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Title: Griffin, Charles Carroll, 1902-1976 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Olsen, Donald, Campbell, Mildred, Clark, Evalyn, Havelock, Christine, Marquez, Antonio
Description
Date: [After 1976]
Text: dl l Jl»).L»7' ,.Ll' f , 5 '4‘; ’-'Yé§ _‘ V 1.; 7 ' ‘ . ,1,-" 1"‘ fl < i . > V .;!r;_?=¢\- v R ,§§, At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held November seventeenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-six, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Charles Carroll Griffin was born on May 24, 1902, in Tokyo, where his father was Professor of Economics at the Imperial University. His family returned to the United States in 1913, settling in...
Show moredl l Jl»).L»7' ,.Ll' f , 5 '4‘; ’-'Yé§ _‘ V 1.; 7 ' ‘ . ,1,-" 1"‘ fl < i . > V .;!r;_?=¢\- v R ,§§, At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held November seventeenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-six, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Charles Carroll Griffin was born on May 24, 1902, in Tokyo, where his father was Professor of Economics at the Imperial University. His family returned to the United States in 1913, settling in Westboro, Massachusetts. Charles attended Harvard, receiving his B.A. in 1922. Then, seeking horizons beyond the academic, he was off to South America for seven years, two in Argentina and five in Uruguay,'in the employ of the National Cement Company. He returned home with an interest in Hispanic American culture and a knowledge of the Spanish language that were to last him the rest of his life. Beginning graduate work at Columbia, he also served as an instructor in Spanish there in 1930. His next venture the following year was as a Research Associate of the Library of Congress, to go to Madrid, where, enrolling at the Centro de Es- tudios Hist6ricos~~at that time perhaps the most significant concentration of liberal intellectuals in the Republic—-he supervised the transcription of historical documents in the Archives of Seville and Valladolid. The next year he was again at Columbia where in 1933 he was awarded the M.A. Nineteen thirty- four brought two important personal events: marriage to Jessica Frances Jones, a graduate of Reed College, and the acceptance of an instructorship in history at Vassar. The early forties brought a period of great concern in the United States for closer relations with Latin America. Men who knew the field were in demand, and Charles Griffin was ready to supply the need. In 1940 he went as exchange professor to the Universidad Central in Caracas, Venezuela, the first United States citizen to serve under the program set up by the Buenos Aires Convention for International Cultural Relations. A letter written later by the Director of the university to our ambassador pointed out that "Dr. Griffin's lectures W€re the first ever given in a school of higher learning in Venezuela . . . regarding the discovery, the conquest and the colonization of North America.” An article in a Venezuelan magazine in 1941 characterized him not as the typical "fat, red—faced North American", but as an aristocratic Castilian: until one heard his "slight Anglo—Saxon accent", one might have mistaken the tall, slender professor for a resident of Burgos or Segovia in a play by Lope de Vega or Calderbn. It might have added, "or a portrait by El Greco." Charles came back to Vassar in 1941, as associate professor; but was off again in February 1943 to the State Department in Washington, where he served as Assistant Chief of the Division of Liaison and Research in the Office of American Republics Affairs. He returned to Vassar in 1944, this time to a full- professorship. Charles served as visiting professor at many places including Columbia, Oé» _, r. I. C, -2- Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Wisconsin, and at the Universidad de Chile. But happily for Vassar he always returned here where his own course in South American history had entered the curriculum, a break—through in the tradition that most history offerings should deal with our European background and the United States. For years it was traditional that every member of the department should teach the one introductory course offered, a survey of European civilization. Charles later regaled his younger colleagues with accountsci'his struggles to cope with "all those popes and emperors." Although most of his teaching at Vassar was in United States political and diplomatic history, his scholarly work lay entirely in Latin America. At in- tervals he represented the United States as forwarder of pan-American affairs, in Chile in 1950 and in Ecuador in 1959, in l962 at the Salzburg Seminar on American Civilization, and as delegate to the Conference on Contemporary Latin American History at Bordeaux. He published four books on Latin American history (one with a Spanish translation, one written in Spanish and published in Ca- racas), and was contributing author to five others. (A selective bibliography is appended to this Minute.) In addition he contributed articles to practical- ly all the scholarly periodicals in his field, and also to the more general historical journals. His last major scholarly achievement was as editor-in- chief of Latin America: A Guide to Historical Literature (1971), the first inclusive bibliography in that field. His place as leader among Latin American historians was recognized first by appointment to the Board of Editors of the Hispanig American Historical Review, and as Managing Editor from 1950 to 1954. In 1970 the Conference on Latin American History gave Charles its "Distinguished Service Award", in the form of a handsome plaque which, characteristically, he kept trying to hide from view. Few of his colleagues or students at Vassar were aware of the extent of his scholarly activities or of his international reputation. "Charles is such a modest chap," wrote his chairman on one occasion, "that it is only when one digs it out of him that it becomes evident" how extensive his achievements and honors were. Self—doubt, humility, and an awareness of his own frailties made him wonderfully understanding of the anxieties of others, and made him the best of all people to turn to for sympathetic advice. Countless colleagues, friends, and students could say, with Sarah Gibson Blanding, ". . . when things got really tough I could always talk with Charles and knew without any doubt I was getting the best and most unbiased opinion possible. Of all my colleagues I counted on him the most." At Vassar Charles served four terms as chairman of the history department. For the last two years before his retirement in 1967 he was first Acting Dean of Faculty and then Dean of Faculty. He felt a deep commitment to the local community outside the college, and took an active part in politics. Among other activities he served on the Dutchess County Committee of the Democratic Party and as Director of the Dutchess County Council on world Affairs. In 1968 he became the first Executive Director of the Associated Colleges of the Mid-Hudson Area, and from 1968 to 1970 served on the Board of Trustees of the Southeastern New York Library Resources Council. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Marist College, and in 1969 became secretary of the Board. But it was as a member of this faculty that we knew Charles best. For him, loyalty to Vassar was no mere catch—phrase, but involved him in genuine financial, ///“ / /:>8 I3? and perhaps even professional sacrifice. He turned a deaf ear to offers to return to the State Department at a salary far above anything Vassar could give him. He did the same to other attractive offers from the Rockefeller Foundation, Stanford, U.C.L.A., and Cornell because, to quote a letter from his chairman to President Blanding, "of his interest in working at an institu- tion in which he believed as heartily as he does believe in what we try to do at Vassar." In February 1950 Miss Blanding wrote him while he was Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin, enclosing a new contract, saying, "I hope like fury you are going to feel like signing. We have missed you and . . . have kept our fingers crossed wondering if Wisconsin was going to wean you away from us. As you can see, we have jumped your salary . . . which I am sure is not as much as Wisconsin could pay you [in fact, Vassar's new offer was only two-thirds what Wisconsin was paying him], but is all we can stretch at the moment." Charles happily accepted the economic sacrifice and returned to Vassar. He, of course, would not have called it a sacrifice. He had abundant ex- perience of great universities, and none of them gave him the intense intellectual and emotional satisfactions that Vassar did: students who delighted in and responded to his broad-ranging intellect and provocative, questioning teaching; colleagues who could be waylaid for speculative discussion or riotous argument; department, comittee, and faculty meetings in which he could observe the wit and cantankerousness, wisdom and perversity, mental agility and abnormal psy- chology of his colleagues. He took affectionate delight in displays of insti- tutional absurdity and human folly, which Vassar offered in prodigal abundance. Charles never forgot what it had been like to be a young, inexperienced instructor, ”. . . Newer and younger [faculty] members . . . instinctively feel him to be their friend,” his chairman once wrote. One of them later recalled: "I first knew Charles at a crucial time in my life—-at the beginning of my career. He quickly became for me a kind of mentor, such as I had never in graduate school . . . By watching him in action in faculty meetings . . . talking to him at faculty tea, or simply chatting with him on an evening . . . I got some idea of what it meant to be a scholar, a teacher, and a man of integrity. Charles and I had our differences--we really were not very much alike——but his example for me was central to my life." Charles came to Vassar at a time when, as he recalled three decades later, "the college . . . was more self—contained than it is today." The Vassar comunity dominated the social as well as the professional lives of a large proportion of the faculty. Depending on their tastes, they used it as a vast salon in which to hammer out their ideas in friendly yet critical company, as a stage on which to develop and display their eccentricities, or a kind of en- counter group in which to express their inner hostilities and aggressions. Charles did his best to maintain the notion of the faculty as an intellectual community even into the fifties and sixties, when outside at“factions, whether professional or personal, were drawing the attention of both zaculty and student body away from the college. It was a mystery how Charles managed to produce the extraordinary bulk of his publications and pursue his professional activities on top of a heavy teach- ing load. For he always seemed to be found in the back parlor of Swift, in the Retreat, or at faculty tea, engaging in anecdote or argument, covering every -4- subject under the sun. ". . . His intellectual curiosity was insatiable, as his fund of knowledge was almost fathomless," one colleague recalls. ". . . What I think of most in connection with him was not just his helpfulness and companionability," writes another, "but those glorious, continuous, shimmering days and nights we all had at Raymond Avenue. That for me was the Golden Age . . . we all belonged to Charles's extensive, amusing, and beautifully domestic- ated world." Charles played an active role in Vassar politics, serving on most major committees, and as president of the local chapter of the A.A.U.P.; in the 1930's he was much involved with the Teachers‘ Union. He firmly believed in maintain- ing the authority of the faculty as a corporate body, and in seeing that the body exercised its powers wisely and responsibly. when Alan Simpson was inau- gurated as President, Charles spoke in the name of the faculty. "The Faculty of Vassar College has never been a placid, harmonious body," he warned the new president. "Because of our nature as questioners, our training as critics, and our diverse associations and interests we are likely to provide opposition as well as support to your endeavours." Charles spoke often in faculty meetings, and one never could be sure in advance what stand he was going to take on an issue. while his commitment to basic principles—-academic freedom, faculty power, individual liberties--never faltered, he embodied the definition of an intellectual as one who is continual- ly and systematically questioning his own opinions. He belonged to no camp, and voted and acted as his conscience and intellect directed. Impressive as he was in faculty meeting, Charles was at his best in a small group, late at night. He delighted in the varieties of human nature, the in- tricacies of thought, and the techniques of politics. But above all he loved conversation. For him, as for Dr. Johnson, conversation offered the best alle- viation for the pain of existence. It was his chief joy, a means of adding to his stock of knowledge, of encountering new ideas--the more subversive and he- terodox the better--and of savouring the pleasures of articulate sociability. Of colleagues in other disciplines he could ask a simple, sincere, and yet so basic a question that one found oneself rethinking ideas long taken for granted. Charles was a moderate historical relativist, for whom the conviction that absolute certainty was an imposible ideal was.not a depressing, but an ex- hilarating belief. For he enjoyed the process of debate more than he cared about the outcome. But while pragmatic and flexible in his approach both to questions of historical truth and educational policy, he never abandoned his moral convictions for the sake of expediency. Intensely sensitive to personal attaﬁksv he 8¢ted a¢¢0rdin9 to his conscience as chairman, as dean, and as individual, never swerving from what he was convinced was his duty for the sake of popularity or a quiet life. President Simpson has summed up the qualities for which we loved Charles: "A dearer man we never knew--gentleman, scholar, wit. I never saw him without thinking of the motto of New College, Oxford——‘Manners makyth man‘. He was . . . a model of good sense, good-heartedness, and fidelity. when I asked him for help he always replied that he would do anything for Vassar—-and did so." -5- Respectfully submitted, ,\ ..1 . _ Donald Olsen, Chairman Q ’ ), ~c , / _.' / ¢ , ‘ _,, 1',‘ /{/,» . .' / \ , , / I '/’-»»1,‘(-"// ~ ,.“/ ~" rt 4, , j M " .>~'L, ( J‘.-1, Mildred Cani'pbe 11 .'/ I 22,,/;j£, J Evalyn Clark ..-/c’. " - - ‘" ,-‘W. V \ A/~" ' - ~ / Christine Havelock A 1./1. ‘:1/1 4 Antonio Marquez / /0 /// _6_ ¢v'¢~€¥¢z»/>1 C-_C, > Bibliographical Note His publications include The United States and the Disruption of the §panish Empire, 1810-1822 (1937), Latin America T1944); The National Period in the History of the New World (1961, with Spanish translation in 1962), and Los Temaspsociales y Economicos de la Epoca de la Independencia (published in Caracas in 1961). He edited and contributed to Concerning Latin American Cu1tur§_(l940), and contributed chapters to Ensayos sobre la Historia del Nuevo Mundo (Mexico, 1951), a commemorative volume in honor of Emeterio Santovenia (Habana, 1958), Conocimento z_desconocimento en las Americas (1958), to vol. XI of the new edition of the Cambridge Modern History on Latin America, 1870-1900 (1961), and to A.P. Whitaker, ed., Latin America and the Enlightenment (1961). In addition he contri- buted articles to the Hispanic American Historical Review, the Haryland Historical Magazine, the IntereAmerican Quarterly, Revista de Historia de America, Boletin de la Academia de Historia (Caracas), Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale, and the Vene- zuelan RevistafNaciona1 de Cultura. His last major scholarly achievement was to edit the bibliographical volume, commissioned by the Library of Congress, Latin ‘ America: A Guide to Historical Literature (1971). 17 I W ' 7 " 'J—.
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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: Kempton, Rudolf T., [?]-1975 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Pierce, Madelene E., Mucci, Joseph F., Lumb, Ethel Sue
Description
Date: [After 1975]
Text: I ‘X \ r ~,. , x. 1.. Q - / Q . x_;Mf- At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held May twelfth, nineteen hundred and seventy-six, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Rudolf T. Kempton came to Vassar College in l937 as Professor of Zoology and three years later was appointed Chairman of the De- partment. He held the degrees of B.S. from Bates College, M.A. from Columbia University and Ph.D. from New York University. Prior to his appointment at Vassar he had thirteen years of...
Show moreI ‘X \ r ~,. , x. 1.. Q - / Q . x_;Mf- At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held May twelfth, nineteen hundred and seventy-six, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Rudolf T. Kempton came to Vassar College in l937 as Professor of Zoology and three years later was appointed Chairman of the De- partment. He held the degrees of B.S. from Bates College, M.A. from Columbia University and Ph.D. from New York University. Prior to his appointment at Vassar he had thirteen years of experience in research and teaching at New York University, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Princeton University. He was a member of several professional societies and at different times was elected to national office in the Society of General Physiolo- gists and the American Society of Zoologists. Rudolf possessed great natural ability and a special personal charisma. He was a man of integrity and courage who would stand and fight, if need be, for justice, equality of opportunity for women and blacks, and other basic principles of a democratic society. He took special pride in being a member of the college volunteer fire department and he numbered among his friends most of the college workmen as well as faculty, administrators and students. Throughout his adult life Rudolf maintained an enthusiastic interest in people, teaching and research. He held firm beliefs in the value of a liberal arts education for women and of the importance of an under- standing of biological concepts and research methods as an integral part of that education. For twenty-six years he taught a two- semester course in General Zoology. After the merger of the Depart- ments of Zoology, Plant Science and Physiology he became one of the Directors of the new General Biology course. The major thrust of his teaching was the nature of scientific investigation and the y interrelationship between fundamental research and application of knowledge to problems of the individual and society. He believed that students should see scientists as real people and not demi- gods cloistered in “ivory laboratories". Rudolf frequently illus- trated his lectures with examples from his own research experience and that of his friends. Generations of zoology students fondly remember his stories about the great and near-great biologists with whom he associated during summers at the Woods Hole Marine Biologi- cal Laboratory. In addition to teaching, Rudolf served the College in important leadership roles. He was Chairman of the Department of Zoology for a total of twenty-two years. During the Presidency of Miss Blanding he served on the Advisory Committee for many years. Older faculty f*~%t-. iv 5* qgv -2.. will remember when as Budget Representative he gave the faculty lucid explanatLons, complete with colored graphs, of the college budget. Rudolf took seriously his responsibility of representing the faculty point of view in conferences with Miss Blanding. He was always ready to discuss a professional problem with any faculty member or to engage in general discussion of college issues. We all knew where and when to find Rudolf. Every morning after completing his eight o'clock class he would pick up his mail from the post office and then go to his unofficial "office", The Retreat. As he drank a second cup of coffee, friends or students joined him. These conversations, and sometimes heated debates, often extended the so called “office hour“. Several times during his tenure at Vassar Rudolf was involved in planning for a new biology building. Before his retirement he saw the start of the plans that resulted in Olmsted Hail, but he never saw the completed building. Of equal importance in Rudolf's life were his teaching at Vassar College and his research, which was largely carried on at his beloved Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Summers spent there were important to him intellectually and socially. He enjoyed the contact with fellow scientists, and the seminars and re- search conversations kept him abreast of what was new and exciting in biological research. The excellent library, laboratory and animal supply made his research activities a pleasure. He was a Trustee of the Marine Biological Laboratory for eighteen years and played an active role in the administration of the Corporation. Rudolf's research concerned the structure and function of the kidney. At the beginning of his career he was a member of research teams who pioneered in important research on kidney function. His own early work dealt with the chick embryo and species of amphibians, but he became especially interested in the Elasmobranch fishes and the role their excretory system plays in adapting the animal to its aquatic environment. Contrary to the hostile feeling about sharks and their relatives held by most laymen, Rudolf regarded these animals as the most fascinating in the world. Many of his publications were based on the relatively small dogfish shark. While on a Vassar Fellowship in i955-56 he studied a variety of species of sharks, skates and rays at Marineland of the Pacific and Marineland of Florida. He is the author of numerous publications. During his later years at Vassar College and after his retirement, Rudolf began to compile a bibliogra- phy of the Class Elasmobranchii; unfortunately death came to him before he could complete this important monograph. During World War ll Rudolf took a leave of absence to serve as teacher and panelist in the U.S. Army's Educational Program. In l9#5-A6 he taught physiology at the U.S. Army's Shrivenham American University in England. For seven months he, with other experts, toured U.A. Army bases in Europe discussing with the soldiers problems relating to sex. An outcome of this experience was a book, "7 co-—authored with Dr. Fred Brown, entitled “Sex Questions and Answers“. This book, pubbished by McGraw-Hill, became a l95O Book of the Month alternate selection and was translated into Danish, Dutch and Portugese. When he returned to Vassar, Rudolf initiated and participated in the widely acclaimed Freshman Sex Panel. This was a question and answer session designed to give incoming students an opportunity for a frank and open discussion of sex. In many ways Rudolf was ahead of his time with respect to sex education. When Rudolf retired in l967, after thirty years of service to Vassar College, he left a void in the Department of Biology and the College Community. Until his death in l975, he maintained his con- tact with the community of biological scientists. Summers were spent as always in his home at Woods Hole and he continued to be active in the affairs of the Marine Biological Laboratory. Shortly. before retirement he built a winter home in St. Augustine, Florida, near the Marineland. Rudolf was a devoted family man. Of greatest -3- /O0 importance in his personal life was his wife,Elizabeth, his daughter, Laura, and his four grandchildren. His was a happy and active re- tirement until his terminal illness. Rudolf Kempton will long live in the memory of those of us who knew him Respectfully submitted, Madelene E. Pierce Joseph F. Mucci Ethel Sue Lumb, Chairman
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Title: Scaravaglione, Concetta, 1900-1975 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Barber, Leila C., Havelock, Christine M., Pommer, Linda Nochlin
Description
Date: [After 1975]
Text: fr- ~/@/ . 5/ -' bi x ~ - / ,;€§§;f;éQ~ ‘ “l!!!!!, Concetta Scaravaglione, l900-1975 At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held May eleventh, nineteen hundred and seventy—seven, the following Memorial, was unanimously adopted: ‘I For sixteen years, from i952 until i967 - Concetta Scaravaglione was a part-time Lecturer in the Art Department. Coming up by train each week from her studio-home in New York City, she taught the art of sculpture, quietly and sensitively, encouraging her...
Show morefr- ~/@/ . 5/ -' bi x ~ - / ,;€§§;f;éQ~ ‘ “l!!!!!, Concetta Scaravaglione, l900-1975 At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held May eleventh, nineteen hundred and seventy—seven, the following Memorial, was unanimously adopted: ‘I For sixteen years, from i952 until i967 - Concetta Scaravaglione was a part-time Lecturer in the Art Department. Coming up by train each week from her studio-home in New York City, she taught the art of sculpture, quietly and sensitively, encouraging her students to find their own way rather than to echo her own. Concetta was a small, but wiry and energetic woman, with a piquant sense of humor. She was warm-hearted and affectionate, but she was primarily a determined creative artist with a steady and serious regard for the integrity and significance of her craft. Concetta Scaravaglione was born in New York on July 9, l900, one of nine children of Italian parents. As a very young girl she expressed an interest in art and at l6 she entered the National Academy of Design and later at the age of 2l she studied at the Art Students League. Before coming to Vassar in l952, she taught at the Educational Alliance in New York, the Masters In- stitute in New York, New York University, Sarah Lawrence and Black Mountain College. Her distinction was recognized many times: in l935 she was awarded the Widener Gold Metal at the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts and Letters; she received a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in l9#5 and in l9h7 she was the first woman to recieve the Prix de Rome for study of the fine arts at the American Academy in Rome. In the late 50's and 60's she served frequently as a judge in art contests in New York State and New Jersey. Her sculptures were exhibited widely: at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, Pennsylvania Academy, Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Arizona State College, Dartmouth, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum all own examples of her work. However, those of us who were at Vassar in i967 remember with pleasure the retrospective exhibition of Concetta's sculpture held in the Art Gallery. She modelled in clay, she carved in wood and stone, she cast bronze and she was one of the first American sculptors to explore the technique of welding metal. One of the most expressive and haunting examples of her work - a large Woman Walking in copper (l96l) — stands today in _. _ .._-..<_ . 7- .___._,....._..__... .<-»----q---<-qp...i, ﬂliﬁw nu. Wiﬂﬁﬁmma ¢ I » i -2- the Vassar Art Gallery. When applying for a leave in I962, Concetta wrote as follows: “I wish to refresh and extend my knowledge of classical works of art. In order to do this, I will travel for the first time to Greece and Crete and visit again such places as Paestum and Florence, Italy.“ Indeed a kind of classical spirit is always felt in her art: the human figure was her special subject; it is always recognizable; movement, tension yet clarity of feeling are conveyed by her often elongated forms. During an interview with a reporter from the Magazine of Art Concetta once said: "If, in the ordered work of sculpture, I can convey something of my unconscious conception of beauty, and my absorbed enjoyment in the work, if the stone or the clay or the wood is not too obstinate, if it seems to be on friendly terms with me, then I am profoundly happy.“ Concetta died of cancer on September 2#, I975, in New York. Leila C. Barber Christine M. Havelock Linda Nochlin Pommer MaY ll, I977
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Title: Stone, Lawrence Joseph, 1912-1975 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Smith, Henrietta T., Constantinople, Anne P., Sadowsky, Stephen
Description
Date: [After 1975]
Text: 3 ,~ M 7-11 _ \ Q . V /r ./ ‘n . /'9' , "xiii, 7 ;,/-,;j; LL‘ / O J g _ <_» . . ‘\__\;\(:_;\, Lawrence Joseph Stone, 1912-1975 At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held May eleventh, nineteen hundred and seventy-seven, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Lawrence Joseph Stone received his undergraduate degree from Cornell and his Master's and Doctoral degrees from Columbia. He taught for various periods at Columbia, Sarah Lawrence, and Brooklyn...
Show more3 ,~ M 7-11 _ \ Q . V /r ./ ‘n . /'9' , "xiii, 7 ;,/-,;j; LL‘ / O J g _ <_» . . ‘\__\;\(:_;\, Lawrence Joseph Stone, 1912-1975 At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held May eleventh, nineteen hundred and seventy-seven, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Lawrence Joseph Stone received his undergraduate degree from Cornell and his Master's and Doctoral degrees from Columbia. He taught for various periods at Columbia, Sarah Lawrence, and Brooklyn College, before coming to Vassar in 1939 as an instructor in the Child Study Department. With the exception of two years spent in the Dept. of Psychiatry of the U.S. Public Health Service during the war, Joe was an integral part of Vassar life until his untimely death on December 13, 1975. Joe's original training and research had been in Experimental Psychology; he was hired by the Child Study Department at Vassar because of the work he had done at Sarah Lawrence filming children for a study of normal personality development. As a result of his early teaching at Vassar, Joe's enduring professional interests emerged: Personality Development, Projective Techniques, Psycho- therapy (he maintained a small private practice for years), making films about personality development in normal children, and Child Advocacy (he found it ironic that the American Psychological Association had proclaimed a code of ethics for the handling of laboratory animals many years before they took similar action with respect to human subjects). The Vassar Film Program be un under the auspices of Mary Fisher Langmuir (now Essex?, then Chairman of the Child Study Department, became a unique vehicle for the teaching of Child Development courses across the country and in Europe. Joe made 3A films in his lifetime, including many which won professional awards; 10 films were produced at the request of the Office of Economic Opportunity for use in training Head Start personnel. His final three films were made in Israeli Kibbutzim, adding to the cross-cultural perspective that he had already introduced in films of Greek and Austrian communal child—rearing. Because of Joe's many and various professional interests, he was particularly suited to introduce a wide range of nontradition- al courses in the Child Study Department, and he was a stimulating teacher. (The enduring quality of his influence in the classroom and in the field was recently made visible by the more than 300 former students and colleagues who returned to Vassar for the 1 /0""/‘ -2.. conference in his honor in March of this year.) The fact that the Department has always included an outstanding Nursery School provided both an empirical and theoretical basis for the study of children, which taught both students and incoming faculty members the importance of accurate observation of child behavior, in evaluating the validity of a particular theoretical orientation. The times and the state of the art dictated that the primary orientation of the Child Study Department through the l9#0's and l95O's was toward the training of teachers and the preparation of young women for motherhood. It is a testimony to Joe's flexibility that, by the time of the merger of the Child Study and Psychology Departments in I965, the curriculum of the Child Study Department had already moved in the direction of more rigorous study of psychological development throughout the life- span. ln addition to numerous articles and reviews, Joe Stone's text, Childhood and Adolescence written with Joe Church, essentially revolutionized the writing of text books in the field. Its radical departure seems very obvious now, but it was the first text to present the individual as an integrated organism developing over time. The traditional text had sliced the child (or our knowledge of him) into such areas as perceptual development, cognitive development, and social development, leaving it difficult if not impossible to see how development in one area influences behavior in another. The "Two Joe's“ were beginning work on the Fourth Edition of Stone 8 Church at the time of Joe's death. Over the years,_Qhildhood and Adolescence has been translated into Spanish, Dutch, French, and other languages. Joe's last major publication, coauthored with Lois Murphy and Henrietta Smith, was a monumental work which again provided a breakthrough in the field of child development. Entitled “The Competent infant,“ this volume not only pulled together the major contributions to research in infancy, historical as well as contemporary, in a selection of readings, but also contained beautifully lucid criticisms and directions for future research in the chapter introductions. The punning (many of them “Groaners"); the twinkle in the eye; the pointed but never malicious wit; the pain over misuse of language; the love of jazz and his delight in knowing obscure musicians and their works, his encyclopedic knowledge of psychology and his personal acquaintance with people who were doing important work in the field, both those who were well-known and those who were just beginning; his persistence in the face of obstacles (which were sometimes us); his delight in children and children's easy responsiveness to him; and his joy in lavishing the good 1 -3- things of life on his colleagues in the form of huge thick rare steaks. All of these things stand out in our memories of Joe. He delighted in the role of Paterfamilias, both with his own family and with his colleagues and friends. He frequently used his ability as a raconteur and his seemingly infinite knowledge of jokes--old and new, good and sometimes bad—-to lighten moments of stress or tension. In his last years, Joe's big house on Raymond Avenue was alive with wave after wave of daughters, sons-in-law, and S grandchildren. These years seemed an almost ideal fulfillment for so uxorious, gregarious, epicurean, fun-loving, child-loving, and jazz-loving a man. Respectfully Submitted, ' Henrietta T. Smith Anne P. Constantinople Stephen Sadowsky
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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: Thompson, C. Mildred, 1881-1975 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Clark, Evalyn A., Drouilhet, Elizabeth M., Schalk, David L.
Description
Date: [After 1975]
Text: C. MILDRED THOMSON —- 1881-1975 V .4 (‘ (' L ~ --l._. / kl w;s;,. tum - :_ 41'“ L, . / -t _ v ,‘ 4 . - 4 ~ v _\‘_."; __.\ .‘ \ - - . Q‘-F’ -"1 -__ _ 1.. _r- At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College P held October twenty-second, nineteen hundred and seventy-five, the following Memorial - was unanimously adopted: C. Mildred Thompson, one of Vassar's most distinguished alumnae and for many years Professor of History and Dean, died on February l6, i975, in her ninety...
Show moreC. MILDRED THOMSON —- 1881-1975 V .4 (‘ (' L ~ --l._. / kl w;s;,. tum - :_ 41'“ L, . / -t _ v ,‘ 4 . - 4 ~ v _\‘_."; __.\ .‘ \ - - . Q‘-F’ -"1 -__ _ 1.. _r- At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College P held October twenty-second, nineteen hundred and seventy-five, the following Memorial - was unanimously adopted: C. Mildred Thompson, one of Vassar's most distinguished alumnae and for many years Professor of History and Dean, died on February l6, i975, in her ninety-fourth year. After graduating with Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in l903, Miss Thompson attended Columbia, from which she received her M.A. and Ph.D.. In l935 she was awarded an Honorary L.L.D. from Oglethorpe University. i In l908, Miss Thompson returned to Vassar as instructor and in l923 was appointed Professor and Dean, positions she held until her retirement in l9h8. She was a woman of firm principles and extraordinary energy While Dean she taught one course in the Department, History 360, "America from the Civil War to the Present.“ From the mid-l93O's onwards, she directed senior tutorials, which were the equivalent of full courses and culminated in a written thesis. ' Her influence on the college was felt in many areas. For example, in l9l7 the Committee on Admissions was established, with Miss Thompson as Chairman., The following year, she instituted a change in the traditional procedure of admitting qualified appli- cants solely in the order of their date of registration: 50 places were held out for applicants taking competitive examinations. This number gradually increased until the 30's, when all candidates were required to take college entrance examinations for admission. Parallel to her concern for academic excellence was her in- terest in making it possible for young women of ability but lesser means to attend Vassar. She worked unstintingly to acquire funds for scholarships. in reco nition of these efforts, the Board of Trustees established in l9E2 the C. Mildred Thompson Scholarship Fund. - ~ In curricular matters she was a true educational pioneer, always willing to accept change, and her brilliant Centennial Ad- dress in l96O showed that this willingness increased with the years From the time of her appointment as Dean, she took the lead in re- visions of the Vassar curriculum - in the late l92O's reducing thei number of required courses and introducing independent study. In l9h3, she led in the development of a plan for earning the degree Q .676 g C. Mildred Thompson Memorial Minute ~4%qnr€hr in three years by adding a ten-week term to the regular two term year. This shorter term made possible the introduction of the first inter-disciplinary courses, including “Today's Cities," “The Tennessee Valley Authority,“ and a major in "Problems and Principles of Recon- struction," to list only a few. The Three Year Plan, never adequately financed and never supported by all the faculty, was terminated in the "Back-to-Normalcy“ following the end of the war, but some of its ex- perimental provisions were continued or subsequently re-introduced into the curriculum. g Miss Thompson's duties involved a great deal of contact with students, and she was revered, loved, and feared by many generations at Vassar. Each entering freshman had to sign the Matriculation Book in her presence, an experience many found awe-inspiring. In i924, an early date for such a program, she set up the first formal psy- chiatric service for students. in l93l, she established the Board of Residents replacing the former Wardens in order to bring closer the life of the classroom and the life of the dormitory. - She maintained a lively intellectual curiosity, and with President MacCracken founded a group known as “Pot Luck." Each year the President and Dean invited eight members of the faculty, some old, some new, to meet with them once a month. At each meeting one of the faculty would report on his or her research, providing an opportunity to share in discussion and understanding of scholarly work in other disciplines. Dean Thompson, a native of Atlanta, was a specialist in the history of the South. Her best-known book was Reconstruction in Georgia, published in l9l5, which dealt with “the world she had in- herited from her parents.“ it has recently been reprinted in two different editions. She wrote in a crisp, clear, straightforward style, never mincing or wasting words, and in the l94O's tried her hand, most effectively, at radio journalism. She traveled to New York to broadcast the program, “Listen, the Women“ weekly over WJZ. She was also a great success on “Information, Please,“ receiving a number of invitations to participate. A memorial for her ninety- second birthday reports that among her souvenirs was an autographed picture of Harpo Marx, with the caption: “To Mildred from her pin- up boy, Harpo. I heard you yesterday, Baby, and you were really on the beam!" Harpo asked for an autographed photo in return. Miss Thompson sent a picture of her Yorkshire terrier, Becky, with the 7 inscription: “Love me! Love my dog!“ Miss Thompson was a friend of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, and often a guest at Hyde Park. When Roosevelt came to speak in front of the old Poughkeepsie Post Office, for he did campaign in Dutchess, County, even though he never carried it, she would be there with a group of banner-waving Vassar students to greet him. She was especi- ally active in the l936 campaign, chairing an “Educators' Committee -11 C. Mildred Thompson Memorial Minute ik@K»8<- for the Re-Election of President Roosevelt.“ Other members of that Committee included Presidents Marion Park of Bryn Mawr, Meta Glass of Sweet Briar, Constance Warren of Sarah Lawrence, and Mary Wooley of Mount Holyoke. A brief sampling of Miss Thompson's many achievements beyond the confines of Vassar might include her service as the only woman member of the United States Delegation to the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education held in London in the Spring of l9Ah. She flew both ways across the Atlantic in a military aircraft, her first introduction to air travel. On the day of her return she came to faculty tea announcing that she had had breakfast in London, and that she had been the only woman on the plane. All this at age 622 Later, as an outgrowth of that wartime conference, she was a member of the American Delegation to draft the UNESCO Charter, along with Senator Fulbright and Justice Frankfurter. " When she left Vassar in l9h8 she was selected by Time Magazine as the only woman on its list of eminent faculty retiring that year. lime portrayed her as an "outspoken feminist,“ an "internationalist,“ and an “F.D.R. Democrat,“ in that order. Though Time may not have“ meant it as a compliment, Miss Thompson did not protest this descrip- tion. - After her retirement, she taught history at the University of Georgia. Some members of the Varsity football team were in her course and she claimed that her greatest challenge was to get them sufficiently interested in the material for her to be able to give them passing grades... In l952-53, she served as Dean of Women at the College of Free Europe in Strasbourg, a school for exiles from Communist coun- tries. She remained active in civic and cultural affairs in Atlanta for many years thereafter. Since l96A, thanks to the generosity of an Alumna who has wished to remain anonymous, the Department of History has been able to offer the C. Mildred Thompson lectures. Distinguished historians from other universities are invited to lecture and to conduct classes, and these semi-annual events have become an institution in the depart- ment, almost a part of the curriculum, and a great benefit to students and faculty alike. They will provide an ongoing tribute to a bril- liant, courageous and independent-minded woman, whose influence will be felt as long as there is a Vassar. A Respectfully submitted, ~ V Evalyn A. Clark, '2h, Professor Emeritus of History , Elizabeth M. Drouilhet, '30, Dean of Residence ‘ David L. Schalk, Associate Professor and Chairman, Department of History
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Title: Sward, Sven, [?]-1975 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Ranzoni, Francis V., Pfuetze, Paul E.
Description
Date: [After 1975]
Text: Attachment #2 ¢»“*"*\‘ svtn SWARD -- v - 1975 23 .. W ,. - 3 ~ -. 3,‘. \* . '» ' 54 J‘ . ,1 - 9' >,'\ ' ,1 - 3 7 - .- _/ '7 \ _ _)_/~> .. At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held December seventeenth, nineteen hundred A and seventy-five, the following e Memorial was unanimously adopted: it is all but superfluous, to say nothing of being hackneyed as well, to state that Sven Sward was an uncommon man. From l95H until his retirement in i975, he...
Show moreAttachment #2 ¢»“*"*\‘ svtn SWARD -- v - 1975 23 .. W ,. - 3 ~ -. 3,‘. \* . '» ' 54 J‘ . ,1 - 9' >,'\ ' ,1 - 3 7 - .- _/ '7 \ _ _)_/~> .. At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held December seventeenth, nineteen hundred A and seventy-five, the following e Memorial was unanimously adopted: it is all but superfluous, to say nothing of being hackneyed as well, to state that Sven Sward was an uncommon man. From l95H until his retirement in i975, he was, in addition to his regular duties, a highly respected and effective teaching member of first, the Department of Plant Science, and then, the Department of Biology. Throughout the years of planning and throughout all the architectural alterations in the plans, his was the only name that ever appeared on the drawings and it remained on the drawings nearly to the final set. Although it was a difficult act to follow, Sven Sward took on the teaching of horticulture two years following the retirement of Henry Downer. Between Sven Sward and Henry Downer, Vassar has en- joyed the rare good fortune of having had half a century of dis- tinguished and inspired teaching of the science, as well as the art, of growing plants. Though not a flamboyant man and given to letting the plants speak for themselves, Sven Sward still communicated his very special feeling for plants, be they weeds or orchids. Over the years, the horticulture course had quietly grown from a small handful of students to one of the most eagerly desired courses in the Biology curriculum. For the fall of l975, nearly one hundred students, all prospective seniors, stood in line for hours to pre- register for the l6 available places. His abilities as a profes- sional horticulturist may be equalled only at places like Kew Gardens or the greenhouses of Alsmeer. ‘ _ ’ Plants did have a special meaning for him. It seemed as though each one had for him its own particular spirit, each tree its own particular dryad. This feeling was communicated more by example than by precept. One merely had to observe him with plants. One story is told of him that illustrates this: One day while he was on his rounds of the campus, he found in the woods by Vassar Lake an American chestnut that had survived the blight and had produced a crop of chestnuts. His comment to his companion was, “This has been a good day“. - in addition to the horticulture class, he had his other duties. He had been Superintendent of Grounds since I952. You all know what that entailed. He saw to it that: snow was scraped from the roads and shoveled from the walks; lawns were fertilized and cut and in V ~__ ._.___.__._.___.-_ _ _.____ .__ _.._...n. $_-\-aw < in I _ _21_" . ._. the fall raked of leaves; trees were trimmed and the ancient, tired, diseased and the deoarted ones removed - and as a conse- quence supplied firewood to the Vassar community; the horticul- ture greenhouses near Skinner were maintained, and thereby cut- flowers of a quality second to none were produced for the college. His tree and shrub nursery over the years has helped to fill the- gaps left by the casualties of the Dutch Elm disease, the Ash blight and Maple dieback. y There was not a tree on the Vassar campus unknown to him. To an already remarkable collection of plants he had added many interesting specimens: The Maakia, a Manchurian specimen by Ely; gTilia euchlora, the Crimean Linden, between the New England Build- ing and Avery; two Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the Dawn Redwood, a Chinese native, one by Strong and one by Olmsted. He propagated, by cuttings, the branch mutation he found on one of the Spruce trees near Main and the President's House. Those cuttings, now over twenty years old and all of three feet tall he had planted in front of the Olmsted Greenhouse. The four maples, now more than 2O years old in the Science Quadrangle of Chemistry, Physics and Biology were grown from seed and planted by Sven Sward. Acer griseium, the paperbark maple, also a native of China, he had i planted in a copse of Japanese maples in the Dormitory Quadrangle. Vassar's only araleaceous tree, Kalopanax, a gift from the Harvard Arboretum, he had planted between Olmsted and Sanders Physics. The daffodils on the hillside on the east side of Sunset Lake are his doing. "The reason they look as though Nature had done it rather is because after the soil was spaded over and prepared, he stood in the middle of it and tossed handsful of bulbs into the air; they were planted where they fell. lt is some measure of the man that although an old Georgia pecan had to be cut down when Olmsted was built, he threatened to nail the builders hide to the Vassar Farm barn door if the §tewartia trees, one at each end of Olmsted, were harmed in any way. The two trees are there, hale and hearty. ln a way, this Memorial Minute is unnecessary. Sven Sward has dozens of living memorials, growing almost everywhere you may look, anyplace you may walk on the Vassar Campus. ' Respectfully submitted, Francis V. Ranzoni O Paul E. Pfuetze 773/
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Title: A Program of Chamber Music by The Composers Quartet
Description: 1 of 3. Schubert, Franz (1797-1828). Quartettsatz in C minor, D. 703: Allegro assai [performed by Composers Quartet: Raimondi, Matthew (violin), Ajemian, Anahid (violin), Zaratzian, Harry (viola), Rudiakov, Michael (cello), guest]. 2 of 3. Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827). Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 [performed by Composers Quartet: Raimondi, Matthew (violin) Ajemian, Anahid (violin), Zaratzian, Harry (viola), Rudiakov, Michael (cello), guest]. 3 of 3. Dvorak, Antonin (1841-1904). Qui...
Show more1 of 3. Schubert, Franz (1797-1828). Quartettsatz in C minor, D. 703: Allegro assai [performed by Composers Quartet: Raimondi, Matthew (violin), Ajemian, Anahid (violin), Zaratzian, Harry (viola), Rudiakov, Michael (cello), guest]. 2 of 3. Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827). Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 [performed by Composers Quartet: Raimondi, Matthew (violin) Ajemian, Anahid (violin), Zaratzian, Harry (viola), Rudiakov, Michael (cello), guest]. 3 of 3. Dvorak, Antonin (1841-1904). Quintet in A major, Op. 81 for piano and strings [performed by Crow, Todd (piano), faculty; Composers Quartet: Raimondi, Matthew (violin) Ajemian, Anahid (violin), Zaratzian, Harry (viola), Rudiakov, Michael (cello), guest].
Skinner Recital Hall
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Date: 04/03/1974, 8:30 PM

Title: Carol Droste, mezzo-soprano, Member of the Class of 1973
Description: 1 of 23. Rossi, Luigi (1598-1653). Gelosia (Cantata a voce sola) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 2 of 23. Handel, George Frideric (1685-1759). Rinaldo (Aria: Cara sposa) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 3 of 23. Handel, George Frideric (1685-1759). Semele (Aria: O Sleep, why dost thou leave me) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (pi...
Show more1 of 23. Rossi, Luigi (1598-1653). Gelosia (Cantata a voce sola) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 2 of 23. Handel, George Frideric (1685-1759). Rinaldo (Aria: Cara sposa) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 3 of 23. Handel, George Frideric (1685-1759). Semele (Aria: O Sleep, why dost thou leave me) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 4 of 23. Handel, George Frideric (1685-1759). Siroe (Aria: Ch'io mai vi possa) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 5 of 23. Mahler, Gustav (1860-1911). Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 6 of 23. Mahler, Gustav (1860-1911). Ging heut' morgen uber's Feld (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 7 of 23. Mahler, Gustav (1860-1911). Ich hab' ein gluhend Messer (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 8 of 23. Mahler, Gustav (1860-1911). Die zwei blauen Augen (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 9 of 23. Ravel, Maurice (1875-1937). Chanson de la mariee (Cinq melodies populaires Grecques) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 10 of 23. Ravel, Maurice (1875-1937). La-bas vers l'eglise (Cinq melodies populaires Grecques) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 11 of 23. Ravel, Maurice (1875-1937). Quel galant m'est comparable (Cinq melodies populaires Grecques) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 12 of 23. Ravel, Maurice (1875-1937). Chanson des ceuilleuses de lentisques (Cinq melodies populaires Grecques) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 13 of 23. Ravel, Maurice (1875-1937). Tout gai! (Cinq melodies populaires Grecques) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 14 of 23. Barber, Samuel (1910-1981). At St. Patrick's Purgatory (Hermit Songs) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 15 of 23. Barber, Samuel (1910-1981). Church Bell at Night (Hermit Songs) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 16 of 23. Barber, Samuel (1910-1981). St. Ita's Vision (Hermit Songs) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 17 of 23. Barber, Samuel (1910-1981). The Heavenly Banquet (Hermit Songs) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 18 of 23. Barber, Samuel (1910-1981). The Crucifixion (Hermit Songs) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 19 of 23. Barber, Samuel (1910-1981). Sea-snatch (Hermit Songs) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 20 of 23. Barber, Samuel (1910-1981). Promiscuity (Hermit Songs) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 21 of 23. Barber, Samuel (1910-1981). The Monk and his Cat (Hermit Songs) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 22 of 23. Barber, Samuel (1910-1981). The Praises of God (Hermit Songs) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty]. 23 of 23. Barber, Samuel (1910-1981). The Desire for Hermitage (Hermit Songs) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), student; Ackere, Hugette van (piano), faculty].
Skinner Recital Hall
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Date: 04/18/1973, 8:30 PM

Title: The String Quartets of Bela Bartok
Description: 1 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 2, Op. 17 (1917) [performed by The Juilliard String Quartet: Mann, Robert (violin), Carlyss, Earl (violin), Rhodes, Samuel (viola), Adam, Claus (cello), guest]. 2 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 4 (1928) [performed by The Juilliard String Quartet: Mann, Robert (violin), Carlyss, Earl (violin), Rhodes, Samuel (viola), Adam, Claus (cello), guest]. 3 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 6 (1939) [performed by The Juilliard String Q...
Show more1 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 2, Op. 17 (1917) [performed by The Juilliard String Quartet: Mann, Robert (violin), Carlyss, Earl (violin), Rhodes, Samuel (viola), Adam, Claus (cello), guest]. 2 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 4 (1928) [performed by The Juilliard String Quartet: Mann, Robert (violin), Carlyss, Earl (violin), Rhodes, Samuel (viola), Adam, Claus (cello), guest]. 3 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 6 (1939) [performed by The Juilliard String Quartet: Mann, Robert (violin), Carlyss, Earl (violin), Rhodes, Samuel (viola), Adam, Claus (cello), guest].
Skinner Recital Hall
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Date: 04/16/1973, 8:30 PM

Title: The String Quartets of Bela Bartok
Description: 1 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 1, Op. 7 (1908) [performed by The Juilliard String Quartet: Mann, Robert (violin), Carlyss, Earl (violin), Rhodes, Samuel (viola), Adam, Claus (cello), guest]. 2 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 3, (1927) [performed by The Juilliard String Quartet: Mann, Robert (violin), Carlyss, Earl (violin), Rhodes, Samuel (viola), Adam, Claus (cello), guest]. 3 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 5, (1934) [performed by The Juilliard String ...
Show more1 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 1, Op. 7 (1908) [performed by The Juilliard String Quartet: Mann, Robert (violin), Carlyss, Earl (violin), Rhodes, Samuel (viola), Adam, Claus (cello), guest]. 2 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 3, (1927) [performed by The Juilliard String Quartet: Mann, Robert (violin), Carlyss, Earl (violin), Rhodes, Samuel (viola), Adam, Claus (cello), guest]. 3 of 3. Bartok, Bela (1881-1945). Quartet No. 5, (1934) [performed by The Juilliard String Quartet: Mann, Robert (violin), Carlyss, Earl (violin), Rhodes, Samuel (viola), Adam, Claus (cello), guest].
Skinner Recital Hall
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Date: 04/15/1973, 8:30 PM

Title: Student Recital
Description: 1 of 11. Dowland, John (1563-1626). Lady Hunsdon's Allemand [performed by Peterson, Karen (guitar), student]. 2 of 11. Dowland, John (1563-1626). Queen Elizabeth's Galliard [performed by Peterson, Karen (guitar), student]. 3 of 11. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). Sarabande and Double (from Suite No. 4 for Violin solo, Transcribed for guitar by Alexander Bellow) [performed by Peterson, Karen (guitar), student]. 4 of 11. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). In dir ist Freude (from the Orgelb...
Show more1 of 11. Dowland, John (1563-1626). Lady Hunsdon's Allemand [performed by Peterson, Karen (guitar), student]. 2 of 11. Dowland, John (1563-1626). Queen Elizabeth's Galliard [performed by Peterson, Karen (guitar), student]. 3 of 11. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). Sarabande and Double (from Suite No. 4 for Violin solo, Transcribed for guitar by Alexander Bellow) [performed by Peterson, Karen (guitar), student]. 4 of 11. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). In dir ist Freude (from the Orgelbuchlein) [performed by Herbst, Sherry (organ), student]. 5 of 11. Faure, Gabriel (1845-1924). Fantaisie, Op. 79 for Flute and Piano [performed by Laupheimer, Nancy (flute), Neely, Pat (piano), student]. 6 of 11. Byrd, William (1542 or 3-1623). Pavana: The Earle of Salisbury (from Parthenia) [performed by Kassel, Richard (harpsichord), student]. 7 of 11. Byrd, William (1542 or 3-1623). Galiardo (from Parthenia) [performed by Kassel, Richard (harpsichord), student]. 8 of 11. Arne, Thomas Augustine (1710-1778). Gigue (from Sonata No. 6) [performed by Kassel, Richard (harpsichord), student]. 9 of 11. Buxtehude, Dietrich (1637-1707). Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland [performed by Chang, Phyllis (organ), student]. 10 of 11. Teller, Richard (b. 1952). I heard a fly buzz (text of Emily Dickinson) [performed by Droste, Carol (mezzo-soprano), Heaton, Francis (flute), Laeuchli, Catherine ('cello), student]. 11 of 11. Schumann, Robert (1810-1856). Sonata No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22 [performed by Chlanda, Christopher (piano), student].
Skinner Recital Hall
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Date: 04/12/1973

Title: Organ Recital Barbara Allen, '73 and Mark Luther, '73
Description: 1 of 9. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). Christ lag in Todesbanden (From the Orgelbuchlein) [performed by Luther, Mark, '73 (organ), guest]. 2 of 9. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). Fantasia and Fugue in G minor [performed by Luther, Mark, '73 (organ), guest]. 3 of 9. Langlais, Jean (1907-1991). Pasticcio (from Livre d'Orgue) [performed by Allen, Barbara, '73 (organ), guest]. 4 of 9. Langlais, Jean (1907-1991). Meditation (from Suite Medievale) [performed by Allen, Barbara, '73 (organ),...
Show more1 of 9. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). Christ lag in Todesbanden (From the Orgelbuchlein) [performed by Luther, Mark, '73 (organ), guest]. 2 of 9. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). Fantasia and Fugue in G minor [performed by Luther, Mark, '73 (organ), guest]. 3 of 9. Langlais, Jean (1907-1991). Pasticcio (from Livre d'Orgue) [performed by Allen, Barbara, '73 (organ), guest]. 4 of 9. Langlais, Jean (1907-1991). Meditation (from Suite Medievale) [performed by Allen, Barbara, '73 (organ), guest]. 5 of 9. Langlais, Jean (1907-1991). Fantaisie (from Hommage a Frescobaldi) [performed by Allen, Barbara, '73 (organ), guest]. 6 of 9. Franck, Cesar (1822-1890). Cantabile [performed by Luther, Mark, '73 (organ), guest]. 7 of 9. Vierne, Louis (1870-1937). Carillon (from 24 Pieces en style libre) [performed by Luther, Mark, '73 (organ), guest]. 8 of 9. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). O Mensch, bewein dein Sunde gross (from the Orgelbuchlein) [performed by Allen, Barbara, '73 (organ), guest]. 9 of 9. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor [performed by Allen, Barbara, '73 (organ), guest].
Vassar College Chapel
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Date: 04/08/1973, 3:30 PM

Title: Luis Garcia-Renart, 'cello, Huguette van Ackere, piano
Description: 1 of 3. Shostakovich, Dmitrii Dmitrievich (1906-1975). Sonata for 'Cello and Piano, Op. 40 (1934) [performed by Garcia-Renart, Luis ('cello), Ackere, Huguette van (piano), faculty]. 2 of 3. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). Suite No. 2 in D Minor for Violincello solo, BWV 1008 [performed by Garcia-Renart, Luis ('cello), faculty]. 3 of 3. Prokofiev, Sergey (1891-1953). Sonata for 'Cello and Piano, Op. 119 [performed by Garcia-Renart, Luis ('cello), Ackere, Huguette van (piano), faculty].
Skin...
Show more1 of 3. Shostakovich, Dmitrii Dmitrievich (1906-1975). Sonata for 'Cello and Piano, Op. 40 (1934) [performed by Garcia-Renart, Luis ('cello), Ackere, Huguette van (piano), faculty]. 2 of 3. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). Suite No. 2 in D Minor for Violincello solo, BWV 1008 [performed by Garcia-Renart, Luis ('cello), faculty]. 3 of 3. Prokofiev, Sergey (1891-1953). Sonata for 'Cello and Piano, Op. 119 [performed by Garcia-Renart, Luis ('cello), Ackere, Huguette van (piano), faculty].
Skinner Recital Hall
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Date: 04/04/1973, 8:30 PM

Title: The Concord String Quartet
Description: 1 of 14. Rochberg, George (b. 1918). String Quartet No. 3 (1971-72) [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 2 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 1. (Tutti) Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 3 of 14. ...
Show more1 of 14. Rochberg, George (b. 1918). String Quartet No. 3 (1971-72) [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 2 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 1. (Tutti) Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 3 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 2. (Trio) Sounds of Bones and Flutes [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 4 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 3. (Duo) Lost Bells [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 5 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 4. (Solo: Cadenza accomagnata) Devil-Music [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 6 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 5. (Duo) Danse Macabre (Duo alternativo : Dies Irae) [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 7 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 6. (Trio) Pavana Lachrymae (Der Tod und das Madchen) (Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds) [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 8 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 7. (Tutti) Threnody II: Black Angels [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 9 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 8. (Trio) Sarabanda de la Muerta Oscura (Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds) [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 10 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 9. (Duo) Lost Bells (Echo) (Duo alternativo; Sounds of Bones and Flutes) [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 11 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 10. (Solo: Aria accompagnata) God-Music [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 12 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 11. (Duo) Ancient Voices [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 13 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 12. (Trio) Ancient Voices (Echo) [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest]. 14 of 14. Crumb, George (b. 1929). Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) for Electric String Quartet (1970) 13. (Tutti) Threnody III: Night of the Electric Insects [performed by Sokol, Mark (violin), Jennings, Andrew (violin), Kochanowski, John (viola), Fischer, Norman ('cello), guest].
Skinner Recital Hall
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Date: 03/11/1973, 8:30 PM
Text: THE - DEPARTMENT - OF - MUSIC ‘UASSAR COLLEGE March 11, 1973, at 8:30 o’clock SKINNER RECITAL HALL THE CONCORD STRING QUARTET Mark Sokol, violin John Kochanowski, viola Andrew Jennings, violin Norman Fischer, ’ccllo String Quartet No. 3 (1971-72) George Roc/lécrg Part A: I Introduction: Fantasia (ll 1918) II March Part B: III Variations Part C: IV March V Finale: Scherzos and Serenades INTERMISSION Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) George Crumo for Electric String Quartet ...
Show moreTHE - DEPARTMENT - OF - MUSIC ‘UASSAR COLLEGE March 11, 1973, at 8:30 o’clock SKINNER RECITAL HALL THE CONCORD STRING QUARTET Mark Sokol, violin John Kochanowski, viola Andrew Jennings, violin Norman Fischer, ’ccllo String Quartet No. 3 (1971-72) George Roc/lécrg Part A: I Introduction: Fantasia (ll 1918) II March Part B: III Variations Part C: IV March V Finale: Scherzos and Serenades INTERMISSION Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) George Crumo for Electric String Quartet (1970) (b. 1929) I. DEPARTURE (Tutti) T/zrenody I: Night of the Electric Insects (Trio) Sounds of Bones and Flutes (Duo) Lost Bells (Solo: Cadenza accompagnata) Devil-music (Duo) Danse Macabre (Duo alternativo: Dies Irae) U1-Phony-u II. ABSENCE 6. (Trio) Pavana Lachryrnae (Der Tod und das Méidchen (Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds) 7. (Tutti) T/zrenody II: BLACK ANGELS 8. (Trio) Sarabanda de la Muerta Oscura (Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds) 9. (Duo) Lost Bells (Echo) (Duo alternative: Sounds of Bones and Flutes) III. RETURN 10. (Solo: Aria accompagnata) God—music II. (Duo) Ancient Voices I2. (Trio) Ancient Voices (Echo) I3. (Tutti) Tlzrenady III: Nig/it of the Electric Insect: [over] This Concert is made possible under the Cooperative Music Program through the New York State Council on the Arts’ grant to the Hudson Valley Philharmonic Society and the ACMHA. Those who wish to meet the artists after the concert are cordially invited to a reception in Thekla Hall (4th ﬂoor). Wednesday, April 4 Faculty Recital: Luis Garcia-Renart, ’ce1lo, assisted by Huguette van Ackere, piano. Skinner Recital Hall, 8:30.
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Title: Vespro della Beata Vergine by Claudio Monteverdi presented by the Vassar College Choir, Jameson Marvin, Conductor, and the Lehigh University Glee Club, Robert Cutler, Conductor, and Orchestra with Soloists Bethany Beardslee, Soprano, Jon Humphrey, Tenor, Arthur Burrows, Baritone, Judith Fay, Soprano, Quentin Quereau, Tenor, Lawrence Weller, Baritone. Conduted by Jameson Marvin
Description: 1 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, I. Deus in adjutorum (Domine ad adjuvandum) [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 2 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, II. Psalm 109: Dixit Dominus [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 3 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643)...
Show more1 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, I. Deus in adjutorum (Domine ad adjuvandum) [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 2 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, II. Psalm 109: Dixit Dominus [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 3 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, III. Concerto: Nigra sum [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 4 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, IV. Psalm 112: Laudate pueri [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 5 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, V. Concerto: Pulchra es [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 6 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, VI. Psalm 121: Laetus sum [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 7 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, VII. Concerto: Duo Seraphim [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 8 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, VIII. Psalm 126: Nisi Dominus [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 9 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, IX. Concerto: Audi coelum [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 10 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, X. Psalm 147: Lauda Jerusalem [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 11 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, XI. Sonata sopra "Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis" [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 12 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, XII. Hymn: Ave maris stella [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest]. 13 of 13. Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643). Vespro della Beata Vergine, XIII. Magnificat (1. Magnificat anima mea, 2. Et exultavit, 3. Quia respexit, 4. Quia fecit mihi magna, 5. Et misericordia, 6. Fecit potentiam, 7. Deposuit potentes de sede, 8. Esurientes implevit bonis, 9. Suscepit Israel, 10. Sicut Locutus est, 11. Gloria Patri, 12. Sicut erat in principio) [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty; Lehigh University Glee Club, guest].
Skinner Recital Hall
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Date: 04/16/1972, 3:30 PM

Title: Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Music of the Fourteenth Century
Description: 1 of 26. Anon., English School (14th Century). Angelus ad Virginem [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 2 of 26. Johannes De Florentia (fl. 1340-1350). Ballata: Io son un pellegrin [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), g...
Show more1 of 26. Anon., English School (14th Century). Angelus ad Virginem [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 2 of 26. Johannes De Florentia (fl. 1340-1350). Ballata: Io son un pellegrin [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 3 of 26. Bologna, Jacopo da (fl. ca. 1350). Madrigal: Fenice fu' [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 4 of 26. Bologna, Jacopo da (fl. ca. 1350). Madrigal: Di novo e giunt 'un chavalier [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 5 of 26. Johannes De Florentia (fl. 1340-1350). Madrigal: O tu chara scientia [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 6 of 26. Anon. English. Stantipes imperfecta [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), guest]. 7 of 26. Anon. English. Trotto [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), guest]. 8 of 26. Anon. Italian. Lamento di Tristano [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), guest]. 9 of 26. Anon. Italian. Saltarello [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), guest]. 10 of 26. Anon. English. Stantipes [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), guest]. 11 of 26. Landini, Francesco (ca. 1325-1397). Ballata: Chi piu le vuol sapere [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 12 of 26. Landini, Francesco (ca. 1325-1397). Ballata: Ecco la primavera [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 13 of 26. Landini, Francesco (ca. 1325-1397). Ballata: Angelica bilta [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 14 of 26. Landini, Francesco (ca. 1325-1397). Madrigal-caccia: De! dinmi tu [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 15 of 26. Landini, Francesco (ca. 1325-1397). Ballata: Gram piant'agli ochi [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 16 of 26. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Ballade: Je puis trop bien [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 17 of 26. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Ballade: Tres douce dame [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 18 of 26. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Virelai: Douce dame jolie [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 19 of 26. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Ballade: De toutes flours [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 20 of 26. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Rondeau: Douce dame, tant com vivrai [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 21 of 26. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Ballade: Pas de tor en thies pais [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 22 of 26. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Ballade: Amours me fait desirer [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 23 of 26. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Double Hocket [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 24 of 26. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Virelai: Se je souspir [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 25 of 26. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Rondeau: Se vous n'estes [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest]. 26 of 26. Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377). Rondeau: Ma fin est mon commencement [performed by Feldman, Grace (vielle, viola da gamba, recorder), Hartzell, Adrienne (vielle, viola da gamba), Jordan, Paul (recorders, krummhorn), Querau, Quentin (tenor), guest].
Skinner Recital Hall
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Date: 03/15/1972, 8:30 PM

Title: Marshall, Howard D., 1924-1972 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Johnson, Shirley, Glasse, John, Albers, Henry, Herbst, Lawrence
Description
Date: [After 1972]
Text: Qé HOWARD D. MARSHALL 1924 - 1972 Professor Howard D. Marshall was born on April 9, 1924 in Poughkeepsie, New York. His parents were Smith and Florence Drake Marshall. He grew up in Dutchess County and attended local schools. He served in Japan and Okinawa in the United States Infantry in 1946. Professor Marshall attended Columbia College where he received his B.A. in 1947, his M.A. in l949, and his Ph.D; in 1954 in Economics. He came to Vassar College as an instructor in 1949 and served on...
Show moreQé HOWARD D. MARSHALL 1924 - 1972 Professor Howard D. Marshall was born on April 9, 1924 in Poughkeepsie, New York. His parents were Smith and Florence Drake Marshall. He grew up in Dutchess County and attended local schools. He served in Japan and Okinawa in the United States Infantry in 1946. Professor Marshall attended Columbia College where he received his B.A. in 1947, his M.A. in l949, and his Ph.D; in 1954 in Economics. He came to Vassar College as an instructor in 1949 and served on the faculty continuously from that time until his death in August, l972. During his time at Vassar he took several research leaves and spent the year 1955-56 as a Visit- ing Professor at Wesleyan University. He was promoted to Assistant Professor at Vassar in 1954, to Associate Professor in 1959 and became Professor in 1967. He was Chairman of the Department of Economics a number of times. In fact, there were many who thought of him as almost the permanent chairman because of his leadership of the Department. He taught a wide- ranging number of courses, and was competent in a surprising number of fields including Labor, History of Economic Thought, Money and Banking, Corporate and Government Finance and Economic Theory. His strong sense of independence kept him from ever succumbing to the "fashionable" in the academic marketplace. His high standards for academic excellence were evident in his writings and in his teaching. He provided great balance in the Department through the years, not only through his breadth of interests but also through the sense of continuity he gave even while welcoming change. He published a large number of articles in his fields and, at the time of his death had completed five books: The Mobility of College Faculties; The Great Economists; The History of Economic Thought; Business and Government; and Collective Bargaining. Several were jointly authored with his wife, Natalie Junemann Marshall. He was deeply committed to problems of the labor movement and particularly brought his insight to bear on the problems of education and educators. At the time of his death he was work- ing on a study of the labor market for public school teachers. $7 HOWARD D. MARSHALL - continued He was active at Vassar on a number of committees. And he was not only a staunch member of the AAUP who applied his professional interest in the mobility of college professors to the local situation, but a past president of the Vassar Chapter. Howard Marshall was one of those rare faculty members who grew up in the Vassar area. Throughout his life he chose to maintain close contact with the community from which he came. He was very active in the Dutchess County and Poughkeepsie community, both in a professional capacity and with respect to community organizations. Howard Marshall's interest in and love of the community led him to a variety of undertakings. He was Chairman of the board of directors of the Hudson Valley Council on Economic Education. He was a member of the New York State Council on Economic Education. He gave a course in Business Economics for several groups at IBM and in l955 and 1958 gave a series of lectures for the Cornell Extension Service on "Current Problems in Labor Relations." At the time of his death he was engaged in producing an index of business conditions for the local area. Howard Marshall was actively involved with many of the busi- ness and community leaders and always encouraged the Vassar students to undertake studies of the community and to sup- plement their classroom knowledge with field work in local banking and investment institutions. In addition, he was the director of the Vassar—Wellesley Summer Internship Program in Washington, D. C. in 1961. This program provided an opportu- nity for juniors to learn about various aspects of national government by working in offices in the nation's capital. He was a well known figure in economics, and was listed in a number of directories including "Who's Who in America," "Contemporary Authors," "American Men of Science," and "Who's Who in Education." He was a member of a number of professional organizations including the American Economic Association, Industrial Rela- tions Research Association, and the National Tax Association. Y? HSWARD D. MARSHALL - continued He was a devoted family man who gave much to his wife, Natalie, and two children, Alison and Frederick Smith. His love of congeniality and friends brought many members of the Vassar community to his home, and we will long remember friendly evenings at Howard's. He had many friends from the Poughkeepsie comunity at large and those of us who joined him in gather- ings at his home always knew that our circle of friends would be widened as we met persons from all walks of life outside the academic community. Thus Howard served in many ways to narrow the gap between town and gown. Many of us now cherish friends we first met at Howard's home. But more than that we remember his warmth and friendliness, the good humour, kindly concern and understanding he brought to any situation, and the breadth of his knowledge as he talked with ease on many different subjects. Howard Marshall's home, located for many years across Raymond Avenue from the Main Gate of Vassar College was an important part of the Vassar community in another way. In it, he exempli- fied the role of the devoted teacher-scholar in a residential college. Senior seminars, picnics for majors, parties at gradu- ation, and gatherings after visiting lectureships were often held at the Marshalls. Here, as well as in the classroom, he imparted to generations of Vassar economics majors his values, an inner peace, a strong sense of justice, and a deep respect for life. Perhaps the most remarkable quality which Howard Marshall had was his courage and tenacity which let none of us at Vassar know how hard it must have been for him to carry on a more than full load of teaching, advising, departmental chairman and college activities cheerfully and with no sense of anything but all the time in the world when we came to him as friends and colleagues to discuss professional or other problems. His illness never curtailed his interests, nor his zest for life. There was a heroic quality to the way he refused to come to terms with the restraining demands of his illness. For Howard Marshall insisted upon living fully to the very end of his life -- without compromise. It was a victory he won through struggles that probably few of us know. Respectfully submitted, Shirley Johnson, Chairman John Glasse Henry Albers Lawrence Herbst ./ I r"
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Title: Christmas Concert
Description: 1 of 8. Adapted from plainsong phrases by Thomas Helmore, 1854. O come, O come, Emmanuel [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty]. 2 of 8. Ockeghem, Johannes (ca. 1410-1497). Missa Sine Nomine: Sanctu; Osanna; Benedictus; Osanna [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty]. 3 of 8. Isaac, Heinrich (ca. 1450-1517). Imperii proceres [performed by Vassar College Chorus, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), facult...
Show more1 of 8. Adapted from plainsong phrases by Thomas Helmore, 1854. O come, O come, Emmanuel [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty]. 2 of 8. Ockeghem, Johannes (ca. 1410-1497). Missa Sine Nomine: Sanctu; Osanna; Benedictus; Osanna [performed by Vassar College Choir, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty]. 3 of 8. Isaac, Heinrich (ca. 1450-1517). Imperii proceres [performed by Vassar College Chorus, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty]. 4 of 8. Porpora, Niccola (1685-1767). Magnificat [performed by Vassar College Choir, Kitamura, Kiyokazu (soprano), Teyler, Kathleen (alto), student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty] ; musicians provided through the Cooperative Music Program and the New York State Council on the Arts' grant of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic Society and the ACMHA. 5 of 8. Schutz, Heinrich (1585-1672). Motets from Geistlich Chormusik: Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt\; Es ist erschienen [performed by Vassar College Chorus, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty]. 6 of 8. Buxtehude, Dietrich (1637-1707). Wie shon leuchtet der Morgenstern [performed by Pearson, Donald M. (organ), faculty]. 7 of 8. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden (Motet VI) [performed by Vassar College Choir, Vassar College Chorus, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty] ; musicians provided through the Cooperative Music program and the New York State Council on the Arts' grant of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic Society and the ACMHA. 8 of 8. Luther, Martin (1483-1546). Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her (from Valentin Schumann's Geistliche Lieder, 1539) [performed by Vassar College Choir, Vassar College Chorus, student; Marvin, Jameson (conductor), faculty].
Vassar College Chapel
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Date: 12/12/1971, 7:30 PM

Title: Alumnae and Alumni of Vassar College celebrating their hundreth anniversary and The Department of Music present Sandra Browne, '68, mezzo-soprano assisted by Huguette Van Ackere, piano
Description: 1 of 25. Schubert, Franz (1797-1828). Aufenhalt (Schwanengesang, no. 5) (Poem by Rellstab) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 2 of 25. Schubert, Franz (1797-1828). Nacht und Traume, op. 43, no 2. (Poem by Max Von Collin) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 3 of 25. Schubert, Franz (1797-1828). Der Tod und das Madchen (Poem by Matthias Claudius) [performed by van Ackere,...
Show more1 of 25. Schubert, Franz (1797-1828). Aufenhalt (Schwanengesang, no. 5) (Poem by Rellstab) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 2 of 25. Schubert, Franz (1797-1828). Nacht und Traume, op. 43, no 2. (Poem by Max Von Collin) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 3 of 25. Schubert, Franz (1797-1828). Der Tod und das Madchen (Poem by Matthias Claudius) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 4 of 25. Schubert, Franz (1797-1828). Gretchen am Spinnrade, op. 2 (Poem from Goethe's Faust) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 5 of 25. Brahms, Johannes (1833-1897). Botschaft, op. 47, no. 1 (Poem by Daumer) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 6 of 25. Brahms, Johannes (1833-1897). Meine Liebe ist grun, op. 63, no. 5 [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 7 of 25. Brahms, Johannes (1833-1897). Liebestreu, op. 3, no. 1 [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 8 of 25. Brahms, Johannes (1833-1897). Der Tod, das ist die kuhle Nacht, op. 96, no. 1 [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 9 of 25. Brahms, Johannes (1833-1897). Vergebliches Standchen, op. 84, no.1 [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 10 of 25. Mahler, Gustav (1860-1911). Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, 1883) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 11 of 25. Mahler, Gustav (1860-1911). Ging heut' Morgen uber's Feld (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, 1883) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 12 of 25. Mahler, Gustav (1860-1911). Ich hab' ein gluhend Messer (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, 1883) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 13 of 25. Mahler, Gustav (1860-1911). Die zwei blauen Augen (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, 1883) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 14 of 25. Britten, Benjamin (1913-1976). A cradle song (A charm of lullabies, opus 41) (Poem by William Blake) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 15 of 25. Britten, Benjamin (1913-1976). The Highland Balou (A charm of lullabies, opus 41) (Poem by Robert Burns) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 16 of 25. Britten, Benjamin (1913-1976). Sephestia's Lullaby (A charm of lullabies, opus 41) (Poem by Robert Greene) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 17 of 25. Britten, Benjamin (1913-1976). A charm (A charm of lullabies, opus 41) (Poem by Thomas Randolph) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 18 of 25. Britten, Benjamin (1913-1976). The Nurse's Song (A charm of lullabies, opus 41) (Poem by John Philip) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 19 of 25. Manuel de Falla (1876-1946). El pano moruno (Siete Canciones populares Espanolas) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 20 of 25. Manuel de Falla (1876-1946). Seguidilla Murciana (Siete Canciones populares Espanolas) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 21 of 25. Manuel de Falla (1876-1946). Asturiana (Siete Canciones populares Espanolas) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 22 of 25. Manuel de Falla (1876-1946). Jota (Siete Canciones populares Espanolas) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 23 of 25. Manuel de Falla (1876-1946). Nana (Siete Canciones populares Espanolas) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 24 of 25. Manuel de Falla (1876-1946). Cancion (Siete Canciones populares Espanolas) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest]. 25 of 25. Manuel de Falla (1876-1946). Polo (Siete Canciones populares Espanolas) [performed by van Ackere, Huguette (piano), faculty; Browne, Sandra '68 (mezzo-soprano), guest].
Skinner Recital Hall
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Date: 10/24/1971, 8:30 PM

Title: Sague, Mary Landon, 1885-1971 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Asprey, Winifred, Hillis, Mary O., Linner, Edward R.
Description
Date: [After 1971]
Text: 5“! MARY LANDON SAGUE 1885-1971 Mary Landon Sague spent most of her life at Vassar College and in the City of Poughkeepsie. Like so many of her genera- tion of teachers at Vassar, she combined her duties as a member of the college family with those of the larger com- munity surrounding it. From her entrance as a freshman in 1903 until her death last March, her love of Vassar College and her interest in it never waned. She joined the faculty in 1909 as an assistant in Chemistry. Her long...
Show more5“! MARY LANDON SAGUE 1885-1971 Mary Landon Sague spent most of her life at Vassar College and in the City of Poughkeepsie. Like so many of her genera- tion of teachers at Vassar, she combined her duties as a member of the college family with those of the larger com- munity surrounding it. From her entrance as a freshman in 1903 until her death last March, her love of Vassar College and her interest in it never waned. She joined the faculty in 1909 as an assistant in Chemistry. Her long association with Chemistry 105 made fast friends of many generations of Vassar students. They recog- nized her worth as a teacher and her interest in them as an advisor. At her retirement and more recently at her death, many alumnae wrote with great affection telling how much hav- ing her as a teacher and friend had meant to them through the years. Rather early in her career the chairmanship of the Department of Chemistry was thrust upon her and imediately her genius for getting things done in an orderly fashion was given full play. She recognized certain shortcomings in the staff in Chemistry and began, by thoughtful appointment, to gather about her a staff of permanent, competent instructors. She was well aware of the needs of the library, too, and with the staff began to build up the collection of books and jour-' nals in the science. Perhaps Mrs. Sague was best known on the campus as the marshal of the faculty and for her direction of the affairs of the Comittee on Fellowships and Graduate Study. Members of the faculty had such faith in her ability and fairness in dealing with all aspects of the difficult task involved that they re- elected her chairman term after term for many years. Her service on comittees was sought but on this one she shone. As she approached retirement, she was asked to undertake the indexing of the faculty minutes. She accepted the assignment, hideous as it was in detail and magnitude. After four years of painstaking labor the Index of Faculty Minutes from 1965 to 1958 had been completed. At that moment in 1958, she must have been the leading authority on the history of the Vassar Faculty. $5’ MARY LANDON SAGUE (continued) Mrs. Sague without seeming effort organized her time so that she could enter fully into the life of the Poughkeepsie com- munity. Her service to the Vassar Brothers‘ Hospital in the years of its expansion from a small community venture to one that holds a dominant place in the Hudson Valley was invalu- able. She was on the Board of Directors of the Family Service Association (now the Family Counselling Service) and soon became its president and served as its presiding officer for many years. After her retirement from Vassar and from many community affairs, she was honored again and again by organi- zations in the city in recognition of her contributions. At its twenty-fifth anniversary dinner, the Poughkeepsie chapter of the American Association of University Women honored her as one of its founders and its first president. As late as 1965, she was the honored guest at a luncheon given by the United Fund. This was in recognition of the work that she had done for the Fund as a member of the board and finally as campaign chairman and president of the Comunity Chest as it was called in her day. She was proud of her Vermont heritage and did not let one for- get that her roots were there. Each sumer she returned to Greensboro, Vermont, a place she loved dearly. At the height of her career, it was particularly fitting that Middlebury College conferred upon her the honorary degree of Doctor of Science, recognizing her both as an educator and as a Vermonter. In the final analysis, though, Mrs. Sague's life was centered in Vassar College. She loved her college and worked consist- ently to keep it a great institution. The well-being of students was one of her primary concerns. She enjoyed teach- ing them. She liked to talk with them and her office was open all hours of the day for conference or just for casual conversa- tion. She used her resources anonymously to help many a student. She entertained them at her house in town. In her last annual report to the President submitted on June 28, 1951, she wrote: "Chemistry is a thrilling subject and teaching it is an enthral- ling, exciting profession." Teaching was her life. Mary Landon Sague was a scholar, a fine teacher and tireless worker and a devoted, charming friend. Winifred Asprey Mary O. Hillis Edward R. Linner I w r7
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Title: Lockwood, Helen Drusilla, 1891-1971 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Gleason, Josephine, Mace, Dean, Turner, Susan
Description
Date: [After 1971]
Text: 80 HELEN DRUSILLA LOCKWOOD 1891 - 1971 Helen Drusilla Lockwood, Professor Emeritus of English and from 1950 to 1956 Chairman of the Department, died in Seaford, Sussex, England, on March 27, 1971, at the age of seventy-nine. Miss Lockwood had retired from the college in 1956, after teach- ing here for twenty-nine years. Although for the last decade of her life she spent most of her time in England, she returned several times a year to Poughkeepsie, where she kept a residence; and she...
Show more80 HELEN DRUSILLA LOCKWOOD 1891 - 1971 Helen Drusilla Lockwood, Professor Emeritus of English and from 1950 to 1956 Chairman of the Department, died in Seaford, Sussex, England, on March 27, 1971, at the age of seventy-nine. Miss Lockwood had retired from the college in 1956, after teach- ing here for twenty-nine years. Although for the last decade of her life she spent most of her time in England, she returned several times a year to Poughkeepsie, where she kept a residence; and she continued until her death to be interested in the affairs of the college and in the Poughkeepsie community. Her substantial gifts to Vassar's Center for Black Studies in 1969 and 1970, and her confidence that the program was likely to contribute to the whole community reminded those who knew her of her belief in the interlocking concerns of learning in the classroom and life outside. Miss Lockwood was graduated from Vassar in 1912. She returned as a member of the faculty in 1927 after years of study, travel and teaching, which included a doctorate from Columbia in Compara- tive Literature and participation in several sumer sessions of the Bryn Mawr School for Women in Industry. Her published dis- sertation was a study of French working men and the English Chartists in literature from 1830 to 1848. Helen Lockwood had a lively sense of a tradition of great teach- ing at Vassar: a tradition of pioneering and originality. She wrote of an earlier faculty that was concerned not to copy other educational institutions but, and I quote "to recognize the needs of people and to meet them." If at its founding Vassar's first originality (recognizing the need of women to be educated) was "its classical curriculum designed to be equal to that of the best university in the country," the "standard of measure- ment" of these early leaders, she claimed, "was life itself. Maria Mitchell taking her students to Kansas to observe an eclipse of the sun in 1870 was no less characteristic than their reading Plato in Greek." She believed, then, that there was a tradition to perpetuate here, and she perpetuated it in her own way. 4 9i HELEN DRUSILLA LOCKWOOD (Continued) For her the great teacher of her student days was Lucy Maynard Salmon, the historian. "I cannot remember," Miss Lockwood wrote years later, "when Miss Salmon's realism was not a presence challenging all decisions." In l937 she made a dream of Miss Salmon's come true in the Social Museum, which she initiated and directed until economy dictated its end in l95l. The museum was described as "drawing on many departments for direc- tion in research and for scholarly substance, and on the community for raw materials" to produce exhibitions that were "creative exercises in the graphic representation of social facts." Miss Lockwood's course in Public Discussion was announced in the Alumnae Quarterly in 1933 as a development in the Depart- ment of English of its "tradition of social criticism and debate." The particular forerunners were the department's courses in Argumentation, which she had valued highly as a student. And there was her own enjoyable and impressive career in the extra- curricular debates that filled the old Assembly Hall in her student days. l9l2's Vassarion had set against her name the lines: In arguing, the simple heat . Scorched both the slippers off his feet. She liked, too, to think of this course, like the Poughkeepsie Forum in which she took part, as carrying on the American tradi- tion of debate around the cracker barrels of country stores. In the new course there was an explicit shift from argument to an arrival at consensus. But, however steadily held as a goal of discussion, consensus was not a compulsion. A colleague has recalled from faculty meetings and committees that her "incessant and tireless wars against cant and nonsense were perpetual encouragements to those who were weaker and less ener- getic in battle." Old students, too, remember that conviction was not sacrificed to consensus. In the teaching of literature and writing, her view of English as an art that begins in experience and gives form and vision to it was not unique in her department. But in the subjects she taught -- American Literature, Blake to Keats, The Contemp- orary Press -- her strong social interests gave a particular push to her efforts to bring her students to an understanding of the dynamics of a work of the imagination. An examination of language and its implications was, however, always essential to this activity, whether it be Wordsworth's great lines on the French Revolution, or the Declaration of Independence, or the students’ own writing (where she declined to let them be satisfied with easy verbal skills). Her conduct of the coordinating QL HELEN DRUSILLA LOCKWOOD (Continued) gr seminar in American Culture made students press back to the roots of their generalizations through language. One of her favorite images was of the misguided student - or faculty member - jumping from abstraction to abstraction as from tree to tree. Problems of communicating in the modern world; langu- age and imagination; the philosophy of free speech -- formed the context of writing and critical analysis in her famous course in The Contemporary Press, which she inaugurated two years after her arrival at Vassar and taught until her retirement. Miss Lockwood did not o'erleap the bounds of the discipline of English, as was sometimes charged; but in her urgency to con- nect it with large human concerns, she was bold to stretch them. An experimental course, Today's Cities, with New York there to study, probably came nearest to Helen Lockwood's conception of what Vassar should be doing. This course, offered by six depart- ments, under her chairmanship, in 1945 and 1946 engaged the full academic time of its twenty freshmen during the third term of Vassar's wartime curriculum. One characteristic of the temper of the post—war years as these teachers saw it was the growing impatience of young people with the gulf they experienced between the world of the classroom and the world without. Today's Cities, Miss Lockwood wrote, could lead them to "clearer conceptions of how the world works" and how poetry and sciences "when related to each other can illumine its struggles and help to direct them." Helen Lockwood was a stirring and memorable teacher. Coming from her, the not uncommon question, "Well, what's on your minds?" was bound to bring response, and then things began to happen. Some- times a young woman regreted having revealed her mind's contents, knew at once that she could not, would not, arrive at consensus with Miss Lockwood, and went her way, perhaps never to forgive or forget. But for others the experience was tonic. And for many alumnae being in her courses was one of the great events of their college years. There are those who remember Blake to Keats or American Literature as giving them hours of rich, heightened awareness; they instigated the Faculty-Alumnae meetings to revive the experience. And there are those who took from her a measure for their lives (as Helen Lockwood did from Miss Salmon); and those who have counted on her for support as they worked out their crises in talk or letters. Helen Lockwood sought vision and worth for her department as well as for students and for Vassar as a whole. Younger col- leagues, sometimes very different from her in cast of mind and HELEN DRUSILLA LOCKWOOD (Continued) in feeling, often took something from her that enlarged their conceptions of teaching and strengthened their own individual- ity. Her extraordinary intellectual vitality and interest in the world endured to the end of her life, as did her faith in the development of the critical intelligence and its power to do good. This faith was expressed in the phrasing of her will where she wrote that, after certain bequests to friends and to public institutions in Poughkeepsie and elsewhere, she was leaving the "residue and remainder of her estate" to Vassar College without restriction, "with the hope that my interest in the quality of teaching and my concern with pioneering in the reinterpretation and deepening of a liberal education will be remembered." Respectfully submitted, Josephine Gleason Dean Mace Susan Turner, Chairman /7 w 4 k
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Title: MacCracken, Henry Noble, 1880-1970 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Griffin, Charles C., Linner, Edward R., Mercer, Caroline G.
Description
Date: [After 1970]
Text: 7/ HENRY NOBLE MacCRACKEN 1880 — 1970 In his book of reminiscences, The Hickory Limb, President MacCracken calls the greatest gift to Vassar of his predecessor, President Taylor, "the group of really distinguished teachers he persuaded to come to its comfortable but sparsely furnished chairs." One can hardly define the single greatest gift to the college of President MacCracken himself, let alone describe the complex personality which was expressed in his various benefactions. But...
Show more7/ HENRY NOBLE MacCRACKEN 1880 — 1970 In his book of reminiscences, The Hickory Limb, President MacCracken calls the greatest gift to Vassar of his predecessor, President Taylor, "the group of really distinguished teachers he persuaded to come to its comfortable but sparsely furnished chairs." One can hardly define the single greatest gift to the college of President MacCracken himself, let alone describe the complex personality which was expressed in his various benefactions. But perhaps his overarching achievement here was to foster an academic comunity, one offering freedom, and governed increasingly by its citizens; a community dedicated to academic excellence and giving its students and faculty the opportunity to be, at the highest levels of imagination and critical thought, citizens of the world comunity. For him this was made possible not only by the faculty and the students but by the staff of employees, the Trustees, and the Alumnae. He came to Vassar a young man convinced that men should not govern women, and that the day of the benevolently despotic college president was gone. He discovered upon his arrival that the faculty was already on its way to self-government, and he supported his faculty in this. He had confidence in the increasing maturity of the students; his belief that they should have more say in their own education was reinforced by his study of the new free universitites of Europe after the end of the first world war. It was with his help and encourage- ment that the powers and right of Trustees, faculty, and students were set down in the Academic Statute of 1923, the forerunner of our present governance. He prized scholarship, but he saw it as including far more than a conventional study of the ordinary materials of learning. He found congenial the traditional Vassar emphasis upon the interconnections of the arts and social life, and of theory and practice in all fields; he strengthened this tradition. The college theatre was encouraged. New off-campus studies were set up, as were inter-departmental programs in the sciences and social sciences, some of them forerunners of our present environmental studies. He brought the college and the local community together, for he wanted the students to be, as he said, "citizens of the world, beginning with Poughkeepsie." HENRY NOBLE MacCRACKEN (continued) Good teaching and study were the center of all this. He sought in various ways to help the faculty teach better and to conduct the research and study necessary to this sort of depth and unity in education. Some of his methods were informal. A young instructor might tremble to be invited to join the Dean and the President in a faculty group called Pot Luck, but he had the opportunity to hear papers by his col- leagues in various fields and to contribute his own research. The students too were encouraged to enlarge their views of their situation; President MacCracken reminded them in chapel talks that they belonged to an old company of students going back to the mediaeval universities. During the two world wars that his administration saw, he showed them various ways in which they might serve society, one being by studying. The relationship between American students and teachers he saw as friendship in shared learning. He wrote: "The authority of the older person, based on experience and wider study, need not prevent the shared life, if it is held in reserve as needed, and if teacher and pupil are both of the community of scholars." He founded the Vassar Journal of Undergraduate Studies so that a larger scholarly world might read the works of our youngest scholars. With President MacCracken's belief in community and inter- connection went the conviction —- natural to an American democrat, teacher of Chaucer and Shakespeare, and participant in the drama -- that human variety is a value to be cherished. In the college this meant his diffusion of his sense that all students should have an equal chance to develop, in their own way, whatever power they had. The standards were very high. The rewards were not external, nor was competition presented as the basis of motivation. It was a true kind of academic freedom, as he said and believed: the freedom to gain knowledge and self—respect. Respectfully submitted, Charles C. Griffin Edward R. Linner Caroline G. Mercer I ~_. 1* 1 __
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Title: Wood, Jr., Frederic C., 1933-1970 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Glasse, John, Griffen, Clyde, Schalk, David
Description
Date: [After 1970]
Text: 77 FREDERIC C. WOOD, JR. 1933 - 1970 The Reverend Frederic C. Wood, Jr., former chaplain and associate professor of religion at Vassar College, died of acute leukemia on October 16, 1970 in Sanibel, Florida. Mr. Wood was thirty- seven years old. He is survived by his wife, the former Jane Louise Barber, and by three daughters, Jennifer, Elizabeth, and Barbara. Mr. Wood joined the Vassar faculty in 1967 after three years as an assistant professor and chaplain at Goucher College. Born in New...
Show more77 FREDERIC C. WOOD, JR. 1933 - 1970 The Reverend Frederic C. Wood, Jr., former chaplain and associate professor of religion at Vassar College, died of acute leukemia on October 16, 1970 in Sanibel, Florida. Mr. Wood was thirty- seven years old. He is survived by his wife, the former Jane Louise Barber, and by three daughters, Jennifer, Elizabeth, and Barbara. Mr. Wood joined the Vassar faculty in 1967 after three years as an assistant professor and chaplain at Goucher College. Born in New Rochelle, New York, he received a B.A. degree from Cornell University in 1954 after graduation from Deerfield Academy. From 1954 to 1957 he was a Naval intelligence officer and Russian crypto- linguist with the National Security Agency. In 1960, he received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Virginia Theological Seminary. In 1961, he received a Master of Sacred Theology degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York, and three years later he earned a Doctor of Theology degree from the same institution. Before moving to Goucher College, he served as an assﬁiant chaplain at Cornell and with Episcopal churches in New York and Richmond, Virginia. A specialist on the inter-relationships of psychiatry and religion, Mr. Wood lectured frequently before various civic and professional groups. His articles appeared in numerous jour- nals, including "Theology Today," "The Episcopalian," and "Pastoral Theology." He was the author of two books: Sex and the New Morality (1968) and Living in the Now (1970). I MI. Wood welcomed the contemporary movement toward what he liked to call a religionless Christianity, toward the living of a faith stripped of antiquated dogmas and rituals. In a journal that he kept during the early months of leukemia, he wrote, "I have never been religious. My illness has not changed that. But at the same time, my thoughts and feelings have been profoundly theological. I have been dealing with ultimate things - the meaning of life and death and the question of what is ultimately important (which is the question of God)." He knew that his understanding of biblical faith often was mis- interpreted, that some thought he sacrificed his Judeo-Christian roots in order to be contemporary while others thought he sacri- ficed relevance in order to maintain a particular tradition. He responded that the style of life described in Living in the Now 7'? FREDERIC C. WOOD, JR. - continued "is for me both relevant and traditional. It is the faith delivered to me as I perceive it in my time.... My wife and I often ponder that in over fifteen years of married life we have each radically changed. And yet we also know that we are the same people we were when we married. This is, I think, the same paradox. It illus- trates why flexibility in the forms of religious beliefs (in the name of their Spirit) is such an important dimension of my theology." Mr. Wood chose to live on the periphery of the institutional church because "this is the only position from which I can exercise the ministry I feel called to exercise." The role of college chaplain appealed to him because the student of today is less concerned with "playing church on campus" than with "becoming a fuller person, with discovering his identity in an anonymous society, and with hamering out values which are relevant to the moral dilemmas which he faces." Mr. Wood saw the task of the man of faith anywhere as witnessing to the values to which he is committed. The college chaplain, in particular, must be counted on the side of humanity against all those forces which tend to depersonalize the academic community. He also must "prick (its) social conscience in regard to the larger community which surrounds it." At Goucher and at Vassar, Mr. Wood gave himself early and fully to various civil rights projects and to leadership in the questioning of American policy in Viet Nam. In the fall of 1969 he co-sponsored a faculty caucus which might have become an effective force had he been able to continue his leadership. Because his views often spoke to the prevailing mood among faculty and students, he sometimes was surprised and amused by the contro- versy they aroused beyond the campus. But his response to those who attacked his views was often far more sympathetic than those who supported him realized. He understood the pain and the perils of social change as well as its necessity. In a sermon delivered early in 1968, he welcomed the new mood among students of criticiz— ing our laws and social order. But he added, "at the same time, I welcome it with ambivalent feelings. I suppose that is because I am still essentially a conservative where law and order are con- cerned. As a member of the much-maligned establishment - the same establishment of private secondary schools, WASPish upbringing, and ivy league colleges which has spawned many of you - I have some fundamental instincts of uneasiness at the prospect of any weakening of law and order. And I would think that those instincts are appropriate to others who do not share my background, since it has been my observation that the dissolution of law and order is finally more damaging to the disestablished and powerless than to 7‘? FREDERIC c. WOOD, JR. - continued the established and powerful." Mr. Wood's way with faculty and administrators, from whom he expected more and often discovered less, was equally direct. On October 31st and November 31st, 1969, this faculty debated the demands of the black students‘ sit-in. Already feverish from the leukemia that had not yet been discovered, Mr. Wood defended his unpopular cause, the ideal of integration, with an eloquence and lucidity which continue to haunt some of us. He never abandoned his conviction that only integration could bring about a true equality and meeting of black and white people. He was no utopian, but he had a vision of the way we must go. When he believed we were deviating from it, he could not keep silent. We miss that courage and that candor. We should be worried by his "suspicion that the wise men may not come to the academy any more." In Mr. Wood's words, "Just (like) the Church, so too our educational institutions, in our busy-ness, worldliness, and self-promotion may have no place for the wise men any more. It may be that we need a revolution in both the Church and the academy - revolution, in the best sense of that word, as referring not to violence or naked power-plays, but to change - a fundamental change in our understanding of what we are doing. Then the wise men may once again come, and offer their gifts and do their thing. Then we may teach one another to be more fully human." Respectfully submitted, John Glasse Clyde Griffen David Schalk / ‘ -; . r _.. 8 A» A , ,7 , .' -: ' Y, _. . 1' l ,l .,,, _. .; ,{,, / 7i =;,i,_
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Title: Milinowski, Marta, 1885-1970 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Myers, Margaret G., Groves, Earl W.
Description
Date: [After 1970]
Text: 73 MARTA MILINOWSKI 1885 - 1970 Marta Milinowski was Professor of Music at Vassar College from 1930 until her retirement in 1950. Born in Berlin of a German father and American mother, she began her musical studies in Hannover when she was but six and a half. Her first piano teacher was Maria Reinecke, sister of the famous conductor, composer, and pianist, Carl Reinecke. In 1899, the family left Germany to set- tle in Buffalo, New York where Marta prepared for college at the Masten Park High...
Show more73 MARTA MILINOWSKI 1885 - 1970 Marta Milinowski was Professor of Music at Vassar College from 1930 until her retirement in 1950. Born in Berlin of a German father and American mother, she began her musical studies in Hannover when she was but six and a half. Her first piano teacher was Maria Reinecke, sister of the famous conductor, composer, and pianist, Carl Reinecke. In 1899, the family left Germany to set- tle in Buffalo, New York where Marta prepared for college at the Masten Park High School and at Buffalo Seminary and continued her piano studies with Mrs. Frank Davidson. In 1902 she returned to Germany for a year of study at the Hochschule fﬂr Musik in Berlin. Such was Marta Mi1inowski's preparation when, in 1903, following her mother's example, she entered Vassar College. She completed the course in three years instead of the required four and was thus able to spend her entire junior year in Paris where she studied piano with Maurice Moszkowski and attended classes at the Sorbonne. After graduating with academic honors and membership in Phi Beta Kappa, she continued her studies with Buonamici in Boston, and with Breithaupt in Berlin, and began her long association as stud- ent, friend, and subsequent biographer of Teresa Carrého, the famed woman pianist who was one of the most able and colorful musicians of her age. Her debut as a pianist was in 1910 with the Berlin Philharmonic under Ernst Kunwald. Of her performance of three concerti, the Mozart A major, Beethoven C minor, and Schumann A minor, the press called her a "remarkable pianistic talent" whose work was "intelligent in conception and clear in form." Soon after her return from Europe in 1913 Miss Milinowski settled in Lake Forest, Illinois where she founded and directed the Lake Forest University School of Music and was appointed Professor of Music at Lake Forest College. There she remained until 1930, when, upon the retirement of Kate Chittenden with whom she had studied during her Vassar years, Marta Milinowski was appointed Professor of Music at Vassar. In a note to President MacCracken, Professor Gow noted that he and Professor Dickinson had found her "alive to the problems of handling applied music in college and interested in working them out." 74‘ MARTA MILINOWSKI - continued At Vassar, her teaching and her many recitals in the newly opened Skinner Hall won her the respect and admiration of the comunity. She also found time to bring to fruition her bio- graphy of Carreﬁo on which she had been at work for some years. This was published by Yale University Press in 1940 "in cele- bration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Vassar College." Retiring from.Vassar in 1950, Marta Milinowski simply trans- ferred her activities from "gown to town." That very year she appeared as piano soloist with, and accepted the presidency of, the Dutchess County Philharmonic Orchestra, an ailing organ- ization which she helped transform into the present Hudson Valley Philharmonic Orchestra. And for a full fifteen years she shared her rich musical experience with innumerable students from the Poughkeepsie area. Although failing physical and mental health at last forced her to terminate professional activity, Marta Milinowski was able, throughout her declining years, to main- tain the same warm and positive manner which had been character- istic of her. She died in Poughkeepsie October l, 1970. Respectfully submitted, Margaret G. Myers Professor Emeritus of Economics A Earl W. Groves Professor of Music, Chairman 9 , » ¢./~,;' .- :/\‘.>'a"‘~" ff.-» <’
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Title: Walker, Helen, 1915-1970 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Gregg, Richard, Griffin, Charles, Daniels, Elizabeth A.
Description
Date: [After 1970]
Text: 75 HELEN WALKER 1915 - 1970 Helen Walker, an instructor in Russian at Vassar from 1966 until her death in 1970, died on November 4th that year in Troy, New York after a long illness at the age of 55. Prior to 1966 after coming to this country from China, Mrs. Walker had served as a mainstay assistant in the Russian Department from 1946 to 1949 and as director of an eminently successful evening Russian pro- gram for teachers from 1962 to 1966. Born in Manchuli, Manchuria on June 10, 1915, the...
Show more75 HELEN WALKER 1915 - 1970 Helen Walker, an instructor in Russian at Vassar from 1966 until her death in 1970, died on November 4th that year in Troy, New York after a long illness at the age of 55. Prior to 1966 after coming to this country from China, Mrs. Walker had served as a mainstay assistant in the Russian Department from 1946 to 1949 and as director of an eminently successful evening Russian pro- gram for teachers from 1962 to 1966. Born in Manchuli, Manchuria on June 10, 1915, the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Alexander P. Bugaer, Helen Walker came to this country in 1946. Although she had forfeited all trace of her previous academic records in China, Mrs. Walker enrolled for the Vassar undergraduate degree, which she received in 1950, followed by the second degree which she took with distinction in 1964. She thereafter enrolled for the Ph.D. in Slavic Studies at New York University. While still in China from 1942 to 1945, Mrs. Walker had served as an editor and translator for Havas Telemondial, the French News Agency in Shanghai. She was an instructor from time to time in the adult education program of the Poughkeepsie Schools, and was an instructor of Russian at Dutchess Community College between 1959 and 1962. During the summer of 1965 Mrs. Walker returned abroad to study at Moscow State University. The success of the Institute for teachers of Russian held on campus for the four years mentioned in the 1960's has been attested to by the rise and popularity of Russian studies in Dutchess County schools. The inauguration of the program in the Arlington High School, for example, is directly attributable to one of her students. Many students, subsequent to their fanned out in to high schools in other states. They found, courses in other institutions of Mrs. Walker's other teacher study in the Vassar institute in surrounding areas, as well as also, that when they enrolled in to pursue further work, Mrs. Walker had given them a rigorous, strong, and rich preparation in a dif- ficult and demanding discipline. Although her central concern was with her students in the class- room, Mrs. Walker constantly opened her expansive Russian heart to those who needed her personal help. In most recent years, under the burden of her increasingly debilitating illness, she HELEN WALKER - continued shared the warm cordiality of her lovely modern house in the woods near Vassar with her colleagues on the faculty and her students. The memorable gourmet delicacies that she created and served introduced those who visited her to Russian food; while the talk and fellowship simultaneously revealed other glimpses of her previous life in a different culture. Soon after Mrs. Walker came to Vassar it was discovered that she had an incurable congenital kidney ailment which threatened her life. Notwithstanding, she courageously accepted her con- dition, and acted to give and gain full measure from her daily professorial comitments. One of her colleagues has sumed up her qualities as a constant thirsting for intellectual activities. "She was a most con- scientious, unselfish, and talented pedagogue, considerate and very thorough and kind." In her quiet and modest way she sus- tained the highest standards of language teaching and criticism Respectfully submitted, Richard Gregg Charles Griffin Elizabeth Daniels, Chairman . ¢_ a< *4 ‘ ' Z ___,_./I’/1,‘: 4~' 5, )/)C$.... ,,,-’,‘;v* ‘.4. ~' * ' " I. ;' I % { .,’ ’ 4;‘ ‘I,/:.’{:»t7‘;l*”€~"$ ‘L ‘ii 5/ /7; if /'
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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: Thornbury, Zita Lillian, 1888-1969 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Linner, Edward R., McArthur, Robert E., Johnson, Jane T.
Description
Date: [After 1969]
Text: ZITA LILLIAN THORNBURY 1888 - 1969 Zita Lillian Thornbury, Director Emeritus of the Voca- tional Bureau, died on March 17, 1969 at the age of 81. She was born and brought up in Poughkeepsie, and for 65 years she was continuously associated with Vassar College - entering as a freshman in 1904, graduating in 1908, from 1908 to 1914 serving as assistant in the Departments of History and Philosophy, then as assistant to the Dean. She left only once, to earn a Master's degree at Columbia in...
Show moreZITA LILLIAN THORNBURY 1888 - 1969 Zita Lillian Thornbury, Director Emeritus of the Voca- tional Bureau, died on March 17, 1969 at the age of 81. She was born and brought up in Poughkeepsie, and for 65 years she was continuously associated with Vassar College - entering as a freshman in 1904, graduating in 1908, from 1908 to 1914 serving as assistant in the Departments of History and Philosophy, then as assistant to the Dean. She left only once, to earn a Master's degree at Columbia in 1921. In 1923 the Vocational Bureau was established, and Miss Thornbury became its first director, a post she held until her retirement in 1953. Even after that she remained close to the College and its alumnae, unfailingly interested in all that went on. She liked to recall that the Vocational Bureau began as a file in a tin box on Dean Ella McCaleb's desk. It was, she said, "a lively but diminutive teacher's registry with few applications for other kinds of jobs." When the tin box became officially the Vocational Bureau in 1923, it was one of the first such services established anywhere, and Miss Thornbury was one of the early pioneer- ing group in the then new field of vocational guidance - a field which is today still somewhat undefined and often frustrating. The 30 years of her directorship saw vast changes in the opportunities for women and the life pattern of the educa- ted woman. Business, industry, the government, the pro- fessional schools began to come to the campus in the search for talented womanpower. Undergraduates shifted from the summer beaches and tennis courts to summer jobs and in the shift became far more knowledgeable about the working world It was a busy and complex period, and Miss Thornbury occupied a special observation post. The many Vassar alum- nae whom she helped remembered her with warmth and affection an efficient, friendly, ever-present figure in the top floor of Main Building's old porte-cochere, one who had a profound ZITA LILLIAN THORNBURY (continued) interest in Vassar College and a genuine, outgoing interest in Vassar girls of all eras. Those of us who saw her on her almost daily visits to the College were always impressed by the depth of her loyalties. She was a dedicated Vassar woman, a fervent Roman Catholic, and a devoted adherent of the Democratic party. Edward R. Linner Robert E. McArthur Jane T. Johnson, Chairman
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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: Downer, Henry Ernest, 1885-1968 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Brooks, Richard, Post, C. Gordon, Sward, Sven
Description
Date: [After 1968]
Text: HENRY ERNEST DOWNER 1885 - 1968 Henry Ernest Downer, Horticulturist Emeritus, who died in Poughkeepsie on September 8, 1968, was born on August 17, 1885 in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight. On March 12, 1912 he received a diploma from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and became head of its tropical propagating department He left England, however, in 1912 and came to the United States. After working a short while with commercial florists and on the estate of Thomas Alva Edison he went to Smith...
Show moreHENRY ERNEST DOWNER 1885 - 1968 Henry Ernest Downer, Horticulturist Emeritus, who died in Poughkeepsie on September 8, 1968, was born on August 17, 1885 in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight. On March 12, 1912 he received a diploma from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and became head of its tropical propagating department He left England, however, in 1912 and came to the United States. After working a short while with commercial florists and on the estate of Thomas Alva Edison he went to Smith College in 1914 as horticulturist and stayed there for six years. In 1920 he came to Vassar College as College Gardener, became Superintendent of Grounds in 1922, was appointed Horticulturist as well as Superintendent of Grounds the next year, and retired in 1952. He taught courses in the principles of flower and vegetable garden- ing and in fruit and plant propagation. His campus walk was a feature of the morning activities of Founder's Day. With the able assistance successively of William Stopher and John Brown as head gardeners, he enhanced the beauty of the college grounds, whose landscaping had been con- tinued by Loring Underwood, landscape architect of the college. In this he was fortunate for most of his career at Vassar in having an adequate and able staff, whose devotion he earned by his kindly thoughtfulness of them and their families. In 1942 the Trustees named two oak groves after him. Professionally Henry Downer's activities and reputation spread increasingly beyond the campus. Until 1943 he was a member of the staff of Popular Gardening Magazine and a frequent Contributor to The Gardeners’ Chronicle of America and other gardening magazines. From 1945 to 1949 he con- ducted a weekly column, "The Gardener's Forum," in the New York Herald Tribune and a weekly column on gardening for the New York Sun. He contributed a chapter on annuals and perennials to Gardening with the Experts (written by twelve noted horticulturists) in 1941 and an appendix to Montague Free's All About the Perennial Garden (Doubleday, 1952); and he was co-author with Fred J. Nisbet of Flowers and Roses, which appeared in 1962. Besides five articles written for Vassar publications, he contributed to the following encyclopedias: New Garden Encyclopedia (ed., 675’ HENRY ERNEST DOWNER (continued) E.L.D. Seymour and others, Wise and Co., 1936), 10,000 Garden Questions (ed., F.F.Rockwell, American Garden Guild and Doubleday and Co., 1944), and the New Illus- trated Encyclopedia of Gardening (ed., T.H.Everett, Graystone Press, 1960). He wrote How to Plant and Care for your Garden for the Home Service Booklets about 1939. He and others contributed to Favorite Flowers in Color (ed., E.L.D.Seymour, Wise, 1948); and with John Strohm and Fred J. Nisbet he edited The Golden Guide to Flowers (New York, 1962). He was a member of the Hortus Society, a group of distinguished horticulturists from New York and New Jersey. He was a judge of the garden and flower displays in Cooperstown, N. Y., and of the New England Flower Show, and for many years a judge of the National and the International Flower Show. After his retirement he and his second wife conducted eight tours to famous gardens in Europe and in 1964 a tour around the world. Locally and in the county, too, he contributed much. The planters of dogwood on Main Street were put in at his advice in 1961. For many years from 1940 he was Chairman of the Town of Poughkeepsie Planning Commission, President of the Dutchess County Horticultural Society, superintendent of the flower show of the Dutchess County Fair, a director and secretary of the Vassar Bank before it merged with the First National Bank, and Chairman of the Board of the Vassar Office of the Marine National Bank of Southeastern New York from 1961 to 1967. He served on the Board of Education of the Arlington School District as auditor in 1930-31, clerk 1932-November 1933, and President, November 1933 - July 1936. Later he taught a course in practical gardening in the Arlington Adult Education Program. Henry Downer took a dim view of governmental handouts and man- made work in which men had little interest. As a citizen he was active in local politics, being informed, articulate, and fearless in expressing often tough-minded views. He was frequently the nemesis of the local politician whose performance did not meet high standards of honesty and good sense. As Superintendent of Grounds at Vassar he would HENRY ERNEST DOWNER (continued) never condone that lawns should be used as shortcuts and flower borders be picked from just because they were there -- and this applied to every member of the college comunity. He had a reverence for plants of all kinds and an insatiable curiosity for identifying plant material -— even if sometimes an inquirer's interest was casual. A man of principles and strong character, he truly had his feet on the ground which he deeply loved. Richard Brooks Gordon Post Sven Sward, Chairman
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Title: Rose, William K., 1924-1968 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: VanderVeer, Garrett L., Turner, Susan J., Mercer, Caroline G.
Description
Date: [After 1968]
Text: "WILLIAM K. RQSE 1924 - 1968 William K. Rose, Professor of English at Vassar College, was born in San Francisco on April 17, 1924, and died in Poughkeep- sie on October 4, 1968. When he came to Vassar as an instructor in 1953, he had had a good deal of teaching experience at vari- ous sorts of institutions; he had been a teaching assistant and acting instructor at Stanford University (1944-46), an instructor at Williams College (1948-50), and a lecturer at the University of California in...
Show more"WILLIAM K. RQSE 1924 - 1968 William K. Rose, Professor of English at Vassar College, was born in San Francisco on April 17, 1924, and died in Poughkeep- sie on October 4, 1968. When he came to Vassar as an instructor in 1953, he had had a good deal of teaching experience at vari- ous sorts of institutions; he had been a teaching assistant and acting instructor at Stanford University (1944-46), an instructor at Williams College (1948-50), and a lecturer at the University of California in Berkeley (1950-51). Stanford had awarded him the B.A. "With great distinction" in 1944, and the M.A. in 1946. He had gone to Cornell University to study first with David Daiches and then with Arthur Mizener, and there was awarded the Ph.D. degree in 1952. Throughout the whole of his adult life, Mr. Rose was an ener- getic and creative teacher, scholar, writer, friend, and citizen. His nature was complex: he was a man of ranging interests both social and aesthetic; a man of deep sensibility; a man both open and reserved; a man possessed of a tragic sense of life » and a richly comic way of seeing and talking about it. For all the complexity, a unified being was there, and a unified achieve- ment shines out of his short life. He was what he was--and became what he became-—partly because of his talent for giving himself to life and yet judging it dispassionately and rigorously and always with the greatest intelligence. His was the imagination that Wordsworth called a "feeling intellect." He was fortunate in his nurture as an American; one can see the beginnings of true sophistication and of a taste that was never shallow or precious, in his enjoyment of his youth in the west--notably in the town of his boyhood, Healdsburg, California, "in the prune country" as he used to say, where his forebears have lived for a hundred years. He knew American cities and suburbs because his relatives lived in them, as well as he knew the New York of writers and artists. Later, as a man at home in London, he was never an expatriate. Since this is a memorial minute for our faculty archives, it is proper to stress his work at Vassar College, inseparable though it was from the rest of his life. One of his oldest friends remarked: "He chose Vassar, even as a young man," and this is true. He was initially attracted, one may surmise, by what the nearness of Vassar to New York's music, drama, and art could do for him and his students, by the sophistication of our faculty and our program, and by the honesty and effort demanded éi WILLIAM K. ROSE (Continued) of our students. He came to believe more and more strongly in the value of Vassar as a particular liberal arts college for its students and for American education. Vassar's English department proved congenial to him; it taught him much and he did much to deepen and define its philosophy and to invent new teaching forms in which this philosophy could be expressed. The department's insistence upon literary study going beyond the narrow formalism in vogue in the 50's suited him. He believed in the study of literature in depth, achieved through maintaining a close connection between the forms of literature and their human and social and historical contexts, and through enabling students to see what it is to make a form out of raw experience themselves. ; He was a brilliant teacher of freshman courses, of narrative writing and advanced composition, and (utilizing his research) of advanced courses in literature. He taught a seminar for many years in the novel of the twentieth century and at the time of his death was preparing to teach an advanced course in modern poetry. All his students felt in him a concern and respect for them, which somehow helped them to develop self-knowledge and ' self-respect. He perceived goodness and honesty, when these were there, beneath youthful cynicism or pretentiousness, and he helped young people to know themselves and say the things that were true for them. He taught them--especially in the writing courses-—to say quite directly what they saw in their lives, to enlarge their views, to develop imagination, and to use language for authentic comment. Thus, through the practice of an art as he conceived it, young people learned something about the nature and possibilities of the world, and were given a chance to live a life both energetic and civilized. The discipline was exacting: he had little patience with determined frivolity; he had the "courage to insist upon the integrity deeper than the easy skills of many students," as a colleague puts it; and he wisely demanded more and more of students as they began to have that integrity. He was not interested in training all his students to be primar- ily publishing critics, scholars, poets or novelists; the aim was larger than that. But he did welcome and encourage the few who showed signs of turning into real writers hereafter. His bequest to the college, recently announced but included in his will for several years, attests to his conviction that Vassar should find and encourage young people who may prove to have special power in the creative arts. ylt might be added here that while such students were undergraduates, he wanted them to reads W ax WILLIAM K. ROSE (Continued) and study as another means to the discipline of literature; and he wanted them to be sound scholars. < Mr. Rose had great energy, which he applied outside his single department. He was from 1962 to 1966 chairman of the editorial board of the Vassar Journal of yndergraduate_§tudies. Through- out his years at Vassar he worked on several committees charged with formulating policy for the whole college, the last being the committee on the Comprehensive Plan, which we are at present discussing. Here he exercised a characteristic freedom and wisdom: he wanted to see new ways in which the students might be liberated and civilized, new ways in which we might maintain and build on Vassar's fundamental strengths. All this of course had nothing to do with gimmicks or cliches, any more than did his teaching. He knew what the strengths of Vassar were, imag- ined what they might become, and hoped that whatever the college did would be solid, sophisticated, and generally first rate. He will be much missed as we carry out this plan. ' Mr. Rose began early to write, and he wrote a great deal in the course of his life, developing his considerable powers as a scholar and critic. He is known for his essays and reviews but especially for his admirable and much acclaimed edition of the Letters of Wyndham Lewis, the painter and novelist (1963). This past year, on a leave from Vassar College and with a Guggenheim Fellowship, he had been at work on a book about Lewis and his great contemporaries--Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot--the "men of 1914" who brought about a literary revolution. It is to be hoped that other scholars may make use of some of the materials that he had collected. We conclude this memorial minute with a passage from a letter to the London Times of October l6 written by his friend, the novelist and critic Walter Allen: E His English friends will have been shocked by the news of Bill Rose's death. Letters from Vassar speak of the courage with which he met it.... For the past decade there was scarcely a year min which Bill Rose was not in London for several weeks, and often for several months. I suspect he was as much at home in London as in New York, and he was the friend of many English poets and novelists. His personal charm was great and his intelligence was WILLIAM 1:. ROSE (Continued) formidable: he was one of England's warmest and most candid friends: and for many English- men he stood for everything that was best and most hopeful in American life. A very fine scholar, he had made twentieth—century English literature his special field, and his edition of the letters of Wyndham Lewis is a model of its kind. We took it for granted, alas, as the precursor of comparable achievements to come. His death is a loss both to his friends on both sides of the Atlantic and to English studies; though one knows that it will be felt most odeeply at Vassar, the college which he had served so well and to which he was so ardently devoted. " u Respectfully_submitted, Garrett L. VanderVeer Susan J. Turner Caroline G. Mercer, Chairman XVIX Attachment # 1
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Title: Smith, Gertrude, 1874-1968 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Baker, Frances E.
Description
Date: [After 1968]
Text: é‘¥ GERTRUDE SMITH 1874 - 1968 Miss Gertrude Smith was born in Portland, Maine, on June 5, 1874, a daughter of Manasseh and Georgiana Hall Smith. She died at Portland on April 9, 1968. When Gertrude Smith entered Vassar College as a freshman with the class of 1897, she had bright auburn hair, observant blue eyes, a vigorous joy in life, and an impressionable keen mind. During the four years preceding her graduation as a Phi Beta Kappa member with a major in mathematics, she had developed not...
Show moreé‘¥ GERTRUDE SMITH 1874 - 1968 Miss Gertrude Smith was born in Portland, Maine, on June 5, 1874, a daughter of Manasseh and Georgiana Hall Smith. She died at Portland on April 9, 1968. When Gertrude Smith entered Vassar College as a freshman with the class of 1897, she had bright auburn hair, observant blue eyes, a vigorous joy in life, and an impressionable keen mind. During the four years preceding her graduation as a Phi Beta Kappa member with a major in mathematics, she had developed not only the keen mind, but also an intense loyalty to her college and its ideals. After a few years of teaching in Portland, followed by a year at Miss Gerrish's school in Englewood, New Jersey, where she taught mathematics, English and Greek, she returned happily to Vassar to study for a Master of Arts degree. Following its award in 1901, she became instructor in mathe- matics, and thus entered upon an association with the college that continued until December, 1944, without interruption except for the year of l907—'08. That year she spent in further graduate study at Cornell University and at the Sorbonne. In Paris she studied under a fellowship granted by the Associate Alumnae of Vassar College. Beginning in 1909, Miss Smith became head resident of Davison House, a post in which she continued until her retirement thirty-five years later. She was also Associate Warden of the college from 1913 to 1932. In these positions, she came in contact with hundreds of students besides those whom she taught in her numerous mathematics classes. Each of these students was to Gertrude Smith a very important person. Her interest in their development was candid, penetrating and patient. In later years people recalled the patience with which she guided the slower ones in class; in her younger years, she was known at times to let her red-haired impatience with stupidity give way to the extent of throwing the chalk at a laggard student. Quietly and constantly industrious herself, she never condoned laziness. Yet she was always ready to confer when her help or advice was sought in the friendly apartment at Davison. The students reciprocated with loyalty to match her devotion to them. No promotion ever made her happier than her election to be the honorary faculty member of the class of 1916. From that time, the members of this class became her particular Vassar family. She knew them one and all, and received them eagerly at reunion times. Some of them became close personal friends for her life- time. Her associations were equally warm with her own class. é5' GERTRUDE SMITH continued. After her retirement she served for twenty—one years as editor of the annual bulletin of the class of 1897. In January, 1966, she wrote with pride: "We are the only class which has sent out an annual bulletin for sixty-five years." Two nieces of Miss Smith graduated from Vassar; one Miss Katharine Ogden, class of 1918, was a former member of the Vassar chemistry faculty. Her sister, Miss Ruth Patterson Ogden, graduated in 1934. For an extended period, Miss Smith's association with Vassar's department of mathematics was contemporary with the chairman- ship of the distinguished geometer, Professor H. S. White. Later, she became the right-hand partner of Professor Mary E. Wells. For years, Miss Smith taught a course in the analytic geometry of three dimensions that long remained a cornerstone of the mathematics major program. She became assistant professor in 1919, associate professor in 1936, and was made a full professor in 1943. She was a member of the American Mathematical Society, and in 1938 was made a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For twenty-five years she served as a reader for the college entrance examination board. A promoter of high academic standards, she was a staunch member of the Vassar chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, and served one year as its president. Her earliest teaching experience had included classes in Latin and Greek. She maintained an interest in Greek archaeology which was fostered by her friendships with several archaeologists among Vassar alumnae families. But her own creative ability was most apparent in her considerable talent for drawing and painting, largely self-developed. Subjects for her charming small line-drawings were usually glimpses of the Vassar campus, often in the vicinity of one of the lakes. For two or three years, she regularly attended an evening class conducted by Professor Clarence Chatterton, where some fourteen faculty members followed his instruction in drawing from life, and then reviewed their efforts in serious self-criticism. Miss Smith was intensely interested in all political develop- ments, national and international. And she did not hesitate to express an opinion. Her travels included many trips to England and Scotland, and a memorable visit to Greece and Italy, -I 44 GERTRUDE SMITH continued with briefer sojourns in other European countries. Each of these trips, as well as a trip after retirement to California became a journey of discovery. Always sensitive to beauty, she followed up her discoveries with enthusiasm, whether for the beauties of nature or for those of group theory or geometry. For as long as health permitted, she traveled from Maine to Poughkeepsie to spend a few weeks each year at Alumnae House. And each year, scores of former students and associates stopped to see their remarkable friend at the Sheraton-Eastland Hotel, where she made her home in retirement, at Portland. In 1962, the department of mathematics set up the Mary E. Wells and Gertrude Smith prize fund, with awards to be made for excellence in the study of mathematics. This honor brought real joy to Miss Smith. An outside opinion is often valuable, and we have one from an American scholar, the late professor Marie J. Weiss, herself a distinguished research mathematician, who taught at Vassar in the nineteen thirties. She declared, "Miss Smith may not be a research mathematician, but she is a superb teacher." This is how Gertrude Smith, loyal daughter of Vassar, would have liked to be remembered. To quote her own admonition from the 1916 Vassarion: "May your torch burn ever brightf". Respectfully submitted, for all the friends of Gertrude Smith, by Frances E. Baker XVIII 333-BBQ
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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: Smith, Winifred, 1879-1967 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Turner, Susan J.
Description
Date: [After 1967]
Text: WINIFRED SMITH 1879 - 1967 Miss Winifred Smith, sometime Professor of English and Professor Emeritus of Drama and Chairman of the Division of Drama, died on October 28, 1967, in Louisville, Kentucky, at the age of eighty- eight. She had gone to Louisville some years after her retire- ment from the college in 1947 to be near her niece, Priscilla Smith Robertson. Winifred Smith was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1879, the daughter of Henry Preserved and Anna Macneale Smith. Her brother was...
Show moreWINIFRED SMITH 1879 - 1967 Miss Winifred Smith, sometime Professor of English and Professor Emeritus of Drama and Chairman of the Division of Drama, died on October 28, 1967, in Louisville, Kentucky, at the age of eighty- eight. She had gone to Louisville some years after her retire- ment from the college in 1947 to be near her niece, Priscilla Smith Robertson. Winifred Smith was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1879, the daughter of Henry Preserved and Anna Macneale Smith. Her brother was Preserved Smith, who became a distinguished historian of the Reform- ation. She was graduated from Vassar in 1904 and came back as a member of the faculty, when she joined the English Department as an Instructor in 1911. She was made a Professor of English in 1926 and served briefly as chairman of that department, from 1929-1931. Of her work as a student at the college, she has written that "Miss Keyes's extraordinary course in Shakespeare was the beginning of my life long interest in the drama," and that it was at the encouragement of Miss Wylie that she went on to graduate work in English and comparative literature at Columbia University, where she was awarded the doctorate in 1912. In the years that she was working on her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, she taught at Mt. Holyoke and at the Knox School in Lockwood, New Jersey, and studied for a year at the Sorbonne. During her tenure at the college she spent two sabbatical years in Rome, and taught as a Visiting Professor of English in summer sessions at Stanford and at the University of California. Among her major extra-curricular activities were her interest in the founding of Sarah Lawrence College and her membership on its board of trustees from 1932-1945 and her work for ten years on the board of the Poughkeepsie Community Theatre Miss Smith took a leading part in the founding of the Division of Drama in 1936 with its attendant Experimental Theatre. She has described their evolution from Miss Buck's course in play- writing, in which students did some "walking through scenes," without costumes or scenery; then came the founding of two courses in dramatic production by the English Department, which Hallie Flannagan taught; then the establishment of the "now famous" Theatre in Avery in 1930, and finally the organization of the independent Division of Drama, headed by Miss Smith, with Hallie Flannagan as Professor of Drama and Director of the Theatre. It was during this period in the thirties that Hallie Flannagan experimented with the living newspaper as a dramatic form and gave the premier of T. S. Eliot“s Sweeney Agonistes. Miss Smith $7 WINIFRED SMITH — continued. served as Chairman of the Division during the tenure of Mrs. Flannagan and with Mary Virginia Heinlein, who succeeded her in 1942 as Professor of Drama and Director. Miss Smith has been recognized as one of Vassar's great teachers; she was also one of its great rebels; and for her, taking a stand began early and as a family tradition. Her father, Henry Preserved Smith, Biblical scholar, Presbyterian minister, Professor of Theol- ogy, a defender of the higher criticism, was tried for heresy by the Presbytery of Cincinnati, Ohio, and suspended from the minis- try by the General Assembly in 1894 because he denied the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible. Her devotion to her father and admiration for him are remembered by her colleagues as one of the salient facts of her life. She has recorded, in an unpublished memoir, how, in her teens, she sat with her mother and her brother, Preserved, in the gallery, tingling with pride at her father's intrepid stand at his trial; and how as "the daughter of a heretic" she inspired a certain distrust.in President Taylor,"a genial but conservative man" who advised her at the time of her appointment to Vassar that it is a "teacher's responsibil- ity not to disturb the faith of the young." She adds that it was almost as disturbing a fact that she was "an ardent worker for woman's suffrage." Miss Smith's advocacy of the suffrage movement (she was speaking all over the country for it in her first years at the college), her interest in the Poughkeepsie community (she taught courses for working women), her knowledge of contemporary politics and her sympathy with the revolutionary side, her concern for social justice, her constant efforts to keep her students alert to the connections between drama and the world were during her career active and interlocking attitudes. While such attitudes were not unusual among her contemporaries on the faculty, she lived them with a particular energy, became known, she writes, as a "radical" by some of the trustees and parents. They may have found their opinion substantiated if they saw an article written by Vice- President Coolidge in a national magazine on red tendencies in America's colleges when he quoted as an example, the Vassar Miscellany News as saying, "Miss Smith was quite favorably impressed by the Soviet Ambassador and struck by his moderation and intel- ligence as compared to the narrowness of some of the Senate com- mittee." That was in 1921. But Winifred Smith“s concern with the contemporary world was never detached from the great tradition of the theater itself, from the Greek, European, English and American drama. She was a very WINIFRED SMITH - continued. learned woman. She was the author of two books, The Comedia del Arte and Italian Actors in the Renaissance; she wrote articles and reviews on innumerable subjects connected with the drama; she translated for production plays by French and Italian writers, and she travelled widely in Europe studying the theater. She spoke French, German and Italian and read Spanish. She planned and taught with Professors Grace Macurdy and Philip Davis of the Classics Department a course called "Tragedy; Greek, Renaissance and Modern." This course became Drama 220, a course in compara- tive drama, one of the most demanding and distinguished courses in the college. It was conducted by Miss Smith in collaboration with members of the English, Classics and Modern Language Depart- ments. It is remembered that Miss Smith had "a swift acting genius for correlation"; and her card file of the synopses of plays that she had read was the wonder of her department; it seems that it contained enough plays to stagger a computer. Of the many reviews she wrote for the outside world, it is said that "she dashed them off at a high speed but always getting to the core of the matter." Her reviews of current productions on the Vassar campus (she herself was not a director) also got to the core of the matter. They were careful to educate the college community in the tradition of the drama and in the study of drama at Vassar. For example, in the year of her retirement Miss Smith wrote of one production that it was "studied in a fundamental way." "Our theater," she continued, "is one of the few on uni- versity campuses that takes its function seriously. For years it has presented significant plays that show its audiences what the stage at its best can do to illuminate tradition, interpret yesterday's and today“s philosophies, and through picture and the spoken word, hold the mirror up to nature." Professor Emeritus Helen Sandison, a long time friend and col- league of Miss Smith's in the English Department (and in its relations with the Division of Drama) wrote among other things, when I asked for reminiscenses of their teaching here: "Like her father, Winifred was a swift and brilliant thinker. She always, it seemed to me, thought through her feelings. This led, sometimes, to misjudgment or inaccuracy, but also to her compelling influence on her students." One of these (a con- firmed Tory, her favorite Shakespeare play was Coriolanus), whom she "awoke," temporarily at least, to George Bernard Shaw, gave money to the college library in honor of "that brilliant but mis- guided woman." And when Miss Smith died, she wrote, "My years at Vassar are still real and living and splendid thanks to Miss Smith." One other anecdote rounds out the picture of Miss Smith's influence in the college and in the world: ‘h young scholar who
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Title: Savitzkaya, Lydia V., 1898-1967 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1967]
Text: "/8 LYDIA V. SAVITZKAYA 1898 - 1967 The very mention of Mrs. Lydia Savitzkaya's name recalls to all who knew her a cheerful little lady hurrying along the campus. She always had a bright and warm smile for all she happened to meet on her way. Each person responded with affection to her enthusiastic greeting as she invariably remembered various details of peoples’ lives. She never failed to inquire after their health or their relatives. Her inter- est in people was deep and genuine....
Show more"/8 LYDIA V. SAVITZKAYA 1898 - 1967 The very mention of Mrs. Lydia Savitzkaya's name recalls to all who knew her a cheerful little lady hurrying along the campus. She always had a bright and warm smile for all she happened to meet on her way. Each person responded with affection to her enthusiastic greeting as she invariably remembered various details of peoples’ lives. She never failed to inquire after their health or their relatives. Her inter- est in people was deep and genuine. This warm hearted lady was loved by students and colleagues alike. The ever ready smile and greeting was somehow symbolic of the great courage and faith that saw Mrs. Savitzkaya through the ups and downs of life. Born in Russia, Mrs. Savitzkaya was graduated with honors from the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg. She special- ized in music and literature and received a master's degree in music, the harp being her instrument. With the coming of the Revolution Mrs. Savitzkaya escaped from Russia via Holland and France, bringing little with her except for personal belongings. Making a new start in Europe, she taught Russian to the British Officers in Holland besides teaching the piano and the harp. After arriving in the United States, she filled engagements with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and taught at the Mannes School of Music in New York. She was a member of ensembles doing sustaining programs for WOR and WABC radio. At the same time Mrs. Savitzkaya gave private lessons in Russian. In 1945 Mrs. Savitzkaya began teaching Russian in New York in earnest. Subsequently she taught at Cornell and in 1946 gave the Army Intensive Russian Language course for officers at Columbia University. From 1946-1948 she taught at Smith College. In 1948 she joined the Vassar faculty and remained here until her retirement in 1964. Mrs. Savitzkaya was devoted to her teaching and was constantly at work on improving materials for class work inasmuch as available textbooks were inadequate. Mrs. Savitzkaya published a reader, Asya by Turgenev, for which she provided the notes and the vocabulary. She was - instrumental in putting on some very colorful plays at Vassar, performed by students of the Russian Department. LYDIA V. SAVITZKAYA - continued Some of the costumes used in the plays were brought back with her from Russia. These plays, based for the most part on folklore were very successful. Among them were the dramatizations of Pushkin's Tsar Saltan; The Golden Cockerel, and Denisov's The Snow Maiden. All those who knew her remember a sweet little lady, greet- ing all she came across with her inimitable enthusiasm and warmth. Some of us thought of her as of a little flitting bird but she also had an air of undaunted determination about her. She firmly believed in her rights as a pedestrian, and lifting her hand imperiously to stop uncoming traffic she marched Victoriously across Raymond Avenue. No automobile was going to preempt her basic human right in traffic. Mrs. Savitzkaya's death on March 27, 1967 came as a shock to her many friends. Small in stature, she nonetheless inspired confidence that she would continue indefinitely in her zest for living and enjoying an interesting life. Her kindness and energy will long be remembered. Her warmth and friendliness will be missed by her many, many friends and students. Respectfully submitted, Helen Walker ‘ XVIII BZLL
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Title: Lamson, Genieve, 1886-1966 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Conklin, Ruth, Pearson, Homer, Warthin, Scott, Post, C. Gordon
Description
Date: [After 1966]
Text: d%T GENIEVE LAMBON 1886 ~ 1966 In the year 1887, the Constitution of the United States had been in operation for less than a century. Only forty States comprised the Union. Grover Cleveland was President ad Morrison Waite was Chief Justice. David B. Hill was Governor of New York and in his annual message to the Legislature he recommended "the abolition of an unnecessary office." Abroad, Victoria was Queen and the Marquis of Salisbury was her prime mbnister. William I was Emperor of...
Show mored%T GENIEVE LAMBON 1886 ~ 1966 In the year 1887, the Constitution of the United States had been in operation for less than a century. Only forty States comprised the Union. Grover Cleveland was President ad Morrison Waite was Chief Justice. David B. Hill was Governor of New York and in his annual message to the Legislature he recommended "the abolition of an unnecessary office." Abroad, Victoria was Queen and the Marquis of Salisbury was her prime mbnister. William I was Emperor of Germany and Alexander III, Tsar of Russia. . Only twenty-nine years earlier, Charles Darwin had published his Origin_g§ Species. Karl Marx had been dead but four years. And in 1887, that supreme revolutionary, Gottlieb Daimler, was operating for the first time a motor car propelled by a petrol engine. In this same year, in the cool silence of a little Vermont town, in sight of the Braintree Mountains and close by the gentle waters of the Third Branch of the White River, Genieve Lamson was born. Miss Lamson's ancestors settled in Randolph in 1791. They were farmers; and good, solid middleclass citizens; hardy, self- reliant, independent, ad God-fearing. One uncle ran the farm, another became a highly successful hardware merchant. Her father purchased and operated s retail furniture store. As was customary in thee days, he was also the local undertaker and funeral director. Before 1900, Miss Lamson's father invested money in gold mining which turned out to be worthless; so that while he was able to send his oldest child and only son to college, he could not afford to do the same for his three daughters. Armed only with a high-school diploma, Miss Lammon taught for four terms in the rural schools around Randolph. On a Sunday afternoon she would drive her horse and sleigh some miles out to a tiny village where for five days a week she met her charges in a one-room schoolhouse; tended a pot- bellied stove; and gave instruction, not only in reading, writing, and arithmetic, but, by way of MoGuffey, in the virtues of temperace, industry, self-control, stick-to-itive- ness, mercy, and honesty. 36 GEMIEVE LAMON - continued The following Friday afternoon would see her return to Randolph. During the week she would live with e local family. , Miss Lamson spoke occasionally of those drives through deep snows, of the biting winds that carried the flakes against her face, of the crunch of steel runners upon hard-packed snow. Finding that she liked teaching, Miss Lamson attended a normal school in Springfield, Massachusetts, for one year. Then for five years she taught in the Roselle Park, Mew Jersey, high school. Aware of the need for a college education, Miss Lamson ventured even deeper into that great area west of the Hudson River and matriculated at the young University of Chicago. Here, she received her Bachelor of Science degree in 1920 at the age of thirty-three. After a year of teaching in a private school, Miss Lamson returned to Chicago for a Master's degree. In 1922, she cams to Vassar where she remained until her retirement thirty years later. Miss Lamson was an economic geographer. She was at first associated with the Department of Geology. In 1934 a Depart- ment of Geography was established and Miss Lamson was installed as chairman. This position she held throughout her tenure. Her published works include "Geographic influences in the Early History of Vermont" (1924), "A Study of Agricultural Populations in Selected Vermont Towns" (1931), and parts here and there in the Dutchess Couty Works Progress Admin- istration Guide Book of which project she was the director. Miss Lamson was a delegate to the International Geographical Union Congress in Warsaw, Poland, in 1934, and in Amsterdam, Holland, in 1938. For twenty years, she was head resident in Lathrop House. Miss Lanson also distinguished herself as Editor-in-chief of the Vassar Journal of Undergraduate Studies. Miss Lamson in her "Study of Agricultural Populations in selected Vermont Towns" described the Vermont farmer, and in doing so, described herself. Me is, she wrote, "a person of reserve and a strong sense of privacy. His characteristic independence is based upon an inherent self-respect. He asks V $7 GERIIVE‘LAMBO - continued no 'oddd of society.‘ He will deal generously with the unfortunate, and dispense hospitality to the stranger, with no apologies for the coditions of his hospitality. At the same time he will drive s shrewd bargain and is so thrifty that he has earned the reputation of being ‘close.’ A pro- found conservative, the farmer clings to the established order. Me accepts change cautiously, and only from conviction based on experience. His conservatism," she continued, "expresses itself in his code of morals and religion. There is a good deal of the English Puritan in the Vermont farmer. He has a keen sense of right and wrong, and a straightforward honesty. He respects education. Me appreciates initiative and ability. He has a profound sense of community responsibility." One thing she did not mention. In every Vermonter, buried deep within his soul, is the spirit of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain boys. This spirit manifested itself in Miss Lamson when she rebelled against the Republicanism of her forefathers, against the Republicanism.of her immediate family, of hr relations to the farthest remove, and of her friends. She flirted with socialism in the images of Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas, and came to rest, finally, in the arms of Franklin D. Roosevelt-~figuratively speaking. when Miss Lamson retired she retuned to the family home in Randolph which in spirit she had never left. She plunged immdiately into the affairs of the community. She was the historian of the Bethany Congregational Church, a trustee of the Vermont Historical Society, a sponsor of the Vermont Symhony Orchestra, and a prominent member of the Randolph Garden Club. Almost to the time of her death she sang in the church choir. A - Last May at the State meeting of the Vermont Division of the American Association of University Women, Miss Lamson was honored by having e national scholarship named for her. Thus, on September 25th, there can to an end a useful life which covered monumental changes in the story of man. True to her backgroud, Miss Lamaon represented the best of tradi- tions; but she had learned a lesson from Lincoln: The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. Ruth Conklin Homer Pearson Scott Warthin Gordon Post, Chairman
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Title: Walker, Sydnor Harbison, 1891-1966 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Gleason, Josephine, Pennock, Clarice, Spicer, Verna, Asprey, Winifred
Description
Date: [After 1966]
Text: ‘+3 SYDNOR HARBISON WALKER 1891 - 1966 Miss Sydnor Harbison Walker, Vassar alumna, faculty member, trustee and Assistant to the President, died December 12, 1966, at her home in Millbrook, New York, at the age of 75. She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of Walter and Mary Sydnor Perkins Walker. After attending Louisville schools, Miss Walker came to Vassar and was graduated in 1913 with honors. Economics was her major interest and she returned to Vassar to teach it in 1917, with...
Show more‘+3 SYDNOR HARBISON WALKER 1891 - 1966 Miss Sydnor Harbison Walker, Vassar alumna, faculty member, trustee and Assistant to the President, died December 12, 1966, at her home in Millbrook, New York, at the age of 75. She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of Walter and Mary Sydnor Perkins Walker. After attending Louisville schools, Miss Walker came to Vassar and was graduated in 1913 with honors. Economics was her major interest and she returned to Vassar to teach it in 1917, with an M.A. from the University of Southern California. Professor Emeritus Mabel Newcomer, a young col- league at the time, writes that "her quick wit and gaiety made her well liked among students in the residential hall where she lived ..... as a teacher she exhibited these same qualities, combined with clarity of thought and expression .... although she could be sharply critical of the careless and the dilatory." In 1919 Miss Walker decided that she needed some practical experience and went to work for a pioneering firm of indust- rial relations consultants where she wrote their weekly news letter. Three members of this young firm became college presidents and some years later Miss Walker herself was on the way to the presidency of a prominent college for women. A fourth member of the firm was Beardsley Ruml. In 1921 Miss Walker engaged in the relief work of the American Friends Service Comittee, first in Vienna and later in Russia In a letter to President Emeritus MacCracken, she vividly describes her experience. "We are now feeding about 15,000 a week through our depots, and we are supplying clothing to nearly 3,000. Our work is done on an individual case basis, which we think to be the soundest, not only from a social point of view, but because we believe that method essential for the creation of a spirit of international good-will - at no time a secondary object in our program... In addition to the feeding and clothing.... we are teaching mothers to care for their babies through the welfare centers; we are supporting a score of hospitals and other institutions for children; we have restocked farms with poultry and cattle and are helping farmers to build up permanent food resources for the city; and we are assisting materially in such constructive Austrian enterprises as the building of suburban land settlements and the creation of a ‘f4 SYDNOR HARBISON WALKER — continued market abroad for the art work of many gifted persons...we feel that we are a real part of the life of the city and not a superimposed group of relief workers." It is not hard for those who knew Miss Walker to visualize her presiding over relief work in the Imperial Palace of the Hofburg, whose stately corridors were cheerless and deserted save for these activities. Returning to America in 1924, Miss Walker combined her inter- ests in industrial relations with social welfare and educa- tion by becoming a research assistant at the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund in New York. In the meantime she received her doctorate in economics from Columbia University in 1928 with a dissertation on "Social Work and the Training of Social Workers." When the Rockefeller Foundation absorbed the Spelman Fund in 1929, Miss Walker began her association of twenty years with the Foundation. She moved from the research department to the position of Associate Director of the Social Sciences Division and finally became its Acting Director. While there she developed a program of international relations involving considerable travel in Europe and South America in very respon- sible positions. In 1933 she collaborated in the preparation of the report of President Hoover's Comittee on Social Trends, contributing a chapter entitled, "Privately Supported Social Work." In 1939 Miss Walker was proposed for trustee of Vassar College by the Faculty Club and she was elected by the board. Again quoting Miss Newcomer, "her contribution as a Vassar trustee was very rea1....Her experience on the faculty and as a student, and her current work in the Rockefeller Foundation, had given her a real understanding of the problems of the college and enabled her to offer constructive criticism and suggestion for change." _ Her resignation as trustee occurred in October 1942, and came because of a crippling illness which led eventually to her permanent confinement to a wheel chair. A friend and fellow alumna described her long battle against mistaken diagnoses, official predictions of helplessness and the end of her career. "Sydnor simply rejected the idea of permanent immobility.... for a person who never knew what fatigue meant, who never could understand inactivity, either mental or physical, 1 < SYDNOR HARBISON WALKER - continued nothing could have been more tragic than paralysis." When Miss Walker realized that complete recovery was impossible, on her own initiative she went to one of the first rehabilitation clinics in New York and learned to help herself to a remarkable degree. Also she wrote, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation published in l945, a report entitled "The First Hundred Days of the Atomic Age." In 1948 another opportunity to serve Vassar came to Miss Walker when Miss Blanding named her Assistant to the President. She returned to live in Metcalf House and became an active participant in Vassar's development. Miss Blanding knew her as "a brilliant woman who never lost her zest for life nor her interest in things of the mind. She was a voracious reader and stimulating companion." After Miss Walker's retirement in 1957, she bought a large colonial house in Millbrook, reminiscent of her native Kentucky. There she continued her vital interest in Vassar and in the many friendships she had made throughout her rich and colorful life. Respectfully submitted, Josephine Gleason Clarice Pennock Verna Spicer Winifred Asprey, Chairman XVIII BBQ-336
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Title: McFarland, Jean H., 1907-1966 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Elliott, Ella M., McKenzie, Margaret, Pierce, Madelene, Green, Howard
Description
Date: [After 1966]
Text: 35’ JEAN H. McFARLAND 1907 - 1966 Jean H. McFarland was born in Riverside, California, in 1907. She graduated from Pomona College in 1929 and in 1930 received the certificate from the School of Librarianship at the Uni- versity of California in Berkeley. She was awarded the degree of Master of Arts in economics from Columbia University in 1935. She was comissioned an ensign in the U. S. Naval Reserve in 1943, and left the service in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant. From 1930 on she held...
Show more35’ JEAN H. McFARLAND 1907 - 1966 Jean H. McFarland was born in Riverside, California, in 1907. She graduated from Pomona College in 1929 and in 1930 received the certificate from the School of Librarianship at the Uni- versity of California in Berkeley. She was awarded the degree of Master of Arts in economics from Columbia University in 1935. She was comissioned an ensign in the U. S. Naval Reserve in 1943, and left the service in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant. From 1930 on she held several positions in the Library of the University of California at Berkeley, becoming Assistant Librarian in 1949. In 1953 she was appointed Librarian at Reed College, and in 1957 she became Librarian at Vassar, a post she held until her unexpected death on August 24th, 1966. We were fortunate to have her at Vassar during what were un- questionably the most difficult years in the history of the Library. She presided over a massive and complicated expan- sion and remodelling at a time when the student enrollment was growing rapidly enough to have strained the facilities of the Library even in normal circumstances. She had to deal simultaneously with a bewildering number and variety of problems, both administrative and technical, and she was singularly energetic and resourceful in solving them. Often and -- by virtue of her position -—inevitably, their solution involved her in reconciling different views. The needs of the students and faculty, the welfare of her own staff, and the requirements of the college administration had all to be regarded and kept in balance, and it was here especially that her intelligence, her tact and her patience were invaluable. Jean McFarland's work was known and respected by her colleagues throughout the country. She was a member of several profes- sional organizations (the American Library Association, the New York Library Association, the California Library Associ- ation, the American Association of University Women and the American Association of University Professors); locally, she was a member of the Presbyterian Church, of the Adirondack Mountain Club, of the Zonta Club, and of the League of Women Voters. Fellow-members in these organizations have repeatedly paid tribute to her dedication: she was anything but a mere : 3‘? JEAN H. McFARLAND (Continued) "joiner," being always willing to give her time and to undertake responsibility; she was active in all of them and an officer in many. She was especially active in developing local library services. She worked diligently on the Library Service Committee of the Poughkeepsie Chapter of the League of Women Voters; and she was a charter member of the South- eastern New York Library Resources Council, in which she served successively as a Trustee, as Vice-President, and as President, an office she held at the time of her death. The extent to which her contributions in this field were prized is suggested by a co-worker from the University of the State of New York, who wrote: "At this moment it is necessary to give some words to the great respect in which she is held here and to speak of the unique place she occupied in statewide library planning. As the Librarian of Vassar, she represented to us the most enlightened thought in the promotion of academic librarianship, and we are particularly appreciative of the high order of service to the entire educational-cultural community she recognized librarianship to be." At Vassar, she not only commanded the respect of her col- leagues by her professional ability, but also engaged their affection by her friendly and unassuming nature. Ella M. Elliott Margaret McKenzie Madelene Pierce Howard Green, Chairman U1 \‘.' XVII
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Title: Koutzen, Boris, 1901-1966 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Churgin, Betty, Deschere, John, Pearson, Donald M., Pearson, Homer, Groves, Earl
Description
Date: [After 1966]
Text: 83 BORIS KOUTZEN 1901 - 1966 The sudden death of Boris Koutzen on December 10, 1966, removed a vigorous participant from the American musical scene-and an esteemed colleague from the ranks of Vassar College. Mr.Koutzen was a member of the Vassar faculty from 1944 until his retire- ment in June 1966. As those who knew him well might have pre- dicted, his was not a typical retirement, for he continued to maintain his usual heavy schedule of composing, conducting and teaching. His death came...
Show more83 BORIS KOUTZEN 1901 - 1966 The sudden death of Boris Koutzen on December 10, 1966, removed a vigorous participant from the American musical scene-and an esteemed colleague from the ranks of Vassar College. Mr.Koutzen was a member of the Vassar faculty from 1944 until his retire- ment in June 1966. As those who knew him well might have pre- dicted, his was not a typical retirement, for he continued to maintain his usual heavy schedule of composing, conducting and teaching. His death came just a few hours after he had conducted a dress rehearsal with the Chappaqua Orchestra which he had founded in 1958. Born in Uman, Russia, in 1901, Boris Koutzen appeared at age eleven as violin soloist with the orchestra at Chersson. At seventeen he won a nationwide contest for the post of first violinist of the Moscow State Opera House Orchestra. He also became a member of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra directed by Serge Koussevitsky. After studies in violin with Leo Zetlin and in composition with Reinhold Gliére he was graduated from the Moscow Conservatory and went to Berlin where he made his professional debut in 1922. He never returned to Russia but in 1924 came to the United States with, to quote him "just enough money in my pockets to join the Musicians‘ Union." He not only joined the union but almost immediately embarked upon the multifaceted career of violinist, composer, conductor, and teacher which was to be his life. He became a member of the Philadelphia Orches- tra which was then at its zenith under Leopold Stokowski. And he joined the staff of the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music where he was head of the violin department, director of the ensemble program, and conductor of the orchestra. He remained with the conservatory for thirty-seven years and with the Philadelphia Orchestra until 1938 when he became a charter member of the elite N.B.C. orchestra which was being assembled for Arturo Toscanini. He married Inez Merck, a pianist, who like himself was descended from a long line of musicians. Their children, George and Nadia, cellist and violinist respectively, continue the musical family tradition. During his initial season with the Philadelphia Orchestra Boris Koutzen conducted that group in a performance of his first symphonic composition. Frequent concert tours of the United States increased his stature as a violinist; and a 7 _3q BORIS KOUTZEN (continued) steady stream of compositions in almost every medium won him wide acclaim as a composer. His symphonic works, for example, were performed by virtually every major American orchestra - the Philadelphia, Boston, N.B.C., Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco and New York to name but a few - and by many foreign groups. His Second String_Quartet won the award of the Society for Publication of American Music and his symphonic poem "Valley Forge" won the Juilliard Foundation award. - e - Vassar began to benefit from this extraordinarily rich and varied background when, in 1944, Boris Koutzen joined the faculty to teach violin. His total dedication to the high- est ideals of his art, his warmth and wit, his inspiring teaching, and his understanding won him the imediate and enduring respect and affection of his students and colleagues. He immeasurably enriched the Vassar musical climate by his many appearances as solo violinist, in chamber music with his colleagues and others, and in performances of his own compositions. Within a few years after his arrival his violin students had so grown in number and in skill that he was able to organize the Vassar Orchestra which greatly extended the training and experience available to students. No one who came to hear their first concert in 1948 was pre- pared for the high level of their achievement. And with each successive year the group seemed to surpass its earlier goals. Generations of Vassar students will never forget his Wednes- day afternoon orchestra rehearsals, where, through a combina- tion of chicanery, cajoling, and sometimes, sheer terror he made the members play better than they were able, and opened for them the door to a great and lasting musical experience. Upon the occasion of his retirement, his colleagues and guest artists presented in his honor a concert of his own composi- tions and cited his "distinguished service to music at Vassar." Under Mr. Koutzen's last will and testament the Music Library is to receive as a legacy, his complete manuscripts and sketches which will be of great use to future students and scholars and will serve as a testament to one who loved Vassar and was beloved. Respectfully submitted, Betty Churgin John Deschere Donald M. Pearson Homer Pearson XVII 120-121 Earl Groves, Chairman
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Title: Miller, John Richardson, 1890-1966 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Berkowe, Christiane, Post, C. Gordon, Venable, Ruth
Description
Date: [After 1966]
Text: lfd JOHN RICHARDSON MILLER 1890 — 1966 A Saturday afternoon in early May. The elms and maples of a former Raymond Avenue cast their shadows across a crusty two—lane highway. Professors and their wives are out of doors, rakes or hoes in hand, clearing the debris of a long Poughkeepsie winter. Suddenly, one is aware of an approaching figure--tall, slim, distinguished, and correct; a figure decked out in wing col- lar, grey ascot, cutaway coat, striped trousers, spats, and upon his head a dark...
Show morelfd JOHN RICHARDSON MILLER 1890 — 1966 A Saturday afternoon in early May. The elms and maples of a former Raymond Avenue cast their shadows across a crusty two—lane highway. Professors and their wives are out of doors, rakes or hoes in hand, clearing the debris of a long Poughkeepsie winter. Suddenly, one is aware of an approaching figure--tall, slim, distinguished, and correct; a figure decked out in wing col- lar, grey ascot, cutaway coat, striped trousers, spats, and upon his head a dark fedora set at a discreet angle. Contemplating this figure, a stranger might surmise that here was a man of fashion, a dilettante, whose delicate hands touched nothing of the earth earthy, and who had uttered his early cries within the confines of a dainty cradle in a foreign city--Rome, Paris, or Teheran--attended by servants who responded at once to his most inarticulate wish. Our stranger, however, would have been wrong on all counts: no dilettante, but a good solid scholar of French literature, whose publications, while not frequent, were important and well-received; no aesthete, but a man who could grub in the garden, hike twenty miles a day with the Adirondack Mountain ' Glub, dance until the wee hours of the morning, and put to- gether an excellent and tasty Irish stew. If he looked a man of fashion, as he did on this particular Saturday afternoon, he was on his way no doubt, as indeed he was, to afternoon tea at the home of a colleague. And, alas, no-—neither Rome, nor Paris, nor Teheran, not even New York, is to be honored as the birthplace of John Richardson Miller, but Leominster, Massachusetts, a mill town half way between Worcester and the New Hampshire border where Miller pére for half a century cared for the sick, brought innumerable people into the world and eased as many out of it. John Miller's childhood and youth are outside the pale of our knowledge. For all we know, he may have been a barefoot boy with cheeks of tan who went fishing on a summer's day, a bamboo pole over his shoulder and a can of worms in his hand. Hi JOHN RICHARDSON MILLER - continued We do know that in the fall of 1909 John Miller entered Williams College and that he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in June, 1913; and that he remained another year at Williams serving as an assistant in history and taking a Master of Arts degree. In this era of non-early specialization, John Miller became an instructor in French, Latin, and algebra, at the Penn-Yan Academy in central New York near the head of Keuka Lake. The following year he moved on to the Washington University Academy in St. Louis, thence to West Virginia University where he taught the Romance languages--French and Spanish--until 1929. In the meantime, he had obtained a Ph.D. at Harvard and studied at the Sorbonne, the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, the University of Florence, the Middlebury French School, and the Institut de Phonétique in Paris. Mr. Miller also held in 1920-1921 a Parker Traveling Fellowship from Harvard for research at the Bibliotheque Nationale. ' In the fall of 1930, John Miller §nd_his wife joined Vassar's French Department. Mrs. Miller was the former Maria Tastevin whom Mr. Miller had first met at a meeting of the Modern Language Association. Forsaking the cause of learning moment- arily, John Miller and Maria Tastevin adjourned to a nearby drugstore where, over a couple of banana-splits, the court- ship really began. In due course they were married and shortly thereafter, with Mrs. Miller, who was returning to Vassar Col- lege, where she had taught from 1922 to 1928, he found his way to Poughkeepsie. John Miller's major publication was a 626-page book published by the Johns Hopkins Press in 1942: Boileau en France au dix-huitieme siecle. This work was very favorably reviewed in American, French, and English journals. All the reviewers, without exception, referred to this volume as an extremely valuable reference work for students of the 18th Century. Following the publication of this book, Mr. Miller was invited at the suggestion of Henri Peyre of Yale to become a colla- borator with A. F. B. Clark on the Boileau section of A Critical Bibliography of French Literature. In March 1946 Mr. Miller published in collaboration with Eliot G. Fay a highly-regarded eleven-page critical biblio- graphy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. f lf2. JOHN RICHARDSON MILLER - continued I In November of the same year, Mr. Miller published a success- ful educational edition of Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince. This charming tale of the encounter of a wrecked aviator and a little boy from another planet is widely used in the United States, not only as a first reading text, but as an example of a literary type in contemporary literature. The Millers‘ last years at Vassar were darkened by the death of their only child, Madeleine, a beautiful and talented young woman who, after graduating from Vassar, had married a Frenchman and lived in Paris. There was joy for them, however, in the presence of a grandchild. Mr. Miller, at that time Chairman of the French Department, retired in 1955 and with Mrs. Miller left the United States for their home in Paris. John Miller was always the most hospitable of men; still, in the midst of an active social life and a frequent attendance at the Paris theaters, John Miller continued his scholarly work. In 1959, there appeared his educational edition of Paul Vialar's Le Petit Garcon de l'ascenseur. This unusual fantasy and Mr. Miller's excellent introduction commended itself to teachers of French in this country. It is still a widely used text. Only once after his retirement did Mr. Miller return to the United States. In 1963 he attended the 50th reunion of his class at Williams. When he came to Poughkeepsie for a few days, we saw him at various parties, gay, happy, full of boyish spontaneity, and glad to be back among his old friends. At one party, he appeared in his reunion costume--an outland- ishly colored blazer and on his head, not a fedora, but a beanie. Sumer after summer in France, research leaves in France, a French wife, and a daughter married to a Frenchman, could not make a Frenchman out of the boy from Leominster, Massachusetts. There was a faqade, to be sure—=he spoke French with the best of Frenchmen and he adapted well to life in France--but under- neath the fagade there was the New Englander. He loved France but he had great pride in his New England background. With Daniel Webster he could have said: "I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves." John Miller died in Paris on January 27, 1966, at the age of seventy-five. Christiane Berkowe Gordon Post Ruth Venable, Chairman XVII 61 -62
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Title: Wells, Mary Evelyn, 1881-1965 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Campbell, Mildred, Linner, Edward, Sague, Mary, Asprey, Winifred
Description
Date: [After 1965]
Text: 3i MARY EVELYN WELLS 1881 - 1965 Most of you present today never heard of Mary Evelyn Wells. Few of you knew her personally. Some of you remember her as a distin- guished senior colleague, for you were but young instructors when she became Professor Emeritus of Mathematics in 1948. Yet Vassar College owes much of its present distinction to women such as Miss Wells. Miss Wells was first and foremost a mathematician, "Euclidean in her approach to life," as one friend characterized her...
Show more3i MARY EVELYN WELLS 1881 - 1965 Most of you present today never heard of Mary Evelyn Wells. Few of you knew her personally. Some of you remember her as a distin- guished senior colleague, for you were but young instructors when she became Professor Emeritus of Mathematics in 1948. Yet Vassar College owes much of its present distinction to women such as Miss Wells. Miss Wells was first and foremost a mathematician, "Euclidean in her approach to life," as one friend characterized her. Her pre- sentation of mathematics had depth and was sound, with that nice blend of scholarliness and integrity that students are so quick to recognize. But it was something more; for in its own way it was a work of art -- the work of a master-teacher. How many of us, like Mary Wells, can so enthrall students that they do not hear the sound of the bell at the end of the class hour? Her gift of humor, fairmindedness and inexhaustible energy, her discretion, loyalty to colleagues, selflessness, sense of the "wholeness" of the Vassar com- munity and what it worked for are the qualities that gained for her the respect and confidence of her colleagues and inevitably led to service on committee after committee. As a long-time member of the Committee on Admission, Miss Wells was adamant in her rejection of candidates unfortunate enough to have acquired even one low score, whatever the field. To quote her: "Vassar College is able to get students who can; why take those who can't?" President MacCracken comments that perhaps this was one of the times in which numbers really got in Miss Wells‘ way. Though a person of strong convictions, she was a firm believer in democratic processes. vShe fought for her beliefs, but when defeated, worked with equal vigor to uphold the decision of the majority. Miss Wells came to Vassar College in l9l5, the year in which President MacCracken was inaugurated. A graduate of Mount Holyoke, she held both the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago where she had worked under Professor E. H. Moore, a rare distinction for any young mathematician, especially a woman. She had already taught for five years at Mount Holyoke, and, as acting Associate Professor, for another year at Oberlin. She was, however, appointed to and accepted an instructorship at Vassar, a rank which she held for five years. At this time mathematics was a required course for freshmen, and Miss Wells was assigned to teach six of these sections. Later promotions came rapidly for that era; at the age of forty-seven she became a full professor and served the college in this capacity for twenty more years. <32 MARY EVELYN WELLS (Continued) Along with her dedication to mathematics and to teaching, Miss Wells had interests beyond the confines of the campus. Perhaps her greatest enthusiasm outside Vassar was centered on India. In 1926, she was invited to the University of Madras as Head of the Department of Mathematics. This experience gave her a last- ing love for that country and an awareness of its problems. She returned to Madras in 1936-37 and continued to serve actively as a trustee of the University long after her retirement from Vassar College. Almost certainly, it was only love for her family and sensitivity to their needs that kept her from going back to India. Indeed, her devotion to her family was marked throughout her life. A younger sister and lively nephews enjoyed many a summer at her home in Maine. This, then, is the woman to whom we pause to pay tribute: a woman whose stern sense of devotion to her profession led her to great distinction as a mathematician and teacher; a person committed to the highest ideal of a Vassar education; and one whose dynamic influence still remains with many associates and students. Mildred Campbell Edward Linner Mary Sague Winifred Asprey, Chairman xv: 323
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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: Parrish, Carl, 1904-1965 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Coover, James B., de Madariaga, Pilar, Groves, Earl W., Pearson, Donald M., Pearson, Homer
Description
Date: [After 1965]
Text: lé CARL PARRISH 1904 — 1965 Carl Parrish was a distinguished scholar--an elder statesman among present-day musicologists--who was active and influential in the American Musicological Society. He was a specialist in medieval and renaissance music, and in the music of Haydn. He was well in touch with other areas of research in music, and was interested in the development of music library resources. He had received a Fulbright Grant in 1952-53 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1958-59. His books...
Show morelé CARL PARRISH 1904 — 1965 Carl Parrish was a distinguished scholar--an elder statesman among present-day musicologists--who was active and influential in the American Musicological Society. He was a specialist in medieval and renaissance music, and in the music of Haydn. He was well in touch with other areas of research in music, and was interested in the development of music library resources. He had received a Fulbright Grant in 1952-53 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1958-59. His books include the "Masterpieces of Music before 1750," "A Treasury of Early Music," "The Notation of Medieval Music," and translations of the "Dictionary of Musical Terms," by Johannes Tinctoris and the "Thoroughbass Method" of Hermann Keller. He was devoted to teaching in a career which he began as pianist and composer. Before coming to Vassar College, he had taught at Wells College, Fisk University, Westminster Choir College, Union Theological Seminary and Pomona College. While at Vassar he taught during numerous summers at the University of Southern California, Union Theological Seminary and the University of Minnesota. His interest in the problems of students was given particular emphasis in those four years when Carl and his wife served as housefellows in Raymond. To those who knew him as a friend as well as professionally, he was a quietly compassionate man whose confidence was to be sought and respected. He had a broad range of interests. In recollec- tion, discussions with him concerning fine points of historical analysis in music, and concerning developments in other fields, can be contrasted with afternoons spent with him in Yankee Stadium or in watching him play ball with his son. His sense of humor was perceptive and generous. His contemplation of ultimate concerns marked both his social awareness and his faith. It was a privilege, not easily gained, to know this man. And it is our privilege, at this moment, to try to call your attention to the whole man. . James B. Coover Pilar de Madariaga Earl W. Groves Donald M. Pearson Homer Pearson XVII 2
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Title: Swenarton, Jane Jenkinson, 1889-1965 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Havelock, Christine, Wheeler, Helen, Post, C. Gordon
Description
Date: [After 1965]
Text: ~27 JANE JENKINSON SWENARTON 1889 — 1965 Professor-emeritus Jane Jenkinson Swenarton, for twenty-eight years associated with Vassar's Department of English, died in Poughkeepsie on August 12, 1965. Writers of memorial minutes tend to exaggerate the good qualities and achievements of the dead and to forgive or forget the imper- fections, if such there be. Lead is transmuted into gold, and gold into the raiment of angels. Portraits emerge so distorted that like some modern paintings the...
Show more~27 JANE JENKINSON SWENARTON 1889 — 1965 Professor-emeritus Jane Jenkinson Swenarton, for twenty-eight years associated with Vassar's Department of English, died in Poughkeepsie on August 12, 1965. Writers of memorial minutes tend to exaggerate the good qualities and achievements of the dead and to forgive or forget the imper- fections, if such there be. Lead is transmuted into gold, and gold into the raiment of angels. Portraits emerge so distorted that like some modern paintings the subject is not recognizable except by those who have read the teacher's manual. Jane Swenarton was not an angel. If the conceit may be forgiven, like the rest of us, she was part this and part that; in short, she was a human being. Disliked heartily in some quarters, she disliked heartily in return. She could be short, sometimes rude, but never unconsciously rude, and ready to take umbrage at the least offense, imagined or not. She was not a rebel but she did believe in standing on her own feet and being counted. She never sought security in the protective coloration of those in authority. She had nothing but contempt for a "you—don't- know-on-which-side-your-bread—is-buttered" policy. She spurned those who were silent until tenure freed their minds and loosened their tongues. She was a woman of convictions and looked down her nose at those whose two-fisted resolution of issues was "On the one hand --- Now, on the other hand." Honest with herself and with others, jealous of her independence, and willing to express her honest, independent thought, she devel- oped to high degree the fine art of making enemies. If Jane Swenarton was difficult with many of her contemporaries, she was not so with her students. Here she was admired and respected as she herself respected them. Her strength lay, not only in her knowledge and in her capacity to communicate, but in 18 JANE J. SWENARTON - continued a genuine and abiding interest in these young women; and many letters from old students who wrote to her at the time of her retirement testify to her influence and to the quality of her teaching as she led them to a critical appreciation of Shakes- peare or James Joyce or Virginia Woolf. At Skidmore College where Miss Swenarton taught before coming to Vassar, the Class of 1923 dedicated its year-book to her. In the course of a page-long appreciation it was said: "There is no one more closely in touch with student interests and acti- vities than she, and to no one do we owe more gratitude . . . she has made English courses fascinating for even the least literary of us." Unable to go on to the Ph.D. because of limited financial resources, Jane Swenarton finally received her doctor's degree in the form of an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Wilson College in 1956. Following her retirement here, she spent a year in Europe, and upon her return, accepted a position at Wilson as a John Hay Whitney Teaching Fellow. In awarding the honorary degree it was said: "To the disciplines of mind which have made her so perceptive a scholar and critic, she adds other qualities even more invaluable to the creative teacher-—a refreshing sanity of outlook, an engaging humor, imagination tipped with fancy, and an enthusiasm which ranges with delight over a great many sub- jects--including her students." The affection in which the students at Vassar held Jane Swenarton is suggested in a jingle (and this is one of many) composed in the manner of A. A. Milne by the students in a Shakespeare class: Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton, What will you do to we? The tales that we've heard, The wails that we've heard, Make us afraid of an E. Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton, Have mercy on such as we, We“ve studied the bard So long and so hard That we need some sympathy. JANE J. SWENARTON - continued Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton, Treat us as if you were we, For after Miss Bacon We may be vacatin For all eternity. Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton, That Shakespeare is great we agree, But our love for him wanes When we think that it gains Us only a D or an E. Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton, We ask it on bended knee; Take a little for granted and Know that we've panted Over this poetry. Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton, Lend a willing ear to our plea. Only one tiny line And a second of time Will turn an E to a B. (And oh I the difference to we 1) Again, difficult as she could be at times, Miss Swenarton was not without close and devoted friends. Gathered from Smith College where she was graduated with a Phi Beta Kappa key in 1911; from Erie, Pennsylvania, where she taught school for the first time; from Columbia where she received the Master's degree; from Skidmore and Vassar, she knew these friends, as they knew her, with confidence, intimacy, and loyalty. It was friendship in the best sense of that word and a relationship in which the foibles, strategems, and poses of superficial social life had no place. There were not many here who knew her intimately, but those who did valued her for her integrity, her knowledge, her understand- ing, and her forthrightness. Jane Swenarton was widely read and had a fine knowledge of English literature and the English theater; she was familiar with the biographies or memoirs of many English and French women of unusual character or achievement; and she read German literature in German with ease and enjoyment. But she was not a productive scholar in the sense that she wrote books and contributed articles to the journals. She had once aspired to the creative life and she wrote many poems and short stories but none of these was ever published. She 30 JANE J. SWENARTON - continued worked for years on the Journal of a great aunt who had made the grand tour of Europe early in the 19th century; no pub- lisher was willing to take it. Earlier, she had written a play which was published by Samuel French; later she was to wish that it had never seen the light of day. The classroom was her forte. Here she was at ease, here she was happy; here it was that she did her best work. Possessed of a clear and penetrating mind and a wealth of knowledge, versed in the techniques of scholarship, and skilled in the use of the Socratic method, she was able to make of her classes a true means to education. Aware that all education is self-education, it was her desire, not to instruct, but to lead her students to instruct themselves, and to know the worth of that instruction. For many years before Jane Swenarton retired from Vassar College she suffered from arthritis. For years she lived a life of pain. For years she sought relief from physicians both at home and abroad, but to no avail. As her condition deteriorated, it was clear that for her the test of courage was not to die but to live. Bent and full of pain, she fought against overwhelming odds to live a normal life, attending lectures and concerts and the Experimental Theater's plays, visiting friends, absorbed in her books, keeping her mind sharp and shining. Except for the passing of time itself, time heals most wounds; but for her, time brought only an increase of pain, debilita- tion, and despair. In the hospital for the last time, she gave up, her courage gone, and knowing that the end was iminent. The flame of determination was quenched and there remained only helplessness, hopelessness, a loneliness which nothing--no word, no act, no presence-—could assuage. Mercy came, bringing death. Christine Havelock Helen Wheeler C. Gordon Post, Chairman XVI 261-263
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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: Haight, Elizabeth Hazelton, 1872-1964 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Erck, Myrtle Soles, Erck, Theodore Henry, Ryberg, Inez Scott
Description
Date: [After 1964]
Text: :22 ELIZABETH HAZELTON HAIGHT 1872 - 1964 Elizabeth Hazelton Haight was born in Auburn, New York on February ll, 1872. She was graduated from Vassar College in l894, received the master's degree here in 1899 and the Ph.D. from Cornell in 1909. Following her graduation from.Vassar she taught Latin for a year at Rye Seminary, for six years at the Emma Willard School, and a year at Packer Collegiate Institute. She returned to Vassar as Instructor in Latin in 1902. For the forty years until...
Show more:22 ELIZABETH HAZELTON HAIGHT 1872 - 1964 Elizabeth Hazelton Haight was born in Auburn, New York on February ll, 1872. She was graduated from Vassar College in l894, received the master's degree here in 1899 and the Ph.D. from Cornell in 1909. Following her graduation from.Vassar she taught Latin for a year at Rye Seminary, for six years at the Emma Willard School, and a year at Packer Collegiate Institute. She returned to Vassar as Instructor in Latin in 1902. For the forty years until her retire- ment in 1942 she served in the successive ranks from Instructor to Professor and Chairman of the Department. An outstanding Classicist and feminist Miss Haight was among the last of a generation of dedi- cated women who comprised a distinguished company of women professors at this and other comparable colleges, a company which chose the pro- fession of college teaching in an era when the choice was likely to preclude marriage and home life in the ordinary sense. Miss Haight made Vassar College her home and her life. She was a gracious lady and an impressive teacher who comanded the loyalty of generation after generation of students. As a member of the faculty of Vassar College, Miss Haight was inde- fatigable in her effort to build up a strong department of Latin and to maintain for Classical studies the important place she believed they should occupy in higher education in the Liberal Arts. One of her many achievements for the Department and the College was the transformation in 1937 of one of the dingiest of Avery Hall's classrooms into the present handsome Classical Museum, which serves not only to house and display Vassar's valuable collection of anti- quities and coins in an attractive setting, but also as a comfortable classroom and small lecture room. Miss Haight had a firm.grasp of both immediate and larger college problems. To the younger members of her own department she was both inspiration and guide, more zealous in emphasizing what could be praised in their work than in pointing out shortcomings. She was unsparing in her efforts to secure for all serious young scholars both opportunity and support for research, and unflagging in her interest in their efforts and achievements. In meetings of the faculty it was often Miss Haight who summed up the sometimes tangent- ial discussion and defined the issue, clarifying the crucial ques- tions and bringing the objective into focus. Presidents, trustees and other department chairmen talked over their diverse educational and administrative problems with her and went away aided by her experience and wisdom and strengthened by her unswerving devotion to the good of Vassar. I ' X3 ELIZABETH HAZELTON HAIGHT (Continued) In the mid-thirties, when scholars were fleeing Hitler's Germany, Miss Haight was chiefly instrumental in organizing a program of visiting scholars, which brought to Vassar a series of distinguished professors as guests, free to give open lectures and to meet with advanced classes and student organizations. Many of these were enabled through their visit to Vassar to secure appointments in American colleges and universities. Miss Haight was a vital force not only in the development of Vassar College but also in the larger field of Classical studies in America. Choosing as her special field the poetry of Horace and the Augustan Age, she published in 1925 her book on Horace and His Art of EnJoyment This was followed at frequent intervals by books on Apuleius and His Influence, Romance in the Latin Elegiac Poets, Essays on Ancient Fiction, The Roman Use of Anecdotes, and a number of others. Earlier, in the years from 1915 to 1919, she had collaborated with President James Monroe Taylor on a book about the College called simply Vassar, had edited the Autobiography and Letters of Matthew Vassar, and then in his turn The Life and Letters of James Monroe Taylor. Miss Haight's books on the Classics were written for the student encountering the Latin texts of her Roman authors rather than for the specialized scholar, and many generations of Vassar students found through her a view of life seasoned by Horace, which became for them the "robur et aes triplex" of their lives. Her eminence as teacher and scholar was recognized by her election as president of the American Philological Association in 1934 - the first woman to hold that office since the founding of the Association in Pough- keepsie in 1869. On the iniative of a group of alumnae, the Trustees established in 1952 the Elizabeth Hazelton Haight Fund for Research in Classics, in honor of her achievement in research and her tenth year as Professor Emeritus of Vassar College. Elizabeth Haight was one of the great builders of this College. Her name will always occupy a significant place in its history. Myrtle Soles Erck Theodore Henry Erck Inez Scott Ryberg XVI 216-21?
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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: 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: Ross, Janet, 1911-1963 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Venable, Ruth, Mace, Dean
Description
Date: [After 1963]
Text: ”’JA§ET‘RGSS Vmm awn, mmsw mi’ mmmh at vaaaax» Gollaga frmm 19:45 V ﬂ:mg~§z%a:*% G34‘ ‘ﬁwah Ga ta 1%3;%!emaa 1:: ?:&a:>:z%a mmla mcmaa, an tiiamb Nth, W11. .‘ V F % {inlay earn! zalaxenmr Eaalcom whevame eawimg at Eiriﬁish Gmmul ‘Ea Essmzaao. % L Tjjﬂwa 9; fgwﬁfﬁmisa vi‘ aha? }'.:y«¢éa% 4% Eauna-5 Filiea de . p .« ?fi§x'sa13.3%.M§{ f'“£’?&!?‘Eﬁ®;§, mt1%a&*m‘ maaiwa an ms.-. tram tha 't¥n~ivema1’ay i!:*1<332¢K 3%} war waratad ’cba¥.%aA. aagma rum the ‘ {...
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