a member of the Vassar community, his friends remeber best the ordered dignity of his home, where he and Mrs. Bracq dispensed a gracious hospital- ity. A neighbor recalls that it was because of his activity on behalf of the motormen and conductors of the Poughkeepsie Street Railway that the Company en- closed the car platforms. The same neighbor relates how some twenty years ago, he sent to Keene for a number of young pine trees, which he presented to the householders along Proessors' Row. He was meticulous in performing his social duties as a citizen. The Faculty of Vassar College wish to record their sense that, in the death of Professor Emeritus Jean Charlemagne Bracq they have lost a member who reflecte honor upon the group by his persistent industry in re- search of importance, his loyal service to three countries, and his very real achievement as teacher and author. And they desire that this minute be sent to Mrs. Bracq with the most sincere expression of sympathy in her bereavement. Amy L. Reed Henry S. White Florence Donnell White IX - 237
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Title: Brown, Louise Fargo, 1878-1955 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Gleason, Josephine, Brown, Emily, Campbell, Mildred
Description
Date: [After 1955]
Text: LOUISE FARGO BROWN 1878 - 1955 Louise Fargo Brown was born in Buffalo, New York of pioneer stock. Early Browns had helped to extend the frontiers along the Mohawk and the Ohio, and Fargos were among the 'h9ers pushing westward to California. These deeds were long since done. But the s irit in which they were done and the qualities leading to their accomplishment, - a lively curiosity, love of the new venture, generosity, a zest for life itself, great good humor and warmth of spirit -...
Show moreLOUISE FARGO BROWN 1878 - 1955 Louise Fargo Brown was born in Buffalo, New York of pioneer stock. Early Browns had helped to extend the frontiers along the Mohawk and the Ohio, and Fargos were among the 'h9ers pushing westward to California. These deeds were long since done. But the s irit in which they were done and the qualities leading to their accomplishment, - a lively curiosity, love of the new venture, generosity, a zest for life itself, great good humor and warmth of spirit - were the rich legacy bequeathed to Louise Fargo Brown. Throughout her life she remained something of the pioneer, with a keen awareness that every generation has its own frontiers to extend, whether of the mind or space. She received her early schooling in the Buffalo schools and her B.A. degree from Cornell University in 1903. In 1905, she entered the graduate school at Cornell and long before Fulbrights and Fords and Guggenheims had made the privilege of foreign study almost a comonplace, Cornell twice awarded Miss Brown its Andrew White Travelling Fellowship. This gave her two wonderful years in Europe, the first at London and Oxford, the second in Basle, Zurich and Geneva. An article based on the research of these years appeared in the En lish Historiggl Review while she was yet a graduate student?‘ §he receTtéd_the Ph.D. from Cornell in 1909, and except for a spring semester at Vassar in 1915, was instructor in history at Wellesley from 1909 to 1915. During this period she completed her first t f th B ti t d book, The Political Activi ies o e a s span Fifth Hhnareh Men in En'land,§prin th5_§nt3rre num, a 500E which received the Herbert'§axter_Adams Prize from the American Historical Association for the best monograph of the year in Modern European History. In 1915 Miss Brown was offered the post of Dean of Women and professor of History at the University of Nevada. She was at this post when America entered World War I in the spring of 1917. Browns, Towers, and Fargos had served their country in earlier wars. Louise Fargo Brown volunteered; and from 1917 to 1919 was detailed to do historical work in Washington. Her pamphlet on The Freedom of the Seas was sent in MS for use at the Paris Peace'Uonference. It delighted her sense of humor that in return for her services as LOUISE mace BROWN (Continued) historian the United States government had conferred upon her the rank of sergeant in the Marines. To the delight of her colleagues on the Vassar bridle path, the sergeant's uniform became the bistorian's riding 0 1 In Miss Brown, during the semester at Vassar in 1915, Lucy Maynard Salmon had seen seething of her own pioneering spirit in history teaching. Hence she was recalled to Vassar in 1919 to begin the years of ser- vice which lasted until her retirement in l9hh. Here she became a lively and spirited member of the college community. She was always a champion of the underdog, and a rugged fighter for the causes in which she be- lieved. At one point she even entered Dutchess County politics and ran for County Court clerk. Some of her colleagues still remember her star role in a Founder's Day program on "Matthew Vassar's Times". During these years she published two additional books, The First Earl of Shaftsbu in 1933, under the auspices 0? tEe Kmerican Historical Association, and A ostle of Democracy, the life of Lucy Maynard Sa§Eon, in l9U3. er wor in England was recognized in her election as Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 1930 she was co-founder of the Berkshire Historical Con- ference, still a thriving organization of women historians. The course at Vassar for which alumnae best remember Miss Brown bore the suggestive title, "The History of Tolerance". To some students it was the most pro- vocative course they had at Vassar. Her interests and activities did not end with retirement. In l9h8, in collaboration with George B. Carson she published a European history text, Men and Centuries of European Civilization, a new approac n ex. oo s. Miss Brown's recent years were spent in Norfolk, Virginia. That one was past seventy need not keep one from exploring and enjoying this new region. She at once identified herself with the local historians and became custodian of their local archives. But as much as she loved the past, she could drop old MSS at a moment's notice to engage in a social or political struggle. Hence, when the scourge of McCarthyism LOUISE FARGO aaowu (Continued) ravaged the land, the old warhorse entered the lists again. Vassar Alumnae who saw the dejected figure of Titus Oates in stocks on the cover of The Nation for April, 195M could not have been too greatly sur- prised to discover that the author of the article, ‘Portrait of an Informer; a Seventeenth Century Moral" was their old teacher of the "History of Tolerance". Those of us who came as young instructors during her term at Vassar remember gratefully her kindness and friendliness during our years of initiation. All of her colleagues respected her integrity and her courage and found Vassar a less colorful community when she was no longer here. Respectfully submitted, Josephine Gleason Emily Brow: Mildred Campbell XIV - 70-71
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Title: Buck, Gertrude, 1871-1922 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1922]
Text: GERTRUDE BUCK 1871 - 1922 The recent death of Gertrude Buck is felt by the Faculty as a vital loss. A distinguishing trait in her character, influencing and co-ordinating all her activities, was an unusual union of the instinct for intellectual experimentation with spiritual steadfastness and courageousness - a union which rendered whatever her critical spirit deemed worthy of keeping not an ephemeral but a permanent posses- sion. All fields of modern thought and life - scien- tific,...
Show moreGERTRUDE BUCK 1871 - 1922 The recent death of Gertrude Buck is felt by the Faculty as a vital loss. A distinguishing trait in her character, influencing and co-ordinating all her activities, was an unusual union of the instinct for intellectual experimentation with spiritual steadfastness and courageousness - a union which rendered whatever her critical spirit deemed worthy of keeping not an ephemeral but a permanent posses- sion. All fields of modern thought and life - scien- tific, philosophical, religious, social, aesthetic - interested her and from them she gleaned harvests of suggestion which, in due time, perpetuated them- selves in modification of her teaching material and method. This sensitiveness to stimulus resulted, how- ever, in far more than eager assimilation of ideas. It was joined with a constructive power of which conspicuous results may be seen in the growth under her initiative and fosterage of a flourishing Com- munity theatre in Poughkeepsie, in the present trend of the writing courses in Vassar College, and in the series of books in which she has embodied her educa- tional method and theory. In the more purely aesthetic fields of literature Miss Buck did much experimentation, publishing from time to time a poem or a play, but, because of her crowded life, leaving unfinished others whose merit is known only to those to whom she turned, from time to time, for suggestion and criticism. In connection with The Comunit Theatre it may be said that its whole atmosphere %ears Witness to a distinguishing social attribute of its founder - a certain quiet, disinterested, impersonal friendliness of spirit springing from the same root of genuine humanity out of which grew her more intimate persaaal relation- ships - lasting memories to her closer friends. It is moved that this recognition of her services to the community and to the College be engrossed in the Minutes of the Faculty and that copies thereof be presented by the Secretary to Miss Buck's family and to Miss Wylie. ~ Christabel F. Fiske VII - 179-180
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Title: Carter, Edna, 1872-1963 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Lockwood, Helen, Swain, Barbara, Healea, Monica
Description
Date: [After 1963]
Text: /2» EDNA CARTER 1872 - 1963 Edna Carter came to Vassar College as a freshman in 1890. She retired as professor of physics in 1941. For twenty years after- ward she kept in touch with members of the faculty and continued to know many of the graduating seniors in physics. There were thus seventy years in which she had close contact with the college and she found it good. Miss Carter's career in physics spanned the discovery of X-rays, of the electron, and of radioactivity; the introduction...
Show more/2» EDNA CARTER 1872 - 1963 Edna Carter came to Vassar College as a freshman in 1890. She retired as professor of physics in 1941. For twenty years after- ward she kept in touch with members of the faculty and continued to know many of the graduating seniors in physics. There were thus seventy years in which she had close contact with the college and she found it good. Miss Carter's career in physics spanned the discovery of X-rays, of the electron, and of radioactivity; the introduction of quantum theory and its application to atomic structure, of relativity and of quantum mechanics; the invention of radio and the subsequent development of radar and lasers; the growth of nuclear physics and the discovery of many new particles; the discovery of fission and fusion; Hubble's idea of the expanding universe. She had a gift for understanding the essense of these new discoveries and ideas, so that physics courses changed continuously through the decades to include what was new, so that students at all levels were aware of the almost explosive opening up of new knowledge and of Miss Carter's excitement about it. She also always found some way for every in- coming member of the department to teach what he thought important in the melee of new physics. Miss Carter's own research in physics began with a study of the energy of X-rays in Wﬂrzburg, Germany, for which she received her Ph.D in 1906. From her results the wave length of X-rays could be deduced, on the assumption that they had a wave nature. The definitive proof of this assumption came in 1912 with von Laue's work. In l9ll Miss Carter received the Sarah Berliner Research Fellowship of the American Association of University Women, then the largest fellowship offered to women. She returned to Wﬂrzburg to work on vacuum sparks and renewed her friendships with German physicists. In later years, when her family settled in California, she carried on her research at the physics laboratory of Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena. There she continued her work on the spectra of sparks, becoming in the process a spectroscopist and astronomer. Her work was published in various journals in Germany and in this country and she was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Edna Carter was born in High Cliff, Wisconsin, on January 29, 1872 of pioneering parents from New Hampshire. The youngest of nine children, her playground was the small village on Lake Winnebago, the countryside, the lake shore, and her father's boat, the Benjamin Franklin Carter, carrying freight and passengers to Oshkosh, Apple- ton and Fond du Lac. Her childhood delight in exploring any kind /3 EDNA CARTER (Continued) of situation remained throughout her life one of her dominant characteristics. As a student at Vassar her first interest was in biology, taught by Marcella O'Grady who introduced the subject here. In her junior year she took physics with Mr. Cooley and in her senior year a newly introduced second course in physics. These were the courses that indicated the direction her life would take. After graduation she returned to Wisconsin to attend a state normal school in Oshkosh, an outstanding school where young teachers fresh from John Dewey's classroom found themselves forced to sharpen their wits in discussion with some of the most renowned teachers in Wisconsin. The next year she became assistant principal in a nearby high school. In her own words, "There I taught a great variety of subjects and sometimes burned the midnight oil literally in a lamp which smoked badly if I forgot to adjust it. My most vivid remembrance of that year concerns an argument with a minister. His sermon in 'Education Week‘ was a shock to all my ideas about science imbibed from Professor O'Grady's teaching, so I wrote an article for the local paper. This drew a bitter personal attack and bad consequences ultimately for my antagonist. Fortunately for me Dr. Cooley at this point asked me to return to Vassar as assistant in physics." Following two years at Vassar she went to The University of Chicago where she studied with two great American physicists, Michelson and Millikan. She then returned to Oshkosh for five years where she taught in the normal school, an experience she always recalled as one of the most satisfying of her life, be- cause of the caliber and strength of purpose of teachers and students. In the meantime Marcella O'Grady had married a distinguished German biologist, Theodor Boveri, in Wﬁrzburg. They urged Miss Carter to join them in Germany to study for her Ph.D. in physics. This she did in 1904, going by way of England to a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science where she met Lord Kelvin, Lord Rayleigh, Sir Oliver Lodge, and other distinguished physicists. In Wﬁrzburg she worked in the laboratory with an international group including Russians, a Finn, and a Norwegian, as well as several Germans. Here Rbntgen had discovered X—rays and although he had been called to Munich she came to know him well. For her work she used the same /4 EDNA CARTER (Continued) induction coil with which he had discovered the X-rays. It was later sent to the Deutches Museum. The director of her thesis was Wien who, like Rbntgen, was a Nobel prize winner in physics. She later spoke of these days of the great Germany, of discussions in the laboratory, weekly colloquia followed by nachcolloquia and nachnach colloquia which extended far into the night, walking and skiing expeditions, a trip on a raft of logs on the river Main, visits to Professors‘ homes. The talk was always of physics. These were the days of "Akademische Freiheit," with its implication of privileges of academic detachment from political involvement, so much cherished by professors at that time for it left them free to devote them- selves to their work. They were later to regret their lack of knowledge of how they were governed. She also spoke of being the only woman in the laboratory and how naturally the men accepted her as one of the group. In her two years in Germany Miss Carter not only laid the foundation for her own work, but she lived in close contact with the best minds in physics. When she went to Germany in l9ll she became friends with the von Laue's. It was at this time that he found proof of the nature of X-rays and she received from him as a Christmas card a picture of the X-ray diffraction pattern which could be explained only by a wave theory. In later years she exchanged visits here and in German with Wien, the von Laue's, and others, until their deaths. In 1906 Miss Carter came to Vassar to stay permanently. Her work during sumers and leaves of absence in Pasadena from about 1914 yielded rewards for the college beyond the direct enrich- ment of her teaching. The men with whom she worked and talked, Hale, Hubble, Babcock, King, and Millikan who had left Chicago to go to The California Institute of Technology became friends of the college. Interesting speakers were glad to come here. Important equipment, otherwise difficult to get, became avail- able for the laboratory. One example of the latter is the Hale spectrohelioscope, originally mounted in a shaft built for it in the Sanders laboratory of physics. In a search for better seeing it was later moved to the observatory. It has recently been returned to its original place in the laboratory for use by students of physics and astronomy. As a young teacher at Vassar College in the years just after her return in 1906 Miss Carter opened a world of physics to the students, and ways of inquiry that were a revelation to them, and they quoted her to their friends so that her presence was felt among them far beyond her classroom and was cherished by them even after they had been graduated fifty years. As chair- /.5’ EDNA CARTER (Continued) man of the department in 1919-1939 she organized its courses, sought its staff, and designed the functional Henry Sanders Laboratory of Physics. Her quiet brilliance was recognized and trusted by her colleagues who persistently through years elected her to important comittees. When she first came to live in Lathrop, another specially able member of the faculty comented to one of her freshmen how "wonderful to have some one come to live here who is so thought- ful." In the years when Kendrick was a community, she was a center of its habitual discussion of principles and goals in education, the advancement of learning and the state of the world; of its generous, loyal give and take among friends; of its fearlessness and delight in sharing its daily tasks. She was relentless toward any compromising debasement of college standards, incorruptible in her integrity, but tireless and generous in helping people who cared about learning, or who had some need, whether undergraduates, gifted young scholars, col- leagues, refugees from European tyrranies, or naval officers turning to teaching. Her clear eyes would twinkle and a luminous or amused smile would come over her face as she would cut through pretense or circumlocution and come out with sharply perceived facts needed in the situation and likely to be glossed over by less direct and well—centered people. Patiently she would explain principles of physics to an inquiring colleague at the breakfast table as well as to her classes, and she would draw out the best about their interests from a teacher of English, or Latin, or Theatre, or Geography, assuming the arts and the sciences to be at home with each other. In her own leisure she painted with oils and joined other members of the faculty in Professor Chatterton's special class for them. She had a way of noticing and remembering their talents. After her retirement from Vassar she organized a department of physics at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut, where she served two years as professor of physics. Following this she did war work on rockets at The California Institute of Technology. She finally retired at 73. We have been glad that she lived among us for years after her retirement, her mind clear, her belief steady in the greatness of the college and in the need of it still in educating women at high levels. Helen Lockwood Barbara Swain Monica Healea, Chairman 1:-Lvl 101+-106
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Title: Child, Eleanor Dodge, 1902-1948 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1948]
Text: 1 i v i \ \ \ 1 I J } ? ! I x 1 i 1 ELEANOR DODGE CHILD (Mrs. Josiah H.) 1902 - 19hB By the death on April 5, l9h8 of Eleanor Dodge Child Vassar College has sustained an irreparable loss. A member of the Class of 1925, Eleanor Dodge played a prominent part in the affairs of the college, serving as Student President in her Senior year. She was a thoughtful and conscientious student and as an officer of the student body proved herself already a good judge of human nature and a young woman of...
Show more1 i v i \ \ \ 1 I J } ? ! I x 1 i 1 ELEANOR DODGE CHILD (Mrs. Josiah H.) 1902 - 19hB By the death on April 5, l9h8 of Eleanor Dodge Child Vassar College has sustained an irreparable loss. A member of the Class of 1925, Eleanor Dodge played a prominent part in the affairs of the college, serving as Student President in her Senior year. She was a thoughtful and conscientious student and as an officer of the student body proved herself already a good judge of human nature and a young woman of practical ability which she used to the advantage of her office. She met the problems which confronted her with equa- nimity and good sense. In 1931 she returned to the college to act as Warden and served in that capacity for nine years. To that office she contributed an understanding sympathy and a sensible practicality which made her work as Iarden appreciated by the whole college comunity, employees, students and members of the Faculty. In 1939, as chairman, she was largely responsible for the success of the 75th Anniversary celebrations. In l9hO she took a leave of absence, but resigned be- fore the end of the year and soon married Josiah H. Child of Boston. In l9h2 she was elected to the Board of Trustees of Vassar and for the past six yeanshas been one of its meat interested and dependable members. She has served on the Trustee Committees for Faculty and Studies, Und er graduate Life, Buildings and Grounds, Endowment, and the Executive Committee, and last year she was elected Secretary of the Board. Her thorough knowledge of the problems facing teachers, administrators, and students gave her advice and her judgment a rounded value un- equalled in the Board. She was always ready to listen to members of the Faculty, and, indeed, eager to get their point of view. we, in turn, liked to hear her judgments and had full confidence in her fairness and a deep appreciation of her understanding of college affairs and of her friendly attitude toward our under- takings. She will indeed be missed. Agnes Rindge Claflin XII - 257
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Title: Christie, John Aldrich, 1920-1987 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Bergon, Frank, Brisman, Susan, Gifford, William
Description
Date: April 6, 1988
Text: i k » z § VASSAR COLLEGE POUGHKEEPSIE -NEW YORK 12601 At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held April 6, 1988 the following Memorial for John Aldrich Christie, 1920-1987, was unanimously adopted: When John Aldrich Christie died last September, he was where lm wanted to be—-at his home in Vermont with his family. Born in Mmthampton, Massachusetts——the son of a Congregational minister—— MM reared in Connecticut and southern Vermont, John was an inveter- Me New Englander. Away at...
Show morei k » z § VASSAR COLLEGE POUGHKEEPSIE -NEW YORK 12601 At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held April 6, 1988 the following Memorial for John Aldrich Christie, 1920-1987, was unanimously adopted: When John Aldrich Christie died last September, he was where lm wanted to be—-at his home in Vermont with his family. Born in Mmthampton, Massachusetts——the son of a Congregational minister—— MM reared in Connecticut and southern Vermont, John was an inveter- Me New Englander. Away at college in Oberlin, Ohio, he read Ihnry James's Roderick Hudson as a cure for homesickness. He returned to New England to earn two M.A.s, the first at Wesleyan mm the second at Yale. In January 1946, as he was fond of say- hg, Helen Lockwood "plucked him out of Yale" to teach at Vassar. Heliked being close to Vermont. He jokingly told friends that lw had wanted this written into his Vassar contract: in the spring, ﬁning maple sugaring time, he would be permitted to leave for two weeks in Vermont. John received his doctorate in English and American literature hom Duke in 1955. Four years later as a Vassar associate pro- kssor'he was featured in a Pageant Magazine article entitled, ‘Q Professor to Remember: What Makes a Dynamic Teacher?" The wption under one photograph read: "Rapt meeting of minds: Freshman dass, teacher Christie, and poet Milton." With Yankee resignation ad good humor, John characterized the article as "a spoonful for Hm educational cause." "While not stirring me to my professional mes," John wrote, it "does Vassar and teaching no harm." V In his courses on American literature John relished teaching ﬂmt pantheon of New Englanders--Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, hmrson, and especially Henry David Thoreau who was the subject of hhn's book, Thoreau as World Traveler, published by Columbia Mdversity Press and the American Geographical Society in 1965. H was Thoreau's sense of the adventurous relationship between wserved and imaginative experience that stirred John's own sense ofhimself as a teacher and a person. The first principle of his waching was always that knowledge is not knowledge until it is uwerienced on the pulse. To him, as to Thoreau, the individual uwerience was primary. "No matter how mild the human adventure," hhn once wrote, "it can be made inestimable" by what one imagina- ﬁvely brings to it. _ 2 _ John's appetite for the human adventure was hard to forget, reflected again in his love of maple sugaring. When one visited him, in Vermont, during sugaring, the air was full of the smell of simmering maple sap. Maple syrup was used on and in everything-— toast, cereal, coffee, ice cream. The sheer energy and physical capacity of the man drew comment, especially if one should also happen to notice he had only one arm. A fall from the rafters of a neighbor's Vermont barn when John was a boy had left his arm badly broken. Infection and the lack of penicillin led to its amputation. John never considered himself handicapped, and neither would anyone who ever saw him splitting logs. Once, as he and a friend approached a toll booth while John was driving, the friend realized that before he could help in any way John had gotten out his wallet, paid the toll, shifted gears, and was leaving the toll booth while simultaneously putting away his wallet and steering with his knees. "Well," the friend thought, "if John is doing it, it must be all right." At Vassar John seemed to serve at one time or another on virtually every faculty committee on campus. He was president of the Faculty Club, when there was a faculty club, from 1947 to 1949. With his first wife Dorothy Sexton Christie, and their three sons, David, John, and Roderick, he brought visiting writers together with students and faculty in his home. In 1951 when he became a Cushing House Fellow, his family became the first faculty family to live in the dormitories. The classes of 1951 and 1963 chose him as their Class Advisor. For nine years he served as an officer in the American Association of University Professors, ranging from president of the Vassar chapter to member of the National Council. He was one of a three—man AAUP investigating team which in 1966 charged the trustees and administration of St. John's University h1Jamaica, Queens, for violation of academic freedom in their dis- missal of thirty—one professors. He enhanced Vassar's financial aid program by creating the position of student research assistant, initially training students himself and paying them out of his own pocket. When John joked about getting money for such projects, his friends could recognize his deft ability to poke sly verbal fun at himself or the institution he was so devoted to. When he was serving as a consultant to Nyack High School in the early sixties, he told Vassar he would need traveling expenses. "How much?" he was asked. '%etween twenty and thirty dollars," he said. Then, John would say, ‘T got a check for twenty—one dollars." John felt proudest of his contribution to multidisciplinary education at Vassar. From the time of his arrival at Vassar he was involved in what was then called the Related Studies Program h1American Culture, a program which collapsed in the mid—l950s for hck of funding. In 1972, John was able to regenerate the program by successfully directing a portion of Helen Lockwood's bequest wward its financial support. As the first director of the v > K 1 V I 1 > k \ 1 k _ 3 _ multidisciplinary program in American Culture, John gave shape to many of the distinctive goals and innovative principles of team- teaching that now mark multidisciplinary education at Vassar. He saw the College as being at the forefront of this experiment in education, and twelve years after forming the Program, he saw ‘genuine multidisciplinary teaching" now quite "come-of-age" at Vassar. In the summer of 1977 John married Elizabeth Garrettson Warner and set off the following year for Greece where he taught as a Fulbright professor. He had previously made two extended trips to India, serving as a consultant to Indian universities on establish- ing graduate programs in American studies, and helping the Univer- sity of Delhi establish India's first doctoral program in American literature. He also visited the University of Kyoto and lectured in northern India, Nepal, Italy, and England. His appetite for new experiences remained strong. When in India, he lived in old Delhi, not the protected atmosphere of New Delhi. In Greece he learned Greek. It was in Greece that a melanoma was discovered on John's shoulder. He was subsequently given a fifty—fifty chance of sur- viving the year. Back in Poughkeepsie, a year later in 1980, his son Matthew was born. For the next five years he energetically continued teaching until he retired, on schedule, in 1985. After ﬂdrty-nine years of service to Vassar, or thirty-nine and a half, as he reminded everyone at his retirement dinner——no detail is too nmll for a scholar, he once said——he moved to Vermont where he and Mizabeth shared their love for the details of life in the house Hwy planned and built together. Visitors heard talk of books, maple sugaring, and music. He and Elizabeth had sung together in Um Christ Episcopal Church choir, and John group that sight—read madrigals. In one of he is happily watching his son Matthew play ﬂit to a colleague was a marvelous plastic Ms last advice, where to get another. His had the the bag sung in a Vassar last photographs piano. His last to collect maple sap last letter, dictated hlthe hospital, was his response to another colleague's book, ﬂﬁth he had just read in galleys. His last wish was to be at home Nth his family. "Our experiences tell us all," John once wrote, _ 'We'are the makers, the poets of our own experiences." Respectfully submitted, Frank Bergon, Chair Susan Brisman William Gifford
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Title: Claflin, Agnes Rindge, 1900-1977 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Pommer, Linda Nochlin, Barber, Leila Cook, Groves, Earl, Kuretsky, Susan Donahue, Askew, Pamela
Description
Date: October 14, 1981

Title: Clark, Jonathan Charles, 1941-1983 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Bergon, Frank, Griffen, Clyde, Rappaport, Rhoda, Kohl, Benjamin G.
Description
Date: October 5, 1983
Text: \ i/ /M-/" *1 ' VVA ‘J ;;4».,_*o {.41 w \'i-I‘. . aLL\'§v.. _. é?,¢ \ saga: ’4 ‘ ab’. V. At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held October fifth, nineteen hundred and eighty-three, the following Memorial , was unanimously adopted: Jonathan Charles Clark was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, on June l8, l94l. He grew up in Vermont and in southern California where he came to love the Pacific coast as he had the New England mountains. As a boy in Vermont, he recalled...
Show more\ i/ /M-/" *1 ' VVA ‘J ;;4».,_*o {.41 w \'i-I‘. . aLL\'§v.. _. é?,¢ \ saga: ’4 ‘ ab’. V. At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held October fifth, nineteen hundred and eighty-three, the following Memorial , was unanimously adopted: Jonathan Charles Clark was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, on June l8, l94l. He grew up in Vermont and in southern California where he came to love the Pacific coast as he had the New England mountains. As a boy in Vermont, he recalled catching perch with his hands by the dam in the Pussumpsic River; and as a boy bodysurfing on the California beaches, he recalled yelling to a friend as they caught a wave together and rode to shore where Jon discovered that his fellow surfer was a California sea lion. In a small apartment on Pacific beach, Jon's mother slept on the living room couch while Jon shared a bed with his step-brother At night he washed out the good pair of pants he had to wear to school. He never had very much money. His father had left his mother just before Jon was born, and his step-father was killed in the Second world war when Jon was still a child. when he was sixteen, his mother was committed to a mental institution. After a brief stay with an uncle on a chicken farm in the San Joaquin Valley-an event that left him with a distaste for chicken the rest of his life-Jon returned to southern California where he was on his own. He had his own apartment and went to La Jolla“High School where he was a brilliant student, especially in mathematics and the sciences, and he was allowed to take a college chemistry course with Linus Pauling. He walked to San Diego to get a bicycle so he could pedal to Scripps Instiunﬁon oFOceanography where he worked after school. He played quarterback for La Jolla High, 3"? when Y0" 1°°¥ed at_J°" 5 "059 Y0" saw the result of his clash with the bruisers of San Diego High who went on to become the bruisers of USC. He received college scholarships to Harvard and Dartmouth» but because Dartmouth offered more money, he said, "I coulmii:affordJ3#% to go to Dartmouth," So he was back in New England where he lggek tte mountains and was on the college ski patrol. He liked to hltﬁl ihe 0 Boston, but in other ways he felt out of place at Dartmouth. _%hd1§w sophomore year he walked off the campus without_both@P1E9 K° Wlwitg tae leaving behind four F's on his transcriPt- He J°l"ed t e rmy . - f Languages, but instead, expectation of being sent to the Monterey School 9 _ G he traveled as a member of the Chemica orp . ]ebrated the fact was glad to be rid of the Army, and he claimed t0]2ZV§S€€ciated with the Ky thiowinghhié bgoéi’ fat‘%:eaewa$grﬁVﬁeyworkgdein advertising layout rmy “to t e as Var’ h American Institute of for Life magazine, then as a catalogue" f°' t e _ W-th his wife Aeronautics. then as a clerk for N0P9a" G“a'a"tee Trust‘ 1 -3- ‘ Judy he moved back to the west coast. While working as head Of the Sample department for the paper distributors of Blake, Moffat. ﬂQd TQWUQ. he began taking night courses at San Francisco State. Trans-@PPl"9 to the University of California at Berkeley, he discovered his love of colonial American history and knew that he wanted to continue his studles at Yale with the historians he admired, Edmund S. Morgan and J. H. Hexter. Jon was graduated with honors from Berkeley and awarded a Danforth Graduate Fellowship. At Yale he won the Tew Prize as the best flPSt—yeap graduate student in history and later the George Washington Egleston Prize for the best dissertation in American history. After a year as a Junior Fellow in History at the Newberry Library in Chicago, he began his teadﬁng career at McGill University in Montreal. The following year, l973, he arrived at Vassar with his wife Judy and his young daughter Hilary. From the moment of his appointment Jon was a popular and influential teacher of history at Vassar. Students flocked to courses in his special area of expertise-colonial America and the period of the ratification of P the Constitution of the United States. But he soon displayed a firm control and versatility in other areas, including American legal history, Atlantic civilization in the early modern period, and historiography. Characteristically, in being a good teacher, Jon broke all the usual mﬂes of good teaching; he laboriously wrote his lectures for each class downim the an's and the‘s and read these lectures aloud to the students. But what would almost always have been a deadening approach became, in Jon's hands, an exciting and lively presentation. Generations of students confirmed that he was not just one of the best lecturers, but one of the best teachers in the department. To say that Jon "took an active part in Department affairs" hardly begins to describe how indispensable he was to his colleagues in History. He was one of the prime movers in the reform of the history curriculum in l97l-78, he played a crucial role in the design and teaching of an ambitious course in comparative cultures, and he took the lead in preparhm 6 Y@aP'l0"9 course that satisfies the freshman reading and writing requht- ment. dudy and he were popular housefellows in Cushing for three years; his chairmanship of the Committee on the Quality of Residential Life brought Perspective and imagination to a vexed area of campus life. His participation in the American Culture Program as advisor, teacher, and planner was much sought and appreciated. These are only the obvious examples drawn from one area of Jon's concerns. In a larger sense, Jon was a living Resource Center for so manX People both on and off the campus. when students or faculty oF—an administrative officer called for some statement of policy from the Hlstvfy Pepartment, more often than not Jon would volunteer to produce the difficult first draft. Just as students gravitated towards Jon, S0, P00, did his fellow historians find him always willing to lay down a book °F 5 Pencil and talk about anything from baseball to Puritanisms. It W65 natural to ask don what the Puritans meant by “preparations” or how to EXP ain Puritanism to nonfBible-reading students. But it was equally Qﬁtugal to discuss with him what to do about an undeserved traffic ticket» a1§ aggnggggdgeg playoff series in l95l, or the comparative ngritg of offer d i . h on never gaye_information; he shared it. Nor did he 8 V ¢8- e was far too unpretentious to do that. One always came -3- away from a conversation with Jon feeling that one had learned a fa t - 0 0 C picked up an idea to think about, collected a Joke never to be f ’ His desk piled h h it °'9°tt6ﬂ- k , 1 19 W h papers, Jon was never too busy to undertake more wor .0P in a arger sens t k ' - membef ef the Department gays? malergmembeﬁ that Shgnhibthable p]ace. one anything, he would turn out the palm of his hand and rejectnthg gdgafthat he had d ne th' scholars? angnhumaggbgingliﬁ But he he]ped a1] °f "5 t° be better teachers, As his mentor Edmund ' u historian for the same reasgﬁrthgthhe §§ldS§°g:§l]5 ri?gn§!ar§ew§S E goﬁd people seriously and took their striving seriously." He was attroot ﬁtter the New England Puritans by their insistence that the world be made E tto than they ever expected it would be. The dominant concern in Jon‘? e er scholarship was understanding the varied ways by which people try toown reconcile their political ideals and ethical standards with the conflictin interests and demands of everyday life. He began by asking whether the g framers of the United States Constitution may have meant what they said ' despite all the debunking of their motives in twentieth century historiography Entitled in its most recent version, That More Perfect Union, Jon's l dissertation foreshadowed all of his subsequent scholarship in the skill with which he revised received opinion without maligning his predecessors, His first published essay demolished the myth of the consolidating ” federalists with wit, impeccable research, lucid presentation, and respect for the honest attempts at interpretation by others. Jon saw his coming to Dutchess County as an ideal opportunity for testing in a more exact way a central conclusion of his dissertation--that political allegiances during the ratification controversy could not be explained by class or interest group. In shifting his attention from the macrocosm of political debate at the federal and state levels to the microcosm of political behavior in its full context in one locality, Jon had to use much more varied kinds of evidence, acquire new skills to deal with them, and acquaint himself with the rapidly developing literature on social history. A major contribution by itself was Jon's reconstruction of the complicated networks of personal relationships in Poughkeepsie based on family, shared religion, economic standing, and occupation. But Jon's aim in the essays which resulted from his research always was to illuminate the choices people faced and what we can learn from their " responses. No wonder bis scholarship contributed so_constantly and powerfully to his teaching. The best illustration is the recently- published booklet, A Government to form, where Jon uses local events and figures to make intelligible a sophisticated analysis of political behavior during our Revolution. In the summer of l982 Jon embarked on a new, ambitious project, less than the explanation of the rise of the two-party Syitem lg ggggeed and America. He had just received a leave in the spréngd egg EDS ital for that research, when 0" 5:"ggYaagggue'ﬂi€O%11§eE2 wgs diagnoseg as . . . a _ complaining of high fever an d he uickly lust "' ' ' t h l ccus aureus an q iggggioisnegscauzexegk latgrf ﬁhothe mornin9,°f M°"deY» February 7' ‘Q83’ Jonathan Clark died at the age of forty-one. d t cher of several parts, but thP0U9h Jgn Clark was a scholar an ea _ . . . - ' - e of inte rity and fierce hls gnaraﬁter ran two dominant traits. a SENS 9 -4- independence on the one hand and a capacity for compassion and friendship on the other. That Jon was able to keep two traits unified in a single personality accounts for the apparent contradictions in his life and work: his tough-minded secular outlook balanced by an abiding interest in Puritan theology, his gruff, sardonic, sometimes earthy, wit, combined with caring for students and colleagues and deep love for wife and daughter, his contempt for unjust authority matched by unstinting service to the Department of History and to Vassar. Jonathan Clark will be remembered as an intensely private man who gave generously of himself to students and community, profession and College. Respectfully submitted, ' Frank Bergon Clyde Griffen K’&/M é)ébﬁ/L5/f/0J1/{’ Qppaport 7 WWW‘ Benjamin G. Kohl, Chairman 1 \
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Title: Conrow, Georgianna, 1878-1954 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Sague, Mary Landon, Thomson, Vera, de Schweinitz, Margaret
Description
Date: [After 1954]
Text: I i \ \ I 1 I 1 esoacranm comzow 1878 - 195k Associate Professor Emeritus Georgianna Conrow was born on January 26, 1878 in Moorestown, New Jersey and died in Poughkeepsie on November 19, l9Sh. She received the A.B. and M.A. degrees from Cornell University, and subsequently continued her studies at Columbia and Cornell, and in Switzerland and France. In l923 she was awarded the Dipl$me de l'Ecole des Professeurs de frangais a l'etranger from the University of Paris. She came to...
Show moreI i \ \ I 1 I 1 esoacranm comzow 1878 - 195k Associate Professor Emeritus Georgianna Conrow was born on January 26, 1878 in Moorestown, New Jersey and died in Poughkeepsie on November 19, l9Sh. She received the A.B. and M.A. degrees from Cornell University, and subsequently continued her studies at Columbia and Cornell, and in Switzerland and France. In l923 she was awarded the Dipl$me de l'Ecole des Professeurs de frangais a l'etranger from the University of Paris. She came to Vassar College in 1905, after teaching in high schools in New'York State and New Jersey, and retired in l9h6. During her many years of service in the French Department Miss Conrow taught students at all levels of their progress - from the beginners, to whom she gave particular care and encouragement, up to the class in Molibre, a subject which was especially congenial to her lively sense of humor. She made an invaluable contribution to the smooth functioning of the department. Faithful in all things,she never con- sidered any task too small to receive scrupulous attention. In discussion of policy matters one could depend on her for a word of good counsel, given at the right time, and founded on experience and wise judgment. In 1925 Miss Conrow was elected Secretary of the Faculty, and held this important post until her retire- ment in 19h6. For the period 1937 to l9h7, including one year after she had withdrawn from teaching, she was also Secretary of the Board of Trustees - the first member of the faculty to serve in this capacity. The value of her service to both faculty and trustees is well expressed in the resolution adopted by the trustees in May l9h7, which we quote in part: "...To convey the meaning of the Board's delibera- tions and actions in brief and effective minutes is a difficult art. Hiss Conrow is a master craftsman in this art. Her work...has not only constituted a fine permanent record for the col- lege but has been of constant help to all members of the Board... in clarifying their thought for further action. Her devotion and wisdom in this work and her loyalty and friendship in performing it... cannot be measured.” GEORGIAHNA CONROW (Continued) Miss Cnrow's interest in the total college community was friendly and warm. But it extended beyond the campus; to civic work also she gave generously of her time and her abilities. Among the important offices she held in Poughkeepsie were: Director of the Vassar Hospital Association and President of the Beard of Directors in 1939-l9h0; 2nd Vice-President of the Comunity Chest; 2nd Vice-President of the Poughkeepsie Garden Club; member of the Scholarship Fund Comittee of the Poughkeepsie Branch of the American Association of University Women, and general Chairman of the v regional A.A.U.W; convention held at Vassar College in l9h8. She was also actively interested in the Women's Republican Club of Dutchess County, and several County welfare associations. The great amount of work Miss Comrcw accomplished, and her many and varied interests reflect her character. With her untiring energy she carried through to completion a task however small or large. She will be greatly missed not only at Vassar College but in the wider city and county community. Her zest for living and interest in people of all ages and walks of life will be a lasting memory to all who knew her. Mary Landon Sague ' Vera Thomson Margaret de Schweinitz XIV — 15
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Title: Cooley, Le Roy Clark, 1833-1916 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Leach, Abby, Moore, J. Leverett, McCaleb, Ella
Description
Date: [After 1916]
Text: LE ROY CLARK COOLEY 1833 - 1916 In recording the death of Le Roy Clark Cooley, for thirty-three years Professor of Physics or Chemistry in Vassar College, the Faculty desires to express its appreciation of the man and of the teacher. His strict fidelity to duty, his high ideals of life and scholarship, his deep sense of moral responsibility, impressed all with his strength of character, while his justice, sympathy and kindly spirit won for him the confidence and affection of those with whom...
Show moreLE ROY CLARK COOLEY 1833 - 1916 In recording the death of Le Roy Clark Cooley, for thirty-three years Professor of Physics or Chemistry in Vassar College, the Faculty desires to express its appreciation of the man and of the teacher. His strict fidelity to duty, his high ideals of life and scholarship, his deep sense of moral responsibility, impressed all with his strength of character, while his justice, sympathy and kindly spirit won for him the confidence and affection of those with whom he lived and worked. During his long term of service in Vassar College, from l87h to l907, he rarely failed to meet a college engagement. His career as an edu- cator covered a unique period in the development of science. He was among the first to introduce labora- tory method in the college course. His researches in the field of radiant energy brought him to the thres- hold of discoveries that have made others famous. His clarity of expression, devotion to truth and im- partial attitude of mind, comanded the respect and admiration of many generations of students and made a potent influence in their lives. Though Emeritus Pro- fessor he continued to be identified in many ways with the Faculty so that by his death the college mourns the loss of a devoted officer and a loyal friend Abby Leach J. Leverett Moore Ella McCa1eb VI - 121
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Title: Cornwell, Antoinette, 1858-1904 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Wylie, Laura J., Cooley, Le Roy C., Kendrick, Georgia Avery
Description
Date: [After 1904]
Text: ANTOINETTE CORNWELL 1858 - 19Oh Whereas: By the death of Antoinette Cornwell, who for many years has ably assisted in its administrative work, Vassar CO1l6ge has lost an officer of singular disinterestedness and fidelity in the performance of duty, of con- stant and most kindly helpfulness in intercourse with her fellow-workers and with the students, and of a refinement, modesty and sincerity of character that made strongly and steadily for all that was best in the life of the college....
Show moreANTOINETTE CORNWELL 1858 - 19Oh Whereas: By the death of Antoinette Cornwell, who for many years has ably assisted in its administrative work, Vassar CO1l6ge has lost an officer of singular disinterestedness and fidelity in the performance of duty, of con- stant and most kindly helpfulness in intercourse with her fellow-workers and with the students, and of a refinement, modesty and sincerity of character that made strongly and steadily for all that was best in the life of the college. Therefore, be it resolved that the Faculty hereby express its deep sense of loss and its sympathy with the family in its bereavement, Also resolved, that a copy of these resolutions be sent to the family. Laura J. Wylie Le Roy C. Cooley Georgia Avery Kendri IV - 266 ck
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Title: Cummings, Louise Duffield, 1870-1947 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Northrop, Paul A., Wells, Mary Evelyn
Description
Date: [After 1947]
Text: i 4 I ! / I LOUISE DUFFIELD cmmlncs 1870 - 19h? Louise Duffield Cummings, who died in Wayne,Michigan, on the 9th of May,19h7, at the age of,77, brought distinction to Vassar College by her unusual accom- plishments in her field, during her 33 years of ser- vice here. In her undergraduate work at the Univer- sity of Toronto, and in graduate study and research at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Chicago, as well as at Bryn Mawr where she took her doctorate, she won recognition through...
Show morei 4 I ! / I LOUISE DUFFIELD cmmlncs 1870 - 19h? Louise Duffield Cummings, who died in Wayne,Michigan, on the 9th of May,19h7, at the age of,77, brought distinction to Vassar College by her unusual accom- plishments in her field, during her 33 years of ser- vice here. In her undergraduate work at the Univer- sity of Toronto, and in graduate study and research at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Chicago, as well as at Bryn Mawr where she took her doctorate, she won recognition through various honors and awards which culminated in the honorary Doctorate in science at Toronto. Her many researches which were chiefly in number systems, correspondencies, systems of configurations, nets, and group theory, appeared in mathematical Journals published in the United States and abroad. This research of many years which contributed to Vassar's name beyond our area, de- creased only when she retired, in 1935, because of poor health. The clarity of Miss Cummings’ teachin and the friend- ly atmosphere she created in her class room were well appreciated by her students who knew her to be a friend as well as teacher. She was enjoyed by the whole community as a happy, active member of the social group, contributing pleasure through her pun- gent wit and delightful humor. In all situations she was resourceful and helpful, creating in others a repose of soul by her own quiet and unworried re- sponse to life's disturbances. All who knew her counted her a most generous, loyal friend in whose welcome lay wannth, and in whose companionship were both stimulus and happy comfort. Hers was a large and rich soul. Paul A. Northrop Mary Evelyn Wells ' XII - 158
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Title: Dannreuther, Gustav, 1853-1923 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1923]
Text: GUSTAV DANNREUTHER 1853 - 1923 It becomes my sad duty to bring to the attention of the Faculty the death of Mr. Dannreuther on Wednes- day, December 19, from an attack of pneumonia. He had been in his usual health the previous Friday when he made his last teaching visit to the college and was ill in all but three days. Mr. Dannreuther was a musician of international re- putation. Born (July 21, 1853) in Cincinnati, Ohio, he finished his musical studies at the Hochschule fur Musik, Berlin,...
Show moreGUSTAV DANNREUTHER 1853 - 1923 It becomes my sad duty to bring to the attention of the Faculty the death of Mr. Dannreuther on Wednes- day, December 19, from an attack of pneumonia. He had been in his usual health the previous Friday when he made his last teaching visit to the college and was ill in all but three days. Mr. Dannreuther was a musician of international re- putation. Born (July 21, 1853) in Cincinnati, Ohio, he finished his musical studies at the Hochschule fur Musik, Berlin, Germany, under Joachim and de Ahne, the two most celebrated German violin virtuosos and teachers of that time. He began his professional life in London, where his elder brother, Edward, was professor at the Royal College of Music. In 1877 he returned to America, and from then he has taken a notable place in the cultivation of the taste for chamber music in this country, having been a member of the Mendelssohn Quintette Club in Boston, the lead- er of the Philharmonic Club of Buffalo, the founder and leader of the New York Beethoven String Quartette, to which after a few years, he gave his own name and which played a prominent part in the musical life of the city until it disbanded in 1917. He was also a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra during its first years, and after he came to New York was at the first desk of the Philharmonic Orchestra for many Y6 8.I'S 0 His first appearance at Vassar was on January 19, 1887, as leader of the Beethoven String Quartette, and near- ly every year after that he visited the college either as solo performer or as a member of his quartette or some group of Chamber musicians. The connection with the college thus happily begun culminated in 1906 when he entered the department of music as teacher of violin, a position he held until his death. As a teacher he was an enthusiastic disciple of the school of Joachim, faithful and painstaking, fond of his pupils and spending freely of time and energy in their behalf. He made valuable contributions to the literature of violin teaching. His students recognized the exceptional value of his instruction as well as the charm of his manner and the breadth of his culture. GUSTAV DANNREUTHER (Continued) His deep interest in Vassar was shown by the gift, in 1910, of his library of Chamber Music, with only the proviso that he should retain in his possession whatever music he desired to use until his death. It is therefore to be expected that to the several thousand pieces already on our shelves, there will now be made additions and that the Dannreuther Library of Chamber Music will serve to link perma- nently his name with the college to which he gave so much of his spirit. George C. Gow VII - 313-311+
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Title: Davis, Philip Haldane, 1901-1940 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1940]
Text: PHILIP HALDANE DAVIS 1901 - 19hO In the sudden death on February 20, l9h0, of Philip Haldane Davis, Professor of Greek and Chairman of the Department, Vassar College suffered an irrepar- able loss. By heritage, training and taste Mr. Davis was a scholar. His education at Princeton University and as Fellow of the School of Classical Studies in Athens gave him a rich equipment for his chosen research on Greek Building Inscriptions; and in this field already at thirty-eight he had won an...
Show morePHILIP HALDANE DAVIS 1901 - 19hO In the sudden death on February 20, l9h0, of Philip Haldane Davis, Professor of Greek and Chairman of the Department, Vassar College suffered an irrepar- able loss. By heritage, training and taste Mr. Davis was a scholar. His education at Princeton University and as Fellow of the School of Classical Studies in Athens gave him a rich equipment for his chosen research on Greek Building Inscriptions; and in this field already at thirty-eight he had won an international reputation. Indeed both his scholar- ship and his personal distinction were so early recognized that he had been called to five other institutions before in 1930 Vassar secured his presence here by giving him the rank of professor. In the congenial atmosphere of Vassar College, his scholarship flowered into that humanism which embraced not only linguistics but literature,ancient and modern, enacted drama, art and music. And as a humanist, he taught with distinction in four depart- ments, Greek, Latin, Comparative Literature and Art. His students mourn the loss of a great teacher, his colleagues the loss of a stimulating and sympathetic friend, the town of Peughkeepsie the loss of a young leader who sought to promote ideals of democracy, justice and peace with good-will. On the campus, the memory of his rich and ardent life has erected a monument more lasting than bronze, the devotion of his fellow-workers. As a last tribute, we offer to him an epitaph which Plato wrote: Thou wert the Morning Star among the living, Ere thy fair light had fled;- Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendor to the dead. (Shelley's translation). Elizabeth Hazelton Height , X-M
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Title: Dean, Willard L., 1841-1898 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Van Ingen, Henry, Kendrick, Georgia Avery, Ely, Achsah M.
Description
Date: [After 1898]
Text: ‘ I i I > WILLARD L. DEAN lﬁhl - 1898 The Cmittee appointed to draw up resolutions upon the death of Mr. Dean, presented the follow- ing: Whereas: by the death of Willard L. Dean Vassar College has lost an officer whose long and faithful service as its treasurer and kind and obliging spirit as a trustee and friend have endeared him to the officers, alumnae and students of Vassar Col- lege during the greater part of its existence; Therefore, be it resolved that this Faculty express its...
Show more‘ I i I > WILLARD L. DEAN lﬁhl - 1898 The Cmittee appointed to draw up resolutions upon the death of Mr. Dean, presented the follow- ing: Whereas: by the death of Willard L. Dean Vassar College has lost an officer whose long and faithful service as its treasurer and kind and obliging spirit as a trustee and friend have endeared him to the officers, alumnae and students of Vassar Col- lege during the greater part of its existence; Therefore, be it resolved that this Faculty express its sense of personal loss at his death, and extend to his family its sympathy in their affliction. Henry Van Ingen Georgia Avery Kendrick Achsah M. Ely III - 257
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Title: Dean, Willard L., 1841-1898 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1898]
Text: WILLARD L. new 18u1 - 1898 Whereas: the members of the Club regret deeply the sad loss the College has sustained in the death of Willard L. Dean, who for so many years did faithful work as treasurer and trustee, and who exerted so strong and kindly an influence among the students as to make each feel a sense of per- sonal loss in his death: - Therefore, be it resolved: that we formally ex- press our sympathy with the Faculty of the College in its loss. Resolved: that a copy of this resolution...
Show moreWILLARD L. new 18u1 - 1898 Whereas: the members of the Club regret deeply the sad loss the College has sustained in the death of Willard L. Dean, who for so many years did faithful work as treasurer and trustee, and who exerted so strong and kindly an influence among the students as to make each feel a sense of per- sonal loss in his death: - Therefore, be it resolved: that we formally ex- press our sympathy with the Faculty of the College in its loss. Resolved: that a copy of this resolution be sent to the Faculty. From the Vassar Club of Detroit III - 277
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Title: Denison, Eleanor, 1902-1969 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Allardyce, Margaret M., McCormick, Thomas J., Thomson, Vera B., Hunter, Mary-Alice
Description
Date: [After 1969]
Text: ELEANOR DENISON 1902 - 1969 Eleanor Denison, Director Emeritus of Scholarships and Financial Aid, died on March 1, 1969, after an illness of only a few days. Since retiring from Vassar in 1967, she had lived in Andover, Massachusetts, in order to be near a much-loved cousin and her family. Here Eleanor found herself a part-time job in a bookshop, which she greatly enjoyed. With her usual vigor and sense of com- munity obligation, she was soon active as a volunteer in the local Red Cross...
Show moreELEANOR DENISON 1902 - 1969 Eleanor Denison, Director Emeritus of Scholarships and Financial Aid, died on March 1, 1969, after an illness of only a few days. Since retiring from Vassar in 1967, she had lived in Andover, Massachusetts, in order to be near a much-loved cousin and her family. Here Eleanor found herself a part-time job in a bookshop, which she greatly enjoyed. With her usual vigor and sense of com- munity obligation, she was soon active as a volunteer in the local Red Cross Chapter, and in Christ Episcopal Church. Her letters to her friends at Vassar showed clearly that she had made a place for herself in the Andover community, and was leading a busy and happy life. Born and brought up in Brookline, Massachusetts, Eleanor graduated from Vassar in 1924. Thereafter, she was engaged always in school or college work - teaching history and Latin at Bradford Academy; Assistant to the Director of Admission, and then Acting Director of Admission at Vassar from 1927-1932; secretary to the headmistress of the Girls School at Milton Academy; and from 1937 to 1942, Head- mistress of the Vail-Deane School in Elizabeth, New Jersey For the next 19 years, she was Director of Admissions at Wells College, and in 1961, she returned to Vassar as Director of Scholarships and Financial Aid. All that she did was marked by unselfish devotion of time and energy and meticulous attention to detail, which she herself attributed to having been a history major under Miss Lucy Salmon. During her tenure as Director of Scholar- ships, she was obliged to handle an increasing number of financial aid cases, and Vassar's participation in several new federal aid to education programs added new complexi- ties to her work. She made a real contribution to the College by educating students, parents and alumnae in the philosophy and the procedures of a sound college financial aid program. A facet of her job that particularly interested her was the history of Vassar's many endowed scholarship funds. She was always delighted when she was able to find just the right student who fulfilled the conditions for receiving aid from a particular scholarship fund. ELEANOR DENISON (continued) Eleanor's enthusiasm, and her enjoyment of people brought her many friends of all ages. After her death her cousin wrote to a friend here: "People that I don't know stop me on the street to talk about her. I am overwhelmed by the number of people who belonged to her circle of friend- ship." A former member of the Wells College faculty recalls being welcomed to Aurora by Eleanor bringing a bouquet of flowers; and when his first child was born, it was Eleanor who had the college chimes played in honor of the event. These acts were typical of the warmth, generosity, and thoughtfulness so characteristic of her, and they are part of the legacy of happy memories she has left to those of us who were her friends and associates. Margaret M. Allardyce Thomas J. McCormick Vera B. Thomson, Director Emeritus of Admission Mary—Alice Hunter .. 2‘ ,»-’(,£<., 1 ii!‘ K") , g,-- p .< ) ‘ 1 = an v 1.. {. 5’ f § vi '7; » ‘. {
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Title: Dickinson, George Sherman, 1888-1964 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1964]
Text: GEORGE SHERMAN DICKINSQN 1888 - l964 On November 6 of this year, George Sherman Dickinson passed away in his home at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he had lived since his retirement from Vassar College in 1953. Mr. Dickinson spent the greater part of his teaching career at Vassar, where he was a member of the faculty for thirty-seven years. For twelve of these years he was Chairman of the Department of Music. Before this, he had taught for six years at the Oberlin Conservatory, where he...
Show moreGEORGE SHERMAN DICKINSQN 1888 - l964 On November 6 of this year, George Sherman Dickinson passed away in his home at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he had lived since his retirement from Vassar College in 1953. Mr. Dickinson spent the greater part of his teaching career at Vassar, where he was a member of the faculty for thirty-seven years. For twelve of these years he was Chairman of the Department of Music. Before this, he had taught for six years at the Oberlin Conservatory, where he had received the greater part of his professional training. Oberlin College conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Music on him in 1935. Mr. Dickinson was generally regarded as one of the most distinguished teachers on the Vassar faculty, and his activities during his long period of service here were manifold; many of them continue to affect the course of the work in music at Vassar in both direct and indirect ways. He was personally responsible for planning, as a whole and in detail, Skinner Hall of Music, which was finished in 1931; and time has proved the soundness as well as the constructive imagination of his planning. In addition to his teaching, Mr. Dickinson was also the Music Librarian of the College, and it is he who developed the Music Library (which is appropriately named after him) into one of the finest college libraries of music in the United States. There are thousands of Vassar alumnae who still remember him gratefully and affectionately as the professor of Music 140, a course that he developed in unusually effective ways, and which served as a model for similar courses in other colleges and universities. Mr. Dickinson was widely known for his scholarly writings in the fields of music theory, music aesthetics, and music as a subject of study in higher education. In his books and articles in these areas he revealed a first-rate mind at work, and whatever he treated was done so with origin- ality. Like the man who wrote them, his books were keen, forthright, and incisive. He left a completed manuscript at the time of his death - A Handbook of Style in Music - which will soon be published, partly through the aid of the Salmon Fund of Vassar College. He was a man in love with books, and he had concern not only for what the book said but how the book said it; his hobby was typography, and he personally designed many of his published works. GEORGE SHERMAN DICKINSON (continued) Those who knew Mr. Dickinson will never forget his intel- ligence and forcefulness, his quick wit and humor, and the essential kindliness of the man. Vassar is the richer because this devoted teacher and able scholar chose to spend the greater part of his active career here. Carl Parrish
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Title: Dimock, George E., 1853-1919 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Reed, Amy L., Baldwin, James F.
Description
Date: [After 1919]
Text: cnoncs E. nxmocx 1853 - 1919 The recent death of George E. Dimock, who was for sixteen years a devoted Trustee of the CO116g6, is felt by the Faculty to be an irreparable loss.F0r Mr. Dimock combined in unusual measure ability in business with the tastes of a man of letters, and as he chose to make the educational and intellectual life of the College his special interest, he rendered it exceptional service. A member of the Comittee on Faculty and Studies, he was always alive to the need of...
Show morecnoncs E. nxmocx 1853 - 1919 The recent death of George E. Dimock, who was for sixteen years a devoted Trustee of the CO116g6, is felt by the Faculty to be an irreparable loss.F0r Mr. Dimock combined in unusual measure ability in business with the tastes of a man of letters, and as he chose to make the educational and intellectual life of the College his special interest, he rendered it exceptional service. A member of the Comittee on Faculty and Studies, he was always alive to the need of materials for study; himself a collector of books, he enriched the Library; he promoted research. Still more memorable was the personal appreciation which he manifested toward all achievements of faculty and students, who felt his commendation to be both a reward and an incentive. There are few men indeed of the present generation who merit so well the description expressed in the Classic phrase, "a friend of learning." While his influence will long be held in living memory with gratitude and admiration, it is enacted as a permanent memorial that this recognition of his life of service be engrossed in the Minutes of the Faculty. It is further moved that a copy of the above-written resolution be presented by the Secretary to Mrs. Dimock Amy L. Reed James F. Baldwin VII - 18
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Title: Domandi, Mario, 1929-1979 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Griffen, Clyde, Daniels, Elizabeth, Kohl, Benjamin, Piccolomini, Manfredi
Description
Date: November 14, 1979
Text: , 1»- . Attachment #1 I At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held November fourteenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-nine, the following Memorial ’ was unanimously adopted: Hario Domandi, Professor of Italian on the Dante Antolini Chair, was born in New York City on February 5, l929, the son of Santo and Filomena Domandi. Educated in the city's public schools, he took his undergraduate degree at St. John University College. He spent the l95O-5l academic year as a Fulbright Fellow...
Show more, 1»- . Attachment #1 I At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held November fourteenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-nine, the following Memorial ’ was unanimously adopted: Hario Domandi, Professor of Italian on the Dante Antolini Chair, was born in New York City on February 5, l929, the son of Santo and Filomena Domandi. Educated in the city's public schools, he took his undergraduate degree at St. John University College. He spent the l95O-5l academic year as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Rome and then completed a Master's degree in history at Columbia University in l952. After two years of military service, he resumed his studies at Columbia in European intellectual history. His dissertation on the German youth movement was supervised by Jacques Barzun. For Hario,Barzun represented the life of the nnndat its best, urbane and elegant, yet humane and deeply serious. » Mario came to Vassar as an instructor of Italian in 1956. From l958 to l963 he served as House Fellow in Jewett dormitory and from l96l to l964, as Dean of Freshmen. His success as teacher and administrator and his productivity as a scholar were rewarded with early promotion to tenure. In Hay, I964, he delivered the convocation address at the request of the senior class. Characteristically, he told his hearers that the result of their education "should be a refined sensibility and a civilized instinct. Just as the entirety of our personal experience is embodied in what we call our ‘instinctive’ reaction to a situation, so too our whole intellectual experience is contained in our instinctive judgments about art, politics, ethics, and the rest. If a college has done its job well, the instinct should be healthy, free of myths and prejudices." In l965 Mario became chairman of the Italian department. In l969 he became the second recipient of the Dante Antolini chair in Italian language and literature which had been given by Hrs. Julia Coburn Antolini in honor of her husband. H Mario maintained a lifelong interest in modern German history and culture, but at Vassar he soon turned to the field where he was to make his scholarly reputation: the translation of significant works on and of the Italian Renaissance from both German and Italian. His first translation was of Ernst Cassirer's The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy_Published by Basil Blackwell in @}iord and by Harper and Row in New York. he book s _ immediate scholarly and commercial success cemented Mario's close relationship with Harper‘s history editor, Hugh Van Dusen, and over the next decade Hario translated five books for the Torchbook Series. _In l965 appeared Mario s ' translation of Guicciardini's Ricordi under the title of MaximS ﬁHQuRBfl@¢tlP0§, Of a Renaissance Statesman. It made his reputation as a Renaissance sﬁholﬂr andlremains in priht today. In l97O Mario published buicciardini s History of Florence with introduction, glossary, and notes. His translation Of _ _ -2- Luigi Salvatorelli's interprefatl°" ° . \in 1972 Mario also coipleted of Tomas Nald0nad0'$ Wofk °" “rba" p'ann'ng. give study of the rise of translation from the German of Ernest Nolte S mas European fascism which~was never published Mario's special knack as a translator was his ability to convoy difﬁ - - ' l d skein of events in C196?’ Teadahli: a?d ph1]?SOpE1cl!shde€Zsgnd lhigngalent attracted the interest of Charles Sing f'°w'ng nq 1 p ' ' d Italian sources ouoted - ‘ . - i ' 1 t of Latin an - T 5 ?:°t§:]l§§§nQ§:y0¢§ gigglgtonégsegigion of Dante's Divine Comedv. ihig t Florence. But ultimately he abandoned this plan in av projects on Hedicean Florence that were to lie unfinished at his death, Om was a volume of the familial letters of Lorenzo de' Medici and his circle done in collaboration with the Florentine paleographer ulnO_COFtli Thelc second was a translation with notes and glossary of oiovanni Cava canti s. Florentine Histories, a prime narrative source on the origins of the nedim regime, for which Mario received a grant from the National Endowment fort Humanities. To his students Marb brought the same qualities of sound scholarship, his clear but never simple exposition, and the magic of his manner. Studm f flocked to his Renaissance classes especially because Mario's recreations that civilization permitted students to discern some of the most humane aspects of the teacher himself. He would talk of Machiavelli and murder ,n Ariosto and the poetic forms, of romance and history, of fortuna and virtm but ultimately for Mario the Renaissance was best represented by a letter Lorenzo de' Medici wrote to his young daughter whom the family had left behind in Florence: if everyone lS gone, and the naughty ones left you alone, do not worry; I will come back purposely to stay with you, and wﬂ stay only with you. Mario used to comment, "He was a good daddy.“ lhis artificer of balance of ower and f t‘ t‘ ~ - - ~ Mario that Virtue the L 2_ o “ar is ic excellence exemplified for _ a ins called humanitas and the Italian hUm&WlStS t;l€d to revive. "Humanitas" is also the best word to describe Mario's 1% ° m°"e than twenty Years as teacher and department chairman. It - c imam for anyone to remain indiffere t t h‘ Va’ + to Iove him’ immediate]y. n o lS warm, almost fatherly, ways and nm l I F ' ' from Ggr$Z;§ gizég 2gggg$ggA%a€; ﬁggrggriwhozhad come to the United Statgs divorce in 1972. Their O 1 h_] i 7 e one. Their marriage ended W delight in her development was A :9 Mary Char10tte’ was born In 196'. h1S - _ x raordina H ' - .’ became known for their h ' ry' 'ar'° and Agnes qUl¢h'Y - t ' - - - . . They bridged worlds easilyT1t3lni%qa3?ffgr the d1verS]ty of th€1r fr]end& exhilarating conversation. Mario's prid ?nce§ of Opinion and taste int0 scholar never detracted from his rid ‘e 1n h1S Own cosmopolitanism as a father's success as a Qarme t p e 1" h'5 Slﬁllian ancestry or in his he attributed to Unc]e Luiq?, gggﬁfggturegk who will forget the aPhorism5 I who will forget the accordion on which h Or Poor, it s nice to have moml to pop tunes to Protestant hymns? 8 ranged with such zest from Polk” In recent years his fa to drinks at six o'clock. Uﬁlikg min? gf ﬁarty fO]]owed from an '"V'tatiM °"$t°maYllY were occasions where a mixedqgrogﬂtherings, Mario's parties » p °f People engaged in liveU ' f the Pisorgimento appﬂﬁfed '" '97'6M 6 O l h l HE‘ I U I l M r I i l 7| i l I Cl‘ i l m . . . - ' lers and for a the kindled Mario's interest in the early Florentine chronic P , - .- ' ' ' E lish a documentary volume on name he toyed with the idea of providing in "9 _ f or of two ]arqe sh -3- _ discussion on a wide range of topics, taking the key from their host who treate the party as an event rather than as a mechanical routine. It was not unusual for him to ask members of his classes and Italian majors to the parties; he deferred to them with the same cordiality that he extended to his friends from the faculty and from the community. It was the rare party that did not end with_Mario in the kitchen making spaghetti al dente or some other preferred dish. But in between the coming and the going at the party, those invited to share it knew that they had a host who took seriously the mandate to honor guests. when a guest comes, Christ comes, Mario said, and he meant it. Every part of Mario's life contained the other parts. His dying was part of his living. Learning that he had a large, malignant tumor which made survival improbable, Mario chose to deal directly with his fate. Defiant, he discovered that in Houston, Texas, there was a project experimenting with nuclear radiation therapy. In the face of uncertainty about the outcome, Hario went to a hospital there as a participant in the experiment. He was subjected to routines which, as he told his friends over the long distance phone, stirred in his mind passages from Dante's Inferno. Mario underwent an operation in the Fall of 1978 which removed the tumor. He was able to spend the next several months in Poughkeepsie, recuperating and preparing to reengage in his scholarly activities. On February 4, l979 he was married to Ann Hedlund whom he had known for many years and who gave him the most loving support in his final months. when the cancer recurred, he first was hospitalized in New York. In lucid moments, he retained his geniality and his flair for telling a story. In the midst of pain, he remained gentle and considerate. He returned to Poughkeepsie and died here on July 8, 1979. He is buried in Little Compton, Rhode Island, where he had spent his summers for many years. . Respectfully submitted, );¢2& Cl d iffen Chairman Y 9 r 0 _ 8%/;\‘@1l€"ii7k A . '>@>w~»»le@~.e» 1 Eliiabeth Daniels f§¢dx?cvvC¢~ C7{ flgiiif . Benjam n Kohl ﬂ(»Cr/L’-5514' " , edi Piccolomini %?'*\ ?:*\%\ \. Q\ d
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Title: Drake, Durant, 1878-1933 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1933]
Text: DURANT DRAKE 1878 - 1933 After eighteen years of devoted service to Vassar College Durant Drake, Professor of Philosophy, died at the age of fifty-five in the early morning of November twenty-fifth. Always frail in body he at first attached no great significance to the illness that laid him low in the month of October, and even when told that the end was near continued a gallant struggle for recovery. Recognizing at last that death had come to claim him he accepted the inevita- ble with...
Show moreDURANT DRAKE 1878 - 1933 After eighteen years of devoted service to Vassar College Durant Drake, Professor of Philosophy, died at the age of fifty-five in the early morning of November twenty-fifth. Always frail in body he at first attached no great significance to the illness that laid him low in the month of October, and even when told that the end was near continued a gallant struggle for recovery. Recognizing at last that death had come to claim him he accepted the inevita- ble with courage and perfect serenity. Durant Drake was of New England puritan stock. It was in accordance with the traditions of his race that he went first to Boston Latin school and then to Harvard University, winning prizes all along the way and graduating summa ggg laude. A kind fate gave him close touch7FIth eminent scholars in his chosen field and fruitful intercourse with them helped to shape his own ideas into what he himself called the philosophy of a meliorist. "If," he wrote, "there is any keynote that has given a kind of unity to my thinking in diverse fields it is a sense of the needless unhappiness from which men suffer and a pas- sionate longing to do my bit in formulating and dif- fusing a clearer intelligence concerning the art of living." Thus in his teaching he emphasized primarily problems of human conduct, drawing his illustrations fro an extraordinarily wide range of reading. Stimu- lating class discussions were often continued on Sunday afternoons when throughout the year he was at home to his students. Many of those who have gone forth from Vassar will always remember gratefully that beautiful and hospitable home. But it was as a writer that Durant Drake was most widely known. Eminently in his books he realized his "passionate desire" to formulate and diffuse "a clearer intelligence concerning the art of living." Their titles indicate how practical, in the broad sense of th t th i f h f hi ki P e erm, was e a m o muc o s thin ng: ro- blems of Conduct (19110, Problems of Reli ion (1‘§l'6JI 3haII We Btanﬁ B the Church? {I525}, America Faces the Ftture lI§§Z;, The New Horalit (l§23). The re- viewers of these boohs all prhise their lucidity, vigor, forceful and winning style, and persuasive sanity. The same qualities of style appear in his re- cent Invitation to Philoso h . His most abstract thinki was ex res H In hi d d It P1 i N t ng p se n an s_,_§ceL n a ure (1925), where he presents his metaphysical system, DURANT DRAKE (Continued) related to though not derived from the thought of Santayana and Charles Strong. It may truly be said of Durant Drake that his life and work, despite his physical limitations, fulfilled to an extraordinary degree its own high aims. Lucy E. Textor IX - 188 [ /
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Title: Dwight, William Buck, 1833-1906 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Cooley, Le Roy C., Whitney, Mary W., Wylie, Laura J.
Description
Date: [After 1906]
Text: J WILLIAM BUCK DWIGHT 1833 - 1906 The Committee appointed September 2h, to draw up resolutions regarding the death of Professor Dwight presented the following: Whereas: William Buck Dwight, whose death occurred on August 29, 1906, has been identified with Vassar College as Professor of Geology and Mineralogy for twenty-eight years, serving the College with loyalty, enthusiasm and efficiency, and Whereas: by admirable traits of character as an in- structor and as a man, he maintained the...
Show moreJ WILLIAM BUCK DWIGHT 1833 - 1906 The Committee appointed September 2h, to draw up resolutions regarding the death of Professor Dwight presented the following: Whereas: William Buck Dwight, whose death occurred on August 29, 1906, has been identified with Vassar College as Professor of Geology and Mineralogy for twenty-eight years, serving the College with loyalty, enthusiasm and efficiency, and Whereas: by admirable traits of character as an in- structor and as a man, he maintained the trustful respect of his pupils, the sincere regard of his as- sociates, and the confidence of all who have been most deeply interested in the welfare of this in- stitution, therefore Resolved: that we, the Faculty of Vassar College here- by testify our appreciation of the character and work of Professor Dwight and our sorrow for the loss of an honored associate. Resolved also, that a copy of this minute be sent to the family of Professor Dwight, as an assurance of our sincere sympathy in their bereavement. Le Roy C. Cooley Mary W. Whitney Laura J. Wylie K C I IV 376 377
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Title: Ellery, Eloise, 1874-1958 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Barbour, Violet, Elson, Ruth Miller, Ross, James Bruce
Description
Date: [After 1958]
Text: stores ELLERY 187k - 1958 At the time of her retirement in 1939, Professor Eloise Ellery had served Vassar College for thirty- nine years and had been associated with it for over fifty. Soon after her graduation from Vassar in the class of 1897 she had been recruited as an assistant in the Department of History by Professor Lucy Maynard Salmon, and on the completion of her graduate studies she returned to Vassar as instructor, rising by successive promotions to the rank of profes- sor in 1916...
Show morestores ELLERY 187k - 1958 At the time of her retirement in 1939, Professor Eloise Ellery had served Vassar College for thirty- nine years and had been associated with it for over fifty. Soon after her graduation from Vassar in the class of 1897 she had been recruited as an assistant in the Department of History by Professor Lucy Maynard Salmon, and on the completion of her graduate studies she returned to Vassar as instructor, rising by successive promotions to the rank of profes- sor in 1916. Her colleagues recognized her fairness and good judgment by electing her to major comittees. From 1910 to 1923 she acted as Faculty Secretary, and from 1923 to 1932 she was Chairman of the Department of History. She filled these posts conscientiously and effectively but the consuming interest in her life was the study and teaching of history, and it was as a teacher that she made a lasting impression upon Vassar College. The factual record of her life is slight. Born in Rochester, N. Y., in l87h, Eloise Ellery was the only child of Frank M. and Mary Alida Alling Ellery. Her paternal grandfather came to America from Yorkshire, England. Her father, a rising member of the business community of Rochester, was to become secretary and later trustee of the Security Trust Company of that city. Miss Ellery attended the Rochester Free Academy and entered Vassar College as a freshman in 1893. Her life-long interest in history was touched off by the teaching of Professor Salmon. On receiving her A. B. degree in 1897, Miss Ellery entered the graduate School of Cornell University. Under the direction of Profes- sor H. Morse Stephens, an authority on the history of the French Revolution, she concentrated on the period of the Convention and chose as her thesis subject the study of a leader of the Gironde, Brissot de Warville. Fellow- ships fran Vassar, from Cornell, and from the Associa- tion of Collegiate Alumnae enabled her to complete work for the doctorate including a year of research in French archives and in the Bibliothdque Nationals. She received the degree of doctor of philosophy from Cornell in 1902. Her only diversion, travel, was closely related to her interest in history. She was a frequent, often solitary, and intrepid traveler in western_Europe. In 1923-2h she joined her father in a trip around the world. This ELOISE ELLERY (Continued) began formidably with a close-up of the Japanese earthquake, though not in the area of greatest danger. In Shanghai, through the cooperation of Sophie Chen Zen, Vassar 1919, Miss Ellery met and talked with prominent leaders of Young China about the liberal reforms their party then hoped to set on foot. When the Saar Valley was the warmest political spot in Europe Miss Ellery went there to obtain first-hand information on that explosive issue. In 1936 she embarked on the Odyssey cruise, visiting historic cities on the Adriatic coast, the Aegean islands, and Asia Minor. She was planning a trip through South America when the second world war intervened. She was fortunate in spending the years of her retire ment near the campus in the homes of devoted friends and colleagues, first with Dean C. Mildred Thompson and later with Dr. Jane N. Baldwin. Her erect figure continued to be a familiar sight to the college com- munity until within a few months of her death. The testimony of alumnae who had the good fortune to study European history under her direction is in striking agreement as to the foundation of her suc- cess as a teacher. Said one who graduated in l9Oh: "Her genuineness was obvious. She was true in her own scholarship and true in her interest in her students--sparing no time or thought to understand their needs and be helpful . . . ." Later, when this same student was Miss Ellery's colleague in the Department of History: "I was struck by E.E.'s abilit to stimulate each student to her best, at whatever grade of ability the student happened to be." Another alumna of the class of l9l2 recalls that there was special life in Miss Ellery's classes. "E.E. had a kind of completeness of range and view of a culture that was fundamental to all the rest of her thinking . . . In discussion there was always freshness, point and light. . . It was especially through the long paper that E.E. drew out and expected to be expressed with thoroughness and polish the whole capacity of every student." Out of this effort came the student‘ realization of "toughness and delight of intellectual adventure." Her quiet assumption that every student would do her best is what most impressed a member of e ELOISE ELLERY (Continued) the class of 1919. To an alumna from the class of '23, she was an inspiring teacher, "not personally or through charm or magnetism, but because she embodied the world of the intellect, "the eager search for and love of knowledge and the utter impartiality and integrity of the true scholar." To a member of the class of 1939, the last year that Miss Ellery taught, the intellectual excitement of her classes is still vividly remembered. Each meeting was a drama that involved every member of the group to the limits of her intellectual ability. The discussion was carefully but unobtrusively guided, within a framework of rigorous standards and respect for the contribution of each student. In the hands of Miss Ellery teaching was truly a creative art. Perhaps the best description of her impact on those she taught is that of a Chinese student: "her special gift is to open people's intellectual box, so to speak, and let its contents flow out in a beautiful abundance." She was an exacting critic, impossible to deceive with simulated learning or irrelevant flights of rhetoric, but endlessly patient with conscientious students, tolerant, witty, and kind. There is no better example of these qualities than her exhortation to a careless student: Miss Blank, "When you hoist, hoist!" The class of 1913 dedicated their Vassarion to her as one “who during our college life, Eas kept before us a high ideal of constructive scholarship." This ideal was pusued not only in the classroom and at the conference table but in a wide variety of activities. Through Miss Ellery's suggestions the great collections of sources available in print for the study of European history were acquired or augmented by the Vassar Library in order that students might have the illuminating experience of observing history as it had unfolded before contemporary eyes. Occasionally a class would stage, after intensive study of the sources, some notable historic incident, as the class in the French Revolution reenacted the Flight to Varennes, using Main Building as the Tuileries, which had in fact served Matthew Vassar's architect as a model. Or a stirring debate in the Estates General or the Convention would be presented with fire and fury in an arena in Rockefeller Hall. As faculty adviser to the Political Association Miss Ellery assisted student officers in organizing a model session of the League of Nations which was attended by some 200 delegates from 29 colleges and universities. mores ELLERY (Continued) Miss Ellery's students continued to be her students after graduation. When they returned to Vassar for reunions, or to enter daughters or even granddaughters they would seek her out to tell her what her teaching had meant to them, the rich record it had made on their thinking and living. Nor had Miss Ellery for- gotten them. To those who were especially in need of counsel and encouragement she wrote long letters mindful of their interests and of the little or big things they would like to hear about. She labored long over her letters to two alumnae living in Communist countries. She knew how eager they must be for news from the free world, but knew also that it must be communicated in a way that would not excite suspicion. She had many friends, yet those who knew her best knew little of the years before she came to Vassar or of her inner life. She had an unassailable dignity and reserve. She appeared duly at parties and meetings and listened with amused tolerance to the small talk of campus intercourse, but she never chattered or gossiped. Her time was carefully hoarded for the long labor of conferences, for reading papers, and for keeping abreast of the literature bearing on her courses. Sunday mornings were devoted to periodical- reading in the Library. Lest this absorption in the art and labor of teaching give the impression that she was stiff, aloof, unsocial, it should be added that she was gracious and cordial in manner. She had in reserve a hoard of witty stories which mellowed with age. Her thoughtfulness in calling on new members of the faculty with assurance of welcome was gratefully appreciated by the newcomers. Her courtesy was unfailing. One of the waitresses at Alumnae House, and one of the nurses at the nursing home where her last days were spent, had exactly the same tribute for her: "She was a lady." Beyond the gates of the college Professor Ellery's standing as a scholar was widely recognized. She expanded her doctoral dissertation into a full-length biography during her early years of teaching. Brissot de Warville a Study in the Histor pof the Hrench Revolution, based on eitensive'§tud§ in French archives, was puhlished in 1915 in a series comemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the college. It is still recognized as authoritative for an under- standing of the role of the Girondin party in the ELOISE ELLEHY (Continued) Convention. But Miss Ellery's heart was in teaching, not in research and writing except as it bore on teaching. During several sumers she attended the Institute of Politics at Williams College. She addressed various organizations on contemporary educational and political issues, and contributed articles and reviews to learned periodicals. From 1925 to 1931 she served as associate on the staff of Current History, her assignment being to provide brie mon y rev ews of political developments in Italy, Spain and Portugal. She was a member of the American Historical Association and in 1915 served on the important General Comittee of that organiza- tion. She was a member of the Vassar chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. In reply to a questionnaire circulated among Vassar alumnae in 1950, Miss Ellery replied to the question whether she would (or would not) choose Vassar if she were entering college then: "Knowing a good deal about Vassar and little of any other college (by per- sonal connection) I am hardly qualified to make any comparative estimate. But after having had an almost unbroken connection with Vassar for over fifty years, I can say that I have always found here an atmosphere of democracy and freedom of speech." This statement may well stand as Miss Ellery's leave- taking 0 Respectfully submitted, Violet Barbour Ruth Miller Elson James Bruce Ross XIV — M47-M50
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Title: Ellis, Ruth Humphrey, 1900-1963 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Crawford, Marjorie, King, Elizabeth, Beck, Curt W.
Description
Date: [After 1963]
Text: /6 RUTH HUMPHREY ELLIS 1900 - 1963 Ruth Humphrey Ellis was born on November ll, 1900, in Ansonia, Connecticut. She was a Yankee, and proud of it: she liked to tell of her father's farm and of the many miles she walked to school as a girl. Working in a factory, she earned the money to go to Wellesley, from where she graduated in 1924. She pre- served a dedicated attachment to her College throughout her life: few of her friends at Vassar have failed to swell the coffers of our sister...
Show more/6 RUTH HUMPHREY ELLIS 1900 - 1963 Ruth Humphrey Ellis was born on November ll, 1900, in Ansonia, Connecticut. She was a Yankee, and proud of it: she liked to tell of her father's farm and of the many miles she walked to school as a girl. Working in a factory, she earned the money to go to Wellesley, from where she graduated in 1924. She pre- served a dedicated attachment to her College throughout her life: few of her friends at Vassar have failed to swell the coffers of our sister college by buying the wrappings and ribbons which Ruth brandished every year at Christmas time. She took her first teaching position at the Connecticut College for Women, where she arrived on horseback, asking feed and shelter for her mount. But soon she decided to continue her own education and entered the University of Illinois as a graduate student and teaching assistant. There she earned a Master's Degree in 1928 and a Ph.D. in 1930. In that same year she came to Vassar as an instructor, and here she taught until, after 33 years, she died where she had spent so many hours of her life: in the midst of a busy freshman laboratory. Ruth Ellis studied biochemistry when it was a young science, - still, indeed, called physiological chemistry, - and concerned itself largely with nutrition. Her dissertation dealt with the essential amino acids. After she came to Vassar, the Sanders Chemistry Laboratory was the inhospitable home of rats who strug- gled along on deficient diets while she directed two students in their research for a Master's Degree. _ In 1953-55, Ruth Ellis spent two years organizing the undergraduate chemistry program at the Women's Christian College in Madras. She fell in love with India, and this love grew into a more gen- eral concern for the people of Asia and Africa in their struggle for political and economic independence. As a teacher, the stu- dents of these countries were especially close to Ruth's heart, and many of them found a warm welcome in her home. But she also almost single-handedly created the Mid-Hudson International Center for professional and businessmen and women from far lands. Nor did she close her eyes to problems near by: she worked with the NAACP for fair housing practices in Poughkeepsie. These many and demanding activities became the central concern in her life, and she was happily at work in them on the morning of her last day. She started and ran committees as the price of i RUTH HUMPHREY ELLIS (Continued) progress, but she was still a Yankee: working as an individual for the welfare of other individuals. She was certain that most of the problems of the world grew from ignorance, and that if people but knew more about each other, these problems would be lessened or dissolved. To her, education was everything, - and everything was education. Marjorie Crawford Elizabeth King Curt W. Beck, Chairman XVI 106
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Title: Ely, Achsah Mount, 1846-1904 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Whitney, Mary W., Cooley, Le Roy C., Wylie, Laura J.
Description
Date: [After 1904]
Text: I P I I ACHSAH motmr E13! IBM6 - 190k The Comittee appointed December 15 to draw up resolutions upon the death of Professor Ely re- ported as follows: Whereas: by the death of Professor Achsah Mount Ely Vassar College has lost a valued and efficient friend, who for many years both as alumna and of- ficer has been devoted to the interests of the Col- lege and has worked for its advancement with zeal, enthusiasm and large-minded generosity, and who has represented to a pre-eminent degree among...
Show moreI P I I ACHSAH motmr E13! IBM6 - 190k The Comittee appointed December 15 to draw up resolutions upon the death of Professor Ely re- ported as follows: Whereas: by the death of Professor Achsah Mount Ely Vassar College has lost a valued and efficient friend, who for many years both as alumna and of- ficer has been devoted to the interests of the Col- lege and has worked for its advancement with zeal, enthusiasm and large-minded generosity, and who has represented to a pre-eminent degree among the college graduates the spirit of ambition and pro- ductive helpfulness that has characterized their activity: Therefore, be it resolved: that the Faculty hereby express its deep sense of loss and its sympathy with the family in its bereavement. Also resolved: that a copy of these resolutions be sent to the family. Mary W. Whitney Le Roy C. Cooley Laura J. Wylie IV - 289-290
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Title: Epler, Helen Frances, 1863-1933 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1933]
Text: HELEN FRANCES EPLER 1863 - 1933 A letter from the family of Helen Epler thanking the faculty for their beautiful floral tribute and words of affection after the death of Miss Epler who was killed in an automobile accident. IX - 185

Title: Fahnestock, Edith, 1872-1957 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Daniels, Elizabeth A., Gleason, Josephine M., de Madariaga, Pilar
Description
Date: [After 1957]
Text: EDITH xmanssrocx 1872 - 1957 Edith Fahnestock ended a long and distinguished career as a teacher of modern languages when she died on November 21st at Poultney, Vermont in her eighty-fifth year. At the time of her retirement in 1939, she had been a member of the Vassar language faculty for thirty-one years. During her rich career as a linguist, Miss Fahnestock ranged over the modern languages with a eosmopolitan sense of the whole. She was warmly aware of language, not only as a tool and...
Show moreEDITH xmanssrocx 1872 - 1957 Edith Fahnestock ended a long and distinguished career as a teacher of modern languages when she died on November 21st at Poultney, Vermont in her eighty-fifth year. At the time of her retirement in 1939, she had been a member of the Vassar language faculty for thirty-one years. During her rich career as a linguist, Miss Fahnestock ranged over the modern languages with a eosmopolitan sense of the whole. She was warmly aware of language, not only as a tool and technique, but as the blood stream of culture. Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, she attended school in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from the Women's College of Western Reserve University in l89h with the degree of Bachelor of Letters. After two years, during which she did graduate work at the University of Zurich and at the Sorbonne, she was appointed Fellow in Romance Philology at Bryn Mawr College. Completion of her graduate work was interrupted by intervals of teaching, but in 1908 she received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College. Prior to coming to Vassar in the Autumn of 1908, she had been made head of the Department of Modern Languages at Mississippi State College, a position which she held from 1899 to 1906, and after that a member of the Department of Romance Languages at Mount Holyoke College for one year. In the early years of her appointment at Vassar she taught Italian and French as well as Spanish. Under her guidance the Department of Spanish was established as a separate division in 1922, at which time she was made its Chairman. She continued in this capacity through its growth until her retirement in 1939. She worked consistently for the broadening of offerings in the Spanish Department and for any changes in the teachin of languages which would break down barriers to international understanding. Miss Fahnestock's great interest in bringing together the people of this country and the Spanish speaking people not only of Spain, but of this Hemisphere, led her to introduce as early as l92l, courses at Vassar, conducted in Spanish, in the literature and the historical cultural background of Spanish America. She further helped the teaching of Spanish by inviting scholars and young people from these countries to lecture or teach in the Department of Spanish. EDITH FAHNESTOCK (Continued) Miss Fahnestock's publications included a Study of the Sources and Composition of Old French "Lai d'Haveloc" 1915; translation in collaboration with Miss Florence White of an "Entremes" by Cervantes; the editing in collaboration with Miss Margarita de Mayo of an American edition of "Campo" by J. M. Estrada, 1937; and contributions in 1930 to Current History. At the time of the Spanish American War a great liberal movement, a twentieth century Renaissance, had arisen in Spain in the work of the so-called generation of '98. Miss Fahnestock was one of the first American language teachers who fully aware of the importance of this movement familiarized American students with the ork of Ramon Menendex Pidal, Miguel de Unamuno, Maria de Maeztu, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Jose Castillejo, Jose Ortegay Gasset and many others. Her concern for Modern Spain continued throughout her lifetime. In 1916 she became a Corporator of the International Institute for Girls in Spain, an organization sponsored by Americans, and staffed entirely by American and Spanish teachers. It provided secondary educational opportunities for the young wmnen of Spain. During the next forty years she continued the connection with the school in various capacities. In 1927 she gave in Spanish the introductory address to the 17th Spanish Language and Literature Summer session at the Centro de Estudios Historicos, of the University of Madrid. Americo Castro, Professor Emeritus of Princeton University and at that time, Director of the Centre, welcomed the foreign teachers of Spanish. Miss Fahnestock who as an American teacher of Spanish had attended the first session in 1912, was invited to address the group in the name of all the language teachers, American and European. She stressed the importance of the relations between the United States and Spain and advocated the promotion of interest in Spanish culture among teachers of Art, History and Literature. Her speech-was published in the issue of "Hispania" of November 1927. During and after the Spanish civil war and until her death, she aided homeless Spanish refugees with gifts of money and clothing. She worked in the defense of the Anti-fascist committee and the Spanish Loyalists. She helped exiles to find ways to carry on their careers in other countries. EDITH FAHNESTOCK (Continued) Colleagues and friends of hers have spoken of the real gift which Miss Fahnestock showed in directing young people into teaching. She had a primary interest and faith in people in whom she honestly welcomed variety, non-conformity and individual differences. Miss Fahnestock continued to live an active life in the communities of Vassar and Poughkeepsie after her retirement. She was a member of the League of Women Voters; she made frequent trips to Castle Point, where, at the Veterans Hospital, she taught Spanish. For a while she also taught at Greenhaven Prison. In recent years she became very much interested in the study of Russian. Before and after Miss Fahnestock's retirement, the book-lined living room in the house on College Avenue shared by Miss Fahnestock and Miss Peebles, of the Department of English, was an exciting haven for Faculty discussions and student gatherings. A fire burning on the hearth and good talk -- these were the by-words for several college generations who look back to the hospitality of this house with its lovely view of the Catskills and its rock garden, and the alert teachers who made it a place of warmth and friendliness. Fran her interest in foreign languages and cultures, to her concern for public affairs, from her activities in behalf of oppressed nations to her kindness towards the stray dog who wandered up hill to her front door, Edith Fahnestock was a humane woman, citizen and teacher. Respectfully submitted, Elizabeth A, Daniels Josephine M Gleason Pilar de Madariaga XIV - 273-27H
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Title: Fiske, Christabel Forsyth, 1869-1956 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Lockwood, Helen Drusilla, Griffin, Charles, Swain, Barbara
Description
Date: [After 1956]
Text: CHRISTABEL FORSYTH FISKE 1869 - 1956 Every one of us who speaks of Christabel Forsyth Fiske, begins his narrative with, "I shQJ.never forget." She was one of Vassar's great women. Her gallant figure crossed the campus as if under full sail, its course held true by her intense love of learning and her direct sense of life. She wrote a nuber of studies on Old English and German Medieval literatures, English modifications of Teutonic racial concepts, 16th century and romantic...
Show moreCHRISTABEL FORSYTH FISKE 1869 - 1956 Every one of us who speaks of Christabel Forsyth Fiske, begins his narrative with, "I shQJ.never forget." She was one of Vassar's great women. Her gallant figure crossed the campus as if under full sail, its course held true by her intense love of learning and her direct sense of life. She wrote a nuber of studies on Old English and German Medieval literatures, English modifications of Teutonic racial concepts, 16th century and romantic literature. She was cited by scholars for her knowledge of Milton. She was learned in languages and belonged to organiza- tions devoted to their study: the American Dialect Society, the American Folk Lore Society, the Scan- dinavian Society, the Modern Language Association. Two of hr works give the key to her quality. In her essay,_§Qmel%1Realism in Medieval German Literature in Vassar E9 geval §tu§}es of I§2§ sEe says of Her findings, I I This thread of homespun is but a slender one... Or to change the metaphor - the plain, quaint little figure which in true medieval fashion has gradually become for me the personification of this intimate, homely phase of the German mind, has been very inconspicuous, lost con- tinually among the mystical and romantic per~ sonages thronging fantastically or brilliantly the pages I have read. Such as it is, however, it is more in evidence, I think, than in most other medieval European literatures, and therefore not nly intrinsically interesting, but also from the comparative point of view, at least suggestively significant. In her last book, E ic Su estions in the Ima er of the Waverl Novels, puEIIsEed in I§ED, she searcEed out the Heroic element in Sir Walter Scott because, she says, ... it had been neglected in criticism in favor of the romantic... In the case of a man of Scott's caliber, the impact of him on the average intelligent mind should result in a moderately well-rounded.. conception of him as a great English writer. CHRISTABEL FORSYTH FISKE (Continued) To have this "moderately well—r0unded conception" required merely that one be aware of the relation- ships of one person and all society, nature, the traditions of lanuage and literature, the range from the folk to the aristocrats, from the romantic to the heroic. This search for fullness and balance made her a superb editor. To her Vassar owes the publication of Vassar Medieval Studies and the Vassar Journal of Under- graduate Studies, the most cﬁaracteristic and original w »ness 0 our achievement in the liberal arts that has ever been published. Beyond writiq; her own piece for the Vassar Medieval Studies, sheedited the whole volume. 'tE¥hin th6‘quiet, exaet words of her preface one can see her in action. She speaks of many an illuminating talk with various colleagues whose work while primarily in classical or in modern fields, is in certain aspects of it closely connected with the period here dealt with... They have cooperated with us; and we have thus a book somewhat widely representative of outlook upon the Middle Ages. The departments represented in the book were English, French, German, Folk Lore, History, Greek, Latin, Mathematics, Art, Music. For fourteen years, 1926-l9hO, as she read the papers of Vassar's students submitted for the Vassar Journal d h t er of Under raduate Stu ies, er sure judgmen nev flagged. Every meeting of the Committee of the Journal brought out the flashing sharpness of her critical faculties, and she could always put into a few words the gist of the virtues or weaknesses of an essay. She was always a teacher too while she was editing. She took infinite pains with the students who wrote these essays, especially when she felt the student had capacity to do distinguished work. She was more interested in helping them to develop their gifts than in passing judgment on their work. She insisted on the highest possible standards of writing and research, involving not only scholarship but also sensitive imagination. From 1903-l9hO generations of students came to life in her courses on the history of English literature, her seminar on Milton, her seminar on Language. Her classes CHRISTABEL FORSYTH FISKE (Continued) were rich in scholarship, profound and illumined. Even students whose background was barren and whose idea of a college was dim, caught the light on the past and discovered that Old and Middle English told them about life. "She taught me to write a critical paper," says one of her students thirty years later. ‘So gently too. But I've never forgotten. She so quietly showed me that I needn't say ever thin but I must select. She showed me how to select tﬁe essentials."Patiently, without invading the personal dignity of her students she taught them to write by singling out each one's exact difficulty or possibility. "I know exactly who you are," she said to a freshman who in her paper a few days before had tried to tell the elevated feeling about coming to college that had suddenly dawned on her the sumer before. "Your face belongs to this paper." But when the faces were not alight because the students had not read the books, much less thought about them, she was known to slam her book don: on the desk, announce "I don't think I want to see you today," and walk out of the room. The effect on their work was electric. She was a friend and a presence on the campus. She knew who was devoted and who lived on the surface. When she trusted people, her greeting always invited them to enter a world of justice and truth in which she herself dWG 0 "When did you get the meaning of academic integrity?" she would ask a colleague for she was troubled about her students’ slow recognition of plagiarism. "My brain is seething," she would say. "Do you know the difference between Plato and Neo-Platonism?" Or if she had a great tyranny of today on her mind or the sufferings of the war or the injustices of the Great Depression or the bitter fruit of prejudice, she would seize one who, she knew, cared too and with her eyes severe and flashing, would say, "Will you explain clearly to me in a paragraph what is the meaning of this and what is to be done about it?" Only by chance did one know that behind the darting questions and the seething mind was also the long, generous private list of contributions to many pioneering agencies struggling to right wrongs. It worked the other way too. As you saw her coming out of the library daily, you would ask her about what in CHRISTABEL FORSYTH FISKE (Continued) Scott's imagery she had found today, and there would come clear, sparkling discourse about the workings of his poetical imagination and perhaps his whole plan for the aforestation of Scotland. She was always ready to share the freshness of experience._But like all original and poetic spirits amidst the worldly ones, she was a wayfarer.... Nevertheless the fact that she was going somewhere wonderful inspired the whole college. Her memory today renews our faith in the course. Helen Drusilla Lockwood Charles Griffin Barbara Swain XIV - 127-129
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Title: Folsom, Joseph Kirk, [?]-1960 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Gordon, Joan, Murra, John, Koempel, Leslie
Description
Date: [After 1960]
Text: 9 d Joseph Kirk Folsom Read at Vassar Faculty Meeting 10/12/60 Joseph Kirk Folsom, Professor Emeritus of Sociolsgy at Vassar College, died suddenly on May 27, 1960, within a year of his retire- ment. He came to Vassar College as Professor of Sociology and Economics in 1931, after having taught at the University of Pittsburgh (1922-24), Dartmouth, and Sweet Briar College (1924-1931). During his last year, he taught as Lecturer at Boston University. He was to have conducted a seminar in...
Show more9 d Joseph Kirk Folsom Read at Vassar Faculty Meeting 10/12/60 Joseph Kirk Folsom, Professor Emeritus of Sociolsgy at Vassar College, died suddenly on May 27, 1960, within a year of his retire- ment. He came to Vassar College as Professor of Sociology and Economics in 1931, after having taught at the University of Pittsburgh (1922-24), Dartmouth, and Sweet Briar College (1924-1931). During his last year, he taught as Lecturer at Boston University. He was to have conducted a seminar in sociology in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar in the spring of 1961, and had made plans for a trip to the Soviet Union to study the contemporary Russian family. He graduated from Rutgers University with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering in 1913, received a Masters Degree in Sociology at Clark University in 1915, and a Ph.D. in Psychology at Columbia University in 1917. In World War I, he served in the U. S. Army as Psychologi- cal Examiner, and shortly after the war went to Czechoslovakia as Regional Director of the American YMCA. During the Second world war he took a leave from Vassar to serve as Psychological warfare Execu- tive in the Office of war Information in this country and in England. He was the author of several books, a contributor to others, and wrote scores of articles for professional and semi-professional Jour- nals. His first two books were written prior to his selection of the family as a field of specialization - Culture and Social Pro ress in 1929 and Social Ps cholo in 1931. He Iater contrituted two major books to the iiterature on marriage and family living - The Famil , Its Sociolo and Social Ps chiatr in 1934 (revised as The Famii and Democratic Societ in 19555 and Youth Famil and Education in i9Fi. ﬁe was edito nd c ntrib to to rie f ion ri Vassar r a o u r a se s o p ee ng lectures published under the title of A Plan for Marriage in 1938. In 1939 he was elected President of the Eastern Sociological Society. From 1992 to 19b4, he served as editor of the American Sociological Review, culminating his work with a special numter evoted to Recent Trends in the Soviet Union. Here his knowledge of the Russian language, one oi Tour ianguages he had mastered, was of great assistance in getting at the sources. In his articles appearing in various journals, one senses the urgency he felt to counsel and educate people in the skills of inter- personal relations in order to help them increase their satisfactions in living. This concern for the distribution of useful information on the sociology and psychology of personality formation within the family is borne out by his administrative and consultative roles in such organizations as the National Conggess of Parents and Teacher, the National Council on Parent Education, the National Conference on Family Lite and the National Council of Family Relations. He was one of the founders of the American Association of Marr age Counse- lors, and upon his retiremen rom Vassar, egan a practice as a marriage counselor in Boston. 2. At the time of his death, he had almost completed an inter- disciplinary social science test, to be called Society for Man. He was also well along on a new book on the family. Through the years at Vassar College, the courses which became most closely identified with Professor Folsom were those in the Family, Social Theory, Social Institutions, and the interdepartmental course on the Soviet Union. He was one of the first social scientists at any college to introduce fieldwork as a part of academic course work. In 1936, he wrote an account of his students’ activities in local social agencies and organizations, in a Report to the President of the College. Temperamentally, Joe Folsom was a liberal, a pragmatic social scientist, and a man who cared very much about what happened to people. In attempting to trace the strands of his interests, his point of view, and the nature of his association with faculty and students at Vassar, one becomes increasingly aware that even those colleagues who worked most closely with him never really knew him as a person. what is evident is that he was a shy man. He was also a courageous man, for in 1953, his teaching and writing were inter- rupted by a period of hospitalization which he sought voluntarily. Moreover, after a semester's leave, he returned to the College and quietly took up his teaching and research. In his last years at Vassar, he continued to speak eloquently in faculty meetings, es- pecially urging us to entertain "outrageous hypotheses" as a stimulus to rethinking educational policy in a wider frame of reference. He was creative, experimental, and of liberal outlook to the end. He was a man who believed deeply that a liberal education could lead to a life of self-fulfillment in work and personal relations. He be- lieved that, since family life is located at the very core of society, in understanding it, one finds many clues to an understanding of the larger culture. Once he said in tribute to Ernest Groves, what can now be said of Professor Folsom himself: "in (his) life we may read this meaning, that family living can be made better through science, if it be guided by the faith that man was not made for the family, but the family for man". Joan Gordon John Murra Leslie Koempel, Chairman ‘fl. fl
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Title: Fullerton, George Stuart, 1859-1925 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Riley, Woodbridge, Washburn, Margaret Floy
Description
Date: [After 1925]
Text: GEORGE STUART FULLERTON 1859 - 1925 The Faculty of Vassar College wishes to express its sense of irreparable loss in the death of Professor George Stuart Fullerton. Proessor Fullerton, as one of the most eminent metaphysicians of his time, conferred great distinction upon the college and its department of philosophy by his connection with our faculty. It was a rare privilege for the stu- dents of Vassar College to feel his influence as a teacher, which has so deeply affected many American...
Show moreGEORGE STUART FULLERTON 1859 - 1925 The Faculty of Vassar College wishes to express its sense of irreparable loss in the death of Professor George Stuart Fullerton. Proessor Fullerton, as one of the most eminent metaphysicians of his time, conferred great distinction upon the college and its department of philosophy by his connection with our faculty. It was a rare privilege for the stu- dents of Vassar College to feel his influence as a teacher, which has so deeply affected many American philosophers of the younger generation; and for his colleagues to enjoy the stimulus of his many-sided personality and the inspiration of his beautiful character. We shall always hold him in admiring and affectionate remembrance. Woodbridge Riley Margaret Floy Washburn VIII — 98
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Title: Furness, Caroline Ellen, 1869-1936 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1936]
Text: CAROLINE ELLEN FURNESS 1869 - 1936 The Faculty of Vassar College records with regret the death on February 9, 1936, of Professor Caro- line Ellen Furness. Miss Furness, a member of the faculty since l89h, has been director of the col- lege observatory since 1915 and in 1916 was appoin- ted Alumnae Maria Mitchell Professor of Astronomy. She was the academic descendant of Maria Mitchell who chose her student, Mary W. Whitney, to be her successor, Miss Whitney in turn choosing Miss Fur- ness to...
Show moreCAROLINE ELLEN FURNESS 1869 - 1936 The Faculty of Vassar College records with regret the death on February 9, 1936, of Professor Caro- line Ellen Furness. Miss Furness, a member of the faculty since l89h, has been director of the col- lege observatory since 1915 and in 1916 was appoin- ted Alumnae Maria Mitchell Professor of Astronomy. She was the academic descendant of Maria Mitchell who chose her student, Mary W. Whitney, to be her successor, Miss Whitney in turn choosing Miss Fur- ness to succeed her. Miss Furness carried on the tradition established by Maria Mitchell and the Vas- sar Observatory continued to make frequent and valuable contributions in the field of astronomy. Under Miss Furness' direction the observatory also took part in cooperative enterprises such as the observation of the total solar eclipse of January 1925. Because of her numerous publications, both scientific and of a general nature, Miss Furness was internationally known and had many friends among astronomers at whose observatories she was always a welcome guest and an enthusiastic co-worker. At the Century of Progress Exposition the judges included her book "An Introduction to Variable Stars" among the best one hundred books written by American women during the last century. The college has lost a loyal, able and devoted alum- na, the faculty one of its most valued and best known members, and the community a generous friend. Edna Carter Mary Landon Sague IX - 311-312
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Title: Furness, Caroline Ellen, 1869-1936 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Carter, Edna, Sague, Mary Landon
Description
Date: [After 1936]
Text: I i I i 1 I i CAROLINE ELLEN FURNESS 1869 - 1936 The members of the New York League of Unitarian Women wish to express their sympathy to the faculty of Vassar College for the great loss they have sus- tained in the death of their member, Dr. Caroline Furness. The League feels deeply the loss to Uni- tarianism, not only of a worker in this locality, but of one whose broad interest was felt throughout the land» From the New York League of Unitarian Women IX - 337

Title: Geer, E. Harold, 1886-1957 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Pearson, Donald M., Swain, Barbara, Peirce, John M.
Description
Date: [After 1957]
Text: E. HAROLD GEER 1886 - 1957 It was with genuine regret that we learned during the Christmas season of the sudden death of Profes- sor Emeritus E. Harold Geer at the age of seventy-one years, more than half of which were spent as a member of the Vassar faculty in the Department of Music. Those of us who knew him well respected his musician- ship, and his uncompromisingly high musical standards. He gave unstintingly of his service to the college as a teacher, organist, director of the Vassar...
Show moreE. HAROLD GEER 1886 - 1957 It was with genuine regret that we learned during the Christmas season of the sudden death of Profes- sor Emeritus E. Harold Geer at the age of seventy-one years, more than half of which were spent as a member of the Vassar faculty in the Department of Music. Those of us who knew him well respected his musician- ship, and his uncompromisingly high musical standards. He gave unstintingly of his service to the college as a teacher, organist, director of the Vassar Choir and of the Madrigal Group, and as chairman of the Music Department for a period of years after the resignation of Professor Dickinson from that position. Mr. Geer was born in Tabor, Iowa in 1886. He received the B. A. and M. A. degrees fro Doane College in Nebraska, and a Mus. B. degree from the Oberlin Con- servatory of Music in Ohio. In l9h9 Deane College bestowed upon him an honorary Mus. D. degree. He studied organ and composition with Widor and Gedalge in Paris, organ with T. Tertius Noble and piano with Ernest Hutcheson in this country, and composition and conducting at the Conservatoire Americain de Fontainebleau in France. Before coming to Vassar College Mr. Geer taught at Lake Erie College for Women in Ohio and at Albion Col- lege in Michigan. From 1913 to 1916 he was organist and choir director of the First Congregational Church in Fall River, Massachusetts. In 1916 he came to Vassar College as Assistant Professor of Music and taught here for thirty-six years. After his retire- ment in 1952 he went to Cbatham College in Pittsburgh. Subsequently he served as acting chairman of the Music Department at Hood College in Maryland. Last summer he taught at the Yale Music School in Norfolk, Connecticut. He was a member of the College Music Association, Pi Kappa Lamba and a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists. He edited and arranged over one hundred compositions of choral music for women's voices. He edited the beloved "Peace I Leave with You", originally harmonized by George Coleman Gow for women's voices. He also made an arrangement of this for mixed voices. Mr. Geer was editor of The H al for Collegasand Schools published in 1955 By %€e Yaie University Press and now in use in the Vassar Chapel. His last publication E. HAROLD GEER (Continued) was a book, Or an Registration in Theo and Practice, which came out last mnnth (December, IéE7I. The study of this subject was carried on by Mr. Gear for many years at Vassar College. Grants frm the Salmon Fund aided his research and the publication of the book. Mr. Geer gave organ recitals at the Prague Municipal Auditorium in Czechoslovakia and at York Minster, England. He had numerous appearances in recital in this country, playing programs of organ music in col- leges, universities, civic auditoriums and churches. His Sunday evening organ recitals on the Vassar Campus offered a wide variety of excellent literature skill- fully performed. To many generations of students these programs came to be known as "dark music" since they were performed in the dramatic setting of the dimly lighted chapel. Unquestionably Mr. Geer's primary musical interest at Vassar College was the Choir, which he directed from 1920 to 1952. He devoted scholarly research to the selection of choral material which represented the world's finest settings of sacred texts. The music he introduced ranged in style from the works of English composers in the,Renaissance Period to those of Vaughan Williams and Kodaly in the twentieth century. The insistent emphasis on superior music certainly had a great influence in improving the musical taste of students who sang it and heard it from the days of required chapel to a later time when chapel attendance was no longer obligatory. The music for the regular chapel services and for other programs was meticulously prepared and beautifully performed. Under Mr. Geer's direction the annual program of Christmas music became a tradition at Vassar College and attracted large audiences. To a casual acquaintance Mr. Geer may have seemed to be rather reserved and formal but h was certainly far from that when he conducted performances of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, "Trial by Jury" on Founder's Day. To those who were intimately associated with him he was a kind and understanding friend and excellent teacher. His perceptions were keen and he possessed a quick sense of humor. He was frank and outspoken, and even those who disagreed with him on policies he favored or with his methods of procedure, never doubted for a moment the sincerity of his convictions. E. HAROLD GEEK (Continued) Socially the Gear home on Raymond Avenue was always a friendly place to visit. The choir parties which Mr. and Mrs. Geer gave each year for choir members and faculty guests and the memorial Geer family Christmas cards, which Mr. Geer designed, will long be remembered. We extend to Mrs. Gear and to his surviving sons and daughter the sympathy of the faculty in their loss and express to them the appreciation of the faculty for professor Geer's long and distinguished service to Vassar College. Donald M. Pearson Barbara Swain John M. Peirce XIV - 375-376
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Title: Geiger, Moritz A., 1880-1937 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Dey, Margaret Rawlings, Venable, Vernon, Thompson, C. Mildred
Description
Date: [After 1937]
Text: I I I I I I I I I I I I I 1 Y l I I I I I ' MORITZ A. GEIGER 1880 - 1937 The sudden and untimely death of Professor Moritz A. Geiger on September 9, 1937 has taken from the Vassar comunity one who for many years had been a distinguished figure in the world of Philosophy, and who, during his three years at Vassar College, won for himself a place of leadership in the intel- lectual life, and of admiration and affection among members of the faculty and students alike. Professor Geiger was...
Show moreI I I I I I I I I I I I I 1 Y l I I I I I ' MORITZ A. GEIGER 1880 - 1937 The sudden and untimely death of Professor Moritz A. Geiger on September 9, 1937 has taken from the Vassar comunity one who for many years had been a distinguished figure in the world of Philosophy, and who, during his three years at Vassar College, won for himself a place of leadership in the intel- lectual life, and of admiration and affection among members of the faculty and students alike. Professor Geiger was born June 26, 1880 in Frankfurt- on-Main. He received the Ph.D. degree at the Univer- sity of Munich where he later began his teaching. In 1923 he was appointed to the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Gbttingen where he remained until 1933, when he was called to Vassar College to assume the James Monroe Taylor chair of Philosophy and the chairmanship of the department. While Professor Geiger attained distinction in several highly special- ized fields of Philosophy, the most characteristic aspect of his work was the wide scope of his interests and the high degree of familiarity he showed in all branches of Philosophy. He himself believed his con- tribution to the field of Aesthetics the one of most importance, but those who knew him best knew that he cherishd the hope of working out a still more com- plete philosophy of Mathematics than has appeared heretofore. Already in his book on the science of Mathematics he had attained results which prompted Hilbert, the great German mathematician, to say that Professor Geiger was the first philosopher since Leibnitz to contribute importantly to the science of Mathematics. In this college Professor Geiger's contributions were made quietly, gracefully and forcefully, always with a breadth of vision and a sense of proportion. In the class-room his lectures were both artistic and scholarly, displaying as did his private conversations a vast erudition, discipline and integrity of mind that were a constant stimulation to those who came in contact with him. In his human relations he showed a kindliness, wisdom and sparkle that won for him an I / 1 1 1 I I 5 i 1 1 ! 1 i i 1 1 I i MORITZ A. GEIGER (Continued) enduring place in the affections and respect of his fellows. He was a philosopher, in life as in study. His philosophy of life is epitomized in one of his letters when he wrote, "Philosophy is not worth- while if it does not strengthen the ability of think- ing and of self-control-" Margaret Rawlings Dey Vernon Venable C. Mildred Thdmpson IX - 407
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Title: Gow, George Coleman, 1860-1938 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Milinowski, Marta, Baldwin, James F., Woodruff, Edith S.
Description
Date: [After 1938]
Text: GEORGE COEEMAN GOW ‘ 1860 - 1938 Vassar College sorrowfully records the passing on January 12 of George Coleman Gow, for thirty-seven years Head of the Music Department, lately Profes- sor Emeritus, distinguished musician and teacher, pioneer in American college music. Called to Vassar in 1895, he had already made a brilliant beginning in the publication of "The Struc- ture of Music", a vital and original embodiment of his ideals of music study. As Head of a college de- partment in...
Show moreGEORGE COEEMAN GOW ‘ 1860 - 1938 Vassar College sorrowfully records the passing on January 12 of George Coleman Gow, for thirty-seven years Head of the Music Department, lately Profes- sor Emeritus, distinguished musician and teacher, pioneer in American college music. Called to Vassar in 1895, he had already made a brilliant beginning in the publication of "The Struc- ture of Music", a vital and original embodiment of his ideals of music study. As Head of a college de- partment in-the-making, his culture and musicianship, his versatility and adaptability, were of the utmost importance. He began as teacher of theory, history, organ, and as organist and choir director. Finding the supply of music available for the choir inade- quate, he was stimulated to enter upon the most pro- ductive period of his life as a composer. His carols and anthems are distinguished by characteristic melodic charm and loftiness of sentiment. One of his arrange- ments, "Peace, I leave with thee", has become a Vas- sar tradition as the closing response in the chapel service. During these years he found time to write a treatise entitled "Harmony", published in the Ameri- can Encyclopedia of Music, which reaffirms his ideals,- ideals from which he never deflected, though repeated- ly thwarted in their realization. He believed that music should be studied as a whole, including theory, history and practise, and deplored the prevalent policy of accrediting music only in part. After twenty-two years of patient insistence, his judgment finally pre- vailed, and.music was raised to the place of dignity that it new holds in the curriculum. As the department grew and new teachers were added, he selected them with keen appreciation of their abilities and capacities. He was a wise and kindly administrator Modestly he sacrificed his personal preferences in order to offer to each colleague the fullest opportunity for individual development, evidently realizing the depart- ment's ultimate need of a more specially trained staff. He was always mindful of the place music should hold in the life of the comunity. He brought concerts and re- citals to the college, directed the Glee Club, spon- sored the Founder's Day Song Contest. Beyond the col- lege itself his influence extended to the Dutchess I i i i ! \ ¢ \ i I r l ! 1 ! GEORGE COEEMAN GOW (Continued) County Musical Association, of which he was more than once president, to the Music Teachers National Associa- tion, of which.he was one time president, and also to the Internationale Musik-Gesellschaft. At length the long cherished hope was realized in a new Music Building in which he had the satisfaction of presiding for a year before his retirement. There, built in a wall is a bronze bas-relief in profile which was presented to the college by devoted students and choir mebers as a constant reminder of the warmth and friendship which he radiated. Not only as a memory'but also as a continuous influence, his life work remains with us. Marta Milinowski James F. Baldwin Edith 3. Woodruff IX - k2?
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Title: Griffin, Carroll Wardlaw, 1900-1959 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Brooks, Richard A.E., Plunkett, Mary Alys, Linner, Edward R.
Description
Date: [After 1959]
Text: 3-7 CARROLL WARDLAW GRIFFIN 1900 - 1959 Carroll Wardlaw Griffin died on May M, l9S9 after twenty- seven years of service at Vassar College. The faculty record his sudden and untimely death with a keen sense of loss and a deep appreciation for what he did for the college during these years. Almost half his life was spent as a member of this faculty and during this time, he so lived as to have gained the friendship and respect of his colleagues, his students and his friends in the community...
Show more3-7 CARROLL WARDLAW GRIFFIN 1900 - 1959 Carroll Wardlaw Griffin died on May M, l9S9 after twenty- seven years of service at Vassar College. The faculty record his sudden and untimely death with a keen sense of loss and a deep appreciation for what he did for the college during these years. Almost half his life was spent as a member of this faculty and during this time, he so lived as to have gained the friendship and respect of his colleagues, his students and his friends in the community outside of the college. He began his teaching in the South after graduating from Clemson College in South Carolina. He studied at the University of Virginia where he earned the degree of. Doctor of Philosophy. His particular field was analytical chemistry, though most of his research up to ten years ago had to do with the adsorption of gases by solids and with some phases of extraction equilibria. The soundness and worth of these studies havebeen recognized by investigators in the field of contact catalysis and analytical procedures, for one finds references to his researches in treatises on these subjects. His textbooks in analytical chemistry deal with both qualitative and quantitative aspects. They reveal his concern with the logical development of ideas and with the exact expression of them. At the time of his death, he was in the midst of preparations for a third book. Carroll had a vital interest in his profession of scientist and teacher. His membership in various professional societies attests to this; he was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of Phi Lambda Upsilon and Sigma Xi, honorary scientific societies. As a member of the American Chemical Society, he did everything within his power to draw together chemists and chemical engineers of this community for the discussion and considera- tion of their common interests and problems. Carroll was one of the founders of the Mid-Hudson Section of the American Chemical Society, served as its second Chairman, and at the time of his death was a member of the High School Liaison Committee for promoting the teaching of science in high school. Membership in the American Association of University Professors was not a passive matter to him, for he had con- tinuing interest in the actions of this organization and 8.6 CARROLL WARDLAW GRIFFIN (Continued) applauded any movement which tended to dignify the pro- fession of teaching. That he cared about affairs at Vassar College was evidenced by his willingness to serve on many academic committees; and his long period of service as a member of the Committee on Research and finally as its Chairman demonstrated how devoted he was to doing the very best that he could for Vassar and the Vassar faculty. Carroll Griffin's liking for people and his interest in teaching and research combined with his friendliness, humor and courage, made him a rare teacher. His present and former students, in letters which they have written in these last weeks, speak of their admiration and respect for him and the things for which he stood; and they describe him as we all know him. They all refer to him as "a fine man, anzble leader, and a friend." They speak of his influence in stimu- lating an interest in chemistry and of what this interest has meant to them in their years at college and the years that followed. One of his graduate students writes of her "two good years at Vassar" and goes on to write "certainly I was a long way from being his most brilliant student but I doubt if any of the others derived more personal satisfaction from the accomplishment or a deeper respect for Carroll as a teacher and a friend." As an alumna put it, "I felt that when I really needed (to) talk, I could go to him. _He gave me much needed advice on many problems." Other students recall his spirit of fun and his humor. Still others recognized the demands that he made on himself and others to maintain what he con- sidered to be a good way of life. One needs only to read such statements as the following to understand this. "He not only imparted his knowledge of chemistry to us but by his presence the knowledge of warmth and goodness in people "Those of us who have known him have benefitted from his uncompromising struggle for truth and honor and from his living example of patience and understanding." I1 0 One cannot forget two totally different aspects of Carroll Griffin's personality. He got a great deal of pleasure out of some of the simple activities on campus and many people recall the fun that he had in taking a Very active part in the student-faculty baseball game on Founder's Day. Even more one remembers that Carroll could disagree with one and yet never lose a sense of friendship and regard for the other person. 89 CARROLL WARDLAW GRIFFIN - (Continued) It seems fitting to close this Memorial Minute with his own words taken from the introduction to one of his books, an introduction on which he lavished much care, thought and time and in which unwittingly he characterized himself. "Here then is the opportunity for joy; the joy of finding the tasks which lie ahead worthy of the effort, the joy of constructing a pathway cleanly ' penetrating what was once strange land, and the joy of commanding new knowledge aid new skills. Here, at last, we shall find the satisfaction that, having crossed this barrier, we are better seasoned for the further travels. And as each such barrier is met and crossed the disclosure becomes ever clearer that the ultimate goal beyond is no mirage, but is reality itself, worthy of all the labor - and all the joy." Respectfully submitted, Richard A. E. Brooks Mary Alys Plunkett Edward R. Linner, Chairman XV - 168-170
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