AMY LOUISE REED
November 22, 1872 - January 24, 1949
Wisdom and humanity are the qualities that must always
be associated with the name of Amy Reed by all who knew
her. Throughout her long service as an active member
of the faculty of Vassar College colleagues and students
alike relied on her judgment, for it was always sound
and given with the understanding of a large minded,
large souled woman. Even in retirement she made friends
among the younger and newer members of the community
who, like her older friends, found themselves turning
to her for advice and for friendship.
Her services to the faculty were incalculable. When
discussions in faculty meeting were straying to non-
essentials or into apparently insoluble oppositions she
would rise and bring them back to commonsense and co-
hesion with words at once downright, simple and full of
humor. The faculty committees on which she worked,
always actively, are almost the total roster of our com-
mittees. She gave vital service to all the activities
of the campus community and to many in town.
Her connection with Vassar goes back to 1888, when she
entered as a freshman; and, except for two years of
graduate study at Yale,.it was continuous after l9Oh,
when she became an instructor in the English Department.
As a younger associate of Professor Laura Wylie, whose
great leadership she followed with comprehension and
sturdy independence, she herself became one of the form-
ative elements in English teaching here. Her mark is
on the thinking of the Vassar English department today;
and her sane and liberal ideas have influenced many a
teacher elsewhere through her constructive work in such
organizations as the School and College Conference on
English.
She left her characteristic impress on the Library also.
Though without professional training for the post, she
was appointed head librarian in 1910, because of her
rich and humane knowledge of books. During her eleven
years in this position her broad vision of long-range
problems set a pattern that has remained valid. Her
searching, critical concept of the place of the library
in a liberal arts college insured vitality to the work
in her time and has provided a stimulus to the library
staff, even to the present day.
AMY LOUISE REED (Continued)
She directed faculty plays in the old days, and she
herself walked the stage, the very figure of her
"great Dr. Johnson". Her chairmanship of the fif-
tieth anniversary celebration was a vast practical
and educational achievement; this occasion marked the
inauguration of President MacCracken, who always
recognized her as in a sense "the dean of us all". She
composed the pageant of the Canterbury Pilgrims, one
of the most memorable of Vassar's outdoor theatre pro-
ductions. Sometimes in leisure hours she wrote mem-
ories of her girlhood in the New York of the 70's and
80's; to hear her read a chapter aloud, - to see the
twinkle of her eyes and hear the irresistible quality
of her laughter, - was the delight of her friends.
She returned to the English department in 1920 and
taught through l9hh. In l92h she received the Doctorate
from Columbia University, publishing then her "Back-
ground of Gray's Elegy" and later her edition of "Let-
ters from Brook Farm‘, evidences of a scholarship that
permeated her daily thinking and teaching. It is pri-
marily as a teacher that she will be remembered by
many generations of Vassar students. In the last few
weeks alumnae have written about her as a valued
teacher, a wise“ humorous, friendly person who always
remembered and placed you", who "wore her learning so
lightly that one was aware of it merely as an enrich-
ment of herself". A foreign student writes "she is
more to me than just the patient teacher who helped me,
struggling with English, and tried to make me under-
stand American Literature. She is the warmest of
friends, and the most open minded spirit. I shall
always remember her as a great personality and as a
woman who could understand so well human nature".
The whole community mourns the loss of a great woman,
a great leader, and a great friend.
Ellinor Belding
Mary L. Sague
Helen E. Sandison
XII - 305-306