Search results

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
Show less

Title: Folsom, Joseph Kirk, [?]-1960 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Gordon, Joan, Murra, John, Koempel, Leslie
Description
Date: [After 1960]
Text: 9 d Joseph Kirk Folsom Read at Vassar Faculty Meeting 10/12/60 Joseph Kirk Folsom, Professor Emeritus of Sociolsgy at Vassar College, died suddenly on May 27, 1960, within a year of his retire- ment. He came to Vassar College as Professor of Sociology and Economics in 1931, after having taught at the University of Pittsburgh (1922-24), Dartmouth, and Sweet Briar College (1924-1931). During his last year, he taught as Lecturer at Boston University. He was to have conducted a seminar in...
Show more9 d Joseph Kirk Folsom Read at Vassar Faculty Meeting 10/12/60 Joseph Kirk Folsom, Professor Emeritus of Sociolsgy at Vassar College, died suddenly on May 27, 1960, within a year of his retire- ment. He came to Vassar College as Professor of Sociology and Economics in 1931, after having taught at the University of Pittsburgh (1922-24), Dartmouth, and Sweet Briar College (1924-1931). During his last year, he taught as Lecturer at Boston University. He was to have conducted a seminar in sociology in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar in the spring of 1961, and had made plans for a trip to the Soviet Union to study the contemporary Russian family. He graduated from Rutgers University with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering in 1913, received a Masters Degree in Sociology at Clark University in 1915, and a Ph.D. in Psychology at Columbia University in 1917. In World War I, he served in the U. S. Army as Psychologi- cal Examiner, and shortly after the war went to Czechoslovakia as Regional Director of the American YMCA. During the Second world war he took a leave from Vassar to serve as Psychological warfare Execu- tive in the Office of war Information in this country and in England. He was the author of several books, a contributor to others, and wrote scores of articles for professional and semi-professional Jour- nals. His first two books were written prior to his selection of the family as a field of specialization - Culture and Social Pro ress in 1929 and Social Ps cholo in 1931. He Iater contrituted two major books to the iiterature on marriage and family living - The Famil , Its Sociolo and Social Ps chiatr in 1934 (revised as The Famii and Democratic Societ in 19555 and Youth Famil and Education in i9Fi. ﬁe was edito nd c ntrib to to rie f ion ri Vassar r a o u r a se s o p ee ng lectures published under the title of A Plan for Marriage in 1938. In 1939 he was elected President of the Eastern Sociological Society. From 1992 to 19b4, he served as editor of the American Sociological Review, culminating his work with a special numter evoted to Recent Trends in the Soviet Union. Here his knowledge of the Russian language, one oi Tour ianguages he had mastered, was of great assistance in getting at the sources. In his articles appearing in various journals, one senses the urgency he felt to counsel and educate people in the skills of inter- personal relations in order to help them increase their satisfactions in living. This concern for the distribution of useful information on the sociology and psychology of personality formation within the family is borne out by his administrative and consultative roles in such organizations as the National Conggess of Parents and Teacher, the National Council on Parent Education, the National Conference on Family Lite and the National Council of Family Relations. He was one of the founders of the American Association of Marr age Counse- lors, and upon his retiremen rom Vassar, egan a practice as a marriage counselor in Boston. 2. At the time of his death, he had almost completed an inter- disciplinary social science test, to be called Society for Man. He was also well along on a new book on the family. Through the years at Vassar College, the courses which became most closely identified with Professor Folsom were those in the Family, Social Theory, Social Institutions, and the interdepartmental course on the Soviet Union. He was one of the first social scientists at any college to introduce fieldwork as a part of academic course work. In 1936, he wrote an account of his students’ activities in local social agencies and organizations, in a Report to the President of the College. Temperamentally, Joe Folsom was a liberal, a pragmatic social scientist, and a man who cared very much about what happened to people. In attempting to trace the strands of his interests, his point of view, and the nature of his association with faculty and students at Vassar, one becomes increasingly aware that even those colleagues who worked most closely with him never really knew him as a person. what is evident is that he was a shy man. He was also a courageous man, for in 1953, his teaching and writing were inter- rupted by a period of hospitalization which he sought voluntarily. Moreover, after a semester's leave, he returned to the College and quietly took up his teaching and research. In his last years at Vassar, he continued to speak eloquently in faculty meetings, es- pecially urging us to entertain "outrageous hypotheses" as a stimulus to rethinking educational policy in a wider frame of reference. He was creative, experimental, and of liberal outlook to the end. He was a man who believed deeply that a liberal education could lead to a life of self-fulfillment in work and personal relations. He be- lieved that, since family life is located at the very core of society, in understanding it, one finds many clues to an understanding of the larger culture. Once he said in tribute to Ernest Groves, what can now be said of Professor Folsom himself: "in (his) life we may read this meaning, that family living can be made better through science, if it be guided by the faith that man was not made for the family, but the family for man". Joan Gordon John Murra Leslie Koempel, Chairman ‘fl. fl
Show less

Title: Strelsky, Nikander, 1893-1946 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Lamson, Genieve, Folsom, Joseph, Lockwood, Helen Drusilla
Description
Date: [After 1946]
Text: NIKANDER sTRELsKY 1893 - 19u6 The faculty of Vassar College mourns the loss of its beloved colleague, Nikander Strelsky, who died June 20, l9h6. He illustrates for us the fullness of life that is possible for an exile. Out of his suffering caused by the Revolution - the death of his father, the loss of his family, his own exile and the break in his engineering career - he grew in faith in the Russian people. He came to see in perspective their possi- bilities of long range achievement and to...
Show moreNIKANDER sTRELsKY 1893 - 19u6 The faculty of Vassar College mourns the loss of its beloved colleague, Nikander Strelsky, who died June 20, l9h6. He illustrates for us the fullness of life that is possible for an exile. Out of his suffering caused by the Revolution - the death of his father, the loss of his family, his own exile and the break in his engineering career - he grew in faith in the Russian people. He came to see in perspective their possi- bilities of long range achievement and to do his share toward it with such love for his fellowwmen that we learned to know the meaning of the spirit of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and how to accept the revolution of our time. "To became a true Russian, to be a Russian fully, means only to become the brother of all men, to become, if you will, a universal man," said Dos- toevsky in his Speech at the Unveiling of the Pushkin Memorial. Nikander Strelsky loved his adopted country, America, and eagerly went out to understand it. He studied Whitman; he farmed in Minnesota; he enjoyed the Ver- mont tradition; he joined his fellow citizens in Dutchess County in many activities. He sensed and believed in the youthful vitality of the United States. He was an incomparable friend. He liked people for themselves. He saw the best that they were trying to be and he was gifted in freein them. He was bursting with ideas that set his friends on fire. His house was open and wanm. Students, colleagues, refugees, local citizens, scientists, engineers, members of learned societies, all came to draw on his radiance. His sympathy, his wit, his laughter, penetrated any barriers or restraints in personal relations. As a scholar he was helping to solve the great problem of our generation, the relationship of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America. He had been appointed by the American Council of Learned Societies to prepare materials for further- ing mutual understanding not only in literature but in i 1 1 1 I ! 1 \ ( \ \ I 4 I 1 I NIKANDER STRELSKY (Continued) politics, science and other fields. He wrote and collaborated in writing books and articles on Rus- sian civilization. A recent article is about to be translated and published in Brazil. At Vassar College he laid the foundations for studies in Russian, not as a linguistic discipline only, but as the study of an entire civilization. He brought a background of realistic training in scientific agriculture, the rich artist's experience of heading a dance troupe, and a Ph.D. in literature. He reached out, therefore, to work with social scientists, art- ists and others among his colleagues. During this last spring he started on a trip to visit universities and scholars, seeking the best experiences in develop- ing Russian Studies in America. All this he carried on under physical handicap. His courage and unselfishness never flagged, nor did his imagination. His work is still unfinished, but many have received inspiration from him personally to go on with it - students, colleagues, friends. Genieve Lamson Joseph Folsom Helen Drusilla Lockwood XII - S7-58 10
Show less

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
Show less

Title: Taylor, Jr., Nelson E., 1921-1960 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Wyman, Martha McChesney, Crabb Jr., Cecil V., Post, C. Gordon
Description
Date: [After 1960]
Text: 1 Z. NELSON E. TAYLOR, JR. (continued) Federal-College Internship Program. More recently, Ned edited a book on American parties and politics, entitled "Know Your Candidates." This was an analysis in their own words of the positions of Vice- President Nixon and Senator Kennedy on major policy issues. In addition, he had been asked to contribute a chapter to a commemorative volume in honor of Eric Voegelin, an outstanding contemporary political theorist and Ned's colleague on the...
Show more1 Z. NELSON E. TAYLOR, JR. (continued) Federal-College Internship Program. More recently, Ned edited a book on American parties and politics, entitled "Know Your Candidates." This was an analysis in their own words of the positions of Vice- President Nixon and Senator Kennedy on major policy issues. In addition, he had been asked to contribute a chapter to a commemorative volume in honor of Eric Voegelin, an outstanding contemporary political theorist and Ned's colleague on the faculty at Louisiana State University. During the recent political campaign, Ned worked as director of research and as writer for Gore Vidal, the unsuccessful candidate for Congress in New York's 29th District. At the time of his death, Ned was revising his doctoral dissertation with a view to publication. This was a study of the American Association of Railroads as a pres- sure group. In fact, Ned made a hobby of railroads; he was what is called a true railroad buff. In his years at Vassar, Ned developed into a fine teacher. There was nothing of the pedant or the antiquarian about him and his classes were alive with stimulating presenta- tion and exciting response. Ned had no file of last year's notes, no yellowed sheets of ancient lectures. Like a good teacher, he strove to make his students think; in the process of doing so, he sometimes exaggerated, he sometimes needled, he sometimes assumed the role of the devil's advocate. But there was point to all that he did in the classroom. In time, the facts might be forgotten, the theories dim recollections, but the students would never forget the intellectual experience that comes of the challenged mind, of new and unexpected ways of looking at social problems, of driving the student back upon the truth or falsity of her basic assumptions. Not only did his students hold him in high esteem as a teacher; their regard for him was genuinely affectionate. Ned's scholarship was acknowledged by students, faculty colleagues at Vassar and in the profession, to be of the highest calibre. His opinions and judgments-—sometimes tenaciously held and vigorously expressed--derived from painstaking research and wide reading, both in his chosen field and in related fields. His own depth of knowledge in his field and other fields that interested him, such No OCR availableNELSON E. TAYLOR, JR. (continued) as theology, served as a model to the students in his ceaseless efforts to bring them up to the highest scholarly level of which they were capable. Ned was fundamentally a conservative with a liberal bent. The day before he died he expressed a deep suspicion of reformers and their ways. His thought was always in the realm of the possible; his interest was in reasonable and sensible steps forward within the context of the American constitutional system unhampered by the claims of special groups or the concepts of doctrinaire theorists. He was very much the descendant of both Jefferson and Hamilton. Behind a facade, reminiscent of one of Ned's favorite writers, H.L.Mencken, there was a very thoughtful and kindly person. He was a loyal and devoted friend who did not give his friendship lightly, but once given it could be depended upon. He was an extremely courteous person to whom the amenities were important. He had a nice quality of quietly doing little kindnesses and of making the recipient feel that the pleasure was really his. His elderly landlady, in whom Ned inspired both affection and admiration, had this to say: "I have never met a young man who was so considerate and who appealed to me so much. I cannot begin to tell you the kind and thoughtful things he has done for my sister and myself. The whole place is different and better since he came here to live." Not only was he a kindly person, he was a lonely person. There often appeared to be a defensive facade, but this was a bulwark of an extremely sensitive person who was easily hurt. On two or three occasions we had discussed the insensitivity of sensitive people to the sensitivities of others. Ned knew his own faults and sought to correct them and to a great extent he succeeded; but he never over- came a loneliness which was more extreme than the loneliness most of us experience. At the end of his life, however, he had two associations which were constant sources of strength. One was the church the other the department. Ned was a deeply religious man. Raised a Methodist, he became greatly interested in the Episcopal Church. He was confirmed and became a member of Christ Church in Pough- keepsie. Not only was he a regular attendant at this church 4 NELSON E. TAYLOR, JR. (continued) and a full participant in its activities, he was a lay reader and assumed his obligations very seriously. Along with deep involvement in the activities of the church, Ned had wide—ranging cultural interests. He loved good music and derived intense pleasure from his large record collection and the numerous musical performances he attended on the campus and in New York City. He was no less interested in drama, expressing this interest both by participating from time to time in campus dramatic productions and by going to the theater frequently. He also attended a great many lectures, symposia, and con- ferences on the campus and elsewhere, and he was heard to coment frequently about how these experiences had broadened his horizons. These varied cultural activities greatly enriched his teaching and made Ned a stimulating conversationalist. In every sense, Ned was a full and complete member of the Department of Political Science. He was a responsible person upon whom we could rely with utmost confidence; his counsel was welcome and of value. Among us all, there was a mutual trust, respect, and liking; but through long years of association, both Mr. Crabb and the chairman can testify to Ned's great contribution to the affairs of the depart- ment, and we particularly will note his absence. And so we say good bye to Ned Taylor: a fine teacher, a good friend, a respected and valued member of the Vassar community. I In view of Ned's profound interest in the classics, it is appropriate that we should end this memorial with a quota- tion from Plato: "Certainly not," said Socrates. "The soul of a philosopher will reason in quite another way; she will not ask philosophy to release her in order that when released she may deliver herself up again to the thralldom of pleasures and pains, doing a work only to be outdone again, weaving instead of unweaving Penelope's web. But she will calm passion, and follow reason, and dwell in contemplation of her, beholding the true and divine (which is not a matter of opinion), and thence deriving nourishment. Thus NELSON E. TAYLOR, JR. (continued) she seeks to live while she lives, and after death she hopes to go to her own kindred and to that which is like her, and to be freed from human ills. Never_ fear, Simias and Cobes, that a soul which has thus been nur- tured and has had these pursuits, will at her departure from the body be scattered and blown away by the winds and be nowhere and nothing." Martha McChesney Wyman Cecil V. Crabb, Jr. C. Gordon Post XV - 207-299
Show less

Title: Wood, Frances A, 1840-1914 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Reed, Amy L., Hill, William Bancroft, Fiske, Christabel F.
Description
Date: [After 1914]
Text: FRANCES A. WOOD l8LO - 191k Frances A. Wood, Librarian Emeritus, died on June 17, l9lh. She was connected with the College almost from its beginnin , as teacher of music, 1 67-70 as instructor in gnglish, 1870-80, librarian, 1800- 1910, and as Librarian Emeritus until her death. Under her care the library increased from a few thousand volumes stored in one room of the Main Build- ing to nearly 70,000 beautifully housed in the Thomp- son Memorial Library. She gave her time and thought to her...
Show moreFRANCES A. WOOD l8LO - 191k Frances A. Wood, Librarian Emeritus, died on June 17, l9lh. She was connected with the College almost from its beginnin , as teacher of music, 1 67-70 as instructor in gnglish, 1870-80, librarian, 1800- 1910, and as Librarian Emeritus until her death. Under her care the library increased from a few thousand volumes stored in one room of the Main Build- ing to nearly 70,000 beautifully housed in the Thomp- son Memorial Library. She gave her time and thought to her work unstintedly throughout her active years. By her reminiscences, published in later life, she made a valuable caatribution to the history of the ﬂollege. Her sweetness of spirit, gentle grace, and sympathetic interest won the friendship of all assoc- iates and students. Those who knew her intimately re- cognized the independence of her thinking, the wise tolerance of her Judgments, the charm of her genial, sometimes whimsical, outlook on life. She was uni- versally beloved. In her death the College has lost an honored member of its Faculty, a sincere friend of all its alumnae, and an interpreter to the present generation of the spirit of its past. Amy L. Reed William Bancroft Hill Christabel F. Fiske V - 333
Show less

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
Show less

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
Show less

Title: Domandi, Mario, 1929-1979 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Griffen, Clyde, Daniels, Elizabeth, Kohl, Benjamin, Piccolomini, Manfredi
Description
Date: November 14, 1979
Text: , 1»- . Attachment #1 I At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held November fourteenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-nine, the following Memorial ’ was unanimously adopted: Hario Domandi, Professor of Italian on the Dante Antolini Chair, was born in New York City on February 5, l929, the son of Santo and Filomena Domandi. Educated in the city's public schools, he took his undergraduate degree at St. John University College. He spent the l95O-5l academic year as a Fulbright Fellow...
Show more, 1»- . Attachment #1 I At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held November fourteenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-nine, the following Memorial ’ was unanimously adopted: Hario Domandi, Professor of Italian on the Dante Antolini Chair, was born in New York City on February 5, l929, the son of Santo and Filomena Domandi. Educated in the city's public schools, he took his undergraduate degree at St. John University College. He spent the l95O-5l academic year as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Rome and then completed a Master's degree in history at Columbia University in l952. After two years of military service, he resumed his studies at Columbia in European intellectual history. His dissertation on the German youth movement was supervised by Jacques Barzun. For Hario,Barzun represented the life of the nnndat its best, urbane and elegant, yet humane and deeply serious. » Mario came to Vassar as an instructor of Italian in 1956. From l958 to l963 he served as House Fellow in Jewett dormitory and from l96l to l964, as Dean of Freshmen. His success as teacher and administrator and his productivity as a scholar were rewarded with early promotion to tenure. In Hay, I964, he delivered the convocation address at the request of the senior class. Characteristically, he told his hearers that the result of their education "should be a refined sensibility and a civilized instinct. Just as the entirety of our personal experience is embodied in what we call our ‘instinctive’ reaction to a situation, so too our whole intellectual experience is contained in our instinctive judgments about art, politics, ethics, and the rest. If a college has done its job well, the instinct should be healthy, free of myths and prejudices." In l965 Mario became chairman of the Italian department. In l969 he became the second recipient of the Dante Antolini chair in Italian language and literature which had been given by Hrs. Julia Coburn Antolini in honor of her husband. H Mario maintained a lifelong interest in modern German history and culture, but at Vassar he soon turned to the field where he was to make his scholarly reputation: the translation of significant works on and of the Italian Renaissance from both German and Italian. His first translation was of Ernst Cassirer's The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy_Published by Basil Blackwell in @}iord and by Harper and Row in New York. he book s _ immediate scholarly and commercial success cemented Mario's close relationship with Harper‘s history editor, Hugh Van Dusen, and over the next decade Hario translated five books for the Torchbook Series. _In l965 appeared Mario s ' translation of Guicciardini's Ricordi under the title of MaximS ﬁHQuRBfl@¢tlP0§, Of a Renaissance Statesman. It made his reputation as a Renaissance sﬁholﬂr andlremains in priht today. In l97O Mario published buicciardini s History of Florence with introduction, glossary, and notes. His translation Of _ _ -2- Luigi Salvatorelli's interprefatl°" ° . \in 1972 Mario also coipleted of Tomas Nald0nad0'$ Wofk °" “rba" p'ann'ng. give study of the rise of translation from the German of Ernest Nolte S mas European fascism which~was never published Mario's special knack as a translator was his ability to convoy difﬁ - - ' l d skein of events in C196?’ Teadahli: a?d ph1]?SOpE1cl!shde€Zsgnd lhigngalent attracted the interest of Charles Sing f'°w'ng nq 1 p ' ' d Italian sources ouoted - ‘ . - i ' 1 t of Latin an - T 5 ?:°t§:]l§§§nQ§:y0¢§ gigglgtonégsegigion of Dante's Divine Comedv. ihig t Florence. But ultimately he abandoned this plan in av projects on Hedicean Florence that were to lie unfinished at his death, Om was a volume of the familial letters of Lorenzo de' Medici and his circle done in collaboration with the Florentine paleographer ulnO_COFtli Thelc second was a translation with notes and glossary of oiovanni Cava canti s. Florentine Histories, a prime narrative source on the origins of the nedim regime, for which Mario received a grant from the National Endowment fort Humanities. To his students Marb brought the same qualities of sound scholarship, his clear but never simple exposition, and the magic of his manner. Studm f flocked to his Renaissance classes especially because Mario's recreations that civilization permitted students to discern some of the most humane aspects of the teacher himself. He would talk of Machiavelli and murder ,n Ariosto and the poetic forms, of romance and history, of fortuna and virtm but ultimately for Mario the Renaissance was best represented by a letter Lorenzo de' Medici wrote to his young daughter whom the family had left behind in Florence: if everyone lS gone, and the naughty ones left you alone, do not worry; I will come back purposely to stay with you, and wﬂ stay only with you. Mario used to comment, "He was a good daddy.“ lhis artificer of balance of ower and f t‘ t‘ ~ - - ~ Mario that Virtue the L 2_ o “ar is ic excellence exemplified for _ a ins called humanitas and the Italian hUm&WlStS t;l€d to revive. "Humanitas" is also the best word to describe Mario's 1% ° m°"e than twenty Years as teacher and department chairman. It - c imam for anyone to remain indiffere t t h‘ Va’ + to Iove him’ immediate]y. n o lS warm, almost fatherly, ways and nm l I F ' ' from Ggr$Z;§ gizég 2gggg$ggA%a€; ﬁggrggriwhozhad come to the United Statgs divorce in 1972. Their O 1 h_] i 7 e one. Their marriage ended W delight in her development was A :9 Mary Char10tte’ was born In 196'. h1S - _ x raordina H ' - .’ became known for their h ' ry' 'ar'° and Agnes qUl¢h'Y - t ' - - - . . They bridged worlds easilyT1t3lni%qa3?ffgr the d1verS]ty of th€1r fr]end& exhilarating conversation. Mario's prid ?nce§ of Opinion and taste int0 scholar never detracted from his rid ‘e 1n h1S Own cosmopolitanism as a father's success as a Qarme t p e 1" h'5 Slﬁllian ancestry or in his he attributed to Unc]e Luiq?, gggﬁfggturegk who will forget the aPhorism5 I who will forget the accordion on which h Or Poor, it s nice to have moml to pop tunes to Protestant hymns? 8 ranged with such zest from Polk” In recent years his fa to drinks at six o'clock. Uﬁlikg min? gf ﬁarty fO]]owed from an '"V'tatiM °"$t°maYllY were occasions where a mixedqgrogﬂtherings, Mario's parties » p °f People engaged in liveU ' f the Pisorgimento appﬂﬁfed '" '97'6M 6 O l h l HE‘ I U I l M r I i l 7| i l I Cl‘ i l m . . . - ' lers and for a the kindled Mario's interest in the early Florentine chronic P , - .- ' ' ' E lish a documentary volume on name he toyed with the idea of providing in "9 _ f or of two ]arqe sh -3- _ discussion on a wide range of topics, taking the key from their host who treate the party as an event rather than as a mechanical routine. It was not unusual for him to ask members of his classes and Italian majors to the parties; he deferred to them with the same cordiality that he extended to his friends from the faculty and from the community. It was the rare party that did not end with_Mario in the kitchen making spaghetti al dente or some other preferred dish. But in between the coming and the going at the party, those invited to share it knew that they had a host who took seriously the mandate to honor guests. when a guest comes, Christ comes, Mario said, and he meant it. Every part of Mario's life contained the other parts. His dying was part of his living. Learning that he had a large, malignant tumor which made survival improbable, Mario chose to deal directly with his fate. Defiant, he discovered that in Houston, Texas, there was a project experimenting with nuclear radiation therapy. In the face of uncertainty about the outcome, Hario went to a hospital there as a participant in the experiment. He was subjected to routines which, as he told his friends over the long distance phone, stirred in his mind passages from Dante's Inferno. Mario underwent an operation in the Fall of 1978 which removed the tumor. He was able to spend the next several months in Poughkeepsie, recuperating and preparing to reengage in his scholarly activities. On February 4, l979 he was married to Ann Hedlund whom he had known for many years and who gave him the most loving support in his final months. when the cancer recurred, he first was hospitalized in New York. In lucid moments, he retained his geniality and his flair for telling a story. In the midst of pain, he remained gentle and considerate. He returned to Poughkeepsie and died here on July 8, 1979. He is buried in Little Compton, Rhode Island, where he had spent his summers for many years. . Respectfully submitted, );¢2& Cl d iffen Chairman Y 9 r 0 _ 8%/;\‘@1l€"ii7k A . '>@>w~»»le@~.e» 1 Eliiabeth Daniels f§¢dx?cvvC¢~ C7{ flgiiif . Benjam n Kohl ﬂ(»Cr/L’-5514' " , edi Piccolomini %?'*\ ?:*\%\ \. Q\ d
Show less

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
Show less

Title: Loomis, Gertrude Shepperle, 1882-1922 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: White, Florence Donnell, Whitney, Marian P., Macurdy, Grace H.
Description
Date: [After 1922]
Text: $ | I ! 1 1 1 | l l K 1 4 I \ 1 GERTRUDE SHEPPERLE LOOMIS 1882 - 1922 Through the death on December ll, 1922, of Gertrude Shepperle Loomis, Assistant Professor of French, both the world of scholarship and Vassar College have sustained an irreparable loss. Profes- sor Loomis was one of the few women whose reputa- tion as a scholar is international. Her numerous publications in Celtic and Old French, appearing in book form and in learned periodicals of America and Europe, won her distinguished...
Show more$ | I ! 1 1 1 | l l K 1 4 I \ 1 GERTRUDE SHEPPERLE LOOMIS 1882 - 1922 Through the death on December ll, 1922, of Gertrude Shepperle Loomis, Assistant Professor of French, both the world of scholarship and Vassar College have sustained an irreparable loss. Profes- sor Loomis was one of the few women whose reputa- tion as a scholar is international. Her numerous publications in Celtic and Old French, appearing in book form and in learned periodicals of America and Europe, won her distinguished recognition in this country and aaroad and brought her into per- sonal touch with many of the most eminent scholars in her chosen fields. A tireless worker to the last, she has left a considerable amount of unpub- lished matter. To an unusual extent she combined with a whole-hearted devotion to research a keen interest in teaching and gave much of her best effort to the organization and original presentation of material, in her eager de- sire to pass on the love of learning. Although her term of service at Vassar was short, September 1919 to the time of her death, she identi- fied herself closely and loyally with the college and has left a deep impress upon its intellectual 15-fee Florence Donnell White a Marian P. Whitney Grace H. Macurdy VII - 180
Show less

Title: Dannreuther, Gustav, 1853-1923 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1923]
Text: GUSTAV DANNREUTHER 1853 - 1923 It becomes my sad duty to bring to the attention of the Faculty the death of Mr. Dannreuther on Wednes- day, December 19, from an attack of pneumonia. He had been in his usual health the previous Friday when he made his last teaching visit to the college and was ill in all but three days. Mr. Dannreuther was a musician of international re- putation. Born (July 21, 1853) in Cincinnati, Ohio, he finished his musical studies at the Hochschule fur Musik, Berlin,...
Show moreGUSTAV DANNREUTHER 1853 - 1923 It becomes my sad duty to bring to the attention of the Faculty the death of Mr. Dannreuther on Wednes- day, December 19, from an attack of pneumonia. He had been in his usual health the previous Friday when he made his last teaching visit to the college and was ill in all but three days. Mr. Dannreuther was a musician of international re- putation. Born (July 21, 1853) in Cincinnati, Ohio, he finished his musical studies at the Hochschule fur Musik, Berlin, Germany, under Joachim and de Ahne, the two most celebrated German violin virtuosos and teachers of that time. He began his professional life in London, where his elder brother, Edward, was professor at the Royal College of Music. In 1877 he returned to America, and from then he has taken a notable place in the cultivation of the taste for chamber music in this country, having been a member of the Mendelssohn Quintette Club in Boston, the lead- er of the Philharmonic Club of Buffalo, the founder and leader of the New York Beethoven String Quartette, to which after a few years, he gave his own name and which played a prominent part in the musical life of the city until it disbanded in 1917. He was also a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra during its first years, and after he came to New York was at the first desk of the Philharmonic Orchestra for many Y6 8.I'S 0 His first appearance at Vassar was on January 19, 1887, as leader of the Beethoven String Quartette, and near- ly every year after that he visited the college either as solo performer or as a member of his quartette or some group of Chamber musicians. The connection with the college thus happily begun culminated in 1906 when he entered the department of music as teacher of violin, a position he held until his death. As a teacher he was an enthusiastic disciple of the school of Joachim, faithful and painstaking, fond of his pupils and spending freely of time and energy in their behalf. He made valuable contributions to the literature of violin teaching. His students recognized the exceptional value of his instruction as well as the charm of his manner and the breadth of his culture. GUSTAV DANNREUTHER (Continued) His deep interest in Vassar was shown by the gift, in 1910, of his library of Chamber Music, with only the proviso that he should retain in his possession whatever music he desired to use until his death. It is therefore to be expected that to the several thousand pieces already on our shelves, there will now be made additions and that the Dannreuther Library of Chamber Music will serve to link perma- nently his name with the college to which he gave so much of his spirit. George C. Gow VII - 313-311+
Show less

Title: Textor, Lucy Elizabeth, 1870-1958 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Griffin, Charles, Conklin, Ruth E.
Description
Date: [After 1958]
Text: LUCY ELIZABETH TEXT on 1870 - 1958 Lucy Elizabeth Textor, professor emerita of history at Vassar Colle e, died at Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, on June 29, 195% in her eighty-eighth year. Upon this occasion Vassar College pays tribute to a loyal friend and to a teacher who served for thirty-six years as an active member of its faculty, and to a historian who, with the encouragement of Lucy Maynard Salmon, then chairman of the Department of History, was respon- sible for the development of...
Show moreLUCY ELIZABETH TEXT on 1870 - 1958 Lucy Elizabeth Textor, professor emerita of history at Vassar Colle e, died at Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, on June 29, 195% in her eighty-eighth year. Upon this occasion Vassar College pays tribute to a loyal friend and to a teacher who served for thirty-six years as an active member of its faculty, and to a historian who, with the encouragement of Lucy Maynard Salmon, then chairman of the Department of History, was respon- sible for the development of Russian, eastern European, and Far Eastern history at the college in the early years of this century when such studies in the United States were mainly limited to a few large universities. Miss Textor was the daughter of Joseph Conrad and Elizabeth Kuhn Textor. Though born in West Virginia, she spent most of her early life in Chicago and took her first degree of Bachelor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. Her interest in history and in teaching, awakened at Michigan, led her to Stanford University where she was awarded the Master's Degree in American history. In odd contrast to the field to which she later devoted herself her thesis, which, unlike most master's dissertations, was published, dealt with the relations between the United States government and the Sioux Indians. By teaching in a private school in Palo Alto and later in a high school in New Haven, Connecticut, Miss Textor supported herself while she earned her Ph.D. degree at Yale University. Immediately thereafter she came as an instructor to Vassar College in 1905. A few years ago, long after she had retired, on the occasion of a visit to Vassar Miss Textor told her younger colleagues in the history department of Miss Salmon's encouagement of her ambition to specialize in Russian history and how the older woman insisted on her getting field experience at the earliest opportunity Traveling in Russia alone in 1909 and again in 1911 was an adventurous step for a young American woman. She traveled widely in Russia and much to her surprise and delight found herself the object of hospitality from many Russian families who generously felt that they must instruct, protect, and entertain this young western student of their country. From that day on Miss Textor became a warm-hearted friend of the Slavic peoples and an interpreter of their culture to her students and to the public. LUCY ELIZABETH TEXTOR (Continued) After the First World War Miss Textor's special interests turned to Czechoslovakia, then newly independent. She spent a sabbatical year in that country and published, in London in 1923, a book on A rarian Reform in Qggchoslovakia. In 1928 a number 0% xasrrban educators, including John Dewey, were invited by the Commissar of Education, Lunarchorsky, to visit the Russian schools. At that time many people in this country were still hopeful that some- thing good would result from the great Russian experi- ment. In her talks after her return, Miss Textor reflected this hope, though she was without illusions about the totalitarian and ruthless character of the regime. A longer stay in Russia of over eight months in 1930-31 gave her a closer view. She lived not as a tourist but as the Russians did (in her case with a fourth class food card which only entitled her to a small amount of black bread, dried fish, and tea and sugar upon occasion). She taught English to help support herself. She attended one of the earliest purge trials and saw same of the worst sufferings of the period of forced liquidation of the kulaks and returned highly critical of the Stalinist regime. At Vassar Miss Textor's studies led to the organization of new courses, especially to a senior course in the history of Central and Eastern Europe. She also gave a course from time to time in Far Eastern History in which she did not claim to be a specialist, but to which her interest in Russian Eastern expansion naturally attracted her. She was much in demand as a lecturer to women's organizations and to other groups in the mid-Hudson valley and as far away as Detroit and Chicago. Many present members of the Vassar faculty remember Miss Textor in the later years of her career as a stately but outgoing and warm-hearted woman, friendly to newcomers. She supported ardently the development of the infant Russian Department, which grew to regular status during the 1930's. In those years of Hitlerite expansion Miss Textor was most active in arousing American sympathy for the Czechs and later for the Poles in their suffering under Nazi domination. Her generosity, in the spending of self and substance, knew no bounds. There were many opportunities for her to help refugees from Russia as well as from Poland and Czechoslovakia with friendly hospitality, wise counsel and financial aid. She was able to repay LUCY ELIZABETH TEXTOR (Continued) hospitality granted her in earlier days by helping to resettle in Canada the surviving members of a Russian family. Several scholars from Czechoslovakia were introduced to academic circles in this country through her efforts, and as a result, were able to establish themselves in suitable positions. After her own retirement, Miss Textor's sympathies and energies were largely occupied for some years by the protracted invalidism of her dear friend, Miss Florence White, Emeritus Professor of French. Miss Textor devoted herself whole-heartedly to Miss White, not only going much actual nursing, but providing an atmosphere of serenity and cheerful hospitality. Later, in spite of failing eyesight and the infirmities of advancing years, she continued to demonstrate courage, wit, and good spirits. Now, after the close of this long life of active service to scholarship, to generations of students, to her country, and to the cause of international good will, we salute Lucy Elizabeth Textor to whom Vassar College owes enduring honor, gratitude and affection Charles C. Griffin Ruth E. Conklin XIV - mls-um
Show less

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
Show less

Title: Wylie, Laura Johnson, 1855-1932 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Peebles, Rose Jeffries, Reed, Amy L.
Description
Date: [After 1932]
Text: LAURA JOHNSON WYLIE 1855 - 1932 Bern, Milton, Pennsylvania, December 1, 1855 A.B., Vassar College, 1877 Pb-QDQ’ Yale, Instructor in English at Vassar, 1895-96 Associate Professor, 1896-97 Professor of English, 1897-l92h Professor Emeritus, l92h Died, Poughkeepsie, New York, April 2, 1932 An expression of what the life of Professor Wylie has meant to us, her colleagues, may perhaps best be approached by reminding ourselves of her own definition of the task of college education as she looked...
Show moreLAURA JOHNSON WYLIE 1855 - 1932 Bern, Milton, Pennsylvania, December 1, 1855 A.B., Vassar College, 1877 Pb-QDQ’ Yale, Instructor in English at Vassar, 1895-96 Associate Professor, 1896-97 Professor of English, 1897-l92h Professor Emeritus, l92h Died, Poughkeepsie, New York, April 2, 1932 An expression of what the life of Professor Wylie has meant to us, her colleagues, may perhaps best be approached by reminding ourselves of her own definition of the task of college education as she looked into the future on the day in June, l92h, when she ceased from active service among us. The continued existence of such a college as Vassar, she said in her farewell speech, would be justified only by its successful establishment as a vital part of the life of the country; not as the educator of a single class, isolated from the community, but as the source, through those whom it directly trains, of inlargement for every ccmmunity into which they 8°- The largeness of such a conception, together with the energy, the high spirit, and the thorough con- sistency with which she lived up to it, was Profes- sor Wylie's great contribution to her college and to the cause of education, throughout her twenty-nine years of teachin as a member of our faculty. And in spite of her failing health in after years, the Pdepth and fertility of her thinkin power" (to use the phrase of one of her colleagues? could still be felt by all who knew her in college or town - felt as a force for better living and more significant social intercourse among all people. Personal free- dom, social responsibility, creative activity - these things she taught steadily wherever she was and how- ever she lived. But first she followed them herself. Miss Wylie came to the college as instructor in the fall of 1895, as a seasoned teacher and with a doc- tor's degree from Yale. She was expected to make changes and she made them; within two years she was LAURA JOHNSON WYLIE (Continued) head of the department and had revolutionized the work, organizing it on what must even today be called a sound, flexible, and progressive plan for the artistic and scholarly study of English, While she showed in the selection of her assistants her power to estimate character and ability, she was, until 1901, almost single-handed in the work of re- construction, the only person officially responsible for the management of the department and the only person in it above the rank of instructor. She car- ried at the same time a heavy teaching schedule and, however large her classes, succeeded in setting an example of the principle she so firmly believed in, of completely individualizhag every student therein. In the conduct both of her classes and of the de- partment, her most remarkable achievement was - as President Macﬂracken has elsewhere said - her power to make almost any group of people, with varying or even hostile opinions, work together for the common good without compromising their integrity or her own. She was always a tireless worker and a courageous fighter for any principle she believed in, but never at the expense of Justice or courtesy to an opponent. Her colleagues paid tribute to her ability by electing her to the most important committees and all movements in the faculty towards a freer curriculum and greater faculty participation in the management of the insti- tution found in her an influential supporter, though always with the proviso that proposed experiments must be fully thought out and results inspected. The students, too, trusted her and felt her personal charm and the breadth of her sympathy to such an ex- tent that few student enterprises of any moment were begun without asking her advice or help. In wholly inadequate recognition of these qualities, the faculty hereby record their deep sorrow at the death of their dear friend, Professor Emeritus Laura Johnson Wylie, and their sense of loss at the passing away of one who was always and most of all a great teacher. Rose Jeffries Peebles Amy L. Reed l. Katharine Warren, "The Retirement of Miss Wylie," Alunae Quarterly, November l92h, IX - 98-99
Show less

Title: Child, Eleanor Dodge, 1902-1948 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1948]
Text: 1 i v i \ \ \ 1 I J } ? ! I x 1 i 1 ELEANOR DODGE CHILD (Mrs. Josiah H.) 1902 - 19hB By the death on April 5, l9h8 of Eleanor Dodge Child Vassar College has sustained an irreparable loss. A member of the Class of 1925, Eleanor Dodge played a prominent part in the affairs of the college, serving as Student President in her Senior year. She was a thoughtful and conscientious student and as an officer of the student body proved herself already a good judge of human nature and a young woman of...
Show more1 i v i \ \ \ 1 I J } ? ! I x 1 i 1 ELEANOR DODGE CHILD (Mrs. Josiah H.) 1902 - 19hB By the death on April 5, l9h8 of Eleanor Dodge Child Vassar College has sustained an irreparable loss. A member of the Class of 1925, Eleanor Dodge played a prominent part in the affairs of the college, serving as Student President in her Senior year. She was a thoughtful and conscientious student and as an officer of the student body proved herself already a good judge of human nature and a young woman of practical ability which she used to the advantage of her office. She met the problems which confronted her with equa- nimity and good sense. In 1931 she returned to the college to act as Warden and served in that capacity for nine years. To that office she contributed an understanding sympathy and a sensible practicality which made her work as Iarden appreciated by the whole college comunity, employees, students and members of the Faculty. In 1939, as chairman, she was largely responsible for the success of the 75th Anniversary celebrations. In l9hO she took a leave of absence, but resigned be- fore the end of the year and soon married Josiah H. Child of Boston. In l9h2 she was elected to the Board of Trustees of Vassar and for the past six yeanshas been one of its meat interested and dependable members. She has served on the Trustee Committees for Faculty and Studies, Und er graduate Life, Buildings and Grounds, Endowment, and the Executive Committee, and last year she was elected Secretary of the Board. Her thorough knowledge of the problems facing teachers, administrators, and students gave her advice and her judgment a rounded value un- equalled in the Board. She was always ready to listen to members of the Faculty, and, indeed, eager to get their point of view. we, in turn, liked to hear her judgments and had full confidence in her fairness and a deep appreciation of her understanding of college affairs and of her friendly attitude toward our under- takings. She will indeed be missed. Agnes Rindge Claflin XII - 257
Show less

Title: Roberts, Amabel Scharff, 1891-1918 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Beckwith, Cora J., Haight, Elizabeth Hazelton, McCaleb, Ella
Description
Date: [After 1918]
Text: AMABEL SCHARFF ROBERTS 1891 - 1918 Inasmuch as one of our young alumnae, Amabel Scharff Roberts, 1913, U. S. Army Red Cross nurse, member of Base Hospital No. 1, Presbyterian Unit with the Brit- ish Expeditionary Forces, died in the service of her country at Etretat, France, January 17, 1918, we, the Faculty of Vassar College, desire to express to her family our deep sympathy in the sense of our com- mon loss. we cannot but be proud with them that Miss Roberts, who had proved to us here her...
Show moreAMABEL SCHARFF ROBERTS 1891 - 1918 Inasmuch as one of our young alumnae, Amabel Scharff Roberts, 1913, U. S. Army Red Cross nurse, member of Base Hospital No. 1, Presbyterian Unit with the Brit- ish Expeditionary Forces, died in the service of her country at Etretat, France, January 17, 1918, we, the Faculty of Vassar College, desire to express to her family our deep sympathy in the sense of our com- mon loss. we cannot but be proud with them that Miss Roberts, who had proved to us here her high standard of work and devotion to duty, should have responded without hesitation to the call of her country, giving unwearying care to the wounded until the end came in supreme sacrifice. The news of her death, coming at the moment of the announcement that Vassar College would be used this sumer by the Red Cross for the preliminary training of college women for the nursing profession, should serve as a bugle call to others to prepare to carry on her labors. Her name will live in our traditions, associated with quiet simplicity, the beauty of steady work, and complete devotion to the service of humanity. Cora J. Beckwith Elizabeth Hazelton Haight Ella McCaleb VI - 217
Show less

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
Show less

Title: Richards, Keene, 1888-1953 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Erck, Theodore, Thornton, Eileen, Kempton, Rudolf T.
Description
Date: [After 1953]
Text: masts RICHARDS 1888 - 1953 The Faculty of Vassar College records its deep sorrow on the sudden death of Keene Richards, General Manager and Consulting Engineer, and mentor, champion and friend. Mr. Richards served Vassar College and its faculty well for 28 years. The quality of his admin- istration was sumed up by a firm of professional management experts, after exhaustive investigation, in these words: "Vassar is doing an outstanding job of business management, one which leaves little...
Show moremasts RICHARDS 1888 - 1953 The Faculty of Vassar College records its deep sorrow on the sudden death of Keene Richards, General Manager and Consulting Engineer, and mentor, champion and friend. Mr. Richards served Vassar College and its faculty well for 28 years. The quality of his admin- istration was sumed up by a firm of professional management experts, after exhaustive investigation, in these words: "Vassar is doing an outstanding job of business management, one which leaves little room for a survey to develop savings of significance.... These comments are intended....as a commendation to Vassar College for a job well done." Mr. Richards died in the master's cabin of his beloved cruiser Wivern, to the end captain of his ship and captain of himself. Keene Richards, engineer, army officer, administrator, was first and foremost an educator. He believed in education; he believed in Vassar College and its faculty; the quality of Vassar was his obsession. All of his official actions were taken with one sole aim, the welfare and prospering of Vassar College. To this end his supervision of the large staff under him was tough and exacting, but fair and generous; he was regarded with their respect, their trust and their affection. To this end he husbanded the resources of the college with painstaking care; the regard was solvency and well-being. To this end he supported, encouraged and championed the faculty; his reward was the profoundness of ou grief. To this end he fattened and watched over the students, in whom his faith was so profound; his regard is the affection and honor of the alumnae. To this end he time and again served his community in difficult assignments; his reward was the high esteem of its citizens and prestige for his college. Dependable, logical, consistent, uniquely able to get down to the essentials of a problem, he adhered stubbornly to his high standards in all of his acts. Reserved in manner, he was accessible to all; critical in approach, he had real affection for people, and his acts of kindness were unpublicized and unnumbered. His memory will long be with us, for, in the words of a veteran member of his staff, "Look around you, he's still here." Theodore Erck Eileen Thornton XIII - hO5-hO6 Rudolf T. Kempton
Show less

Title: Buck, Gertrude, 1871-1922 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1922]
Text: GERTRUDE BUCK 1871 - 1922 The recent death of Gertrude Buck is felt by the Faculty as a vital loss. A distinguishing trait in her character, influencing and co-ordinating all her activities, was an unusual union of the instinct for intellectual experimentation with spiritual steadfastness and courageousness - a union which rendered whatever her critical spirit deemed worthy of keeping not an ephemeral but a permanent posses- sion. All fields of modern thought and life - scien- tific,...
Show moreGERTRUDE BUCK 1871 - 1922 The recent death of Gertrude Buck is felt by the Faculty as a vital loss. A distinguishing trait in her character, influencing and co-ordinating all her activities, was an unusual union of the instinct for intellectual experimentation with spiritual steadfastness and courageousness - a union which rendered whatever her critical spirit deemed worthy of keeping not an ephemeral but a permanent posses- sion. All fields of modern thought and life - scien- tific, philosophical, religious, social, aesthetic - interested her and from them she gleaned harvests of suggestion which, in due time, perpetuated them- selves in modification of her teaching material and method. This sensitiveness to stimulus resulted, how- ever, in far more than eager assimilation of ideas. It was joined with a constructive power of which conspicuous results may be seen in the growth under her initiative and fosterage of a flourishing Com- munity theatre in Poughkeepsie, in the present trend of the writing courses in Vassar College, and in the series of books in which she has embodied her educa- tional method and theory. In the more purely aesthetic fields of literature Miss Buck did much experimentation, publishing from time to time a poem or a play, but, because of her crowded life, leaving unfinished others whose merit is known only to those to whom she turned, from time to time, for suggestion and criticism. In connection with The Comunit Theatre it may be said that its whole atmosphere %ears Witness to a distinguishing social attribute of its founder - a certain quiet, disinterested, impersonal friendliness of spirit springing from the same root of genuine humanity out of which grew her more intimate persaaal relation- ships - lasting memories to her closer friends. It is moved that this recognition of her services to the community and to the College be engrossed in the Minutes of the Faculty and that copies thereof be presented by the Secretary to Miss Buck's family and to Miss Wylie. ~ Christabel F. Fiske VII - 179-180
Show less

Title: Twiss, Edith Minot, 1873-1925 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1925]
Text: EDITH mom TWISS 1873 - 1925 The Faculty of Vassar College wishes to record its sense of the loss which it has suffered in the death of Edith Minot Twiss, Associate Professor of Botany. In the six years of her service here, Miss Twiss had won the respect of the college comunity for her single-minded devotion to her chosen subject of Bacteriology and for the clear-cut efficiency with which she served on committees of public health in the township ad of academic business in the col- lege. Her...
Show moreEDITH mom TWISS 1873 - 1925 The Faculty of Vassar College wishes to record its sense of the loss which it has suffered in the death of Edith Minot Twiss, Associate Professor of Botany. In the six years of her service here, Miss Twiss had won the respect of the college comunity for her single-minded devotion to her chosen subject of Bacteriology and for the clear-cut efficiency with which she served on committees of public health in the township ad of academic business in the col- lege. Her students appreciated the ripe scholarship and long experience which she brought to laboratory and lecture-room and shared with them so generously. Few of her associates realized that her adequacy in her work and her quiet power came from a fortitude that met all demands upon her at the cost of great fatigue and self-sacrifice. It was her indomitable courage which carried her through the work of the year to its very close, only a month before her death Such a spirit lives on, not only in the memory of friends, but in that growing life which she taught and fostered in the college. Elizabeth Hazelton Haight VIII - 107
Show less

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.-» <’
Show less

Title: Davis, Philip Haldane, 1901-1940 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1940]
Text: PHILIP HALDANE DAVIS 1901 - 19hO In the sudden death on February 20, l9h0, of Philip Haldane Davis, Professor of Greek and Chairman of the Department, Vassar College suffered an irrepar- able loss. By heritage, training and taste Mr. Davis was a scholar. His education at Princeton University and as Fellow of the School of Classical Studies in Athens gave him a rich equipment for his chosen research on Greek Building Inscriptions; and in this field already at thirty-eight he had won an...
Show morePHILIP HALDANE DAVIS 1901 - 19hO In the sudden death on February 20, l9h0, of Philip Haldane Davis, Professor of Greek and Chairman of the Department, Vassar College suffered an irrepar- able loss. By heritage, training and taste Mr. Davis was a scholar. His education at Princeton University and as Fellow of the School of Classical Studies in Athens gave him a rich equipment for his chosen research on Greek Building Inscriptions; and in this field already at thirty-eight he had won an international reputation. Indeed both his scholar- ship and his personal distinction were so early recognized that he had been called to five other institutions before in 1930 Vassar secured his presence here by giving him the rank of professor. In the congenial atmosphere of Vassar College, his scholarship flowered into that humanism which embraced not only linguistics but literature,ancient and modern, enacted drama, art and music. And as a humanist, he taught with distinction in four depart- ments, Greek, Latin, Comparative Literature and Art. His students mourn the loss of a great teacher, his colleagues the loss of a stimulating and sympathetic friend, the town of Peughkeepsie the loss of a young leader who sought to promote ideals of democracy, justice and peace with good-will. On the campus, the memory of his rich and ardent life has erected a monument more lasting than bronze, the devotion of his fellow-workers. As a last tribute, we offer to him an epitaph which Plato wrote: Thou wert the Morning Star among the living, Ere thy fair light had fled;- Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendor to the dead. (Shelley's translation). Elizabeth Hazelton Height , X-M
Show less

Title: Robinson, Bertha, [?]-1890 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Drennan, Manuel J., Salmon, Lucy M.
Description
Date: [After 1890]
Text: BERTHA ROBINSON - 1890 The Faculty of Vassar College feel impelled to put upon record an expression of their sense of the serious loss sustained by the College in the death of Miss Bertha Robinson, for the past three years a valued and beloved instructor in the College. The influence of Miss Robinson, quiet and unobtrusive to a high degree, was much deeper and stronger than she knew. Her modesty and perfect freedom from a spirit of self-assertion led her to depreciate the value of her...
Show moreBERTHA ROBINSON - 1890 The Faculty of Vassar College feel impelled to put upon record an expression of their sense of the serious loss sustained by the College in the death of Miss Bertha Robinson, for the past three years a valued and beloved instructor in the College. The influence of Miss Robinson, quiet and unobtrusive to a high degree, was much deeper and stronger than she knew. Her modesty and perfect freedom from a spirit of self-assertion led her to depreciate the value of her services and the extent of her powers. And it is a source of regret to her closest friends that she could not live to know how much she had done for her pupils, how much she had contributed to raise the tone and spirit of the College, how much her example of steady and severe conscientiousness, of unfailing courtesy, of unwearying patience, had benefited others. Her friends and all who had knowledge of her work know that it was solid and that the results of it will be permanent. Her wide knowledge, her various accomplishments, her refinement of taste, her earnestness as an instructor have left their mark upon her many pupils, and have gaied for her the respect and affection of all who have associated with her. The Faculty of Vassar College desire to record their sense of loss, and their sincere and heart- felt sympathy with her bereaved family. Manuel J. Drennan Lucy M. Salmon II — 222
Show less

Title: Stone, Walter, 1917-1959 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Mace, Dean, Olafson, Frederick, Bartlett, Lynn
Description
Date: [After 1959]
Text: WALTER sworm 1917 -1959 Walter Stone, Associate Professor of English at Vassar College, died in London on March ll, 1959. in his forty-second year. Upon this occasion we are paying tribute to a gifted teacher, scholar, and writer, whom we shall long remember and whose death we shall long mourn. Walter Stone was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on August h, 1917. He was educated at the University of Illinois, taking the degree of B. A. with highest tutorial honors in 1939, and going on to the M....
Show moreWALTER sworm 1917 -1959 Walter Stone, Associate Professor of English at Vassar College, died in London on March ll, 1959. in his forty-second year. Upon this occasion we are paying tribute to a gifted teacher, scholar, and writer, whom we shall long remember and whose death we shall long mourn. Walter Stone was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on August h, 1917. He was educated at the University of Illinois, taking the degree of B. A. with highest tutorial honors in 1939, and going on to the M. A. ' at the same university in l9hl. After working for a time for the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation, he went into the United States Navy and served from l9h2 to 19h5, including a tour of duty in the Aleutian Islands. In 19Uu» he married Ruth Perkins, who was later to receive considerable recognition for her poetry. v When the war ended, he entered the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Remaining in residence at Harvard until 1950, he took a master's degree in l9h9 and his Ph.D. in 1953. His doctoral thesis, which he wrote chiefly under the direction of the late Professor Hyder Rollins, was a study of the literature of Elizabethan eschatology, in particular a cluster of predictions pointing to the end of the world in the 1580's. This thesis opened the way to the larger study of Renaissance apocalyptic and eschatological thinking on which he was doing research in England at the time of his death. He had hoped to write the first book on the subject. His researches had already led to the publication, in the Journal of En lish and Germanic Philolo , for 1953, of "SE§Eespeare and the Sad Kugurs", an article which proves that a recent well-known attempt to date Shakespeare's sonnets has been based on radical mis- interpretation of available evidence. By its extensive learning and its sound arguents, the article quite transcends its limited subject and stands as an important contribution to the study of eschatology in the Renaissance. 87-L WALTER STONE (Continued) It was at Harvard that he began his career as a teacher, serving as a Teaching Fellow, on the staff of "English A", fron l9h6 to 1950. In 1950 he returned to the University of Illinois as an Instructor in English. In 1953 he came to Vassar College as an Assistant Professor of English, and in 1953 he was promoted to Associate Professor. Among the courses which he taught here were senior composition and poetry from Blake to Keats. In 1958 he also received a Faculty Fellowship. It is impos- sible to exaggerate how much this award meant to him, for it enabled him to go to England, which up until that time he had known only through the literature which he loved so well. So far this has been an account of Walter Stone's life as a scholar and teacher. He was also a writer. For years he wrote poetry and fiction, and at the time of his death his talent was beginning to win recognition. One sign of this recognition will be the inclusion of some of his poems in Poets of Toda VI, to be published this year by Scribner's. Tn l§58 one of his short stories, "Reason Not the Need", appeared in the New Yorker, and an article, "The Mezzanine", in the Partisan Review. "The Mezzanine" is a witty satire on the annual meetings of the Modern Language Association. But Walter Stone, like other people endowed with a strong sense of irony, could be satirical about things of which he was very fond, and he spent some of his happiest hours at such meetings, for they gave him an opportunity to meet so many of his old friends. Among his gifts, his talent for friendship is one of the more notable. People of all kinds were easily drawn toward him, and, after they had come to know him, felt that here was someone with a special quality, here was someone unique. It is not easy to define this quality. Some things about him are very clear. He was gentle and warm-hearted and generous, quick to sympathize, and completely open in his manner. He was one of the most pleasant of companions, lively, witty, full of intellec- tual curiosity, full of interesting ideas -- and always kind. But there is something else that is harder to describe and perhaps even more central to his nature. There is a tradition that St. Francis once found a piece of paper IILEER STOKE (continued) on e muddy reed and picked it up and cleaned it off ct or reverence for the "nod" that wee written on itt not many people, in this day-or that, can either feel or underetend such a reverence for words, but Welter stone did, yworde were not merely the inetrumnnte of his trade as e teacher of literature and writer: they illumined the world end lighted up human experience which without them would be hutieh and opaque, and it was halter Stone's eenee of this numinoue quality of the word that inspired hie deep love for, and absolute dedication to, literature» Even moe remarkable wee the un~derivetive and, in the best eenee or the word, naive character or thin 40V0$10ﬂe He wee e learned men, and hie mind nee thorouﬁhly steeped in the literary and scholarly tredit one ct En§iend end western Europe, but literature for h nee never guet e learned enthuei~ emu or sophisticated hobby. t wee hie primary reggonee to lifet It eee the deepest expression, pe ape, of that extraordinary vitality that moved out rrom.him in so many directions and took eo menﬂ rerun, in all of which one eeneed e deep love of t e .eor1d ee well ee an acute eeneitivity to the pain and myetery and beauty with.ehich it is filled. walte Stone wee} in feet, that very rare thing, e natively American literary mind as naturally and uneelfconec o et hoe in the etmoephere of the imagination as the fehuliete and poets of the older literary cultures, yet happily free from any tinge or e compulsive or restricting ”netivism“. Hie true and greet vocation eea that of the poet, and he served it well. The record or thia vocation remeine not only in hie writings hut in the minds of many of the students for who hie teaching opened doors upon literature and the world; The following vorde were written by one of his former students ehotly after Welter Stone gied, end it ie fitting that they should be recorded >6!-‘OI Ire Stone conveyed his oen feeling for life, and literature ea an expression of the greet- neee of life to ell hie students. He left ue with e wonderful, magical eenee or the immediacy or people and places. Through the 8 r ualy WALEER STON (Continued) works of other poets and writers, he gave us a very special world. To those of us who had him for our central courses, he held out a kind of poetic vision and offered us 8 part Q YV - 153-155 Dean Mace Frederick Olafson Lynn Bartlett
Show less

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 ‘ {...
Show more”’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 ‘ { éu5;§i3rw3i$_y at ‘ramxma $;2::3}93§ am *shaV I"§a.%D. ﬁagwa ﬁrm: Hadellffe eraiﬁy ex? Pavia aariy 3.9 V 4“<awwmm%mram ?.9;‘$1y $2} Emma} La waagaas in 1.9% ﬁrs. Haas at Vaaaw aﬁnﬁgw Fanuitsg Fe zsmahiﬂp fem vama:-eh in the t tzazatsumﬁ Emma aviisiaa uf Mwﬁwm3#wmwwwuA mag‘ ’a§aa£;%%#*¢.mgh$ $1 vwicaksuat amwaea 1:: Emma at Vanuatu >ﬁW; awhiaaulw iniznmstsa mm In ttza lyzvia pout:-y of tha ma in We mviﬁaizw car was 18% ua::si.m:'y. she 3.1% haekgmma in her have mad wwieaga or aisryg am. Rama um um: E‘:-«nah am English with em wit; m-aalaiw flair. Her aoxwamation in ulwya ma aanghtmz ea hm- ‘ ‘ ‘ % ‘iswlﬁ 1 as §o1r1% at emzvmasy wat aawa % «awn 1 Wen¢c:unte:v% - he grew ' :7%‘§¢Aﬂamvémamm em aharma vama. am am mun am scum * 5‘h»&t:‘ alwaw ma» fmvarnﬁa that Emv sum as‘ V ma Lemarzaias. aaaaama pmsvauu but we 5 ea’ a map % my kiss axvizimasiemg wpmaanted A 61' em 1*£w¢‘¥£asa ma msdlentcd 119 T {E : T ’&n%Eu.ajretua1 bﬁiarsuw an met: pzrainaa by mg 18%: eanturyt j ¢ X g: a.a$%~£4ae‘£rg as? $13. rams azaja isha bane: in ‘aha % ‘ ‘ % maﬁa; ﬂay sn%-u% ammp and hwahmg always % rzmam aaaztva:11nmz»;{ sb¢%str.d1m ramming 5.3 that 1 h my in em: mmaeuh was aw tan L *s£m¢. - ua harpgwtictmﬁim in a waver- ,;; ,3 amlmar 46 wk dam ma 12¢:-self‘ "apraaﬁing *mga%MA% J%mwua 1. _} ﬁt! ' 1::xa=ge:a;;a1% or fmsau mapsmsibnityg and inaeoa A1 \ 1 ymmwzemx mamma mm rmnraraea W has rm ' am: wméwhﬁma in chavlaﬁte 3 and at i=:ax~d;aar2a1:h ma» Ammuazm w mu c:1m&a1'n g_g_ [£13 M wbzieaﬁivna ‘ 3 Vusﬁar Lﬂaiiage two bar utmlsaaﬁ mam” L ﬁnuiwrawa her as an aﬁeatwn speaks? ‘ ‘ afbzm uamﬂ -an w ﬁnk: in pawl Mmmunioaa } W % A raw culture he: ntmleur age to A lmagumaa- n his aimarskazay whsrclm she aha:-ma fully \ th§%wa¢-:4 ax’ 93§zaFz!a;m§a;mr'p‘a1¢mn§; sawing sumo him an A me. mntﬁw esuaaétxvvbaaiiuuaazbsxittes rem mm upms haz- ¢ oiiﬁzy iﬁlliwﬂg we was always &4avotA9ﬁ to her v‘ 7;‘ . A ._ zq }<aa:mmaa; 4 tﬂlﬁiﬁﬁg it t§A‘u§éaw¢%6v1ahi¢ :21’ am» w.~.mx «ma % 313. tax: {amw ta haze «lam raw, aharmatvad bar f 5 L‘#;‘?s13Fﬁ;4a"i!2#,£%. Sm aw mm awn Aw ahaugh nathimg mm wrung. M V‘ . %%‘ﬁ1watw&w was ﬁaamiw; affiaiamt, ma fazvmwd-A 3¢ak1u.§V2;1:sF§haaﬁ+rn1aaa mags am in izathersa the waxy» V ms» ﬁga fariehcaramao an? it: was-in. ¢1a~uasaaaj ‘:23: mm at am cwmiz cm ma .z~amm-E way W £hmfa;a; 3.12: 11955 ma aha wwaa gag a immwv :2? aha‘ Zavaxua. sahmis em Oﬁliﬂégea at we mdale J %mma%A§asamamm gm %§m mm» eewmmh. % ﬁ'33s§Eh hl5‘3¥ imymawaﬁ wish. t.h1.a mmzu minute was Ruth vvenabxa Dean *2‘. man
Show less

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
Show less

Title: Dean, Willard L., 1841-1898 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1898]
Text: WILLARD L. new 18u1 - 1898 Whereas: the members of the Club regret deeply the sad loss the College has sustained in the death of Willard L. Dean, who for so many years did faithful work as treasurer and trustee, and who exerted so strong and kindly an influence among the students as to make each feel a sense of per- sonal loss in his death: - Therefore, be it resolved: that we formally ex- press our sympathy with the Faculty of the College in its loss. Resolved: that a copy of this resolution...
Show moreWILLARD L. new 18u1 - 1898 Whereas: the members of the Club regret deeply the sad loss the College has sustained in the death of Willard L. Dean, who for so many years did faithful work as treasurer and trustee, and who exerted so strong and kindly an influence among the students as to make each feel a sense of per- sonal loss in his death: - Therefore, be it resolved: that we formally ex- press our sympathy with the Faculty of the College in its loss. Resolved: that a copy of this resolution be sent to the Faculty. From the Vassar Club of Detroit III - 277
Show less

Title: Macurdy, Grace Harriet, 1866-1946 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Clark, Evalyn A., Kambouropoulou, Polyxenie, Sague, Mary Landon, Erck, Theodore H.
Description
Date: [After 1946]
Text: 1 ! 1 1 1 GRACE HARRIET MACURDY l866 - l9h6 The Faculty of Vassar College records with sorrow the death on October 23, l9h6, of Professor Emeri- tus Grace Harriet Macurdy, teacher, scholar, human- ist and humanitarian. Miss Macurdy served Vassar well for forty-four years as a teacher of Greek. On her retirement in 1937 President MacCracken wrote of her: "No description in wnrds can fittingly por- tray the service which Miss Macurdy has rendered to the life of Vassar. Her humor, her...
Show more1 ! 1 1 1 GRACE HARRIET MACURDY l866 - l9h6 The Faculty of Vassar College records with sorrow the death on October 23, l9h6, of Professor Emeri- tus Grace Harriet Macurdy, teacher, scholar, human- ist and humanitarian. Miss Macurdy served Vassar well for forty-four years as a teacher of Greek. On her retirement in 1937 President MacCracken wrote of her: "No description in wnrds can fittingly por- tray the service which Miss Macurdy has rendered to the life of Vassar. Her humor, her gayety and her eloquence have combined with her rare learning to bring a distinction to the Classical studies that has made graduates of Vassar desired in every grad- uate school. The spirit of youth is still hers and her outlook has grown with the years." The long list of her published works bears testimony to her distinguished scholarship, which won her re- cognition and acclaim'b0ﬂa at home and abroad. The humane quality of her writings brought many tributes and was appreciated by an American Army officer just returned from the war in these words: "Of all the work done by American scholars in the field of Clas- sics I had rather been the author of The Quality of Mercy than of any other book I know. at mpressed me most was the fact that pursuit of the gentler vir- tues in Classical literature had breathed into your pages their spirit." Miss Macurdy's human interests were universal, and she brought to all of her associations a unique charm and dignity which raised them above the level of the commonplace. Her life centered in Vassar College and in her devotion to friends in Great Britain, Italy and Greece. Her warm sympathy and generous aid to the stricken in those countries brought her in July l9h6 the high honor of a British decoration, the King's Medal "for service in the cause of freedo". Both her spirit and her work bore the quality of eternity, and, strangely, the very essence of them both was voiced in a poem of her own found in her desk after her death. Her stanza on the painter of 1 > I 5 i J 1 ! J ! i L 5 4 J I GRACE HARRIET MACURDY (Continued) a black-figured Attic vase might well serve as her own epitaph: His work shall perish, but the artist's soul, Imaging beauty changing endlessly, Shapes still new visions of the Eternal Whole, And finds for beauty imortality. Evalyn A. Clark Polyxenie Kambouropoulou Mary Landon Sague Theodore H. Erck XII - 80
Show less

Title: Woodruff, Edith, 1887-1950 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Swenarton, Jane T., Makemson, Maud W., Geer, E. Harold
Description
Date: [After 1950]
Text: norm woonnurr 1887 - 1950 The sudden death of Miss Edith Woodruff on Saturday, March 25, 1950 ended the career of one who had spent more than thirty years of her life in the service of Vassar College. Miss Woodruff was born in Andover, Massachusetts on April lh, 1887. She received her early education at Brunswick, Maine where her father was Professor of Greek at Bowdoin College, and at Wheaten Seminary where she completed her preparation for college. She graduated from.Vassar in 1909....
Show morenorm woonnurr 1887 - 1950 The sudden death of Miss Edith Woodruff on Saturday, March 25, 1950 ended the career of one who had spent more than thirty years of her life in the service of Vassar College. Miss Woodruff was born in Andover, Massachusetts on April lh, 1887. She received her early education at Brunswick, Maine where her father was Professor of Greek at Bowdoin College, and at Wheaten Seminary where she completed her preparation for college. She graduated from.Vassar in 1909. Thenceforward, with the exception of two years which were spent in social work, the study and teaching of music were her chief concern. She received her A.M. at Vassar College in 1918 and the degree of Bachelor of Music at North- western University in l92h. Her interest in music and in methods of teaching music led to frequent periods of study in this country and abroad. She studied piano, harpsichord, theory, com- position and musicology in New York, London, Paris, Salzburg, at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleu and at the Harvard Summer School. Of late years composing had come to be Miss Woodruff's greatest delight, and in the summer of l9h8 she attended the Composer's Conference at Middlebury College, where some of her compositions were performed. A choral work, a setting of Sara Teasdale's Zierrot, has been sung several times and has been recorded by the Vassar Glee Club. Characteristically, she spent her last morning composing and playing the harpsichord. While she was intensely interested in the life of the college in all its aspects, the affairs of the Music Department were a matter of deep and lasting concern to her. She had done more than anyone else to give continuity to the teaching of music theory at Vassar College. She made a constant study of her own teaching methods and earnestly endeavored to improve them; and she was always searching for ways in which the depart- ment might serve the students more effectively. Many of her ideas which had crystallized over the years took permanent sha e in the volume, Harmonic Writing, pub- lished in 19kg. While the book_§as designed primarily EDITH WOODRUFF (Continued) for the use of Vassar College students, it has attracted favorable attention elsewhere, and has already been adopted by one or two other institutions. Edith Woodruff will be remembered for her spon- taneous and genuine friendliness, her warm heart, her freshness of outlook and her sense of fun. Students and faculty members who knew her will recall affectionately her eager interest in people, her loyalty to her friends, her concern for the welfare of her students, and the spirit and the corage which she showed when expressing or defending her views. The faculty of Vassar College has lost a loyal and devoted colleague. Jane T . Swenarton Maud W. Makemson E. Harold Geer XIII — 97
Show less

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
Show less

Title: Bracq, Jean Charlemagne, 1853-1934 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Reed, Amy L., White, Henry S., White, Florence Donnell
Description
Date: [After 1934]
Text: JEAN CHARLEMAGNE BRACQ 1853 - 1931; Jean Charlemagne Bracq, who died December 18, l93h at his home in Keene, New Hampshire, at the age of eighty-one, had served Vassar College with distinc- tion fro 1891 to 1918, at first as John Guy Vassar Professor of Modern Languages, afterwards as head of the Department of Romance Languages and Professor of French. Although he came to America at the age of eighteen, he remained always a loyal son of France in his sympathies and in all his varied...
Show moreJEAN CHARLEMAGNE BRACQ 1853 - 1931; Jean Charlemagne Bracq, who died December 18, l93h at his home in Keene, New Hampshire, at the age of eighty-one, had served Vassar College with distinc- tion fro 1891 to 1918, at first as John Guy Vassar Professor of Modern Languages, afterwards as head of the Department of Romance Languages and Professor of French. Although he came to America at the age of eighteen, he remained always a loyal son of France in his sympathies and in all his varied activities. He took an especially warm interest in the little town of Bertry near Cambrai which was his birthplace, keep- ing in touch with its schools and its library, which he had helped to found. One of its streets now bears his name in recognition. A graduate of the McGill University and of the Newton Theological Seminary, he carried on further theological study in Edinburgh and in Paris at the Sorbonne. He was secretary of the McAll Association in Philadelphia for six years before coing to Vassar. Later in life he received honorary degrees fron.Colgate and McGill. In his twenty-seven years at Vassar he built up from small beginnings a strong department of Romance Lan- guages, in which the study of French was transformed from the mere learning of a language to the study of a civilization by modern methods. He was eager to interpret the spirit of France to young Americans and readily placed the resources of his learning at the disposal of American research students in France. As an anti-militarist he worked untiringly to further international understanding and was three times a delegate to international peace conferences. In his book, France Under the Re ublic (1910), he showed himself an enthusiastic defender of the Third Republic and of governmental policy in French colonial expansion. His paper on French Ri hts in Newfoundland furnished the historic basis for tée settiement of oer tain long disputed questions concerning the Newfound- land fisheries, and he took a prominent part in defend ing the French government at the time of the separation of church and state. He lectured and wrote on a variety of subjects and published articles and pamphlets too numerous to be listed in this place. JEAN CHARLEMAGNE BRACQ, (Continued) Many honors came to him: he lectured before the Lowell Institute; was decorated Officer of Public In- struction and Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; he was elected Laureate of the French Academy and Laure- ate of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, Paris. When he retired in 1918, he was subsidized by the Canadian Government to travel and study French- Canadian history and social life, the fruit of which research was another important work, The Evolution of French Canada (l92h), which was later translated Into French and for which he was awarded a gold medal by the Franco-American Society. A tireless worker, he left unfinished at the time of his death a very con- siderable manuscript. In his life as a member of the Vassar community, his friends remeber best the ordered dignity of his home, where he and Mrs. Bracq dispensed a gracious hospital- ity. A neighbor recalls that it was because of his activity on behalf of the motormen and conductors of the Poughkeepsie Street Railway that the Company en- closed the car platforms. The same neighbor relates how some twenty years ago, he sent to Keene for a number of young pine trees, which he presented to the householders along Proessors' Row. He was meticulous in performing his social duties as a citizen. The Faculty of Vassar College wish to record their sense that, in the death of Professor Emeritus Jean Charlemagne Bracq they have lost a member who reflecte honor upon the group by his persistent industry in re- search of importance, his loyal service to three countries, and his very real achievement as teacher and author. And they desire that this minute be sent to Mrs. Bracq with the most sincere expression of sympathy in her bereavement. Amy L. Reed Henry S. White Florence Donnell White IX - 237
Show less

Title: Stroebe, Lilian L., 1875-1959 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Hofrichter, Ruth J., Clark, Evalyn A., Bister, Ada Klett
Description
Date: [After 1959]
Text: 80 LILIAN L. STROEBE 1875-1959 When Miss Lilian L. Stroebe retired in 1945, at the age of 68, in good health and undaunted in her zest for an active life, she turned German Department historian. She re-read forty German Department annual reports, studied statistics, compiled a list of publications of members of the depart- ment, and read over all her diaries, A Line A Da , kept diligently through thirty years. The CoIIege pu§lished her 45 page essay, Ehe ggaching of ggrman gt Vassar College...
Show more80 LILIAN L. STROEBE 1875-1959 When Miss Lilian L. Stroebe retired in 1945, at the age of 68, in good health and undaunted in her zest for an active life, she turned German Department historian. She re-read forty German Department annual reports, studied statistics, compiled a list of publications of members of the depart- ment, and read over all her diaries, A Line A Da , kept diligently through thirty years. The CoIIege pu§lished her 45 page essay, Ehe ggaching of ggrman gt Vassar College in Regge and Wag. 5 §gtrospectjl905;l945. ' She came to Vassar in 1905, and it can be said that those early years of this century may well be regarded as the be- ginning of a new era in the teaching of modern languages. Up to the turn of the century, any native speaker of a lan- guage was considered to be a fitting instructor. Now a Ph.D, became necessary, as proof of training in literature, philology, and phonetics. The translation method was being abandoned for the direct method, that is the oral approach to the language. Miss Stroebe was admirably equipped to be a leader in this trend. Born in Illenau, Germany, she was one of the first women to receive a Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg. In 1905, she came to the United States, meaning to be a mere visitor for about a year. But fate intervened. Staying in New York, she decided to have some laundry done. But the establishment she selected happened to be a French hand laundry. when she saw the bill, she felt that her funds would not hold out, and that she had better look for a job in this expensive country. She secured one at the Rye, New York, Seminary. This led to her appointment at Vassar, and so it is to a laundry bill that we owe the presence here of a leading personality in the teaching of languages. Here she was to spend 58 years of almost continuous teach- ing. Her energy and her devotion to her profession could not tolerate idle summers, and in 1912, she initiated the sum- mer school in Lakeville, Connecticut, which later devel- oped into the nationally known Middlebury Summer School of Languages. Recognition came when Middlebury gave her an honorary degree in 1944. Another high light of her career was the discovery in February 1912 of what is now the famed Speck Collection of 81 LILIAN L. STRGEBE (Continued) Goetheana at Yale University. It was delightful to hear her tell about the clue given by a student, the intrepid walk she took with Miss Marian P. Whitney, then Chairman of the Department, and others, crossing the frozen Hudson on foot to take the west Shore Railroad to Haverstraw, where to their amazement they found in back ofaa little drug store the valuable collection to which the elderly druggist, Mr. Speck, had devoted all the time and funds he could spare from his business. Yale rather than Vassar was selected as a depository because our College did not have the space to house the large collection. It is new housed and handsomely exhibited at Yale in a special wing of the Sterling Library and is the finest Goethe collection in this country, second only to one private collection in Germany. This safari is an example of Miss Stroebe's love of long walks and trips. She was an accomplished mountain climber, and after age and arthritis made active walking difficult, she took great joy in trips abroad, and during the year, drives in Dutchess County. Companions privileged to drive her enjoyed with her the pleasures brought by the changing seasons, from the hunt for the first pussy willows to the forages for lilacs around abandoned farm houses, and to the search, in the fall, for the elusive bittersweet.’ And the picnics and cook-outs in which the staff and all the German majors took part--those were the days! when we were setting out it was lovely to hear her say, with a contented sigh, "Now there is Sunday in my soul!" She taught us 'the lay of the land and the rhythm of the road.’ In her work with younger colleagues she shirked no trouble to help them to come up to their best possibilities. 1Pa- tiently, she sat in the classroom to observe a newcomer's technique, which must have bored her considerably. Her detailed and objective comments were those of a person who knew exactly what she wanted, and why she wanted it; they helped immeasurably to develop the teaching method ofi young instructors. Those of us who experienced this never cease to be grateful for what they received. As early as 1907 an introductory course in Germanic phil- ology and Middle High German was offered, as far as she 82 LILIAN L. STROEBE (Continued) could find out the first of its kind in an undergraduate college. We still teach it as part of 300. Many articles, mainly on classroom technique, are still read by aspiring teachers, and many of her textbooks, some published in cooperation with Miss Whitney, Miss Hofrichter and Mrs. Bister, are still in use. She made one capital find, Emil und die Detektive, a first year reader edited with Miss Hofrichter. Its royalties paid for several trips to Europe and extensive book purchases. The greatest inspiration she gave to her colleagues lay in her unflagging and enthusiastic devotion to her work. The Department was the center of her life, and nothing was too much.for her if it led to better teaching. The methods she developed still are a tradition at Vassar, and, through the Middlebury Summer School, they are spread to many other colleges. Her work still goes on, as she now rests after her labors. Ruth J. Hofrichter Evalyn A. Clark Ada Klett Bister XV - 152-153
Show less

Title: Wells, Emilie Louise, 1871-1916 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Moore, J. Leverett, Griffen, Clyde, Schalk, David
Description
Date: [After 1916]
Text: ~ 18 EMILIE LOUISE WELLS 1871 - 1916 The community of Vassar College realizes with peculiar sorrow the loss it has sustained by the death on April thirteenth, 1916 of Emilie Louise Wells, Associate Professor of Economics. During eighteen years of service the influence of her mind, of her personality has made itself ever more powerfully felt and the Faculty is anxious to bear witness to the loss that has befallen the intel- lectual, as also the communal life of the college. As a member of the...
Show more~ 18 EMILIE LOUISE WELLS 1871 - 1916 The community of Vassar College realizes with peculiar sorrow the loss it has sustained by the death on April thirteenth, 1916 of Emilie Louise Wells, Associate Professor of Economics. During eighteen years of service the influence of her mind, of her personality has made itself ever more powerfully felt and the Faculty is anxious to bear witness to the loss that has befallen the intel- lectual, as also the communal life of the college. As a member of the college community, Miss Wells upheld a high ideal of social service and generous helpfulness. In general relations she revealed the fine impersonality of mind which springs from re- cognition of the larger issues of life, while her more intimate friends realized the potent attraction due to her intense human quality. Her scholarship was clear and logical, and with it she combined an unusual appreciation of what was best in the world of art. Her concern for her students extended be- yond the friendly co-operation of the classroom and she nubered within the group of those bound most closely to her several whose love and admiration had deepened with their experience of later life. The Faculty by this minute desires to express its appreciation of a rare and gifted personality and to proffer to her family a true sympathy in their be- reavement. Christabel F. Fiske Herbert E. Mills J. Leverett Moore VI - 110-111
Show less

Title: Peebles, Rose Jefferies, 1870-1952 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Lockwood, Helen, Sague, Mary, Swain, Barbara
Description
Date: [After 1952]
Text: ROSE JEFFRIES PEEBLES 1870 - 1952 Rose Jeffries Peebles came to Vassar College in 1909 as Instructor in English. She had graduated from Mississippi State College for Women, and had taught there as well as in preparatory school and in junior colleges in Arkansas and Kentucky. At that time she was completing her doctorate at Bryn Mawr. Twenty—nine years later, in 1938, she retired from the college as Professor of English and, for the five preceding years, Chairman of the Department. Her field...
Show moreROSE JEFFRIES PEEBLES 1870 - 1952 Rose Jeffries Peebles came to Vassar College in 1909 as Instructor in English. She had graduated from Mississippi State College for Women, and had taught there as well as in preparatory school and in junior colleges in Arkansas and Kentucky. At that time she was completing her doctorate at Bryn Mawr. Twenty—nine years later, in 1938, she retired from the college as Professor of English and, for the five preceding years, Chairman of the Department. Her field of special scholarly interest was prose fiction, medieval or modern. Her doctor's dissertation on the romance of Longinus was part of the wide-spread work of interpretation of Arthurian legend which went on in the first quarter of this century, and remains the authoritative study on its subject. Her work on the romance cycles never ceased, and occasional articles - A Note on Hamlet, 1916, The Children in the Tree, I927 - found their imy Into print. Uthers were written and never published. The real outlet for Miss Peebles' scholarship was the classroom. There her activity as scholar and teacher, through three decades, brought into existence our present courses in prose fiction and together with her wide European contacts supported the interest in comparative literary studies which her colleagues Professor Marian P. Whitney and Professor Winifred Smith were developing in their fields of German and Drama 0 Even her first years of teaching at Vassar were notable. The richness of her inquiring and fear- less mind, and the unique balance of warmth and detachment, serious grace and humor in her per- sonality brought new life to basic required courses. In 1912-13 she first offered a course in "English Metrical Romances, especially those of Germanic origin, and the development of the Arthurian legend". This course changed gradually first into "The Romance in English Literature 8 ROSE JEFFRIES PEEBLES (Continued) from its beginnings to the present time", then into "The Romance..with emphasis on its importance in the development of the novel". By 1923-2h three courses had grown from the original stock: "The English Novel from its Beginning to George Eliot", "Prose Fiction" - an advanced course, and a seminar: "Studies in English Romance". Alumnae of the mid- twenties remember with excitement the sense of independent adventure and creation which radiated frun these courses. The seminar especially represented Miss Peebles' deep con- viction of the rightness of sustained, advanced, independent work for all students, the plodding as well as the brilliant. From the belief in this kind of work throughout the college, and from the students’ response to it, came the incentive for the publication of the Vassar gournal of Undergraduate Studies; from it too came in part the plans'?or the new curriculum of 1928 with its assumption of the students‘ maturity and readiness to carry on specialized study with a background of adequate knowledge. Miss Peebles' interest in romances and novels and in her students‘ responses to them and to life was not a secondary, trained and academic matter but a primary and temperamental taste. All human activity - thoughts, feelings, doings - absorbed her. Everybody's story, anybody's story, received her sympathetic scrutiny; her patience with student-problems and story-problems alike seemed endless, in spite of the incisive criticism with which she could, when she cared to, terminate stupid or egotistic talk. But those who worked with her knew that much of her tolerance was simply one aspect of her irre- pressible zest to "explore further", no matter what the fatigue or the disagreeable results of that exploration might be. She gave no impression of physical daring or of unusual energy, but her appetite for experience, direct or vicarious, her delight in life and her power to receive it through her senses and imagination was inexhaustible. Her classroom connections with her students and colleagues were only a small part of her relations with them. She gave them hospitality with unlimited ROSE JEFFRIES PEEBIES (Continued) generosity; the house at 123 College Avenue where she and Professor Edith Fahnestock kept open house for successive college generations of Vassar students and teachers stands for an often neglected aspect of the academic life - the illustration of the intellectual life as a way-of-existence, rather than the precept alone. There was good fortune in that house, to be sure; but there was also knowledge of the world, and involvement in many kinds of non- academic work; there were people comin back with the results of their lives‘ joys and sor- rows, and there was always harty and profound laughter to set the perspective right. These friends lived so that it was plain to see how the academic life, lived with eager minds and rich sympathies, makes its followers deeply human, fruitful, and satisfied. At the end of her life, after fourteen years of retirement, Miss Peebles was able to say clearly that her life had been happy, that she had done what she wanted to do. This ripeness it has been Vassar's privilege to share in. Respectfully submitted, Helen Lockwood Mary Sague Barbara Swain XIII - 306-307
Show less

Title: Howson, J. Howard, 1894-1978 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Drouilhet, Elizabeth M., Glasse, John H., Linner, Edward R.
Description
Date: [After 1978]
Text: Attachment #l VASSAR COLLEGE POUGHKEEPSIE - NEW YORK l26Ol At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held ~ October eighteenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-eight, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: d. HOWARD HOWSON, l89Q-l978 When J. Howard Howson retired, in I959, he had been , Professor of Religion and Chairman of his Department for thirty years. He died in January of this year. Born in Totonto, Canada, in l89h, he was reared in the Puritan tradition. He graduated from the...
Show moreAttachment #l VASSAR COLLEGE POUGHKEEPSIE - NEW YORK l26Ol At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held ~ October eighteenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-eight, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: d. HOWARD HOWSON, l89Q-l978 When J. Howard Howson retired, in I959, he had been , Professor of Religion and Chairman of his Department for thirty years. He died in January of this year. Born in Totonto, Canada, in l89h, he was reared in the Puritan tradition. He graduated from the University of Toronto in l9l6. In l9l7, he became an officer in the Northumberland Fusileers and began serving with the British Expeditionary Forces in France. He fought two years in frontline trenches without wound from shellfire but, just before the Armistice, was burned by gas. When released from the hospital, he returned to Canada and went West in search of an outdoor life. He dug coal in Alberta for nine hours a day and, at night, taught English to fellow miners. Then he worked on government lands in Northwest Canada. He came to New York City in i920, at age 26, to study at ' Union Theological Seminary. l923 was a banner year: he received the B.D. degree, maqna cum laude, from Union, and its Travelling Fellowship; Columbia Teachers College awarded him an M.A.; he was elected Fellow of the National Council for Religion in Higher Education; and he married Lillian Campbell. He taught at both Union and Teachers College for the next two years and then, for three, at Hamilton College. , Howard Howson joined the Vassar faculty in i929, on the Frederick Weyerhaeuser Chair. He created Religion lO5, a course in which he introduced generations of Vassar students to scholarly study of the Judeo-Christian tradition. His course in the history of religions helped to pioneer Asian studies in the curriculum. He taught for years in the Vassar Summer Institute of Euthenics, on ethics and religion, adolescent psychology, and mental hygeine and the family. In the early nineteen forties, he taught summer courses in marriage at Michigan State. Later in the'forties, the Rev. James A. Pike then Rector of Christ Episcopal Church, Poughkeepsie, publicly attacked his liberal approach to the study of religion. That attack was not Mr. Howson's only link with the community. He belonged to the First Congregational Church, to the local chapter of the League for Industrial Democracy, and to the Dutchess County Society for Mental Health, in all of which he held elective office. After retiring from Vassar, //.1 //. J. Howard Howson -2- he taught a course in religions of the world at Dutchess Community College. His wife, Lillian, died in l9h6. They had three children-- John, Carol, and Christine--who grew up in the college community. In l9h7 he married Alice Guest, of the Department of English, later Study Counselor, who survives him. He spoke countless times in chapel, which then met daily. Francis White Field '36 has recalled that one clique of students attended day after day, so handsome was Mr. Howson, until they discovered that he was married. Then they dropped chapel. Mrs. Field also recalled this touch of his teaching: In l932...it was still the custom to assign specific seats to new students in a classroom, at least until everyone got well acquainted. Being tall, and having a name that began with "W", I had spent my life so far at the end of the line or the back of the room. Not so in Howard's class. He had decreed that W, X, Y, Z should be in the front row. That is how my appreciation of him got off to such a good start. Howard Howson had a consideration for persons that was at once deep and unsentimental. Over the years, one member of the Vassar community after another turned to him for counsel. We close with some words of his own. They come from an address on "Academic Freedom“ that he gave during the McCarthy era: Academic freedom involves much more than society's recognition of the role of the scholar as the re-examiner of our cultural heritage. Academic freedom involves society's legitimate expectation that the scholar as teacher will educate scholars as competent as himself, with an - integrity equal to his own, with independence of judgment ~ comparable to that he claims for himself. This means that he must create in his classes an atmosphere of mutual intel- lectual respect, in effect, a miniature scholarly society of students, under the guidance of the teacher. This involves the recognition of obligations on both sides. On the side of the teacher there must be a recognition of the student as a person in his own right. He is a creative person with his own aspirations, his own aptitudes and inter- ests for which no apology need be made. He is no tabula rasa on which the teacher inscribes the truth as he knows it; no empty vessel waiting for the truth to be poured into him. if he is to be initiated into the society of scholars he must be treated in such a way that he has a growing respect for him- self as a scholar. This means that he must learn that dis- cipline of scholarship that will take him back to the living data of knowledge with tools that will enable him to distin- guish the important from the trivial, the significant from J. Howard Howson -3- the insignificant, the more permanent from the ephemeral. the student is to think fearlessly, the scholar as teacher must acquaint him with points of view and conclusions othe than the teacher's own in such a manner that he as student ' is free to accept other possibilities without any sense of disloyalty to his teacher or fear of censure by him. lf the student is to think creatively, the scholar as teacher must be perceptive, and appreciate the significance to the student of efforts that may be pitiably faltering when compared with the assured strides of the mature sch l o ar. This calls for humility in the very area of the scholar's sense of power. Respectfully submitted, Elizabeth M. Drouilhet John H. Glasse Edward R. Linner October l8, i978 I" /' /L1‘ If
Show less

Title: Monnier, Mathilde, 1876-1954 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Smith, Winifred, Miller, John R., de Schweinitz, Margaret
Description
Date: [After 1954]
Text: MATHILDE monnxsn 1876 - 195k Mathilde Monnier, Professor Emeritus of French, was born in Switzerland on May 26, 1876, and died there at her home in Porrentruy, on April 22, l9Sh. She came to Vassar in 1909, after teaching for seven years at Putnam Hall in Poughkeepsie, and served the college as a distinguished member of the French Department until l9hh. Miss Monnier's work in the first World War was significant. In 1918 she was granted leave of absence to assist American soldiers of...
Show moreMATHILDE monnxsn 1876 - 195k Mathilde Monnier, Professor Emeritus of French, was born in Switzerland on May 26, 1876, and died there at her home in Porrentruy, on April 22, l9Sh. She came to Vassar in 1909, after teaching for seven years at Putnam Hall in Poughkeepsie, and served the college as a distinguished member of the French Department until l9hh. Miss Monnier's work in the first World War was significant. In 1918 she was granted leave of absence to assist American soldiers of foreign origin at Camp Devens, and in the summer of 1919 she was with the Y.W.C.A. in France, dealing with the problem of sending French war brides to America - an experience she described in the Vassar Quarterly of May 1920. While greatly attached to her work and her friends here, Miss Monnier remained the the European in our midst. Her summer vacations and her subsequent leaves of absence were spent in travel and, most often, at her apartment in Paris - where she entertained many of the contemporary writers with whom she was acquainted. Miss Monnier's students were admiring and devoted; they felt her power and her charm and were appreciative of her tireless efforts on their behalf. All her life she counted many lasting friends among them. As a teacher she maintained strict discipline and the highest standards. Under her instruction the students worked their hardest, and longed to excel. They discovered not only the meaning of the classics but also the rhythm and the tone. For Miss Monnier was one of the rare teachers of language and literature who was herself a poet. This was proved - long before her own volume of verse appeared - by her eiquisitely sensitive and musical reading of the literature she taught. She introduced and established in the Vassar curriculum the first courses in contemporary French literature and in diction. In 192k Miss Monnier and Miss White collaborated in translating from the French a novel by Isabelle Sandy, Andorra, which was published by Houghton Mifflin. Miss Monnier's volume of poems entitled Dis ersion, appeared in l9h2, published in New York By Ehe Editions MATHILDE MONNIER (Continued) de la Maison francaise, in a series which included works by several of the leading French writers. One of the publishers remarked after reading the manuscript: "I1 y a de la musique dedans." As in her work, so in her bearing, there was artistry and distinction, and in her life clarity of purpose courageously carried out to the end. Respectfully submitted, Winifred Smith John R. Miller Margaret de Sghweinitz XIII - use
Show less

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/
Show less

Title: Kendrick, Georgia Avery, 1848-1922 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Moore, J. Leverett, Palmer, Jean C.
Description
Date: [After 1922]
Text: \ 29 GEORGIA AVERY xsnnnxcx 18u8 - 1922 The Faculty of Vassar College desires to record its sorrow at the death on December lh, 1922 of Georgia Avery Kendrick for twenty-two years (1891-1913) Lady Principal of Vassar College. Occupying a difficult position where students and faculty meet on a more nearly equal footing she main- tained dignity but not at the cost of affection and showed to all members of the College a warm feeling of personal interest. Gentle in manner, courteous in address...
Show more\ 29 GEORGIA AVERY xsnnnxcx 18u8 - 1922 The Faculty of Vassar College desires to record its sorrow at the death on December lh, 1922 of Georgia Avery Kendrick for twenty-two years (1891-1913) Lady Principal of Vassar College. Occupying a difficult position where students and faculty meet on a more nearly equal footing she main- tained dignity but not at the cost of affection and showed to all members of the College a warm feeling of personal interest. Gentle in manner, courteous in address and demeanor she revealed at the same time a steadfastness of purpose that endued her influence with unsuspected permanence and power. As social head of the College she embodied the grace of a hos- tess with a sincere knowledge of intellectual pursuits and respect for academic standards. J. Leverett Moore Jean C. Palmer v11 - 2L1
Show less

Title: Hutchinson, Ruth Gillette, 1898-1936 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1936]
Text: RUTH GILLETTE HUTCHINSON (MPSQ Arthur Re) 1898 - 1936 The members of the Executive Comittee on April 8th adopted a resolution expressing sympathy with mem- bers of the faculty in the loss of Associate Profes- sor Ruth Gillette Hutchinson, and their own high regard for her. A formal resolution will be adopted by the Board of Trustees at their next meeting. From the Executive Comittee of the Board of Trustees IX - 336

Title: White, Florence Donnell, 1882-1950 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Sague, Mary Landon, Miller, Maria Tastevin, de Schweinitz, Margaret
Description
Date: [After 1950]
Text: FLORENCE DONNELL WHITE 1882 - 1950 The Faculty of Vassar College expresses its deep sense of loss in the death on December 15, 1950 of Florence Donnell White, Professor Emeritus of French. Miss White was born in Alna, Maine, on January 23, 1882. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1903, taught for two years at the Springfield, Massachusetts, High School, and received her M.A. degree from Mount Holyoke in 1907. Continuing her graduate study at Bryn Mawr, where she was a Fellow in...
Show moreFLORENCE DONNELL WHITE 1882 - 1950 The Faculty of Vassar College expresses its deep sense of loss in the death on December 15, 1950 of Florence Donnell White, Professor Emeritus of French. Miss White was born in Alna, Maine, on January 23, 1882. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1903, taught for two years at the Springfield, Massachusetts, High School, and received her M.A. degree from Mount Holyoke in 1907. Continuing her graduate study at Bryn Mawr, where she was a Fellow in Romance Languages, and also at the University of Paris, she received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Bryn Mawr in 1915. She came to Vassar in 1908, and was glad to carry on her whole career in the college which she loved and on which she has left her distinctive mark as an educator and as a person. The gratitude felt by Miss White's students for what her teaching means to them was well expressed in one letter, received at the time of her retirement in l9h7, when the Florence Donnell White Fund was established: I felt when I left Vassar and feel even more strongly after twenty-four years that her teach- ing gave in fullest measure what a college educa- tion should give: respect for scholarship, honesty and humility in the practice of it, and as an end result of four years of study a founda- tion of knowledge of and interest in the subject so well-laid that nothing can destroy it. There were no easy short-cuts in Miss White's courses - for herself or her students... Her stu- dents were well-informed, because she informed them well, with the highest standards for thorough work, with a belief in the importance of exact knowledge as against guesswork and good intentions, and with a mastery of her subject which, shared with them, gave them a fund of appreciative familiarity with France that they would use and enjoy for the rest of their lives. ' Miss White was chairman of the department of French from 1918 until 19h6. She served on the most important elective committees of the faculty; among those which claimed her activity for the longest periods were the 30 FLORENCE DONNELL WHITE (Continued) Committee on the Curriculum, on Students‘ Records, and the Advisory Comittee. She published a study of Vol- taire's Essay on Epic Poetry, and in collaboration with colleagues made translations from the French and Spanish. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, of the Modern Lan- guage Association, the American Association of Teachers of French, the American Association of University Profes- sors, the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Colonial Dames of America. Outside the college she participated in the activities of the Institute of International Education and she was one of the originators of its program for the Junior Year Abroad. In recogition of her constant work in further- ance of understanding between the French and American peoﬁle she was made Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in 193 . Miss White's clarity of mind, her keen wit, her absolute justice, and her unfailing enthusiasm are qualities recalled by all who knew her. They enabled her to carry the responsibilities of teaching and administrative tasks with untiring strength and without ever seeming to be burdened. She had the tact and true sociability which came from a generous interest in people. A staunch New Englander, she had a deep affection for France, its literature and its people. In France, where she spent almost every summer, she counted many friends, one of whom has written, characteristically, "No one could have mgde the"United States better respected and loved than s e did. The Faculty of Vassar College, who have long had Miss White's sustaining presence among them, will keep the memory of her distinction, her wise counsel and her gracious company. Mary Landon Sague Maria Tastevin Miller Margaret de Schweinitz XIII - 171-172
Show less

Title: King, Marianne Louise, 1880-1960 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Thomson, Vera B., Bacon, Julia G., Claflin, Agnes R., Richey, F. Elizabeth
Description
Date: [After 1960]
Text: -"""‘ K.‘ \ faR'.vu’~\ S3‘? ' M NE LCUISB 7 Q ff: CU I‘-' I3.) > 0 1 J FT‘? i-1 -, CD 1650-1960 Vorianne Louiso King res born in Homo, Vow"York, bovcmbor b, 1930, but moved st an osrly ago to Aurora store bor family become closely conncctod with tolls College. Ste studied at tro Sargent School of Pkysicsl Eﬁucstion in Boston, Xassochusctts, under Dr. Dudley Ssrront, and in 1906 came to Vassar as an assistant in the Qymnssium. She become an instructor in...
Show more-"""‘ K.‘ \ faR'.vu’~\ S3‘? ' M NE LCUISB 7 Q ff: CU I‘-' I3.) > 0 1 J FT‘? i-1 -, CD 1650-1960 Vorianne Louiso King res born in Homo, Vow"York, bovcmbor b, 1930, but moved st an osrly ago to Aurora store bor family become closely conncctod with tolls College. Ste studied at tro Sargent School of Pkysicsl Eﬁucstion in Boston, Xassochusctts, under Dr. Dudley Ssrront, and in 1906 came to Vassar as an assistant in the Qymnssium. She become an instructor in 1909 and was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1921, sorving as Acting Cksirmsn of the Deport- most of Physical ﬁducation in 192k during Kiss Rsl1antine's leave. During a sosostor leave in 1926-29 Hiss King visited sc~ looted schools and collcros to obscrvo vork in Eoﬁv Kochonics __ u I her particular fiold of interest. In l9h6 sis retired sftcr forty years of sorvico. She died on January lS, 1960. Gscorations of Vassar students will remcnbor For for her bosutiful carriage, a wonderful example of practicing what she preached. Ska was quiet and rosorvod but genuinely interested in people, and those with wrom she came in con-- tact were ioprosssd with her modesty and unselfisbncss. She nave generously of hcr time to many causes, but her orcstcst contribution was in corrcctivos, whore she worked with in- dividual stuﬁcnts on exercises proscribed by their own doctors. She was particularly interested in helping polio patients and spostics» ' Ste retired very bappily to her old tome in Aurora where ska was able to pursue her love of oardcnipg/and the outdoors and to continue contacts with s collcge“énvironmcnt. She ncvor lost For interest in Vassar and doligttcd to soc and boar from old friends. Her warmth, her kindness and bar cheerful spirit will be remembered by those who knew her. Vera B. Thomson Julia G; Bacon Agnes R» Clsflin Ft Elizabeth Rickey XV - 2hS
Show less

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 /'
Show less

Title: Palmer, Elizabeth Hatch, 1865-1920 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Moore, Leverett J., Miller, Maria Tastevin, de Schweinitz, Margaret
Description
Date: [After 1920]
Text: ELIZABETH mvrca PALMER 1865 - 1920 By the death of Elizabeth Hatch Palmer the Faculty of Vassar College has lost a member whose service has extended over a period of twenty years, and by this minute the Faculty aims to record its apprecia- tion of the work that she has accomplished. The selfsame qualities that made Professor Palmer so successful as a teacher were manifest in her work as a member of the Faculty - a broad and deep humanity, a high ideal of scholarship, a scrupulous honesty...
Show moreELIZABETH mvrca PALMER 1865 - 1920 By the death of Elizabeth Hatch Palmer the Faculty of Vassar College has lost a member whose service has extended over a period of twenty years, and by this minute the Faculty aims to record its apprecia- tion of the work that she has accomplished. The selfsame qualities that made Professor Palmer so successful as a teacher were manifest in her work as a member of the Faculty - a broad and deep humanity, a high ideal of scholarship, a scrupulous honesty towards herself and others, a sense of balance and justice made constructive through untiring energy and a sincere loyalty to the best interests of the College. She possessed in an unusual degree the capacity for detail combined with a sane opinion of its value and a notable gift for administration, which made her a valuable member of the important committees on which she served, particularly the Comittees on Petitions and Elections, on Intercollegiate Relations and on Admission. Professor Palmer was no mere laudator te oris acti either in the greater world without or In the ITFFIe world of the college, but a vital personality who saw clearly the essential connection between the past and the present. She possessed something of the ancient Roman virtus, something of Roman reverence and dignity, quickened by a sympathy which made her a loyal friend and a reasonable fellow-worker. To the College as a whole her death is a very real loss, but to her colleagues who enjoyed the privileges of a long association her honored memory will live as an eternal possession. Grace H. Macurdy Ida C. Thallon J. Leverett Moore VII - S2
Show less

Title: Loebl, Eugen, 1907-1987 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Rousseas, Stephen
Description
Date: September 28, 1988
Text: E 9’ 5 F E 1 \- 1 I _.-i-..~..,_,e '-ﬁ#§<-Ir~'"€§-_ 1 , x \ \ ‘Y ' i » Vassar College Faculty Meeting September 28, 1988 I N M E M O R I A M Eugen Loebl 1907 - 1987 Eugen Loebl was born on May 14, 1907 in the village of iwlic, in the Hungarian part of the Austrian Empire. After World War I it became a part of the newly created nation of Czechoslovakia. He started his education in Holic and then went on to study in Vienna, two and a half hours away, at the muversity for...
Show moreE 9’ 5 F E 1 \- 1 I _.-i-..~..,_,e '-ﬁ#§<-Ir~'"€§-_ 1 , x \ \ ‘Y ' i » Vassar College Faculty Meeting September 28, 1988 I N M E M O R I A M Eugen Loebl 1907 - 1987 Eugen Loebl was born on May 14, 1907 in the village of iwlic, in the Hungarian part of the Austrian Empire. After World War I it became a part of the newly created nation of Czechoslovakia. He started his education in Holic and then went on to study in Vienna, two and a half hours away, at the muversity for welthandel (World Commerce) and later completed Ins economics studies in Prague at Charles University, where he .i~ ﬂso subsequently taught. 9 Although Eugen came from a religious background, he was not a"pratiquant," and unlike his brother who was an ardent Zionist, i. Iugen went directly into politics. As a child he had noticed the gqabetween peoples‘ religious beliefs and their acts. And in jﬂm political sphere, the acts of cowardice and accommodation to g, 1‘ sﬂm rising Nazi movement were even more troubling. In Vienna he »~ .4 Imechoslovakian communist party because it was the only group and other Jewish students were beaten by brown-shirted Nazis who - \ ~ﬂm1ked the halls of the university. He was shocked that this 9: kmﬂd.be allowed to happen, and in his mid-twenties he joined the #1 . ( *‘ >< Q "ﬂmt was seriously resisting the rise of Naziism. *1; S Eugen was a very bright young man and he rose quickly within Hm party's ranks. By the time of world War II and the German . -hwasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939, he found himself in London E I s Q v ;, i v E. l F W-Y,-,._..._., -“W 2 with the provisional Czechoslovakian government in exile, where he served as economic adviser to Jan Masaryk, the minister for foreign affairs, and in the immediate postwar years as representative of Czechoslovakia in the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Toward the end of the war, when the defeat of Hitler seemed inevitable, Eugen was sent from London to Prague in a roundabout way with plans for the new government. The path to Prague was via Turkey and then through most of the back part of Russia on train. On the last leg of the trip Eugen shared a train compartment with a Russian general who forced him to drink down toast after toast of vodka and black pepper to the Russian nation, to the Czech nation, to the armies, to the generals that led them, and on and on until Eugen became deadly sick. when he finally arrived in Prague, somewhat wobbly, he found the war had ended and the Czech exile government already installed. As close as Eugen had been to Jan Masaryk, he could never bring himself to discuss the death of his friend in the communist takeover of the Czech government -- whether he fell or was pushed out of the bathroom window. Whenever asked about it he went into a pained silence, and one soon sensed it was a topic not to be pursued. In the new communist government Eugen became deputy minister of trade. It was in this capacity that Eugen made a fatal mistake. The Czech government in exile had rovisionally agreed (at a time when Czechoslovakia was still '6 ccupied by Soviet troops) to provide the Soviet Union with O 3 uranium ore at cost plus 10 percent. After the war, in 1947, Eugen headed a Czech delegation that met with Foreign Trade Minister Anastas Mikoyan and Deputy Prime Minister Krutikov to renegotiate the terms of the earlier agreement. Eugen suggested that the Soviet Union pay Czechoslovakia at world market prices for the ore. That was the beginning of Eugen's downfall. Years later, after his release from prison and his rehabilitation as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Bratislava, Eugen asked his research staff to calculate the difference between the prices the Soviet Union actually paid and the world market price for uranium ore. For the period 1945 to 1965 the difference exceeded one billion dollars. The tragedy of Eugen Loebl is best explained by a book published early in the postwar years under the title The God That Failed, with Ignazio Silone, Arthur Koestler, Stephen Spender, and others as contributors. Eugen was arrested on November 24, 1949 and was brought to trial in 1952 along with Rudolph Slansky, the Secretary—General of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and 12 other defendants. In the Slansky trial of 1952 Eugen saw his great hope, the thing he most believed in turned into an instrument of terror. He later came to think that the failure was built into the system of Marxism; that betrayal of the revolution was inevitable; that the system itself was fatally flawed and inhuman. And he spent the rest of his life making amends for his earlier beliefs by writing books and articles, by 4 testifying before Congressional Committees, and by taking to the lecture circuit in Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Brazil and India. Eugen set out the story of the 1952 Slansky Trial in his book Stalinism in Prague. In it he repudiated Koestler's thesis in Darkness at Noon, based on the trial of Nikolai Bukharin in 1939, that confessions were made out of a sense of party loyalty and political need. One confessed, according to Eugen, simply because one had no other choice. Of the fourteen defendants, eleven were Jewish. And of the 11 not one was a Zionist. Yet the accused were charged with conspiring to promote world Jewish domination and of trying to sabotage socialism in order to align Czechoslovakia with the West. The charges were espionage, high treason, and sabotage. All were regarded as “Trotskyite, Titoite, Zionist and bourgeois-national traitors in the service of the U.S. imperialists and under the direction of Western espionage agencies." All confessed after extensive grilling and torture by Czech and Russian interrogators. In particular, Eugen Loebl was accused of being an Israeli agent. The shipment of arms in 1947 to Israel from the Skoda plant in Czechoslovakia was seen as part of an international Zionist plot. Of the fourteen charged, only three survived -- Artur London, Vavro Hajdu, and Eugen Loebl. The rest were executed. Eugen spent eleven years in jail, five of them in solitary confinement. It was while in solitary confinement, with no books and no writing material at his disposal, that he began rethinking his Marxism and committing his new thoughts to memory. The 5 critical fault he found in Marxism was its dependence on a primitive labor theory of value based on manual labor. It was while in jail that Eugen devised his notion of "mental" labor, which became the basis of all his subsequent thought in the field of economics. - , ~ with the rise of Khrushchev to power and his repudiation of Stalin in 1956, rehabilitation became a possibility, but Eugen was not to be released from jail until five years later in 1961. For two years after his release he worked as a wrapping clerk and was not rehabilitated until 1963. At that time, Alexander Dubcek, the head of government, insisted that Eugen be given a responsible position in government. He was assigned by the bureaucracy to the central bank of Bratislava with the expectation that he would fail. Instead, he excelled and was shortly made deputy director of the bank. The "Spring Thaw" of 1968 saw the end of "socialism with a human face" and the brutal reimposition of Stalinism in the Eastern European countries. Russian tanks rumbled through Prague's Wenceslas Square in August of 1968 and Eugen fled to the West. It was on January 24, 1969 that President Alan Simpson announced the appointment of Eugen Loebl as Dexter M. Ferry, Jr., Professor of Economics and Political Science at Vassar College, where he stayed as a member of the economics department until his retirement in 1975 at the age of 68. He was an active member of the department of economics and a major participant in the Critical Thought program of Science, Technology and Society. He 1 \ F . i F l A \ v i & K . é \? \L i F ‘- F P F i ‘v 1 i I x w > I ,_ _4,__?_ v K > 2 % x } > : F. i 6 proved to be an inspiring teacher and his classes were extremely popular with the students. It was while at Vassar that he put down in writing his major thoughts on mental labor. His book Humanomics: How We Can Make the Economy Serve us -- Not Destroy gs was widely reviewed and endorsed by such prominent writers as Alvin Toffler, Peter F. Drucker and Michael Novak. It was a controversial book that recommended the doing away of income taxes, the imposition of stiff value added taxes on the products consumed by the rich, and placed human values at the center of the economy -— which in his view was done neither by capitalism nor by communism. Above all, the one thing he most wanted was to remove economists from the center of decision making. "I think all economists," wrote Eugen, "should be given five years of solitary confinement. Half of them might radically rethink their ideas, and the other half would at least be out of circulation where they could do no harm." V His biggest success was in India in 1978 where Prime Minister Moraji Desai not only endorsed the book but was photographed prominently holding it out for the benefit of the photographers -— and the book. So much publicity was received Eugen's ideas in India that a group was formed to promote them (which still continues to function), and the Dalai Lama invited Eugen to visit with him. It turned out the Dalai Lama was interested in combining the religion of Tibet with the teachings of Marx -- in the hope of finding some way of ending his exile in India by compromising with the Chinese communists. Eugen was by I v » I V 1 M » xi ‘x v. :4 I 1 r E I 5 E E 7 appalled by the idea and severely lectured the Dali Lama on the impossibility of doing so, as he did, on another occasion, to Marxist catholic clergy in Brazil on the impossibility of combining christianity with Marxism. But while he was in India his hosts were alarmed at his being constantly followed by agents of the Czech and Russian embassies -- so much so that they appealed to the Indian government for his protection. It was with considerable relief that his official host kissed him goodbye at the airport. In his retirement years, from 1975 to 1987, he attended a conference on human rights in Madrid and travelled extensively in Europe and Latin America. He also served as a consultant to Denison Mines, the world's largest uranium mine in Canada, run by the Slovakian multi-millionaire, Stephen Roman, with whom he wrote a book, The Responsible Society. Less than a year before his death, Eugen travelled to Vienna where a television documentary was being made on the psychological effects of his imprisonment and interrogation (The Confession). Eugen played himself in the documentary, and in prison uniform spent hours walking the prison corridors and reliving his past. The TV documentary was broadcast on June 13, 1987, two months before his death. It was also broadcast in the Czech language. The last project Eugen Loebl worked on was the problem of Peace and Freedom, to which he was convinced he had the answer. His views attracted considerable interest in West Germany, where his papers on peace and freedom are to be deposited, in India, 8 and among some deputies in France. All his other papers will be deposited at the Libraries of Columbia University. Eugen Loebl suffered his first heart attack in 1961, one week after his release from prison. He had a second, and minor, attack in 1983. With the passage of years he had, at times, difficulty in breathing, and in 1987 he decided to undergo bypass surgery at the age of 80. He went into it with courage and was sure that it would turn out all right. He made rapid progress the first two weeks after the operation, but the trauma of the operation, in conjunction with his diabetes, proved too much. He died at home in New York on August 8, 1987, leaving behind a son in Switzerland from his first marriage, and his second wife of eighteen close and very happy years, the artist, well known and well loved in Vassar circles, Greta Schreyer. The extraordinary life of an extraordinary man had come to an end. Throughout his life, Eugen was "engagé." He was not content to sit on the sidelines watching developments from the safety of his classroom, as so many academic "seminar Marxists" are want to do. He was a warm and caring man who, though "engagé," never allowed his critical faculties to be subordinated to an external dogma. To have known Eugen was to have basked in his warmth, his bubbling enthusiasm, and his eternal optimism and belief in the possibility of a better world. Respectfully submitted For the epartment of Economics Stephen Rousseas
Show less

Title: Snyder, Alice Dorothea, 1887-1943 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Sague, Mary L., Ellis, Constance
Description
Date: [After 1943]
Text: i 3 \ ¢ i i ! 1 X I \ 1 % ! \ l \ > 4 i 1 1 ALICE nonowasa smmsa 1887 - 19u3 The Faculty of Vassar College wish today to express their profound sorrow and sense of irreparable loss in the untimely death on February 17 of Alice Doro- thea Snyder, their friend and colleague for thirty years. The facts of her distinguished career as stu- dent, teacher, critic, and widely recognized authority in the difficult field of Coleridge scholarship have been published and will be preserved in the...
Show morei 3 \ ¢ i i ! 1 X I \ 1 % ! \ l \ > 4 i 1 1 ALICE nonowasa smmsa 1887 - 19u3 The Faculty of Vassar College wish today to express their profound sorrow and sense of irreparable loss in the untimely death on February 17 of Alice Doro- thea Snyder, their friend and colleague for thirty years. The facts of her distinguished career as stu- dent, teacher, critic, and widely recognized authority in the difficult field of Coleridge scholarship have been published and will be preserved in the Faculty records. Vassar College is proud of her achievement. But our words today are in commemoration of her place in our hearts. Most of all we shall remember her as a person of com- plete integrity, who said what she meant and meant what she said. Her intense mental life never sepa- rated her from other people, for her thought and her feeling had united in a sincere conviction that the duty of the American scholar was, in the words of Emerson, to "put forth his total strength in fit actions‘, although her path to that conviction was not Emersonian or mystic, for her personal philosophy was founded on that of John Dewey. In action, she was not rash or extreme, but always prompt, steady, undiscouraged and unwearied. A great part of her time outside the classroom went into arduous committee work in the interests of better education, social justice, and good governent. For a person of such swift and brilliant intellect, she had unusual patience with the slow and often wasteful procedures of democracy. Since she had a gift for clarifying confused issues and could be trusted to give fair-minded consideration to views opposed to her own, both students and col- leagues came to value highly her opinion on contro- versial subjects. Her students, who sometimes began by being in awe of her, learned very soon that her interest in them was genuine and always kind. In every class there were always some who gave her their affection and lasting friendship. Those friends_who had been with her in the place she loved best, her summer home in Greensboro, Vermont, who had driven with her over the Vermont roads, had 1 i 1 J 1 1 \ ) I \ ! % 5 1 > 1 ALICE oonowmm smrnsa (Continued) helped her sail a boat or paddle a canoe, saw her perhaps at her most characteristic. Relaxed and happy in the beauty of mountains, valleys and streams, familiar with farm and village life, full of pungent talk, shrewd observation and humorous anecdote, she was a delightful companion. One of her students wrote in the Miscellan News of February 20, "To have had a class with MIss Enyder was one of the greatest privileges." And the feel- ing 0% teachers ofddgglish £2 otgercgllegei 1; per- aps es expresse n a e er rom . o yo e: ~ "To lose Alhae Snyder out of our world now, seems so disastrous that words can only suggest the distress of the members of our department here. She has done much, in all the professional groups in which we have known her, to make our comon effort energetic, discriminatingﬂand humane. Her wisdom will be ' deeply missed. In recognition of the rare value of her unique per- sonality, we move that this appreciation be included in the Minutes of our Faculty, and a copy sent to the members of her family. V Mary L. Sague Constance Ellis XI - 1
Show less

Title: Wheeler, Ruth, 1877-1949 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Northrop, Paul A., Swenarton, Jane J., Griffin, Charles C., Conklin, Ruth E.
Description
Date: [After 1949]
Text: I v \ | l i 1 1 i I r x ? ! \ 1 1 RUTH WHEELER 18 77 - 19149 In the death of Professor Ruth Wheeler we have lost a valued member of the comunity. Her influence at Vas- sar was unobtrusive, yet real and positive, and as we see it now after her death, of lasting value. She was a kind and gentle person, always charitable and toler- ant, yet firm in her own convictions and capable on occasion of strong opinions. She believed with a kind of intuitive sympathy in the best qualities of people and...
Show moreI v \ | l i 1 1 i I r x ? ! \ 1 1 RUTH WHEELER 18 77 - 19149 In the death of Professor Ruth Wheeler we have lost a valued member of the comunity. Her influence at Vas- sar was unobtrusive, yet real and positive, and as we see it now after her death, of lasting value. She was a kind and gentle person, always charitable and toler- ant, yet firm in her own convictions and capable on occasion of strong opinions. She believed with a kind of intuitive sympathy in the best qualities of people and tended to ignore their failings while enjoying their foibles. Miss Wheeler began her professional career as a bio- logical chemist, receiving her Ph.D. from'Yale after working under Mendel. She was elected to Sigma Xi and to the American Society of Biological Chemists, and for many years was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her interest in nutri- tion early took the form of active participation in the scientific training of dietitians. Her counsel and encouragement in the American Dietetic Association re- sulted in high professional standards for the Associa- tion and its Journal. In the Medical School of the State University of Iowa, where she was Professor of Nutritian from 1921-1926, she established the first nutrition internships for graduate study, which greatly improved the professional training and status of die- titians. She continued her interest in this field by acting as Consultant in Nutrition to the Department of Medicine of the Presbyterian Hospital in New York from 1926-1930. Her appointment in 1926 as Director of Euthenics and Professor of Physiology and Nutrition at Vassar was a logical outcome of her interest in the improvement of the conditions under which people live. In her develop- ment of the Euthenics program she exhibited throughout a steadfast patience and equanimity that did much to temper the opposition with which any radical educational experiment is inevitably faced. Her guidance of under- graduates majoring in this field and her direction of the Summer Institute from 1929-19h0 contributed not only to human welfare but to Vassar's reputation through out the world. As Chairman of the Department of Physiology, Miss Wheeler was not only fertile in ideas for improving the quality RUTH WHEELER (Continued) of teaching, but was most receptive to the ideas of others and generous in her encouragement of younger colleagues and her willingness to give them free rein. Maay members of the college who were less closely con- cerned with her professional work, particularly her juniors, will always remember Miss Wheeler's friendly and stimulating interest in their work and in their problems. She had a deep respect for the feelings and rights of others, going to extreme lengths to avoid interference or encroachment. This attitude grew out of a sensitive imagination which.made it pos- sible for her to see the other person's point of view, while her sense of humor and her modesty enabled her to make suggestions in an acceptable manner. ¢ After her retirement in l9hh Miss Wheeler found the leisure to cultivate her many interests - her fondness for birds and flowers, her delight in children, her enjoyment of reading aloud, her study of the history of Dutchess County and her abiding interest in every detail of Vassar life. She read widely in biography and history and continued to show a keen interest in foreign affairs. Those who knew her well remember how eagerly she listened to the radio commentators during the war years. In spite of increasing frailty she 4 maintained to the end of her life a perceptiveness and awareness that made her a cherished companion and friend. Paul A. Northrop Jane J. Swenarton Charles C. Griffin Ruth E. Conklin XII - 306-307
Show less

Title: Brown, Louise Fargo, 1878-1955 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Gleason, Josephine, Brown, Emily, Campbell, Mildred
Description
Date: [After 1955]
Text: LOUISE FARGO BROWN 1878 - 1955 Louise Fargo Brown was born in Buffalo, New York of pioneer stock. Early Browns had helped to extend the frontiers along the Mohawk and the Ohio, and Fargos were among the 'h9ers pushing westward to California. These deeds were long since done. But the s irit in which they were done and the qualities leading to their accomplishment, - a lively curiosity, love of the new venture, generosity, a zest for life itself, great good humor and warmth of spirit -...
Show moreLOUISE FARGO BROWN 1878 - 1955 Louise Fargo Brown was born in Buffalo, New York of pioneer stock. Early Browns had helped to extend the frontiers along the Mohawk and the Ohio, and Fargos were among the 'h9ers pushing westward to California. These deeds were long since done. But the s irit in which they were done and the qualities leading to their accomplishment, - a lively curiosity, love of the new venture, generosity, a zest for life itself, great good humor and warmth of spirit - were the rich legacy bequeathed to Louise Fargo Brown. Throughout her life she remained something of the pioneer, with a keen awareness that every generation has its own frontiers to extend, whether of the mind or space. She received her early schooling in the Buffalo schools and her B.A. degree from Cornell University in 1903. In 1905, she entered the graduate school at Cornell and long before Fulbrights and Fords and Guggenheims had made the privilege of foreign study almost a comonplace, Cornell twice awarded Miss Brown its Andrew White Travelling Fellowship. This gave her two wonderful years in Europe, the first at London and Oxford, the second in Basle, Zurich and Geneva. An article based on the research of these years appeared in the En lish Historiggl Review while she was yet a graduate student?‘ §he receTtéd_the Ph.D. from Cornell in 1909, and except for a spring semester at Vassar in 1915, was instructor in history at Wellesley from 1909 to 1915. During this period she completed her first t f th B ti t d book, The Political Activi ies o e a s span Fifth Hhnareh Men in En'land,§prin th5_§nt3rre num, a 500E which received the Herbert'§axter_Adams Prize from the American Historical Association for the best monograph of the year in Modern European History. In 1915 Miss Brown was offered the post of Dean of Women and professor of History at the University of Nevada. She was at this post when America entered World War I in the spring of 1917. Browns, Towers, and Fargos had served their country in earlier wars. Louise Fargo Brown volunteered; and from 1917 to 1919 was detailed to do historical work in Washington. Her pamphlet on The Freedom of the Seas was sent in MS for use at the Paris Peace'Uonference. It delighted her sense of humor that in return for her services as LOUISE mace BROWN (Continued) historian the United States government had conferred upon her the rank of sergeant in the Marines. To the delight of her colleagues on the Vassar bridle path, the sergeant's uniform became the bistorian's riding 0 1 In Miss Brown, during the semester at Vassar in 1915, Lucy Maynard Salmon had seen seething of her own pioneering spirit in history teaching. Hence she was recalled to Vassar in 1919 to begin the years of ser- vice which lasted until her retirement in l9hh. Here she became a lively and spirited member of the college community. She was always a champion of the underdog, and a rugged fighter for the causes in which she be- lieved. At one point she even entered Dutchess County politics and ran for County Court clerk. Some of her colleagues still remember her star role in a Founder's Day program on "Matthew Vassar's Times". During these years she published two additional books, The First Earl of Shaftsbu in 1933, under the auspices 0? tEe Kmerican Historical Association, and A ostle of Democracy, the life of Lucy Maynard Sa§Eon, in l9U3. er wor in England was recognized in her election as Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 1930 she was co-founder of the Berkshire Historical Con- ference, still a thriving organization of women historians. The course at Vassar for which alumnae best remember Miss Brown bore the suggestive title, "The History of Tolerance". To some students it was the most pro- vocative course they had at Vassar. Her interests and activities did not end with retirement. In l9h8, in collaboration with George B. Carson she published a European history text, Men and Centuries of European Civilization, a new approac n ex. oo s. Miss Brown's recent years were spent in Norfolk, Virginia. That one was past seventy need not keep one from exploring and enjoying this new region. She at once identified herself with the local historians and became custodian of their local archives. But as much as she loved the past, she could drop old MSS at a moment's notice to engage in a social or political struggle. Hence, when the scourge of McCarthyism LOUISE FARGO aaowu (Continued) ravaged the land, the old warhorse entered the lists again. Vassar Alumnae who saw the dejected figure of Titus Oates in stocks on the cover of The Nation for April, 195M could not have been too greatly sur- prised to discover that the author of the article, ‘Portrait of an Informer; a Seventeenth Century Moral" was their old teacher of the "History of Tolerance". Those of us who came as young instructors during her term at Vassar remember gratefully her kindness and friendliness during our years of initiation. All of her colleagues respected her integrity and her courage and found Vassar a less colorful community when she was no longer here. Respectfully submitted, Josephine Gleason Emily Brow: Mildred Campbell XIV - 70-71
Show less

Title: Washburn, Margaret Floy, 1871-1939 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Langfeld, Herbert S.
Description
Date: [After 1939]
Text: MARGARET FLOY WASHBURN 1871 - 1939 Tribute of a Colleague That Miss Washburn's fellow scientists considered her an outstanding scholar and leader in research is evident from the fact that she was a past presi- dent of the American Psychological Association, and a member of the Society of Experimental Psychologists and of the National Academy of Science. One of her most deep-seated principles was that a wman in science should be judged entirely on the basis of her work, and that no...
Show moreMARGARET FLOY WASHBURN 1871 - 1939 Tribute of a Colleague That Miss Washburn's fellow scientists considered her an outstanding scholar and leader in research is evident from the fact that she was a past presi- dent of the American Psychological Association, and a member of the Society of Experimental Psychologists and of the National Academy of Science. One of her most deep-seated principles was that a wman in science should be judged entirely on the basis of her work, and that no leniency or consideration should be shown her on account of her sex. I remember that she opposed honoring a certain wmnan because a member of the committee remarked that he thought we should have a woman in the selected group under discussion. I am sure that I am reflecting the opinion of all those who are acquainted with Miss Washburn's work that she richly deserved the honors and recognition she received. It would be impossible to describe in this place with any degree of completeness the vast number of publica- tions that came from Miss Washburn's pen. The list of her publications in the Psycholo ical Register, which starts with her first paper in l%9h, covers almost six columns of fine print. Miss Washburn was an ideal experimenter. She had a lively curiosity, a profound respect for facts, imagination, and an integrity which inspired trust in her results. She could be abrupt with an opponent whose ability she distrusted, but she was patient and generous with those whom she respected because they were moti- vated solely by the desire to arrive at the truth. Her research was well-planned and carefully executed. She was meticulous as to details but direct in her attack and she never acknowledged defeat. Miss Washburn's outstanding contributions were to animal psychology and to the speculations on the motor theory of consciousness. Through them she has earned an honored place in the history of psychology. Her book, The Animal Mind, is a classic in the former field and Eﬁe was a pioneer among the modern motor theorists. MARGARET FLOY WASHBURN Tribute of a_§olle§5pg (Continued) I have met a number of students who have taken courses under Miss Washburn. Almost all of them have spoken of their respect for her scholarship and her ability as a teacher, but they have added that they were somewhat afraid of her and had dif- ficulty in knowing her. From personal experience I learned that her rather reserved and austere manner was due principally to shyness and to extreme earnestness in what she might at the moment be interested. I soon discovered that she was generous and warm-hearted, and a loyal friend and colleague. Above all, she had the modesty of a sincere and forthright parsonality. Vassar Alumnae MagaZin6 January l9l,L0, Page )4, Herbert S. Langfeld, Chairman Department of Psychology Princeton University
Show less

Title: Birdsall, Jean, 1895-1935 -- Memorial Minute
Date: [After 1935]
Text: JEAN BIRDSALL 1895 - 1935 In the untimely death of Jean Birdsall the college suffers the loss of one of its most beloved and talented teachers. Coming into the faculty in 1927, by reason of manifest ability she was rapidly ad- vanced to the rank of Assistant Professor and later to that of Associate Professor. Whether in the field of ancient or of medieval history, her interest in the reconstruction and interpretation of social life, as her pupils testify, was spontaneously imparted to other»...
Show moreJEAN BIRDSALL 1895 - 1935 In the untimely death of Jean Birdsall the college suffers the loss of one of its most beloved and talented teachers. Coming into the faculty in 1927, by reason of manifest ability she was rapidly ad- vanced to the rank of Assistant Professor and later to that of Associate Professor. Whether in the field of ancient or of medieval history, her interest in the reconstruction and interpretation of social life, as her pupils testify, was spontaneously imparted to other» As a productive scholar her contributions were finding a place in noted publications; a study of the English Manors at Caen being contained in the Anniver- sary Essays in honor of Charles Haskins, while a translation of the fourteenth century chronicle which was left unfinished is still expected to be printed in the Columbia Records of Civilization. To the in- tellectual activities of our academic societies she gave unstinted support, having been a devoted member of the Classical Club, at one time President of Phi Beta Kappa, and continuously Vice-President of the Faculty Club. At the same time membership in such onerous cummittees as that on Admissions, on Students‘ Records, and the Board of Elections gave evidence of uncomon efficiency in the administration of affairs touching the student body. For the same reason, especially in maintaining a good rapport between the older and the younger members of the comunity, her recent services as Head Resident of Josselyn Hall are acknowledged to have been most valuable. Without seeking popularity, or apparently being con- scious of any such attribute, Miss Birdsall neverthe- less comanded it in an unusual degree. So expressive a nature was likely to enliven any company wherein she might be found. In ordinary cdnversation her dis- position was o timistic, dwelling with discrimination upon that whicg was enjoyable and commendable, delight ing in the frank interchange of opinions, while the less amiable trends of discussion found her silent and indifferent. Moreover a ready wit without sharp- ness was an instrument which served to brighten and clarify whatever it touched. With no inclination to be exclusive she evinced a marked capacity for friend- ship, whereby she became a merry copanion in the JEAN BIRDSALL (Continued) recreations of the campus and countryside. All these traits and activities are remembered as the spontane- ous overflow of an abounding spirit within. But alas that rare mental endowments were cast in a frail physical frame, and that a life so full of promise has been thus cut off at the beginning of a brilliant careerl The college has truly been enriched by her presence, the memory of which will long remain. James F. Baldwin IX - 271
Show less

Libraries

Today's hours:

Vassar College Digital Library

Pages

Pages