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EXCE
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ulglti '-=''--''
A
CHRONICLE
OF ACHIEVEMENT
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AUGUSTUS HOWE BUCK, A.1\1.
Professor of Greek
Bostun University College uf Liberal Arts, 1873·1917
Profc~sor Emeritus, 1902·1917
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A
CHRONICLE
OF ACHIEVEMENT
Thirty Years of the
Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Educational Fund
BY ROBERT E. ~RUCE
Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, Boston University
Chairman, Committee on Professor Augustus Howe Buck Scholars, 1917·1946
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF THE BENEFICIARIES
1948
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COPYBIGBT 1948
BY
EXCH
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DEDICATED TO
THE
E R OF
AUGUSTUS HOWE BUCK
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Foreword ...
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- ---- - ----
Table of Contents
PACE
Foreword . vii
Introduction xi
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Introduction . . .
The best seller of the ages was the product of many minds.
This book, which faces no such future, owes whatever success
it may gain to so many men that the single name on the title
page will give a false impression to any who fail to read
farther.
Specifically, the continued support and encouragement of
President Marsh, Dean Taylor, and the Committee on Pro-
fessor Augustus Howe Buck Scholars have been important
elements in promoting this task. The beneficiaries, mentioned
on the title page, have supplied the most important part of
the copy. Their work was necessary for the writing, and to
them is due in large measure the credit for whatever favorable
results have followed.
This is a book of, for, and by men. But vicariously for them
and directly for myself I hereby pay tribute to Miss Esther
Clement. It would be difficult to overstate the importance
to the entire project of her tireless efforts. Her professional
training and her years of work with the Fund Committee give
her unique qualifications for this assistance. With entire con-
fidence, and with the approval of all concerned, I leave in her
hands the watching of the final steps in publication and the
carrying out of such plans as shall bring this volume before
its public. Such work will, of course, be done under the gen-
eral supervision of the Chairman of the Board of Editors of the
Boston University Press, Professor Robert E. Moody. To
him the planning and execution already owe much.
In the chapter about Professor Buck extensive quotations
have been used from the pamphlet, Professor Augustus Howe
Buck, written by Dean Emeritus William M. Warren, and
lesser extracts from articles concerning Professor Buck written
by Professors Judson B. Coit and James Geddes, Jr. Still other
xi
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quotations have been made from letters of Professor Augustus
Howe Buck and Dr. Lemuel H. Murlin, now in the archives
of the University, and from letters and minutes of the Com-
mittee on Professor Augustus Howe Buck Scholars. For the
use of all of these we are grateful. For permission to quote
from the Tercentenary History of the Roxbury Latin School
by Richard W. Hale, Jr., we are grateful to the Trustees of the
Roxbury Latin School. We are similarly indebted to Ginn and
Company for the use of a quotation from D. E. Smith's
History of Mathematics.
What follows is both acknowledgment and apology. Be-
cause of limitations of time and space - time for writing
and space between the covers - three important matters have
regretfully been almost entirely omitted, viz.:
Special honors accompanying degrees. These, of various
sorts, were received by a majority of the men.
Reviews of books by the men.
Material regarding the ancestors of the beneficiaries when
otherwise it would have been necessary to omit pertinent
information about their immediate families.
ROBERT E. BRUCE
xii
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I'
CHAPTER J
The Man
T HE STAGE is set, the curtain is rising, and before us stands
Augustus Howe Buck. But for him, the Fund named in
his honor would never have been established - a statement
which is by no means limited to its obvious implications. He
is the Man of this chapter, and a Man in full measure he was.
Professor Judson B. Coit and Dean William M. Warren
were his friends and colleagues for many years. The latter
was also his student. In what follows, quotations from the
writings of these two are indicated by (C) and (W) respec-
tively.
Augustus Howe Buck was forty-seven years of age in 1873
when he was appointed professor in Boston University College
of Liberal Arts. He conducted the first class exercise in the
College that fall, but because of his age when appointed the
period of his service was less than thirty years. He ceased his
classroom teaching in 1901 and in 1902, after a year of sabbatic
leave, became Professor Emeritus.
How were his earlier years spent? What in his career before
1873 led to the call of that opening opportunity in the new
University? Born in eastern Connecticut in the last month of
1825, "he grew up on one of those boulder-strewn farms that
have developed for thousands of New Englanders strong wrists
and shoulders, a sturdy back, an unconquerable self-reliance,
and an unquestioning regard for facts." (W) Formal school-
ing for young Buck was honored mainly in the breach, but this
was in no sense true of his mental training. On that boulder-
strewn £arm "he early learned that hard work is an essential
part of life" (C) and that principle he carried over from the
1
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2 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
physical into many other fields. His mother arranged for him
to study Latin with a local clergyman, but died before the plan
was carried out. Mr. Buck was not given to superlatives, but
the terms in which he spoke of her leave no doubt that his
mother had great influence on his young life. As a result of his
study of Latin, "by the time he was twelve . . . he had read
all of the Aeneid." (C)
In the summer of his twentieth year young Buck went to
Amherst. There he spent the time until school opened getting
acquainted with the ways of the College and, "as he later de-
clared, posting himself on the peculiar characteristics of dif-
ferent members of the faculty," (C) an occupation perhaps
followed quite effectively by later generations of students, in-
cluding his ownl He lived "in a club where board cost but one
dollar a week." (C) Expenses even of such microscopic size
were too heavy for his pocket and after that first year he was
obliged to spend much time in replenishing the supply, mainly
by teaching. He was in residence at Amherst little if any over
two years. However, he finally received the degrees of A.B. and
A.M. from his College.
The Donor of the Fund knew Professor Buck intimately and
he must have known about his early life. Did he, conscious of
the struggle of this one young man and sensing how much
more he might have accomplished in life had some friend stood
ready to aid him in those critical college days,-did the Donor
devote his time, his waning energies, and the fortune amassed
and husbanded through the years, to the end that men of such
potentialities as the Man possessed might have educational
opportunities far beyond those of the latter? If so, it was not,
we may be sure, with emphasis on education alone, but rather
on the added service to humanity which the men might thereby
be prepared to give. Thus not only is Professor Buck's life to
be kept in perpetual remembrance through the Fund, but his
spirit of service to humanity is to be a guide to the men who
reap its benefits. For young Buck was a Christian of unusual
promise but of insufficient means.
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mE MAN
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4 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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THE MAN ;
the Roxbury Latin School and then turned the place over to
Collar. The author of the Tercentemuy History, in speaking
of Headmaster Buck's service to the institution, says: "To Rox-
bury Latin he left three great assets: an uncompromisingly high
standard of scholarship . . .; a tradition of long service in
teaching . . .; and William Coe Collar." A graduate of the
school in commenting on the last point has suggested that Mr.
Collar was fortunate to have been associated with Mr. Buck.
In 1867, after severing his connection with the Roxbury Latin
School, the Man left on another two-year trip to Europe. On
his return, there followed four years of high school teaching,
three of which were at the Boston Latin School. Finally, in
1873, he was appointed Professor of Greek at Boston Univer-
sity. The faculty to which he came was fortunate in the mem-
bership of many able young teachers. In the first Yearbook of
the University, that of 1874, the name of Augustus Howe
Buck, A.M., follows that of the President and the Dean in the
list of the faculty. Next comes the name of Dudley Buck, and
last, that of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. A. Graham Bell is an-
other name in the list and the Yearbook states that he gave
an "inaugural lecture."
With the passing of the years, Professor Buck and other
members of the faculty may well have found much satisfaction
in the memory of their short association with Alexander Gra-
ham Bell. A reception was tendered him in March of 1916 at
the Boston City Club which was attended by many prominent
guests, including the Governor and the Chief Justice of the
Commonwealth. Bostonia for June, 1916, states that Dr.
Bell paid generous tribute to the University in the following
words:
I count it a great honor to have belonged to Boston University.
It was while I was connected with the school that all the work was
done on the telephone. . .. My best recollections of the Boston
of the old days are of Boston University and President Warren.
The speaker, continuing, detailed several incidents connected
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6 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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I I II : : : : ! ! r------'-
THE MAN 7
travel in Europe. His only daughter had died in infancy. And so,
to meet young women daily in his classes must have opened for
him a new chapter. But he gave no hint of feeling embanassed or
unduly expectant. When the College, then on Beacon Hill, moved
a stone's throw from 20 Beacon Street to 12 Somerset, he promptly
assigned to the new Claflin Room, set apart for the women's use,
the unofficial but promptly adopted name of "The Parthenon";
the mantel over the wide fireplace had been adorned with the head
of Athena. Sometimes, for variety, he called the room the Gynae-
ceum, an old Greek name for the inner apartment in which the
women dwelt. He brought from Munich some handsome outline
dl3wings, by Flaxman, if I remember, depicting Greek maidens,
well nourished and shapely, and as he explained, likely to suggest
to the women students what they should try to become in bodily
form and grace.
Once in a while he would speak to a woman student so plainly,
or perhaps with so coeducationally impartial a disregard of feminine
taste and tenderness, as to bring tears or a flash of indignation.
One day, when he thought a student was letting her attention fall
short of its proper object, he remarked, to the amusement of the
whole class, "I wish, Miss X-, you would tum those pretty orbs
of blue jelly to the blackboard." Later she revered him, but with-
out forgiveness for his reference to her twinkling eyes. Another
time before a whole class, he told an incompetent but sensitive
girl that her proper place was nearer to some kitchen pantry than
to any shrine of the Muses. She wept silently, and her classmates
set their teeth. Yet his customary classroom talk was considerately
kind. He held sarcasm to be the language of the Devil. In those
years while college education for women, especiaUy collegiate co-
education, was a matter of earnest debate, instructors seemed on
guard a~inst any discriminations based on chivalry. When Profes-
sor Buck's eminent colleague Professor Bowne began his teaching in
the College, he called the rolls, the men and the women alike, by
surnames only: Mr. Smith was plain "Smith" and Miss Jones was
plain "Jones."
In the classroom Professor Buck never lost time by aimless wan-
dering. The agendum of the hour was the business of the class.
Personal reminiscences, unless teIse and pat, amusing stories for
relief of tension, preferences in politics, disconnected convictions
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8 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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THE MAN 9
kind and the universe as God's work, he bore himself not only as
a scholar but also as a man among men and as a good steward of
God's manifold grace.
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10 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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THE MAN 11
blest that heart and memory are full of riches which neither
age nor mortality can despoil."
Not long after that letter was written, Professor and Mrs.
Buck went to Germany to spend the years that remained of
mortal life. This was his eleventh journey to Europe. There
was an occasional renewal of correspondence. A postcard dated
at Rostock, December 9,1907, records that they reached there
September 20. On February 12, 1914, he wrote frbm Wies-
baden in script much less plain than that of the earlier letters:
There is little prospect that we shall be able to renew our youth
so as to keep step with the lively western world. . . . We are not
sure of returning to America. . . . If my son who is now in Algiers
should undertake to see us landed in Boston, the temptation would
be great, but alone we might find an end of our career in the
Atlantic.
The nebulous plan for returning to America was never to be
carried out. The two died at Rostock within a few weeks of
each other during the First World War, - Mrs. Buck on Feb-
ruary 28,1917; and Professor Buck on April 15 following. Be-
cause of the War only a few details of the circumstances be-
came known, chiefly through word from friends in Rostock
to Miss Victoria Zeller, a graduate of Boston University who
was Mrs. Buck's niece.
Being in that vicinity in the summer of 1937, I decided to
find, if possible, the grave of myoId teacher. I had but just
left the railroad station at Rostock when I was so fortunate as
to meet Graf and Grafin von Pheil, who gave me timely aid.
With their help the common grave of Professor and Mrs. Buck
was found in an old cemetery which even then was no longer
used for burials. It is a very beautiful place with many shade
trees. Rostock was heavily bombed during the Second World
War and is now in Russian hands. In spite of these facts,
word has been obtained that the common resting place among
the trees of Professor and Mrs. Buck was uninjured and reo
mains much as it was in 1937.
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12 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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CHAPTEll II
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14 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
In any event, the Giver of this Fund had the courage to fol-
low his vision even when the vast majority of his contempo-
raries would probably have judged his efforts too insignificant
to affect materially the record of the age. To the limit of his
means the Donor thus implemented his life's purpose.
Dean Warren, in paying tribute to Giver and Gift in Bos-
tonia of June, 1934, wrote as follows:
It should be known that the giver of the Professor Augustus
Howe Buck Educational Fund entrusted to the University the
whole substance of his hard-earned fortune. With means of living
in every comfort, he chose to live simply and frugally that he might
save the more to put into service for his race.
In discussing economies the Donor once said to Dean Warren
that he himself had worn ragged cuffs that the Fund might
grow the larger. There are endowments and endowments. Some
of them seem as impersonal and as random as rain. Others
almost seem alive with a spirit of personal purpose attained through
personal self-denial. To this second kind of charitable trust belongs
the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund.
The conditions governing the Fund were not in final fonn
until over six years from its actual establishment in the last
month of 1916. In a letter dated January 3, 1923, the late
President of the University, Dr. Lemuel H. Murlin, wrote:
The whole undertaking is such a precious one to the Donor that
I think we can get a much more efficient administration and more
of a personal element in it if all communications to him should
come &om one source.
He then asked me to act as that source and in a matter of days
sent me away to have a personal interview with the Donor. I
saw him but this once. He then appeared far from well. Never-
theless, he had very definite ideas as to what he wished the
Fund to accomplish, and knew how he expected its purposes
to be achieved. The results of our interview, of discussions
with Dean Warren of the College, and of various letters, are
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THE GIVER AND THE GIFT 15
incorporated in the final form of the Contract, dated July 17,
1923.
The various forms of the Contract had so much of detail in
them that it is perhaps not strange that the intent of the Donor
and the interpretation of the University were not always iden-
tical. For example, the degree of anonymity which the Donor
desired for himself was not clearly understood. In at least one
matter I, myself, quite innocently failed to carry out the
Donor's wishes. The complete title has always seemed rather
long. And in some of the work of a committee which has cared
for much of the detail connected with the Fund the word
"Professor" was sometimes omitted from the title since it
seemed to add more length than dignity. These, and other
matters, came to the Donor's attention; and he finally wrote,
as he had every right to do, what might be considered a letter
of protest, certainly of dissatisfaction.
A pretty good measure of the worth of an administrator is
found in his ability to tum the liabilities of a bad situation into
assets. These difficulties with the Donor might, I suppose,
have been adjusted by letter. But the President of the Univer- .
sity, having on his shoulders all final responsibility, felt that the
situation called for something more. A few days after he had
sent the letter of protest the Donor, who, in spite of his wealth,
lived in a very simple manner, answered the door-bell to dis-
cover President Murlin on the steps. The latter made no move
to enter, but putting forward a small package which he carried,
said: "We seem to have failed to keep faith with you in all
respects, Sir, and I am returning here the securities you gave
us." I refuse to consider the loss, not measurable in dollars,
which would have resulted had the Donor accepted the pack-
age and closed the door. Instead, thus met in perhaps the only
way that could completely disarm him, he said, "Come in." It
is hardly necessary to add that the unopened package came
back with Dr. Murlin over the hundreds of miles to Bos-
ton. Perhaps these two good men now meet occasionally
where misunderstandings over such things as the meanings of
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16 A CHllONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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THE elVER AND THE GIFT 17
providing the career chosen warrants it, then through one or
two subsequent years of postgraduate work."
The way for these two powers to deal with the details was,
obviously, to appoint a committee. Thus three months after
the Fund was established, the Faculty of the College created
by vote a Committee on Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Scholars. This body, not mentioned in the Contract and prob-
ably never contemplated by the Donor, has through the years
handled nearly all of the many details involved in carrying out
the purpose of the Deed of Gift, being meticulously careful to
aid the powers recognized in the Contract without invading
their respective fields.
The Committee appointed in accordance with this vote
consisted of Professors William G. Aurelio, Robert E. Bruce,
and Lyman C. Newell.
At the first meeting of the Committee, held March 29,1917,
Professor Aurelio was appointed recording secretary, a position
which he held for over twenty-five years. In collecting material
for this volume, I have been in correspondence with a large
number of the beneficiaries of the Fund. Spontaneous words
of appreciation for various members of the college faculty
occur in many of their letters. No name thus appears more
frequently than that of Professor Aurelio whose deep personal
interest in his students seems growing into a college tradition.
"Prof," to many a graduate, means William G. Aurelio, whose
name appears in the list of the faculty for the first time in 1902.
Recently this life-long celibate received a letter addressed to
"Prof. and Mrs. William G. Aurelio." Asked to explain the
"Mrs.", he replied: "It's a collective term, comprising all my
students from the beginning."
Professor Newell was appointed financial secretary, and set
up a system of accounting with the men which has remained
in force with but little change to the present. At two different
times, when the chairman was on sabbatic leave, Professor
Newell served the Committee as acting chairman. His quiet,
effective counsel, especially during the early experimental years,
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18 A CHRONICLE OF ACmEVEMENT
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THE GIVER AND THE GIFT 19
period, rejected a name presented by the Committee could, I
feel sure, be counted on the fingers of one hand. However,
tasks assumed without authorization troubled the Committee
somewhat, particularly during the early years; and in 1924 at
the regular March meeting of the faculty the chairman re-
ported in some detail on these many activities. The reception
accorded the report left no doubt that the Committee was pro-
ceeding with the approval of the faculty. In this connection
it should be pointed out that candidates for appointment to
the Fund in full standing are usually known to various mem-
bers of the faculty who are not on the Committee and the
word of such members carries, and should cany, much weight
with those whose duty it is to recommend, nominate, and
appoint to the Fund. The President of the University actually
makes the appointment after careful consideration of the evi-
dence.
The Donor made it clear throughout that his real interest
was in the men and not in the institution. As far as the latter
was concerned, he expressed satisfaction that the Fund would
probably strengthen its alumni association - and no morel
However, the actual effect upon Boston University has gone
far beyond that. As early as 1922, a report to the President of
the work of the Committee contained the following:
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20 A CBllONICLE OF ACIIIEV£MEN1'
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THE GIVER AND THE GIFT 21
of the men have received help for from five to seven years.
So the number in anyone year has run far beyond the Donor's
first thought. In the early nineteen-twenties there were over
twenty men on the Fund for several successive years. And in
recent years, because of the aid received from the Government
by returning veterans, the number has gone even higher. As a
rule, however, it has been nearer a dozen.
The Donor's real objective was the education of young men
for service to humanity. An article of the Contract provides
that:
Allowances are to be outright, and not repayable if the career chosen
and followed is altruistic, theoretical or academic; but if the career
is chosen for its material returns then the payments made shall be
returnable within a reasonable time to the University for the benefit
of the Income Account of the Fund.
Another article states:
Candidates for appoinbnent who do not seek a career for financial
gains are to be given preference.
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THE GIVER AND THE GIFl' 23
may we not agree that to be a positive Christian one must at
least strive to exemplify in his life those things which Jesus
taught? Membership in a Christian church might be consid-
ered a necessal}' test of this point, but it surely is not a suf-
ficient one. Certain things are clear, however. The double use
of the phrase indicates its large importance in the mind of the
Giver and places his gift on a plane quite apart from any other
funds.
As indicated by its name, the Committee started with but a
single grade of appointment - the Scholar. However, in ad-
ministering the part of the Contract cited earlier which pro-
vides that worthy beneficiaries may be aided not only through
the college course but throughout graduate and professional
training, it has seemed wise with the approval of the Faculty
and President to establish other grades. For example, when
the man leaves college for graduate study he becomes a "Pro-
fessor Augustus Howe Buck Fellow," to continue his training
with the financial support of the Fund at Boston University
or elsewhere. At this point we may notice one of the many
details that has had to be adjudicated. A large number of the
beneficiaries have preferred to carry on graduate work at other
institutions, meeting new instructors and the scholastic com-
petition of a different set of students. There come to mind,
readily, Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Columbia,
Princeton, Chicago, the universities of Illinois and California,
and in addition schools in at least six different European coun-
tries to which these men have gone for graduate study. It was
early noticed that graduate schools in America, learning of the
Fund, were not unwilling that the Fellows should continue
to receive aid therefrom throughout the years of their graduate
work I It is perhaps not surprising that the Committee, anxious
to make a relatively small yearly income go a long way, has
had little sympathy with this view. We have been not only
willing but anxious to place our men, after their first year of
gmduate aid from the Fund, in competition for aid from their
chosen gmduate school with men from other colleges. It is
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24 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
hardly necessary to add that they have made good and that the
desire of all graduate schools to retain high-grade students has
supported the policy of the Committee in this matter. There
come to mind at once and without particular search the names
of Chicago, Harvard, Illinois, Rochester, Columbia, and Yale
as among the universities which have aided the work of the
Committee in this manner.
Aside from the two grades of appointment described above
there are now two others, both of a probationary character.
With reluctance it is recorded that the Committee was early
obliged, by sad experience, to discount judgments about candi-
dates other than those of their college instructors. Neverthe-
less, wishing to relieve men of financial worry as early as prac-
ticable it was decided to aid preparatory school graduates of
high standing, personality, and character to the extent of
tuition in their first year in college. Such men are called Tui-
tion Scholars. As a rule, however, even the record of a year in
college during which the man has presumably been obliged to
work outside to supplement this minimum aid is an insuf-
ficient basis for appointment as a Scholar of the Fund; and
candidates who are retained beyond the first year are appointed
Beneficiaries (with a capital B) for a year or two more. During
this period their stipends are on the same generous basis as
those of the Scholars. Stipends for all grades save the Tuition
Scholars are determined by need as shown in information given
the Committee by the beneficiary on blanks supplied for the
purpose. They range from relatively small amounts to a maxi-
mum of $1500 or more per annum - this latter amount being
approximated in the case of many graduate students. The
total amount given in stipends to the end of the year 1946-1947
was $266,427.61, the largest amount paid to a single bene-
ficiary being $5,620.
Among the beneficiaries who have gone from college or
graduate school into active professional work there have been
24 college teachers, 9 preparatory school teachers, 10 research
men, 6 ministers in addition to 3 men ordained who are in
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THE GIVER AND THE GIFT 25
other work, and 8 doctors. One of the men has been in the
diplomatic service for several years. In addition, two or three
others who have returned from military service in distant
fields are seriously considering that profession.
Various methods have been adopted for acquainting appli-
cants and beneficiaries of the Fund with the purposes of the
Donor. For example, in his application for appointment the
candidate signs a statement containing the following sentence:
I make this application with knowledge of the provisions of the
Deed of Gift which require that all students receiving assistance
from the Fund shall be young men of positive Christian character
having insufficient means to secure a thorough education.
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CHAPTER III
I drab, bestialwhen
N THIS DAY the task of many writers is to describe the
waste of war, there is much satisfaction in being
permitted to tell the story of men who, even though they may
have had some part in that horror, have for their main objec-
tive helping to build a world in which such destruction is un-
thinkable. The men are beneficiaries, past and present, of
the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund. Life
stories supplied by them constitute the major part of what
follows. They have been asked to remember that one of the
few places in which modesty ceases to be a virtue is in auto-
biogmphic writing. They have in general responded to the
suggestion in a gratifying manner, though many have felt
forced to add an apologetic note. A few are burdened with
the thought that their lives have failed to bring to fruition their
youthful dreams. One of them has expressed it thus:
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INTRODUCING THE MEN 27
like much and even seems to have a tinge of smugness about it,
but I . . . know that you will take what I have said for what it
means.
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28 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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o
cg
~
~
CJ
o
~
~
COMMITTEE ON PROFESSOR AUGUSTUS HOWE BUCK SCHOLARS
Left to Right: Albert I\forris, Dean Ralph W. Taylor, William G . A urelio, Dean Emeritus \Villiam M. Warren, Kenneth A. Bernard,
President Daniel L. Marsh. Earle F. Wilder, Robert E. Bruce. , . Philip Mason (Chairman) , Camillo P. Merlino.
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INTRODUCING THE MEN 29
eral Arts. Next comes Newell S. Booth, Bishop of the Meth-
odist Church for the major part of the continent of Africa;
then in order, Edwin C. Byam, Professor and head of the
Department of Modern Languages at Delaware University;
George Z. Dimitroff, astronomer, first at Harvard University
where he had charge of an important observatory, and now
at Dartmouth; Nels F. S. Ferre, Abbot Professor of Christian
Theology at Andover Newton Theological Seminary; Roland
D. Hussey, Professor of History at the University of Cali-
fornia at Los Angeles; Walter J. Moberg, Dean of North
Park College, Chicago; Raymond O. Rockwood, Professor of
History at Colgate University; and finally Waitstill H. Sharp,
Unitarian minister, four times commissioned to carry on relief
work in Europe lind Asia.
Many of the men who have finished their graduate work are
doctors, Ph.D.'s or M.D.'s, but save in some of the later chap-
ters they will not be so designated. These doctors earned their
titles long after the incidents of the chapters immediately fol-
lowing had become history. Indeed it may be questioned
whether many of them had ever heard of a "Ph.D." before late
high school age. Moreover, the requirements for degrees
change so much from time to time and from place to place
that the relative values of the various degrees held by the bene-
ficiaries are hard to assess. Nearly all the men aided by the
Fund who are mentioned in this volume, are members of Phi
Beta Kappa or some other honorary society and many of them
have received degrees with citation of various special honors.
In concluding this chapter let it be said that what follows
will have served a useful purpose if it tends to promote such
work as is being carried on by the Professor Augustus Howe
Buck Educational Fund.
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CHAPTER IV
Backgrounds
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BACGROUNDS 31
For many years, perhaps, the successive generations of a
family travel quietly along the level road. Then a cowageous
soul climbs to a higher level. It may be he turns from the
security of a "safe" job to the risks of a higher one. It may be
he leaves the old home for a new one across the sea. It may
be anyone of a multitude of things. But to the climber,
whether he leaves a name to be seen on Time's unrolling scroll
or dies unhonored and unsung, succeeding generations owe a
debt they can pay only by emulating his upward struggle.
In such climbing lies the long-time hope of our wavering
civilization. If tomorrow is better than today it will be because
of no miracle, no hocus-pocus. It will be because brave, God-
fearing men climb "the steep ascent to heaven" and pull the
lagging crowd up with them. So the lives of the men of the
Fund, small in number though they are, may at least do their
part in pointing ways that others may follow and that others
may help to keep open for free passage.
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32 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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BACKGROUNDS 33
"Dad" taught me many arts and crafts, and with them all, the
satisfaction of doing a good job. I had access to a reasonably
complete set of machine and wood-working tools, so that making
things was possible. Since my stepfather came from a long line of
seafaring men, a sailboat was an absolute necessity for him, and
from the age of five or so I was amply exposed to the pleasures of
the ocean. The infection is deeply rooted in me, for even now I
can get complete relaxation and mental freedom only on the ocean
and in a boat small enough to permit the unadultemted taste, feel,
and smell of the sea.
Serious thought about objectives probably began in the last years
of grammar school, and has continued at accelemted pace ever
since. Certainly the first objective was to live as nearly as possible
according to the teachings of Christ. I have probably come less
close to attaining this objective than any other, partly because of
failure fully to comprehend His teachings, but largely because I
have not been blessed by freedom from human weaknesses. An-
other objective was to keep in as good condition as possible the
healthy body which had been given to me. A third objective was
to give leadership whenever called upon for a worthy purpose. My
fourth objective has been to learn as much as possible concerning
as many things as possible. Pursuance of this objective has oc-
cupied most of my time since college days.
My fellow students and my teachers in high school must have
been more satisfied than I with my progress toward the stated
objectives, since, at gmduation, they selected me as recipient of the
Senior Cup "presented for character, scholarship, athletics and
personality.ff
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34 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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BACKCROUNDS 35
Mother and Dad were married in 1915, and I was born October
6,1917.
Interesting in view of my present position - instructor in Eng-
lish - is the fact that before I went to school Finnish was the only
language I knew. It was (and is) spoken at home and my play-
mates were mostly of Finnish parentage, so that although I under-
stood a few words of English, I didn't even learn to speak the
language until I went to school. Soon, however, I was bringing
home report cards with all A's.
I went through public school, graduating from junior high in
1931. I remember giving the valedictory address about our ship of
education having completed one portion of its voyage. I remember
learning a part in a play about George Washington overnight and
reciting the line "I cannot tell a lie, Mother, I did it with my own
little hatchet." I remember being the only boy to wear short pants
for graduation exercises - I must have had something of the show-
man in me, thus making myself stand out as very young and very
small and still the smartest boy in the class.
Indeed, one of my early ambitions was to be an actor. As boys, my
best pal and I arranged theatriCail and motion picture performances
in the cel1ar of my home. I had a movie projector (with the use
of a phonograph we had sound movies), my friend did magic tricks,
and with the help of some neighborhood girls we presented plays,
too. I remember writing a drama called "The Witch's Daughter"
and appearing in person in the role of the witch. My mother was a
very active and versatile member of the local Finnish Dramatic
Club, as well as an excellent reader of poems. I loved to hear her
read; I loved to attend rehearsals and smell the mustiness of the
bare stage; I loved to see the finished performance come to life
later with the glitter of bright lights, the world of canvas scenery
and grease paint, the magic of applause. Though I did not become
a professional actor, the spell of the theater is still upon me.
Another of my early ambitions was to be a concert pianist. When
one of our neighbors bought a piano for his daughter, I learned
along with her to playa couple of simple pieces, and I hounded my
parents day after day to buy me a piano. I drummed my fingers
in imaginary piano playing at the breakfast, dinner, and supper
table. I wheedled and cajoled and argued, until finally I got my
piano and started lessons at the age of eight. I studied music
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36 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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BACKGROUNDS 37
institutions. It has always amazed me how quickly they adapted
themselves to their new surroundings, since they had formerly been
from peasant families and bad little schooling. After working a
year or two on a farm my father became an entrepreneur in the
wholesale produce business, in which he has been engaged ever
since. This livelihood never returned a great deal of money, but it
provided enough to live on.
I first saw the light of day on October 1+, 1920. I remember very
little about my early childhood. At the age of six I entered elemen-
tary school, where I remained for six years. From the start I was
under the handicap of being preceded through school by an older
brother and sister who persisted in drawing down all sorts of
honors, scholastic and otherwise. I was under pressure to do like-
wise and I believe that this was an important incentive to the
successes that I later achieved. My record in grammar school was
consistently filled with A's-with one exception: conduct. My
transgressions were always mild but they occurred often enough to
bring down the wrath of my teachers.
In 1932 I entered junior high school. This was an important
event in my life, since it meant moving on to a newer and larger
school with pupils from other sections of the city. Even at that
age I was always eager to meet people, and the thought of coming
into contact with so many new faces intrigued me. I continued
my high scholastic record in junior high school and was chosen
highest ranking boy in all three years at this school. In addition, I
served on the Debating Club and acted as sports editor for the
school paper. Besides engaging in legitimate activities, I published
(in conjunction with two of my cronies) a scandal sheet. This was
an illegal piece of journalism, since it was not recognized by the
school. However, it was very popular and made things very in-
teresting at times. My conduct was still the subject of serious con-
cern by some of my teachers, but this phase of my career was over-
looked by the powers that be in view of my excellent scholastic
record.
The broadening of my contacts with other boys and girls dur-
ing this period (1932-35) seems very significant to me. It was
during these years that I took on a very cosmopolitan attitude to-
ward life - a viewpoint which I hope is still with me. By that I
mean that I began to appreciate the feelings, viewpoints, and habits
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38 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
of others who did not think exactly as I did. I learned that there
was a place in the world (at that time it was a comparatively small
world to me) for athletes and scholars, extroverts and introverts,
Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Jews, etc. I believe
that during this period I was taught the value of tolerance and ap-
preciation of the other fel1ow's viewpoint. Today I feel sony that
more of my fellowmen are not convinced that this is the only way
to live happily, but I have confidence that through a process of
slow evolution, we will some day have a minimum of hatred and
intolerance.
Summer work enabled me to pay for al1 my clothes without any
help from my parents. AIl through my school years I earned money
during the summer months, and I am thankful for this because it
taught me the value of money and the necessity of working bard
to get ahead.
In 1935 I entered high school. It was a large school-about
1800 pupils - and I immediately began to take an active interest
in all the activities, both scholastic and extra-curricular. In the field
of scholarship, I again was at the head of my class as far as the
male membership was concerned. I did not consider myself bril-
liant - in fact there were a few others in my class whom I con-
sidered better scholars. However, I was lucky enough (here I am
not being modest) to obtain high enough grades to be appointed
Salutatorian of the class at graduation.
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BACEGJlOUNDS 39
cessful text in his subject which has been published in England
as well as in America, and has had wide adoption. In the latest
year for which a report is available it was used in nearly six
hundred colleges. All three of these men are, and always have
been, city dwellers.
Russia, Sweden, and Syria were the homelands of their
parents. Economic pressure was a factor in the coming of all
three families to America, though in two of the cases addi-
tional factors were involved. Moreover, economic betterment
for all was a definite result of the move. All entered successfully
into commercial life in America, and reached levels of pros-
perity which, while of very modest figure according to Ameri-
can standards, were probably far above anything they could
have achieved in the lands of their birth.
To tum to other matters now that the bare fact of final
economic betterment has been stated would be to miss the
high adventure of these three families as they came from lands
across the sea. The voung Syrian, entering in imagination
into experiences in which he had no part, says that his mother's
"far journey" was
a page in the immigration movement which in drama and in
significance to American culture and history is on a par with the
days of the pilgrims or the time of the covered wagons. Mother,
whose farthest journey had been to Damascus (about ten miles
away), reluctantly but bravely left familiar places and friends to
embark with two children just barely in their teens on a trip into
a new and completely strange world.
Just before the ship cleared the harbor at Beirut, Syria. Turkish
officers came aboard in search of male Christians who might be
stowing away in order to escape draft in the army. One such young
man in order to avoid capture jumped overboard. A sympathetic
but ignorant bystander threw Mother's suitcases overboard, think-
ing they were the property of the Seeing youth. Thus Mother's
trip was delayed under stress of buying new wardrobe. The trip
across the water was crowded. unsanitary, and difficult. Steamship
lines apparently bad not time in midst of booming trade to dif-
ferentiate between immigrants and cattle.
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40 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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BACltGllOUNDS 41
children of this Russian family who lived all graduated from
high school, but only the youngest was able to attend college,
"thanks in large part to the Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Educational Fund."
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42 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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BACKGROUNDS 43
heart. School to me was a dreadful place. Even to this day the
my odor of that old school building with its oiled 800rs gives me
a sickening pain in the pit of my stomach. I don't think this atti-
tude ever left me during all of my primary and grammar school life.
I had the misfortune of being liked by the teachers and was fre-
quently held up as an example for the other students. Nothing can
cause a youngster more mental anguish. Outside of school I was a
robust, happy child playing intensely with the other boys in the
neighborhood.
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A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
Like the other two, the story of the school years of the boy
of Syrian parentage is a mixture, part happiness and part-
something else.
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BACEGl\OUNDS 45
The number of Fund men who were born in this country
of immigrant parents is by no means exhausted. There are
others of Swedish parentage, at least one of Spanish, and more
than one of Swiss. The distinction between this group and
that of the foreign-born is based rather more on convenience
than on logic. For at least one of the foreign-born was brought
to this country as a babe in arms, while one of the group just
considered was born but a year after his mother arrived here.
Moreover, some members of the third group, the one next con-
sidered, are but little farther removed from ancestors across
the sea.
I t would be gratuitous specifically to point out all of the
climbs these six men, and their immediate forebears, have
made. One may easily discover at least three or four risers
conquered in each life story. In every case the sea has been
crossed to the betterment of economic conditions. In every
case these six men have been able through sacrifice, their
own and that of others, plus many aids financial, mental,
and spiritual, to live lives of greater usefulness. The sacrifice
given and the difficulties overcome have been, for not a few of
them, truly excessive. Even their reception, or that of their
forebears, in this "land of the free" has sometimes been such
as to banish temporarily the bright vision of freedom with
which they came. The Syrian mother locked away from her
children without explanation was a case in point. Even worse
was the treatment, to be described later, of a young Swedish
boy who survived it to climb to the pinnacle of his profession.
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46 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
with their families. Others came alone. But for all of them the
level sea was, by paradox, a steep ascent to a higher level. In
spite of the contrast between these two groups, there is also
much of similarity. For all the men have, sooner or later,
followed the urge to climb. Moreover, half the American-born
men named above have spent a considerable part of life across
the seas. No common characteristic, save possibly their climb-
ing proclivity, holds more promise than their cosmopolitanism.
The first of these American boys has, insofar as I know,
spent all his life in America. Now in middle life, he holds an
important post in one of the large universities of the country.
He writes:
Great-grandfather, on my father's side, was a resident of Glas-
gow, Scotland. He was a man of lavish and expansive (also ex-
pensive) taste, for he would occasionally light his pipe with a
British one-pound note. As a boy, my grandfather used to recover
the stubs of these notes from the fireplace and eventually he re-
deemed them at the bank. With this money he financed his first
trip to the United States, while still in his teens, and worked in
the shoe industry. He returned to Scotland, married there, and
after three children had been born, brought his family to the
United States and settled in Massachusetts. My father, the fourth
child, was born in this country. Although my grandmother had
had little or no formal schooling, she was a thrifty, capable, God-
fearing Scotswoman, who did a splendid job of mising a large
family. When my father was nine years old, his father died in an
accident in the mill. At the age of twelve, my father had to leave
school and go to work. While attending a series of revival services
he became conscious of a very strong desire to gain an education
for himself and to enter the Christian ministry. He gmduated from
Boston University in 1896, having worked his way through college
by working in one of the stalls of Faneuil Hall market, doing other
jobs that were available, and living in a garret. He then entered
the Methodist ministry, and became a living example of the religion
he preached.
My mother's ancestors were Vermont farmers for as far back as
we know. As a young, unmarried man, my grandfather served in
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BACKGROUNDS 47
the Civil War. On one occasion, a friend of his had drawn a sentry
assignment which was considered very risky, since the sentries for
the two previous nights had been killed at that post. Since this
man was married and had a family, he asked my grandfather, who
had drawn a relatively safe assignment, to swap jobs for the night.
My grandfather agreed, survived, and the friend was killed at the
post my grandfather would have had, if there had been no swap.
I was the second of six children, two boys and four girls. The
family has always been held closely together, not clannish, for there
were always friends in the house or yard. Perhaps the best way to
express the idea is to say that my parents succeeded in building a
real home, one -to which every member really belonged, and to
which every child knew that his friends would be welcomed. Dis-
cipline was strict, work was abundant, but in spite of the struJGde
for food and clothing, my parents found time to play with their
children. Work had to be done first, and then we could play. How
they were provided is still a mystery to me, but we had our quota of
equipment for such out-door sports as baseball, football, skating
and bicycling.
Morning devotions were a regular part of each day, usually com-
ing right after breakfast. Then the breakfast dishes had to be done
before we went to school. In the summer, especially, much empha-
sis was placed on memorizing selected passages of the Bible. I can
still see the family seated around the living room, each child having
his or her tum at reciting some chapter or verse, after which the
whole family knelt together in prayer.
As a boy, I was always a good student, though I rarely, if ever,
did more than was required. As soon as studying was done, I was
out playing whatever game was seasonable. I was active in all phases
of church work. However, I broke my share of windows, and en-
joyed Hallowe'en pranks that are now frowned upon.
Although my mother did not have a college education, she was
a well educated woman, and she was determined that each one of
her children should go to college. All of us took the college prepara-
tory course in high school, and five of us have Bachelor's degrees
from Boston University. My parents started and stimulated dinner
table discussions of topics of the day, moral, religious, political and
social. There was no coercion on the part of the parents, and each
cluld was encouraged to think for himself or herself, and to defend
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48 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
The second boy of the group was born in Boston on the top
of Beacon Hill, almost under the late afternoon shadow of
the gilded dome. At six weeks, however, he moved with his
parents to a pleasant sea-side town a few miles southeast of
the city. There, he tells us, "atop a terminal moraine was to
be my home until my marriage, and the rallying-ground for
my three brothers and myself," until the death of father and
mother and the sale of the old place. There "were nine years
of education entirely at home because we lived so far from the
public schools and possessed no car." Then "came the eight
years of formal education ending with graduation from high
school in 1919."
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BACKGROUNDS 49
The farm tasks were so many and so varied. and their accomplish-
ment so rewarding - haying to beat a July thunderstorm; icing to
beat a thaw or a February snowstorm; engineering a grape harvest
in unfriendly Massachusetts gravel; trimming forest trees; the hus-
bandry of watermelons and canteloupes. celery. apples and cabbage
against woodchucks. rot and rats; clearing up the bam. beginning
with that omnium gatherum. the New England farm work-bench
- these stints were all so practical that I have never since been
fagged by labor. I am glad also for the lessons in foresight, in
judgment and in initiative which crowd hard upon each other on
a farm where, in 1917. we raised all our war-time food needs. ex-
cepting salt and spices. A farm is a commonwealth. The farm boy
learns that what he does not do for his parents and his brothers he
is not doing for himself.
My father had turned away from the ecclesiasticism which, sub-
mitted to. might have rewarded him with its highest honors. a
bishop's rule or an editorial post of national import. But he had
not turned away from pure religion. The steady clear traditions
of Methodist and Quaker piety held him easily to grace before
meat. our reading of a Bible chapter every day for years. followed
by the Lord's Prayer and by the Doxology sung with joined hands.
Father wrote on every week end, on holiday forenoons (unless
the bees were swarming, and he had to prove that to Motherl) and
until mail time every summer day.
00 Sundays. especially remembered, we attended the Old Sbip
Church. Unitarian. This was the greenhouse of my own convic-
tions and profession. I loved the warmth and dignity of its services.
the appeal to reason and compassion and mysticism in sermon
and prayer and responsive reading, the march of the ancient Puritan
hymns. the sight of white-haired grandfathers shepherding their
sons and grandchildren to public worship; the friendliness of the
people; and the sense, growing in me, of a beloved community hold-
ing unbroken worship since 1681 under these venerable beams and
arches. This is the oldest church in continuous use in America. On
Thanksgiving Eve, the ministers and delegates from all the churches
in this Plymouth County town. excepting only one, gather here to
keep the hour of memory and gratitude.
Such were the roots and the prevailing winds. Public schooling
in 1911, begun at nine years. became-after its first amazements
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50 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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::: ".-
BACKGROUNDS 51
doctor of the horse-and-buggy days. Both of them fought in the
Civil War. It was Mother's desire that I become a doctor too, but
I realized early that I was not temperamentally fitted for that
profession. Both my parents were eager that I receive a good edu-
cation, and it is thanks to considerable sacrifice on their part that I
was able to begin my college work.
When I was about three, my family removed to a little country
village. A few years later, we moved to a small farm which my
father ran until his death in 1934.
The memories of my childhood in the country are very precious
to me: the joy of Bying kites, and roaming the fields and woods to
find the first pussy willows and cowslips in spring; the thrill of
catching my first trout with homemade pole and line; swimming
and berrying in the hot, lazy days of summer; walking through
the dried leaves and making borse-chestnut slings in autumn; and
perhaps best of all, sliding and skating in winter.
There was work too: keeping the woodbox filled, caring for my
own small Bock of hens, and helping Dad with the haying and the
cultivating. I must confess that at the time these last two tasks were
not always pleasurable, for they seemed always to need doing when
there were other prospects more inviting to a youngster - a game
of Indians or a hike through the woods, for example.
My first formal education was given me by Mother, who taudtt
me to read, using a very much simplified version of Hiawatha.
She p~red me well enough for me to enter the second grade
when I began to go to school.
For seven years I attended a small one-room school where I had
two excellent teachers. The second of them gained the complete
confidence of all her pupils, and we all worked and played hard
together. She planned many projects for the purpose of acquiring
much-needed equipment for the school. We industriously sold
Bower seeds and chocolate bars, and put on entertainments. And
we were very proud of the water cooler, phonograph, and other
items which we were able to purchase with the proceeds from our
work.
There were many community activities in which I participated:
church and Sunday School programs, the church young people's
group, a boys' club with its crafts, hikes, picniCS, and socials. When
I was old enough to do so, I joined the local Grange, and took an
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52 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
active part in its affairs, being one of the officers for a number of
years.
The high school teacher to whom I owe most taught me French
and Spanish. Thorough and exacting, she helped lay a firm foun-
dation for my later study of languages. When I arrived at college, I
found that I was as well prepared in languages as pupils from
much larger and better schools. At that time the number of extra-
curricular activities in the high school was rather limited. I did
participate in the school chorus, the boys' glee club, and in my
last year I was editor of the school paper. At graduation in 1925
I received the Washington-Franklin Medal for excellence in the
study of United States History, and was valedictorian of my class.
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BACKGROUNDS 53
was surrounded by the wooded hills where we camped in summer
and gathered nuts in the fall. There were also pastures where high-
bush blueberries grew in profusion, and cool mountain ponds and
brooks whose fish were waiting to be caught. My m~ories of
this place are all pleasant. After my first year of school the building
burned down and after that we trudged a couple of miles to the
other side of town. Rewards were then established by my mother
for being on time at school. Not too many were earned for there
were just so many interesting things to see and do on the way, both
going and coming. I well remember that many times in the win-
ter when the snow was deep, and the temperature low, my Dad
would pull my stocking-cap down over my face and my coat collar
up and then lead me to school so that my cheeks would not freeze
on the way. We were part of a procession of similar dads, boys
and girls. What a sight we must have beenl We ate lunch at school
and returned safely in the warmer temperature of the afternoon -
not always, however, without a dose of "chilblains" in our feet
and frost-bitten fingers in spite of the thick woolen socks and home-
made mittens. What fun on the home-made wooden sled with its
iron runners, or going crazily over the thick crust on a couple of
barrel-staves nailed together I What fun in the spring when the
maple sap was running and taffy pulls were in orderl In the par-
sonage here my little sister was born and I brought the whole
school home with me at noon to witness this wonderful present
that I had received. In this town I was given my first gun - a small
air-rifle with which I shot rats at night in a neighbor's hen-house.
This was my first employment, although I cannot recall how much
I was paid per rat. Here, too, I began earning a little by selling
produce from our garden, part of which I cultivated myself. On
our many camping trips and day excursions up the hills and into
the fields surrounding this town my father began to introduce me
to the wonders of creation and laid the foundation for my interest
in zoology and botany. Himself an excellent botanist, Dad was
also a great teacher, and years of scientific training since have only
increased the certainty of a divine creator whose existence was
taught me in those early years.
I have said that my memories of the years in the Connecticut
bills were all pleasant. I know now that Dad's life was occasionally
threatened because he opposed the almost slavelike conditions
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54 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
under which the men worked in the mill and especially the saloons
which took so much of their weekly pay.
When nearly eight years of age, we moved to the city. Those
were days of great excitement to my sister and me. So many new
things to see and get used tol I can still recall my first ride on an
elevated train - it was fine until I happened to look out as we
rounded a curve and found that we were tipped so that I had an
unobstructed view of the street below. It was a long time before I
willingly rode again. My first experience with a revolving door in a
department store was hardly more pleasant. I did not look forward
to the new school with great joy, because in preliminary inter-
views I had been told that of course I would not be able to continue
in the third grade but would have to go back to the second.
However, when my father showed the Principal my books, copy-
books and papers, he decided that perhaps I was "up to grade"
even though I came from the country, and I was allowed to go on
in the third grade. One month later, he changed his mind and
put me ahead into the fourth grade. Later I was to receive
another double promotion, remaining in the ninth grade only a
few weeks. Still later I was to regret this, for I found that the
ninth grade arithmetic would have given me the background for
high school and college mathematics and that without it I had an
extra hard time with those subjects which were already naturally
difficult for me.
By the time I was ready to go to college my life had been greatly
influenced by three men - an influence which is still part of me,
even though all of the men are now dead: My father, who was
companion and chum as well as father; the man who was for many
years my Sunday School teacher, a prominent manufacturer whose
name still appears on the labels of candy eaten by thousands; and a
high school teacher who constantly went out of his way to help
boYs who were willing to do what they could for themselves. I
have studied, played, camped and worked with all of them. The
two laymen were very active in Christian work. Mostly, however,
it was the practice of Christianity in their every-day lives, every day
of their lives, which impressed me and gave to me the sound faith
which I have had. To each of them the Golden Rule was not
only an ideal, it was an actual way of living which they proved
could be made to work.
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BACKGROUNDS 55
I began to teach my first Sunday School class through a some-
what unusual experience. At the age of fifteen I was working for
the summer on a large fruit and grain farm in Pennsylvania. Hear-
ing that a Sunday School was being carried on in a school house two
miles away, I walked over and found one devoted man trying to
conduct a school and teach a lesson to over thirty people ranging
in age from long-bearded grandfathers to babes in arms. He was
glad of any assistance, no matter how inexpert, and so for several
months, except for a few Sundays when ripe fruit demanded pick-
ing, I taught a group of Pennsylvania Dutch children. In the years
to follow I was to teach many children and adults as well, but I
shall never forget that first class. During my last year in high
school my plans for a career as a medical missionary were almost
blighted - for several months I was ill with rheumatic fever.
However, not only did I not die, but I became one of the small
percentage to recover with no demonstrable heart disease.
My desire to be a missionary is present in my longest recollec-
tions - as is my intention to become a medical doctor. My parents
were both ardent supporters of missions and from early childhood I
thrilled to the tales told by the many missionaries who were enter-
tained through the years in our home. My sympathies veered from
Home to Foreign and from field to field until finally China be-
came the object of my ambitions.
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56 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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BACXGROUNDS 57
bad the children's diseases when we were younger. We prepared
to give the play at Hallowe'en time-and most of the cast came
down with the measles. Then we got it ready again for Thanksgiv-
ing time and we had the mumps. Again we were almost ready for
the presentation and three-fourths of us came down with the
chiclcen-poxll But we lcept on and finally gave that same play at
the close of school.
For the first time in the history of the school, every single mem-
ber of the graduating class went on to take some kind of higher
education.
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58 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
less energy, the life of the family and a lover of practical jokes.
Taking his college training in the classical tradition, he never-
theless entered the teaching of sciences in the public schools
and then pursued advanced studies in many of the sciences at
Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Chicago." Restless again, he
changed from teaching to the ministry and finally to the mis-
sion field in South India, "where he spent the remainder of
his career primarily as an educator. He hit his stride when he
became located in Kumool where he had charge of one of the
largest and best endowed mission school systems in South
India." The improvement he brought about in many phases
of agriculture in that part of India "won him the highest
award for public service there shortly before his hasty exit fol-
lowing the fall of Singapore - the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal." The
mother seems to have been the balance wheel so necessary
to the ultimate success of such a restless father. Her son writes:
Self-sacrificing devotion to family was and continues to be the
outstanding trait of my mother who willingly followed my father
to the mission field, raised five children, consented to leave them
in boarding schools or in the States at an early age and, after the
family had matured, assisted in the activities of the mission station.
Of himself he writes:
I spent years three to ten with my parents in India. I soon picked
up a ready speaking knowledge of Telegu, the regional dialect,
most of which I promptly forgot when I went off to boarding school
where the natives spoke Tamel. Boarding school began at age six
and my first three years of it were spent at a large English institu-
tion, The Breeks Memorial School, located at the summer head-
quarters for the Governor of the Madras Presidency. My memory
of that school is none too happy. My primary recollection is of the
rod which was never spared.
We certainly deserved a licking now and then, although it did
not seem fair to get one at the line-up in the morning for dirty
shoes which had not been cleaned properly by the Indian servant
overnight. My fear of inspection was such that I spent part of
my four cents a week allowance (which was really adec:tuate far
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BACKGROUNDS 59
my purposes and could be split into twenty-four parts) on shoe
blacking. I often expended considerable energy with water and a
nail brush trying to induce a shine on the shoes. Dirty hands and
faces or untidy clothes also brought a licking.
We lived in dormitories with children separated according to
approximate ages. There were some thirty of us little kids crowded
into one large room. We slept on beds with slats, which were
often removed as a prank. especially when a boy was away for some
reason. It was our fond hope that the matron would sit on a bed
whose slats had been removed. We usually had our dinner earlier
than the others and were put to bed first. Left quiet and theo-
retically asleep, bedlam would often break out as pillows flew
around, mattresses and slats came off beds, and clothing scattered.
Sometimes the playing mice would hear the cat coming and would
all hop into bed and be as quiet as a cemetery on a dark night
when the matron popped into the room. At other times, we would
be caught in the act and then there were spankings.
There was the unforgettable dining room where we little kids
were supposed to be seen but not heard. Food was average to
below. Now and then a grub appeared in the porridge. There was
the chocolate pudding trick pulled on the new boys, who were
urged to smell the pudding by their neighbors only to have their
faces shoved into the sticky dishes. We were supposed to eat
everything set before us, and it would be difficult to enumerate
the tricks we resorted to to get rid of things we did not like. There
was the exchange with the neighbor, and the handkerchief. There
was also the prized position near the window where things could
be tossed out on the sly. I had the gift of chatter and could never
keep silent at table for long. One Sunday evening I met my Water-
loo. An English boy, an Italian and I got into a running argument,
interrupted occasionally by the master who finally, in wrath, sent
us to our dormitory. We knew our destiny and prepared hastily
to meet it. With the help of some candles and the kerosene lamp,
we melted wax on our right hands. The master administered the
inevitable caning to the Italian and myself first and we left the
room laughing, forgetting that the door was open. We were called
back by the weeping English lad, who, incidentally, had a large
black and blue welt on his wrist, and we were then caned on the
left hand. As we left the room, we were warned that the next
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60 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
time we got into trouble, we had better have a board down our
pants.
Other recollections include the regular Sunday night letter-writ-
ing bee. "Dear Mamma and Papa: I am well and happy. I hope
you are well and happy. Love, ." You could not be un-
happy or complain because your letters were read and mailed by
the master. Now and then you pulled a fast one by sending a letter
home on the sly without a stamp so that your parents had to pay
the postage. One of the great anticipations was the hoped-for
package that some mail might bring. You watched every delivery
and I still cannot see a mail man without wondering if he has a
package for me. You had some chance of keeping clothing to
yourself. But let there be candy, cake or cookies - sweets - and
your chances of getting more than a smell were slight.
I was glad to be rid of Breeks Memorial School after three years
of exile. I had managed to pick up a strong English accent, so that
on my return to my parents on the plains, I confounded them
with my "Mawthers" and "Fawthers" and "Beg your Pawrdons:·
My fourth year was spent at an American School, which was
maintained by various denominations and has developed into a
fine institution, known as Kodai School. Like Breeks, Kodai was
located in beautiful mountain surroundings, but it was smaller and
more congenial. We did not live in donnitory style, but in rows
of single or double rooms. Life was somewhat less regimented,
although it was sbl1 a boarding school. I still had to write "I must
not talk" by the hundred after school (I became expert at using
two pencils at a time, and often contrived to save the copies for
future use) and got a licking now and then.
I never had patience with those who commiserated with the
.children of missionaries. True, we did lose the benefits of intimate
family life. But in terms of broadening experiences, of the necessity
for development of qualities of se1£-dependence, of having an amy
of opportunities for education, few chifdren are more favored. There
was never any question that we were all- and I refer to all the
missionary children I knew - going on to college.
I lived in India during a very impressionable period of my life.
The Indian "atmosphere" has always seemed natural to me, just
as· memories of the old fann or of the small village of childhood
days in America usually remain vivid. My knowledge of India was
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BAClCCROUNDS 61
unscientific and colored by the missionary approach, an approach
that was a strange mixture of religious evangelism, the white man's
burden and superiority, and the British point of view toward Indian
affairs. Although study since has enabled me to appreciate the
Indian side of the question, I have tended to understand the
British difficulties and problems and have seemed "pro-British"
to my American friends who are less bothered with concrete fact
and more influenced by pure idealism.
We left India in the spring of 1918 under war conditions and
had to return to the United States via the longer Pacific route
rather than via the Suez and Britain. We stopped in Hong Kong,
were able to visit Canton, rested long enough in Shanghai for a
tour of the city and did the same with several Japanese cities, in-
cluding Yokohama. Then came the very long hop to Honolulu
and tour of that island and finally the Golden Gate of San
Francisco. When I had crossed the Rockies and returned to Ohio,
I had completed one full tour of the world, the first half of the
trip, however, being nothing more than a boyhood, vague memory.
On the other hand, the Pacific voyage, at age ten, left many stiong
impressions and recollections.
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62 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
I was brought to the United States for six years and started
elementary school in Syracuse, New York. From age eight to four-
teen, I went back to live in Japan, first in Yokohama and then in
Tokyo. My memories are of Japanese scenes and of the Tokyo
Grammar School run by a British ex-major from India. The last
year of this period was taken up by a private class for about a dozen
missionary children organized by a teacher from California. We
were to be prepared for high school.
Many are the memories that flash through my mind. The plain-
tive flute-like call of the blind masseuse as it sounded through the
evening air. The plight of these blind so interested my grand-
mother, who had come to spend the sunset of her life in Japan,
that she founded the Yokohama Christian Blind School (Yoko-
hama Kummoin), an institution carried on' by my father and
sisters and still existing in Yokohama after World War II.
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BACKGROUNDS 63
for a service as missionaries that in the case of the father lasted
for almost sixty years. Of his mother he writes that she
"Was one of the rarest of souls. Not only did she bring up the
five of us children and carry the many duties of a pioneer
missionary's wife, but she distinguished herself in special proj-
ects, such as the founding of the Mother's Day movement in
Japan. She died in 1935."
Still others there are among the foreign-born six who came
here so young as to have little or no memory of life across the
waters. The next to come, one who hardly knew what the word
college meant till he was nearly of college age, is now professor
and head of an important division of instruction in one of the
large universities of the country. "As a youngster," he writes,
"I had been a Horatio Alger fan. I assumed that the thing to
do was to learn the business." Again and again in his story
that follows it appears that "he learned the business"l
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A CHRONICLE ACHIEVEMENT
story - and an
That is a desirable
interest of many a UIUjl;lI"'I"UJ
own, have led, the places been, the things
done, include little that would keep a stranger from sleeping
through their recital, though they have been and are enjoyable
to me.
On many occasions I have thought it rare good fortune that my
family came to America when I alone among my brothers and
young enough my formal study
in England my extended schooling
occupation slight.
ied when I was but a respected
when I was worked long hours
pride in the ran the biggest mal:::l1111e
in the shop. Like most Englishmen, he enjoyed his garden, bis
vegetables, and his Bowers; and these Ileamed to like and to grow
by watching and helping him and by cultivating the little plot
he assigned to me. At one time or another, he kept chickens, ducks,
rabbits, and pigeons too, and these provided many satisfactions and,
chores.
to Boston with
Every few yards,
had to stop
, wnleei-Dal'lrow to carry
enormous quantities of waste so that my sister
make the endless yards of bandages my father needed during his
last bed-ridden year. That is all. Except that he left me the legacy
of knowing that I had honorable, humble parents who cared for
each other and their children.
When Mother died my oldest sister, then seventeen, took over
the and management of the household for our family of
of the youngest. complaint, without
self-sacrifice, she labors of baking
loaves of bread and puddings
bing by hand the of four factory worke:rs
members of the were at home, of 11li:U"~1I5
and mending clothes, and of doing work of cleaning and house-
hold maintenance with a minimum of help. She it was who cared
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BACKGROUNDS 65
for my father through his long illness, and then went to work to
pay the doctor's bills and to support herself and me.
This sister was psychologically and sociologically my mother. As
a baby I went to church in her arms, and as a child I slept beside
her during the sermons. She tended to my wants, watched over
me with sympathetic care, and gave me the affection and the sense
of a secure world that a child needs.
Even before I came of school age I roamed freely about within
a radius of half a mile of our home, picking flowers and berries
and fruits. I remember how she provided the milk and sugar for
the wild strawberries I picked; with what tender protest she cleaned
and cooked the bony little lake perch and kivvers I brought home;
the green collar box filled with burnt match sticks with which
she taught me to spell before I started school.
I went to school at age five and a half, and at the end of the first
year was promoted to the third gmde. When I was in the seventh
gmde I fell in love with the teacher who subsequently, but not,
I am sure, because of that, left to raise chickens. This year marked
the end of Father's illness and his death. Only the younger of my
two sisters was then working, and it became necessary for the
older one, the "mother" of our family, to find employment too;
so I stayed out of school nearly all of that year to keep house and
tend to Father. Once a week my school teacher came to bring me
a supply of lessons and to help me with them.
When I finished gmmmar school in 1914 the principal said I
should go to high school. No one else in my family had ever done
that, and I had not hoped that such good fortune could ever be
mine. But there were others who favored it, and my sister, proud
of the possibility, felt that she could finance the venture. I started
high school at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where Sister and I had
gone to live with an aunt for a time after Father's death. The
school was large and bewildering to me, but I enjoyed the com-
mercial course in which I was enrolled. The city, with its hard
roads and ugly tenements and small shops, I hated. Day after day
I came home from school at noon, put my nine-months-old cousin
in the carriage, and walked off four, five, six miles into the sur-
rounding countryside and back, just to get an afternoon of green
grass and trees and exercise in the fresh air.
Before the end of the school year we had returned to our earlier
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66 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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BACKGROUNDS 67
of the time we paddled naked through sun and shower. I mean
nakedl
The Rector is now some eighty years old and Rector-Emeritus.
A few years ago I had the pleasure of helping to organize a gathering
in his honor. The invitations were sent out only to those who had
been camping with him at one time or another. Just one single
letter was sent, saying that the recipients were invited to come to
renew old acquaintanceships and that we hoped to give the Rector
some tangible memento of the occasion.
All of the Rector's boys had come from modest homes, but the
replies to the invitations came not only from painters and truck
drivers but from lawyers, judges, engineers, college professors,
journalists (the plurals are correct). There were men in attendance
from New York and all over New England. The cash contributions
bought a fine radio and left a sizeable remainder, presented as a
check. The ages of those present ranged from the twenties to the
seventies, and many had not seen the Rector nor heard directly
from him for ten, twenty, thirty or more years. But for an inter-
vening building, I could see the Rector's home (he built it and
has lived there, keeping house alone for years) from my study as I
write this. For nearly forty years he has been my good and re-
spected friend.
Near the beginning of my sophomore year in high school the
bookkeeping teacher told us to take our manuals home and see
how far we could go with them. I brought my books back with the
half-year's assignment completed. The school principal shortly
called me to his office and said the commercial course was not for
me; that I must take the college course; that I should go to college.
He might just as well have suggested that I take a voyage around
the world. I knew such things were done, but they had no con-
nection with my hopes or plans.
I expected to go to work after high school; perhaps I should say
full-time work, for I had filled in my spare time gathering a bit of an
income since I was eight or nine. Even then I sold tickets to
church events to get a free one for myself. I sold post-cards in the
fall. I picked dandelions and watercress to sell to the neighbors in
the summer. I mowed lawns. I did many other things.
Work stopped my chances of joining in high school athletics,
but I had my share of extra-curricular fun in various activities, in-
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68 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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BACEC30UNDS 69
peets. He said they had tried to show their appreciation by sub-
stantial rises in salary, but that if I were dissatisfied they would try
to do better. I said I was not displeased with my wage. He asked
if I really expected to make more money four years later than I
would be making at that time if I stayed with them. My "No"
left him speechless and completely mystified. He had never been
to college.
Ten days before registration day I received a 8attering invitation
from a steel manufacturer. He was going to open a New England
ofIice in Boston. I would be in charge of the New England terri-
tory, receiving a commission on all tonnage sold in New England.
I sweated over that for one tough week. On registtation day in
September, 1921, I enrolled in Boston University College of Libeml
Arts.
What a typical American epic, with a Horatio Alger fan
pitted against a businessman mystified by a "No" because he
bad never learned to reckon values in any unit save dollarsl
That the hero of the epic was born across the sea is incidental
save as it may add to the interest of the tale. Simon-pure ideal-
istic young Americanism is written all over the story.
Somewhat in contrast are the background and early lives
of two brothers, born in Italy. They came to this country with
their mother so early that even the elder has only vague mem-
ories of the land of his birth. Nevertheless, because the family,
having joined the father who was already here, made their
home in a settlement of Italian immigrants in the "Brick-
bottom" section of an industrial city, they remained for years
essentially Italians. Yet, if you were to meet these brothers
now, in early middle life, you would find them, in the inci-
dentals of looks and speech and in essential outlook, as Ameri-
can as many of the men we are here considering. Both are
college professors in full standing in New England colleges.
What were the external factors that changed these boys from
Italians of peasant parentage to American college professors?
Among them were these: Their father and mother, hard-work-
ing Italians to the end of life, were ambitious for their children
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BACJ[GllOUNDS 71
father "was the only son of a fishennan who died at sea, but
not without helping his son to safety after the shipwreck."
The widow and mother became a kind of "pub" keeper and it
is probable that here the son developed the drinking habit.
'fhe wife of this son, and mother of the two boys, found "her
main burden not the children she bore" (there were over a
dozen, "reduced at birth to six by God in his wisdom and
mercy"), "but this habit of her otherwise model husband. He
was an indefatigable worker both at home and at the factory
of the meat-packing company where he worked" (in America),
"for thirty-five years. His work knew no end, for he was cook
when he got home and shoe repairer and housemaid." The
mother meantime was busy with work brought home "from a
near-by factory. This couple worked hard and together. For
to them this land of milk and honey was to be for their chil-
dren. They undertook necessary sacrifices for the sake of what-
ever education their children could realize. For the father,
who was the more vocal on the matter, had made up his mind
that his children should go to school if they had any ability
at all, even though children meant boys only. And in this
determination he was unique among the immigrant Italians
in his section of Brickbottom."
The mother's Italian background is sufficiently humble. Her
father was "a hired man on the farms of more prosperous
landowners, and in later life the milkman who led his cow
about and filled the pitchers of his waiting customers. With
him is connected the only hint of a skeleton in the family
closet. He was caught helping himself to several armfuls of
bay from a prosperous neighbor'S stack and was incarcerated
a few days to teach him that a starving cow and a hungry
family are not sufficient reason for taking from one's neigh-
bors." The older of the two brothers returned to Italy for
myel and study on the Fund after he had been absent for
nearly a score of years. That was in 1929. He was able to visit
his maternal grandmother, who later at the time his life story
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72 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
was written was "still alive, living with one of her daughters
in Italy, receiving and hoarding her remittances from her sons
in America."
Of his own early life and that of the family, the older of
the two brothers writes:
We are still in Italy. Our family consisted of myself aged three,
a brother aged three months, my mother, and my father whom
economic distress had driven to America before the birth of his
second boy. Little by little combined family effort accumulated
passage money to the New World. So my mother gathered to-
gether her few belongings and her two children and set out for the
United States. The year was 1911, the boat the Canopic.
On my first train ride, en route for Naples and America, I was
surprised at one point by periods of light and dark, light and dark
following in quick succession. For a while I remained bewi1dered.
I brought to bear all of my science, but what is the science of a
country boy of three? In the end, I felt obliged to set down the
extraordinary happening to a sudden series of little nights and
days. But I had never gone through a day so quickly, it seemed,
nor through a night. I hardly knew whether to be incredulous
or pleased..•. Finally, I asked mother. She said simply that we
had been passing under tunnels and defined a tunnel with reference
to our experience. The explanation, I think, was a relief, but not
unmixed with disappointment. Since then I have on other occa-
sions found the truth a bit prosaic.
I recall the bare wooden hull of a boat at Naples. Into this hull
we were being driven as if with whips. Women shrieked, pressing
forward perspiring and dishevelled. I was almost trampled under-
foot as I clung desperately to my mother while she strove valiantly
to make her way forward, hardly knowing whether to clasp to her
more tightly the babe at her bosom or to pick up the half-smothered
child tugging ever more faintly at her left side. Finally, having
been kept upright by sheer lack of space for faIling, and urged
irresistibly below, we arrived downstairs. Here all I recall is a
great heat, the wet, and a mist. The rest of my remembrance seems
to have been quickly crowded over. Nevertheless, this experience
of smother and panic had been stamped deep enough in my con-
sciousness to require explanation several years later. All I could
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BACKGROUNDS 73
gather then from my mother were a few uncertain phmses about
the cholera at Naples, the hot showers, examinations, etc. To my
astonishment, she seemed to have forgotten I
Our landing in America is marked in my remembrance by a
minor and comical detail noteworthy if at all only as a further
illustration of the queer tricks of m~ory. When we arrived at
our destination, my father almost immediately presented me with
a yellow, curved, elongated object which, after it had been peeled
longitudinally and inserted between the teeth, had a sweetish, mealy
taste. I chewed a while tentatively, appraisingly, then, lookinK
up, voiced my approval by a question. "Come si chiama? Che et'
"Una banana," said my father. "Una banana," I repeated gravely,
and I munched even more appreciatively, as though knowing what
it was made a difference. It was my first experience in America.
Before the family arrived the father bad been living at a
bordo d'uomini, or men's boarding-house, but they were
soon established in a humble home 6f their own, such as the'
immigrants of Brickbottom inhabited. Of the bordo d'uomini,
we are told: they were "remarkable for the absence of a
feminine housekeeper, the men themselves doing all the buy-
ing, cooking and cleaning together and dividing the expense."
For me it will be characterized always by the scrubbed whiteness
of a soft wood floor still faintly redolent of suds and soapine and a
general neatness and spotless cleanliness. Such early impressions
no doubt were strengthened by contrast with the inevitable dis-
order of our own home where mother struggled simultaneously
with the necessities of eking out my father's poor wages with home
work of different sorts, the problem of maintaining a spick and
span cleanliness in rather poor, overcrowded quarters, and the dep-
redations of a lengthening series of lusty brats. At any rate, these
hordi d'uomini looked as antiseptic as a Hood's creamery or a
vegetarian restaurant.
I don't remember my father's ever kissing my mother or even
uttering a word of endearment; and my mother was equally un-
demonstrative. Did she love him? Somehow the word falls in bad
taste here, as though crudely introducing the irrelevant. What is
certain is that she lived with my father a quarter of a century and
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74 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
we children were content. Did mother love us? Yes, if one were
to judge by the sacrificial care she gave us, by her ambitions and
her plans for us, by the look on her face as she bent over us when
we were sick. But there were no effusions, except, of course, those
for privileged babies and smaller children. Few indeed were the
"dears" and the "darlings" abounding elsewhere as incense for the
family atmosphere. Yet Italian is rich beyond measure in terms
of endearment, to mention only its incompamble diminutives. But
there was no nonsense at our house, it just wasn't done, that's all
- and I can still see my mother blush half-pleased, half-vexed at
the stolen kisses of my high school days when I sought to introduce
now and then affectionate usages gathered from reading and the
movies or from my increasing contacts with the interior of certain
American homes.
With regret for the space limitations we bid farewell to
this chapter in "the heroic age of Italian immigration" when
men and families came to this land of golden opportunities
with the hope of returning home from these bleak shores to
sunny Italy with such riches as their hard labor had gained.
Then came the rude awakening. For the children were not
Italians. They were Americans. And the parents, put to the
test between children and homeland, did what such parents
have always done - held to their hearts a deep nostalgia, but
stayed with their children. One of the two whose story this
is pays tribute to the parents as he writes:
One is permitted to doubt whether the slick young Italian-
American who makes the Big Leagues, the All-American football
teams as well as the crime columns is the equal in stamina and
dignity of his illiterate forebears of 200d old farmer and fisher stock.
It is not surprising that in the vast majority of cases the
imagination of the Italian immigrant focused, as it was bound
to be, on physical necessities, did not extend much beyond
them.
Education for the children? Yes, but not at financial sacrifice,
especially when the family was large and one did one's best until
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BACKCROUNDS 75
the oldest son reached fourteen and, leaving school, began earning.
But my father did not go along in his thinking at this point with
the group, especially when my brother began bringing home such
excellent report cards. A dream set in his detennined heart, a
dream which was to find almost scornful challenge among some
relatives and his neighbors, but support amongst the American
friends at the Italian Mission, of whom we shall soon speak. The
emphasis I have been placing on this determination to sacrifice for
education is not misplaced, for in this community the progress of
my brother not only through the grades, but also through college
(with the help of the Buck Fund), and then, also with the help of
the Fund, to Harvard with a tour of Europe and study in France,
was a success outstanding in the history of this immigrant group.
They proved that the son of a peasant, the son of an immigrant
laborer in America could better himself beyond the means which
his family could provide. Thus then, the Buck Fund in helping
my brother was saying something through him, to American-Ital-
ians about Americal
These developments in my brother's education were not only
a source of great pride for my father, than whom my brother never
bad a more vociferous and persistent press-agent, but they were
to become a staff when all was dark and lonely. I remember more
than one night when, on returning home fairly late from my studies
at the Boston Public Library, I found him smoking and crying tears
of proud joy before his altar, a snapshot my brother had sent, was
it from Paris, England, Egypt, Greece? That his son, yes, that his
son and Annunziata's, the Annunziata who had passed on three or
four years ago (1925) and left him alone with their six children,
should be considered worthy of study in Europe, this was solace
and inspiration at onceI .
But, to go back a bit, while my father worked and dreamed, my
mother planned, directed, and slavedI No opportunity for creating
a penny escaped her, as she urged, cajoled, commanded and loved
her husband and children into remunerative work, challenging
their powers to the utmost, but careful that they did not go too
far; but every effort of theirs was as nothing to her own labors.
Did she not can and bake, make clothes out of Daly's remnants?
(I shall ever remember my shirt of upper and lower part - stitched
across the chest, of two colors, but costing three centsl) The
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76
taking in of a boarder helped financially, as did the work from the
near-by shoe shop; and in her spare time (I) she crocheted in-
tricately designed table cloths, bed quilts, and pillow cases for
friends and for her children when they got married. This family
knew nothing of insurance, but as long as she was alive, her mind,
chamcter and ambition captained her husband and children who
were her morning, midday, evening, and dreamlifel
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BACKGROUNDS 77
We must interrupt this story of school life for a brief men-
tion of the influence of an Italian mission on the lives of these
two. The length of the statement is in inverse mtio to the
importance of the institution to them. But they have written
of it in such detail that it is pmcticable neither to insert their
accounts entire nor to abbreviate them. Suffice it to say that
a group of Christian men and women of conservative beliefs
and shrewd common sense labored for years among these
people of foreign birth and outlook, until finally example and
precept came to their fruition. One hardly dares accept at
full value the meed of praise these two give that band of con-
secmted women. Better than pmise, both of them became
sincere Christians, of whose "positive Christian character"
there has never been a shadow of a doubt.
And now to continue the story of school as the younger of
the two saw it.
No serious purpose took shape until after my religious conver-
sion, which came to mean to me that whatever talents I might
have, had to be dedicated to the God who had made them possible.
Thus, in junior high school I settled down to become a good
Christian in school. Since my brother thought that the general
course meant a little bit of everything and not much of anything,
I "took up" the commercial course, and did my best to make the
Honor Roll, with some success. My big hands and the typewriter
keyboard did not get along very well, and I simply could not keep
my balance sheets as neat as the girls'; my handwriting betrayed
every system, and about all I could say was that I tried hard. I
would have given much to go out for football, but work and light
weight made that impossible. When the other boys began talking
about dates I just listened. I was convinced that no girl would
ever look at anybody who looked like me, what with that hopelessly
straight hair which just would not stay soaked downl The high spot
of junior high was my being made a Monitor and being allowed
to wear the red arm band.
As my work improved, there was evidently more talk about my
going on to high school and even college. It was in my junior
year in Junior High that my mother died. (I shall never forget
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78 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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BACKGROUNDS 79
schools in America and held charges in Sweden and from
New York to California in America.
A social reticence on Frans' part was not by any means an indica-
tion of ill-will but rather of shyness. He was basically insecure.
One of a peasant family of fourteen children, six of whom were
wiped out in an epidemic of diphtheria, he knew what it was to
be constantly hungry, and even, in a time of severe economic de-
pression in Sweden during his early childhood, the ignominy of
having to beg for bread. As a youth he was converted by a Baptist
evangelist, which so enraged his father, a nominal adherent of the
Lutheran State Church, that he seized an ax and young Frans
had actually to flee for his life. An unrequited love affair with the
daughter of a rich burgher of the town at about the same time in-
troverted him still more. It is possible that a compulsive desire
to "make something of himself," to prove his worth to those who
had cast him off, combined with his religious conversion, led him
to enter the ministIy.
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80 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
"On principle" he left his flourishing post and took up his work
among a handful of "believers" in Gnesta, a small town west of
Stockholm. This transfer took place during the first year of Fred's
life.
By the time Fred was six years old the world was at war, and
following suit, so were the youth of Gnesta. Children who could
scarcely toddle would lie in ambush with a club to clout the
"enemy" on his way to first grade. Rocks made fine ammunition.
Trainloads of wounded soldiers being shipped back to Russia passed
through the toWD; distant rumble of cannon from sea-battles in
the Baltic made a boy's insides quiver; all in all it was a fierce,
exciting time to be growing up.
While pastor at Gnesta, Frans sank his life savings in the
purchase of Saby, a charming country estate seven miles outsid~
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BACKGROUNDS 81
the town. The white manor house, reached from the road by a
long allee of apple trees, stood on a green, sloping. promontory
thrusting into beautifull..ake Frosjon. To one side, along the lake
shore, stretched a deep tract of forest; to the other rolled rich farm-
land. For young Fred it was a paradise. Still too small to be of
much use in farming, he was free to wander in the woods, to fish in
the lake, to lie on his back in inch-deep moss under dipping birches
and dream. Often he was gone from breakfast to supper on his
solitary adventures, lunching on nuts or wild berries in the woods.
Maria, her brood having increased to eight, scarcely missed him.
The appeal of solitude was all the stronger to this sensitive boy
now that he was becoming aware of his difference from his asso-
ciates. Fiat of all, his being a Baptist, a dissenter from the estab-
lished State Church, in a day when Free Church adherents were
suspect and not a little despised, set him apart from his school-
mates. Secondly, his father's position as gentleman farmer alienated
the family from the poorer townsfolk who chiefly made up the
church's constituency. Furthermore, Frans felt that the local
district school was inferior in educational standards to the town
school, and insisted that Fred attend the latter, even though it
meant a seven-mile walk twice a day. Fred lived in dread of meet-
ing his contemporaries, who missed no opportunity to taunt him
either for his religious affiliation or for being "stuck-up." He would
start for school as early as six in the morning and run the whole
seven miles to school, crouching with palpitating heart behind
hedgerows to avoid a passing schoolmate.
Frans had meanwhile become so absorbed in the profitable busi-
ness of farming, with war-time food prices fantastically soaring,
that he suspended his preaching, not wholly to the sorrow of a
number of his parishioners who deemed it unseemly for a pastor of
thein to be having such worldly success. But Maria had not mar-
ried him to be a farmer's wife, not even a gentleman farmer, and
she sorely and audibly missed both the church life and the town
contacts. In the coune of time, as the post-war market cmhed,
Frans was obliged to admit that he had not been cut out for farm-
ing, and regretfully sold his beloved Siiby.
The family's next move was to Falkoping, an attractive city with
a well-established Baptist Church. Fred, now eleven, having
finished the public school course, realized that for one of eight
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82 A CHllONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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BACJCGllOUNDS 83
ing mist. At Ellis Island the boat disgorged its load of aspiring
immigrants. One by one Fred watched his shipboard friends go
through the tedious process of having their papers cleared and leave
for the mainland. When would his tum come? He sat tense with
expectation while a couple of officials discussed his papers in a
harsh and unknown tongue. An interpreter asked him a few ques-
tions and disappeared. Still he sat, waiting; the last of the familiar
faces from the old Stockholm had been sent ashore. Finally, an
attendant appeared, verified his identity, and beckoned roughly.
Fred's heart leaped as he followed down a long corridor, clutching
his little satchel. To set foot on American soil at lastl
But at the end of the hall he found himself thrust into an
enormous, bare room, noisy with the mingling of many strange
tongues and foul with the stench of unwashed bodies. His throat
contracted at the sight of the high, barred windows. Where was
he, and why had he been imprisoned? Shyly he began to try to
make inquiries, but in all this milling mass of many races and na-
tionalities there appeared to be not one who understood Swedish.
A dull grunt or a savage curse was all he could elicit from those he
approached. Suddenly a bell rang and as if by magic the room was
emptied. Curiously he followed the exodus to another ugly hall
with long, bare tables and benches, where a meal was already under
way. He tried to swallow a bowl of greasy and watery soup and a
piece of dry bread. All the butter and most of the bread had been
scooped up by the first arrivals at the table. Later another bell
summoned them to the washroom. Apart from the indescribable
sanitary conditions, the boy's delicate sensibilities suffered from the
indignity of having to catch in mid-air a towel Bung at him by a
scowling attendant and, harder still, a handful of soap jelly. When
night came, he was assigned to a quadruple-deck bunk which ac-
commodated two on each level. Not daring to undress and dreading
to fall asleep for fear of losing the $50 his mother had sewed
into his undershirt, he lay rigidly watching the unshaven, dark-hued
foreigner in the bed beside him, and praying for deliverance from
this place.
Prayer and a little Swedish Bible in his pocket were his only
consolation as day after day wore on. A Dutchman, by means of
sign language and a calendar, conveyed the information that he
had been in this Limbo of detention for three years. Fred's heart
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84 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
sank and he fought to keep back the tealS. Even being sent back
to Sweden to face the jeen of his friends would be preferable to
staying in his homble prison. Then, on the eighth day, he was
summoned abruptly and was ushered into a small room where a
smiling lady addressed him softly in Swedishl "Is this Fred?" From
lowest depths his spirits soared to the heights. Oh, beautiful,
beautiful lady, shining with Christian compassion. Beautiful, beau-
tiful the music of language undentood. Beautiful, too, the bag of
bananas and bottle of milk for a hungry boy.
Only then did he learn what had happened. The evangelist who
had so blithely agreed to be his sponsor could not be located; his
brother, George, in Minnesota had finally found someone who
would sign papelS in his behalf, but this all took time. In the
meantime they had located Mr. and MIS. Pehr Behring, of Brook-
lyn, friends of Frans and Maria from their New York days, and
it was through them that Fred's release was finally effected.
After a week of dazzled and delighted amazement at the noise,
the speed, the height, and the mechanical complexities of New
York, the excited boy was put on board the train by the kindly
Behrings, en route to St. Paul. The all-night ride seemed intermin-
ably long, and the silence imposed by the language bamer grew
unbearably oppressive to the eagerly expectant, sociable little
fellow. Screwing up his coutage, he drew from his pocket a slip of
paper on which one of the Behring family had written several
English sentences, and addressed his seat-mate with his own pho-
netic rendering of "What time is it, please?": "Vaht tee-meh ees
eet play-ah-seh?" As the bewildered passenger shrugged uncom-
prehendingly, Fred said sympathetically, in Swedish, "Ob, you
don't undelStand English either." After changing trains in Chi-
cago, Fred sat on the edge of his seat, ready to spring. Every
station the conductor called out sounded like "St. Paul" to his
untrained ear, and several times the conductor had to use force
to restrain him from jumping off the train.
George met him at the station in St. Paul glad to see one of
his family after two lonely, hard-working yealS, but at the same time
dreading an added burden of responsibility on his thin, seventeen-
year-old shoulden. He had made arrangements for Fred to work
for his keep and schooling on the Minnesota farm of Emil Swen-
son, and it was there that Fred went directly. The Swensons were
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BACJCGllOUNDS 85
a hard-working, pious couple of middle age, childless and unac-
quainted with the lighter aspects of life. They expected, and re-
ceived, a man's work from the boy, who had already acquired the
habit of over-conscientiousness in everything he did. After the early
morning hours spent in chores, he walked to the little district
school, and on his return home worked until dark. The charming
young girl who was his teacher was appalled at the prospect of
teaching this tall boy who spoke not a word of English, but solved
the problem by placing him in the first grade for two weeks, in
the second for two more, and so on, until by the end of the term
he had been through all eight gradesl
Thanks to his brother George's intercession, he was permitted
to enter Bethel Academy in St. Paul, a Swedish Baptist institution
where George was now enrolled in the Seminary. Fred met his
school expenses and supported himself by every means possible,
washing dishes, window-washing, and all sorts of odd jobs after
school hours.
The following summer, 1923, an offer of extremely high pay
lured him to hire out to a farmer who worked him mercilessly.
He had to milk eleven cows before breakfast, spend all day in the
fields "shock thrashing," and milk the eleven cows again before
falling into bed. When threshing was through he quit this job
for the comparatively easy one of carrying plank for sixteen hours
a day, at thirty cents an hour.
Fall found him with the small sum of $25 saved after all his labors.
He registered for his second year at Bethel, and even went out for
football, the first time he had had opportunity for play since be
had begun to earn his own living at eleven. But before fall pxactice
was over he had come down with diphtheria and languished for
weeks in the hospital. His heart was tempoxarily affected and a
long period of convalescence was inevitable. In desperation George
telephoned a woman in a small town whom he knew to be a de-
voted church member and told her the story. Holding the tele-
phone receiver, she simply turned to her good husband, repeated
the story, and asked, "Shall we, Axel?" He nodded, and without
further ado Fred became a member of the family of Axel Olson,
on a farm in Princeton, Minnesota.
Mr. Olson had been a successful contIactor in St. Paul and Mrs.
Olson a physio-thexapist connected with a hospital there, before
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86 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
their retirement, for reasons of health, to the farm. They were both
people of taste and refinement and practising Christians of the
highest type. Mrs. Olson found Fred a somewhat unruly patient,
unaccustomed, after his years of independence, to taking orders or
advice. But she grew to love him dearly as she cared for his needs,
and gave him ungrudgingly all the mothering he had been so sorely
missing.
After the first few months of convalescence, the idea occurred
to Mrs. Olson that Fred might hold preaching services in a little
church at Wyanette that had long been closed for lack of funds
and a pastor. The doctor agreed to the proposal, but limited the
preaching time to fifteen minutes. Thus it was that Fred preached
for the first time to a handful of well-wishing country folk, at the
age of fifteen. His gift for preaching was so marked and his enthu-
siasm so contagious that as the winter and spring wore on, more
people were 80cking to church than there had been in years, and
the collection plate bore increasingly evidence of their gratitude
not only to God but to the young preacher in their midst.
Meanwhile, back in Sweden, Fred's father's parish work had been
prospering and he had moved on to a much larger church in
Hedemora. After all these years he was once again in a position of
importance somewhat equivalent to the Lulci church of his early
married life. But his contentment was not shared by restless
Maria. From the time that Fred had left home, she had been
talking America; and now that news of his iIlness had reached her,
she was insistent beyond poor Frans' endurance. He reluctantly
submitted to negotiations with the Swedish Baptist conference
in America, which eventuated in securing for him the little church
in Springfield, Massachusetts. In May, 1924, Fred received word
that his parents and remaining six brothers and sisters had arrived
and were anxious to have him join them in the Springfield parson-
age. After a hasty trip to see them and to look over the prospects
of life with the family once more, he finished out the summer at
the Wyanette Church, and in September entered as a sophomore
in Springfield's Central High School.
The possibility of going on to college had seemed only a wild
dream to him during his high school course. He had worked sum-
mers, on a farm in northern Maine, preaching, and tutoring, but
his earnings had scarcely more than clothed him, and no financial
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BACKGROUNDS 87
support was forthcoming from his home, teeming with smaller
children. One opportunity presented itself in the form of a benev-
olent gentleman who offered to finance his four years in college
completely if he would sign an agreement never to forsake the
fundamentalist faith. But Fred, who never dreamed that he could
ever see more truth than he had already seen in this respect, never-
theless could not bring himself to sign away his right to think.
At this time he heard of the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Edu-
cational Fund, and almost with unbelief in the reality of his having
been accepted as a Buck Scholar, entered Boston University's Col-
lege of Liberal Arts.
Now as he looks back upon. those days, he often comments on
what an indescribable help the Buck Fund was to him. It seems
incredibly good that any such fund should exist anywhere, and he
often wonders if his present life of service would have been possible
if he had not been fortunate enough to receive such a solid college
education in this way.
The last of the six men bom on foreign soil came from his
home in Bulgaria when he had reached college age. Bu~ that
he did not leave Bulgaria altogether behind when he came to
America, he makes clear in the following statement: "At least
some of the earliest associations and environment have con-
tnouted a great deal to what I am. It seems to me that even
today I judge people, evaluate events, and make decisions on
the basis of the impressions that I acquired in my childhood"
Even more important in understanding his career is his "belief
that one can achieve any goal one sets for himself if he wants
it badly enough and is willing to fight for it."
Not a little of the "profound influence" he attnoutes to his
early environment is seen in what follows.
Although I was born on the banks of the Danube I grew up in
the heart of the mountains. In the little valley of Orbanie, sur-
rounded by the mighty pealcs of the Balkan Mountains, life was
exacting, the climate was rugged and one looked ahead not in
terms of days or months but in terms of seasons. Spring, fall,
summer and winter had a special meaning for there were no stores
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88 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
around the comer. The economic life of the country was far re-
moved from the teeming industrial life of the city. The peasants
led a life that was simple, natural and sincere, a life unaffected
with the artificialities of the city, a wholesome life, rugged as the
mountain peaks, stem as the faces of those simple folk, blessed with
the fruits of one's labor and the bounties of nature. I grew close
to the earth. "God's handiwork," my father called it. He showed
profound appreciation of nature and loved the out of doors. How
well I remember racing with him on an early morning for the last
few hundred feet to the top of the hills to see the first rays of
the sun as they touched one after the other the mountain peaks
across the valley while below us, bathed in the morning mist 1ilce
the fires from a thousand altars, rose the smoke above the red roofs
of the whitewashed cottages. At other times I have sat in silent
awe by my father's side on these same hilltops watching the setting
sun sink into the west. Then the stars above seem to light one by
one as if reBected in the valley haze where evening fires and candle
lights marked the villages.
Again I remember picking out the Dipper, Orion or the Pleiades.
or listening to my father's answers to· frightening questions as the
neighbors stood at night to watch the great Comet. I often wonder
how far back were the seeds sown that germinated when I fell
under the spell of Professor Brigham's unbounded enthusiasm.
But let us go back to statistics. I was born in a minister's home
and so to speak in the Methodist Church. I am the oldest of three
boys and the second in a family of five children. It was my father's
second marriage, he having lost his first wife and first child at
childbirth.
After serving as a volunteer in the Bulgarian-Serbian War,
his father entered the Theological Seminary in the Danubian
city of Svishtov "and was eventually ordained by the Method-
ist Church." Then there followed many moves from charge
to charge as was the custom of that church. One of these,
known in the family as the "great migration" is described thus:
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BACKGROUNDS 89
library that numbered in thousands of volumes, among which were
many bound volumes of periodicals and early newspapers. The
little carts with their oxen or water buffaloes filled not only the
church yard but stretched for many blocks down the main street
of the tOWD, as the process of weighing individua110ads took many
days. Among our playmates we were the center of admiration
and envy of our good luck of moving and at least for us children
it was great fun.
After telling that his mother was born across the street from
an American school in which, as she grew, she was first a pupil
and then a teacher, he continues:
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BACKGROUNDS 91
plored the ruins of the Byzantine past, the churches and the
mosques. I planned to see the golden hom, the city of minarets, the
gardens of enchantment immortalized in Loti's writings. But I
was not just another student doing the things it was customary for
new students to do, for I knew I would not see them again. This
was my only chance. I was going home, and then I was going on.
It was like a dream, yet I was conscious that I was dreaming and
I wanted nothing left undone in that dream.
I returned to Bulgaria at the end of the school year and after
a few days of relaxation I had to break the news to my folks. I bad
to tell them that I was not going back to Robert College and
that I had made up my mind to go to America.
No one was more enthusiastic than my parents, yet there were
some serious difficulties. We had no money. However, I insisted
that I was going to America and the news leaked out. In the little
town word spread and friends and neighbors wanted to know when.
"When is he going to America?" It was early summer and my im-
mediate prospects were zero. Yet I could not put off the date too
long. There was my family to be considered. I could not stay
idle for a year. If I was going to America to study, why should
I not stay in school until I was ready to depart. So I set the date
- in February. At least that was the simplest way out. February
was still some seven months away.
But my glib talk came home to roost. The heat of summer had
long since passed, then the crisp fall months slipped by one after
the other. It was already winter and again friends and neighbors
came to visit and to say good-bye for "He may be leaving any time
now." Still I did not have the slightest notion which way to tum
for money.
My father had begun to worry. Eved if we sold everything we
owned, thus depriving the whole family of future support, we
could not have raised the 21,000 leva necessary to buy passage for
one person. And even if we could have raised that sum, that would
have been too great a sacrifice and I would not accept it.
Yet time crept on. It was already the middle of January. I was
seriously worried and confined my activities to my father's study
where I kept drilling myself on elementary English and mathe-
matics.
There was one special family friend, an elderly lady, whom the
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92 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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BACKGROUNDS 93
expect to find gold in the streets of New York or Indians lurking
behind trees, but I did find as I expected I would that America was
the land of opportunity and equality.
I remember my father's conservative admonition when I left.
He said, "You have made a choice and I think a wise one. You will
undoubtedly find conditions quite different even than you imagine.
Remember that you are on your own. We wish you well and will
be happy when you make good. If you don't we will be sorry but
we will be too far away to help you." I was on my own, all right,
and there was one big question in my mind at the time. I was in
debt to the tune of 21,000 levas. Under the normal five-to-one
exchange rate, that meant forty-two hundred dollars in American
money. I could gamble that the rate of exchange would remain
seventy-ta-one, but what if the normal rate was reestablished?
I came straight to Boston. I had a heart-ta-heart talk with my
conscience and my ambitions and then I decided that I must wipe
out my debt before I did anything else. So I began looking for a
job.
It was at this time that I had the buss-boy experience. It is
an insignificant incident, based, as it will be seen, on the lack of
vocabulary, yet it illustrates how utterly inadequate my knowledge
of America was in spite of my associations with Americans and
how helplessly lost and bewildered a young man of nineteen can
be. I had no idea what kind of a job I was looking for. Somewhere
I had heard the advice that if one can get a job which gives him
free board he will be much better off, for at least he will have plenty
to eat and will not cheat his stomach in order to save.
Now since my primary purpose was to save money, I was looking
for a job in a restaurant. It was early one morning and in the
window of one of the cafeterias neatly leaning against a platter
full of fat doughnuts was the sign "Buss boy wanted." At last
I had a chance. But waitl I must have qualifications. I took stock.
I was young, healthy and willing to work, but I had never met the
word "buss" before. I pulled out the little pocket dictionary given
long ago to my mother by one of her American teachers. It car-
ried on its cover the imposing title .. 5000 Shakespearean Words,"
and I found the meaning of buss - a kiss. I moved down the
street and got a job in the Y.M.C.A. It was here that I learned how
to swim, a sport that I have enjoyed ever since. It was this Asso-
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BACKGROUNDS 95
my father had returned to him was merely a deposit in lieu of
guarantee. The court ruled to the contrary and my father was able
to cash the cheque at the highest rate of 167 Bulgarian to one
American, dollars, which more than wiped out my whole debt.
I was a free and bold man and reflected upon my own position
at the Y.M.C.A. and decided that I was underpaid. No matter
how I looked at it, I was being paid $2 a week less than the
other fellows working with me. So I went to see the man in charge.
He was the type of man whose prototype I had already met in
Robert College. He gave me a sermon on the virtues of the
Y.M.C.A. and pointed out that the existing rate of exchange if I
saved all the money earned and converted it in Bulgarian levas
I would have a millionaire's salary. Fortunately I was independent
and I quit the job.
I walked down to the basement of the next building and got a
job as dishwasher at $12 a week, but I could eat all I wanted.
I was a good dishwasher, "the best they ever had," the manager
told me, "but $12 a week was all the job could pay." Soon, however,
fortune smiled on me again.
The kitchen staff consisted of two colored cooks and a Spanish
chef of more than usual temper. Something happened one morning
and he fired both cooks af once. Then came the noon rush and
he called me over to help on the steam table, and before the middle
of the afternoon we had a new dishwasher and I was a short-order
cook dressed in one of the chef's tall white hats and working at a
new salary of $21 a week. Things moved along smoothly and the
chef offered to take me to Bermuda where he was going to work in
one of the hotels. I thought seriously of going, but finally decided
against it.
When summer approached I found a job at a small family hotel
on the Maine coast, where I worked as a handy-man seven summers
while going to school. This was a profitable and healthy summer
occupation, for I soaked in enough sunshine each summer to last
through the winter (at least the tan did). But this was the intro-
duction to the rugged New England and I learned to love it in all
its many moods. The brilliant sun-bathed sandy coves, the rocky
cliffs, the smooth white sand that stretches for miles, the tangy
spray of salt water, the moonlit waters in the cove splashing over
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BACKGROUNDS 97
weight of the child. The only alternative was to swim through
the white water on the reef - and this he did. 1 have always
felt that the quality in this rescue that made it, as he himself
will tell us, "the best rescue of the year" (for the entire coun-
try if 1 remember rightly), was the fact that when they were
safe on shore it was found that the pupil had not a scratch
upon him, while the teacher, who had taken on his own body
the full force of the surf pounding on the reef, was taken to
a hospital.
Here then, to resume his story even including the missing
eight words, in parenthesis: "(I enjoyed it and was pleased
when later) The American Red Cross presented me with their
highest award - a medal with two bars 'for service' and a bar
'for rescue.' "
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CHAPTER V
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COLLEGE AND UNIVEllSlTY 99
feature that between omitting altogether the many generous
characterizations, and spreading them all on the record of the
men who make them, it seems best to put in a few unsigned
near the end of the chapter including earlier only such mention
as is necessary for the continuity of the story.
The first story of college days is that of Ernest B. Benson,
who has for many years been a teacher and administrative
officer in a well known private school. He writes:
My life previous to the years at the College of Liberal Arb fol-
lowed an unexciting pattern. It was the sort common to many
boys who were born to immigrant families of limited meaDS. In a
background of extremely simple living I was born in Dorchester,
Massachusetts, to parents who were both natives of Sweden. I was
educated in the public schools of Dorchester and graduated first
in my class at high school. Consistently studious, I was always
interested in the reason for the absence of abenatioDS in the
quality of my school performance. I think that the situation was
partially explained by the nature of my background. In an at-
mosphere of frugality, consistent labor, and limited means, it was
not surprising that I viewed life rather seriously. Opportunities for
education were not to be wasted. A respect for education and for
educated people inculcated in Sweden into my aunt (in whose
family I was reared from infancy) and into my father, was con-
tinually instilled in me.
The idea of attending Boston University was being implanted
in me early. Walter Moberg, a senior at Dorchester High School
when I was a freshman, entered the College of Liberal Arb after
outstanding accomplishments at high school, and there became a
Buck Scholar. During my high school period and during my first
year at college I was making an attempt to build up my financial
reserves to defray some of my college expenses by working summers
and on week ends during the school year. I worked as a store clerk
and also in catering jobs. The years at the College of Liberal Arb
were exciting years of intellectual awakening. I entered in the
faD of 1929, received my A.B. in 1933 and my A.M. in 1934. I was
elected to Phi Beta Kappa and chosen as valedictorian of my class.
I felt particular pride in graduating with distinction in biology and
honors in my general curriculum.
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COLLEGE AND UNlVEIlSITY 101
w. E. Gregory, a fellow student. He was then dean at Culver
Military Academy, Culver, Indiana. Since that time he has be-
come superintendent of the schoo1. In the early part of 1936 he
approached me with the idea of urging me to come to Culver to
organize and equip the biology department and to develop a new
course in biology. I found it too difficult to refuse the opportunity
offered me in spite of my reluctance to leave the East and public
school work.
After six years of regular teaching at Culver, I turned toward
administrative work at the same institution. In the fall of 1914 I
was placed in charge of one section of the school as counselor and
administrative head of the Culver Battery, a group of 155 cadets.
This position entailed counseling students on academic and general
problems, supervision of the dormitories housing the organization,
supervision of leadership training, and general administrative work.
The Battery really constitutes a small school within the larger
academy. Working with me is a staff of other members of the fac-
ulty with special advisory, athletic, and military responsibilities.
I occupy this same position at the present time.
The next of the men, Warren R. Reid, tells his story as
follows:
Our genealogical records go back only one generation. Before
that all is in the realm of myth. My father's parents came from
the north of Ireland. My mother was born in England. My father
was the second child in a family of six, and the first of them to be
born in this country. Both families settled in Lowell, Massachu-
setts, then still famous for its whirling spindles. My mother worked
in the cotton mills until her marriage. My father tried his hand
at many trades. His one consuming interest was in music, and it
was through this that he met my mother. Saving what he could
of his earnings he studied voice and choral singing. For many
years he was well known as a church singer in Lowell. The little
additional money he was able to earn from this source would, under
ordinary conditions, have seen us through in modest comfort. But
unfortunately my mother was never well after my birth. After
spending the greater part of nine years in hospitals she died. I re-
mained an only child except for a half-brother born when 1 was
considerably older.
,"
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COLLEGE AND UNlVERSlTY 103
and philosophical background in addition to a thorough grounding
in the subject itself. There was evidence of planning behind and
integration in the teaching of even the most apparently unrelated
disciplines. And the quality of the teaching was better than any-
thing I have experienced since. It did not tend to lose itself in
ivory towers. It was crisp, living, and real. Classes were often large,
but I never found an instructor too busy to spend considerable
time in discussion with individual students.
In fact it was the quality of the teaching at Boston University
which inspired me, early in my second year, with a desire to be-
come a teacher. After wrestling with an urge in the direction of
the higher mathematics, I settled on history as my chosen field,
and it was my hope that some day I might be able to pass on to
students of my own something of the feeling for the cultmal de-
velopment of western civilization that my own instructors were
developing in me.
I was working reasonably hard and I knew that my grades were
not unsatisfactory, but I had no idea that they were higher than
those of any other man in the freshman class; I learned that they
were in May, 1926, when I was awarded a prize. This prompted
me to apply for a scholarship to help me in my sophomore year,
and my continued academic success encouraged me to apply in
1927 for a Professor Augustus Howe Buck Scholarship. Financial
problems remained difficult until I was made a beneficiary of this
Fund. Summer work in a Lowell printing plant would not alone
have enabled me to continue my education, and it is doubtful if
my health, which was never very good, would have permitted me
both to study and to hold down a job during the winter months.
About the social side of college life in Boston during the later
twenties there is much that is worthy of recording. Considerable
bas been written, most of it unfavorable, regarding colleges, like
the College of Liberal Arts, where a great many of the students
commuted hom their homes daily. It was said that such colleges
were little better than glorified high schools, and that their students
were largely deprived of the benefits which may be derived from
university life as that life is understood at Oxford, for example.
Many of us were inclined to believe these gloomy theories at the
time, but as I look back on the period I am sure that the social side
of college life at the College of Liberal Arts was in no way inferior
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COLLEGE AND UNIVEllSITY 105
My first full-time research job was rather unusual. Financed
by the Rockefeller Foundation operating through the University
of Alaska I spent two years in Washington, D. C., cataloging and
indexing the records pertaining to Alaska which were located in
the Library of Congress, the Department of the Interior and the
National Archives. I found the work interesting and suited to my
temperament. Gradually my interest changed from mediaeval Eng-
lish history - the field of my dissertation - to American history
and political science, particularly the latter. My contacts with the
staff of the National Archives led to a permanent appointment in
that institution in 1941, and I am still happily and usefully em-
ployed there.
If the future works out as I now hope it will, I will remain in
Washington and finish raising a family of three boys, aged thir-
teen years, two years, and six months. I like archival work; it
makes full use of my training at Boston University and at Yale, yet
it does not require much in the way of oral expression in front of
large groups. I have many pleasant contacts with representatives of
various Government agencies, but nothing in the nature of class-
room work. My fondest project for the immediate future is the
preparation for publication of a codification of all Presidential
documents. At present these exist in the form of two numbered
series, largely unpublished, of Proclamations dating back to 1791
and of Executive Orders dating back to 1862. No attempt at
codification has ever been made. One order amends another, as
amended by still others, in such a way that long and painful re-
search is now necessary in order to determine the status of the
text of any given order. I now believe that such a codification can
be produced in connection with the 1948 edition of the Code of
Federal Regulations, a publication which will run to more than
twenty volumes and on which I am now serving as associate editor.
The next man writes in the third person. Here is his story:
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106 A CBlt.ONlCLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
had enlisted in his teens in the Union forces of the Civil War, and
after participating in several battles, was shipped home as hope-
lessly ill. He nevertheless recovered; married Ellen Batchelder,
then farmed for more than fifty years in the town of Harvard. His
son, John Alden Cleaves, was one of his family of three boys and
a girl.
Alden, son of John Alden Cleaves, finished the eight grades of
the public grammar school in seven years, omitting the sixth grade,
and graduating in 1923 just before he was thirteen years old. At
Bromfield School, which served as Harvard's high school, he won
an award for highest scholarship in competition with the thirty
students who attended. His graduating class included two girls
and two other young men.
During these years from 1910 to 1927 the first World War with
its subsequent inflation, starvation in Europe, depression and boom
in the United States, had perhaps a minor but unmistakable effect
on the youth. His father, a carpenter in the country, was employed
intermittently with inevitable winter lay-offs that kept the family
budget meager, taught the boy a high value of a dollar, and clarified
for him the relationship between money and food. Earning his
first money during summers at manual labor with the town road
repair crew further impressed him with the value of the $310 be
received for each eight-hour day of hard labor.
His mother, a former grade school teacher, his high school prin-
cipal, and his own observations so convinced him of the value of
higher education, that his decision to secure a college education
(at Boston University) and to carry on in the science of physics
was a serious and determined one. He entered the College of
Liberal Arts of Boston University in the faIl of 1927 on the merit
of a transcript of his high sch.ool record. In order to attend a ten
o'clock class he rose at 6:45 A.M. and spent nearly four hours a day
commuting forty miles each way to college classes. A student
ticket amounted to about twenty-five cents a day.
His high school principal had kindly warned him not to be
disappointed if he were not in the top scholastic bracket of his
class at college, but the determined efforts of the young man did
not lead to such disappointment. A partial tuition scholarship
was awarded him at the end of the first semester and others fol-
lowed during freshman and sophomore years. Then a Professor
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 107
Augustus Howe Buck award financed all his expenses for living in
Boston and attending college. From then on his only marks were
A's with some pluses and minuses included for variety. His life
at a fraternity house was enjoyable, and the contacts with fraternity
brothers were valuable. College Choir and University Chorus were
outlets for his voice talent. He was also active in the Young Men's
Christian Association and was one year president of the Mathe-
matics Club.
He was awarded the A.B. degree in 1931 with honor, and with
distinction in the field of physics, and at that time had twelve
hours' credit in the Boston University Graduate School. Planning
to teach science, he continued work for the A.M. degree, taking
two courses in the Harvard Gmduate School, and receiving the
A.M. from Boston University in 1932.
The prospect of a good teaching position seemed remote in
those depression days, hence he accepted a teaching fellowship
at Yale that conferred faculty status, required instructing of physics
laboratory classes, and permitted two-thirds credit for another year
of graduate study in physics. The Yale fellowship was not renewed
in 1933, but a similar offer at Duke University in Durham, North
Carolina, was accepted. Further graduate study and instructing
was continued there until June, 1935. There being question as to
the merit of results of his research at that time, decision was made
to secure a teaching position, and he taught for the following three
years.
Arrangements were made to return to Duke University Gmduate
School in 1938, where he worked on a new research project in
infra-red spectroscopy. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree there in
1939.
Since that time Dr. Cleaves bas been employed in aero-
nautical research, first at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Lab-
oratory at Langley Field, Virginia, and later at the Flight
Propulsion Research Laboratory to which he went when it
was established at Cleveland in 1942 by the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics.
In October, 19%, Dr. Cleaves was made head of the Analyti-
cal Chemistry Section, a promotion which increased his supervisory
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 109
poor church, all unthinkingly, did much for the "self-sufficient"
youth of our family.
The awesome first semester of college was a pleasure. If Boston
University College of Liberal Arts were a criterion, everyone should
have at least one year of college. What a transitionl A high school
boy to a college man - realizing for the first time how little he
mew, how small he wasl How did the University know I needed
funds? Some place there was a kindly eye. A small scholarship
made possible another semester. By this time the conviction was
growing that man can do anything if he really wants to - had I
not memorized "As longing molds in clay, so life carves in the
marble real."?
But the candle was burning on both ends in the second year.
Up with difficulty at 8:30, to make the nine o'clock class late by
street car. Off to work at 3:30 in the afternoon, straightening fine
needles 'til after midnight under glaring lights. Home by 1:00
A.M., setting aside the books begrudgingly at 2:30. Then up again
with difficulty and all over again. Meals, when, where and if con·
venient. Not'til I found a good wife some years later did I get
over the effects of thatl When hailed on the street by that wonder-
ful old Sunday School teacher to give an Epworth League young
people's church talle, it now became: "man can do anything if he
just doesn't get tired." Never a budding author, I was nevertheless
not surprised to obtain an "A" on my "research thesis" for an
English course. I wrote on the subject, ''The disadvantages of
having to work your way through college." The award of the Pro-
fessor Augustus Howe Buck scholarship indeed made a momentous
day.
I think of Boston University with the fondest recollections, of
times before as well as after the scholarship award. If, before the
award, I had no time for extra-curricular activities (in the evenings) ,
I at least had my days at the college. The main staircase and the
halls surrounding it, the pillars and checkered floor remain a source
of particular attachment. Our gatherings there for songs or talks,
with the Dean and professors gathered with the students on the
second floor, bring fond memories and a feeling of hominess.
With the scholarship, college life for me became a song. College
Choir, Men's Glee Club, University Chorus and the German (sing)
Club with that wonderful old gentleman of unbelievably diverse
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COLLEGE AND UNIVEllSITY 111
Ions of broth. We of the "home &ont" had our problems but the
reports of the cures resulting &om the product of our efforts were
reward indeed.
Soon after came the assignment as department head in cluarge of
"Antibiotic Extraction and Purification" which now included the
infancy of yet another great contribution, streptomycin. The de-
velopment and industrial growth of this product which like peni-
cillin "just couldn't be produced commercially" again challenged
science.
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 113
a lot of good practical philosophy. I remember Professor Aurelio's
telling us we never have time to do all the things we want to-
we must choose. I remember Tom Mariner and myself doing
page after page of integration problems in calculus and then when
the test came being shellacked by a smart girl from Vermont. I
remember the math club winter sports party where I nearly broIce
my leg trying to talce a tree along with me on a toboggan ride. I re-
member trying to locate the constellations from the roof of the
College of Liberal Arts building. Only the brightest could over-
come the haze of Boston's night lights. I remember Professor
Taylor's telling us the college authorities would permit him to give
only 10 per cent of his class A's. He would like to give many more
but those were the orders - and the class became busy computing,
guessing, and hoping.
After four years at Boston University, I went to - - - - -
for my M.A. Probably just to show them they'd have to admit me
this time. They did, and I think I made a good record in their
Graduate School. Now that I am to teach in Wellesley High
School, convenient to Boston, I am thinlcing of further study.
Perhaps I can fulfill the ambition to hold a Ph.D.
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 117
tions together, make it seem natuIal that lasting friendships were
made then.
Since I seem to be making a point of my increased activities at
Illinois compared to my relative inertness in Boston, I wonder if I
shouldn't hasten to explain that I've lost no affection for Boston
in the process. Perhaps I should explain it this way. I am deeply
interested in the improvement of the facilities, the campus, the
buildings, et cetera, at Boston, although I shall probably never re-
turn to New England myself. I can't say I have the same concern
for Illinois since the school is like a tempora~ employer to me.
Or to express it still another way. I wouldn t have missed my
graduation in 1939 for any reason. Yet practically all of us in my
group at Illinois celebrated our finals, and received our sheepskins
by mail. This is probably an odd way of expressing devotion to the
cause of one's alma mater; if it is unique, you as an editor may be
interested.
For the sake of the record, I might add that I worked two years
as a special research assistant in charge of high pressure equipment
and reactions and for one year was on a University Fellowship.
Because of shortages, this time war-inspired, I was drafted into
teaching duties during that last year.
Kenneth R. Whiting was bom in Somerville, Massachu-
setts, in February of 1913. His family moved so frequently
in the years following that he now finds early memories "ex-
tremely blurred." At fifteen he finished junior high school and
with that his education seemed to be ended. The economic
state of the family obliged him to go to work; and in the next
five years he held in succession five different jobs, in all of
which his hands performed a more important part than his
bead. He says:
These occupations raised little enthusiasm in my young soul.
I tried to supplement my meagre education by various unsatisfac-
tory expedients such as night school, correspondence courses, and
unguided but extensive reading on my owo.
This quiet, thougbtful young man was of the climbing type.
When general economic conditions deteriorated and wages
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 119
pleasantest memories I have are discussions with two friends, one
a Buck Scholar, and the quiet bull sessions at fraternity.
Due to the generosity of the Fund I was able to go to the Uni-
versity of California at Los Angeles to do graduate work in Latin-
American history. Here I studied under a Buck Scholar, Professor
Roland Hussey. Thus the Buck Fund's influence on my college
life had completed a full circle. I came to Boston University largely
because of the influence of a Buck Scholar; my best friend in col-
lege was a Buck Scholar; and the cause of my going to the Univer-
sity of California at Los Angeles was a Buck Scholar.
In my second year at the University of California, I was made a
teaching assistant in history. All seemed to be clear going for the
attainment of my PhD. wh.en the war came in December, '41.
Nothing would do but that I must dash off on my white charger
to save our land from the invader.
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 121
Fortunately the Committee on Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Scholars now considered me a reasonable risk, and offered me a
tuition scholarship for the second semester of my junior year. With
that news, I took the boat to New York City after the mid-year
examinations were over and spent a restful week end at the Sloane
House (Y.M.CA.), visiting museums and art exhibitions.
The summer between the junior and senior years was spent
chauffeuring. It was a pleasant change to drive a new Buick con-
vertible sedan around New England, but the insight into the
degradations of a wealthy family escaping frustrations by alco-
holism served to arouse disgust for the well-to-do. My senior year
was the best. For the first time I began to appreciate the satisfac-
tion that can be derived from teaching and investigative activity.
The problem of choosing a medical school was comparable to
being accepted by one. I applied for admission to the medical
schools of Boston University, Harvard University and the Univer-
sity of Rochester. In the course of time I was accepted by all
three. Investing in a trip to Rochester, I visited the medical school
and talked with the Dean. He encouraged me to consider coming
there, which I did when he offered me a tuition scholarship for the
first year. Then the Committee on Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Scholars provided me with the funds to meet my living expenses
and my graduate career was assured. Without the help of the
Fund I would not have finished college as I did, and with that help
I was started on my professional career.
The summer of 1938 was unique. Dr. Leland Wyman, then
of the Boston University School of Medicine, in continuation of the
former year's work on the ethnology of the Navajo Indians, wanted
a field assistant to accompany him on his investigations that sum-
mer. He was advised to approach me, and thereafter he quickly
aroused my interest. With my savings of $60 and an equal
stipend from the Fund, I joined him for the summer. We drove
to the Southwest by a leisurely route through the southern states,
sightseeing all the way. After we reached New Mexico we camped
in the open, cooked our meals over the fire usually made of fra-
grant smokeless juniper, and slept in a bed roll on the ground.
Driving through isolated Mexican villages, National Parks and
Monuments, crossing the Rio Grande, stopping at Albuquerque,
we gradually made our way towards Gallup at the western border
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122 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 123
medical knowledge to a larger number of the Indians. It gave me
a perspective that could not have been obtained otherwise.
Medical school started in September, 1938. The first impression
of school was that of a new and great adventure. A classmate from
Ohio and I engaged a room about a mile from school- a pleasant
walk across the bridge over the Genesee River. We were different
in all ways. He was short, blond, extrovertive - brilliant enough
to grasp reading matter in a glance but he spent most of his time
building model airplanes and going to the movies. He barely
graduated. It is interesting to recall the other seven students in
our anatomy dissecting room, for we spent innumerable hours to-
gether over our two cadavers. One, a former symphony musician,
failed the first year. Three others besides myself have entered aca-
demic medicine, two are still in training after the war, and one is
in practice.
The third year of medical school, the most important of all four,
involved long hours of work examining patients, doing laboratory
work, and attending rounds and clinics. By the end of two weeks
it was clearly apparent that something was wrong for I had gotten
off to a bad start, could not keep up with the schedule, and felt
poorly. My adviser quickly discovered the cause of my difficulty-
minimal but spreading pulmonary tuberculosis. That answer was
simultaneously a cause of anguish and afforded me relief to know
there was a basis for my changed behavior and lack of drive. Two
weeks later I was a bed patient in lola Sanatorium. For the first
month I slept and ate, and did little else. After that I began to
revive and read as I had never read before - a mixture of medical
literature, novels, short stories, et cetera, and the newspaper
accounts of the outbreak of the war resulting from the attack
at Pearl Harbor. Along with the rest of my classmates, I received
a note from the Army asking me to obtain a commission pending
graduation. It was not pleasant to be a bed patient when I was
aware of my duty, but tuberculosis patients were not wanted by
the Armed Forces.
At the end of nine months, I resumed my medical studies as a
third-year student - clinical clerk. By that time, my tuberculosis
was sufficiently healed to permit part-time work, but at the same
time the accelerated program was initiated because of the shortage
of doctors during the war. I was asked to accept a student fellow-
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 125
this time built up a notion of the glorious West. Anyhow, I made
up my mind to try my luck in that direction. Still I felt that I
could not go without some documentation of my work at Boston
University. Hence I appeared in the registrar's office with a re-
quest for a transcript of my record. One of the young ladies re-
ferred me to Mr. Taylor (now Dean). We spoke two or three
sentences and then he asked me: "If you had the money to con-
tinue would you drop out of College at this time?" "Of course
not." "Then go to class as usual and let me see what I can do in
a few days." I still think that Mr. Taylor saw right down to the
bottom of that failure in English.
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 127
But the loan-aid was comparatively little to the job-aid which
this association made possible. Mr. Mackay employed me for four
summers at the Constitution Wharf Warehouse and here, not
only the earnings but the "learnings" in contacts with run-{)f-the-
mill, varied, American laborers were immense. By and large they
were good sports who never could quite believe or understand my
motives in refusing to play poker or rummy for "small stakes" with
them at noon.
In another counsellor of the Rotary Club, Mr. Ulysses S. Harris
of the Motor Mart Garage, I found a Christian businessman whose
business practices testified to his convictions, a Christian father, a
Christian husband, and a Christian churchman. I became another
member of the little family which included two boys; it was always
nice to go there for supper and for the evening, since the atmos-
phere of the home was a testimony to Christian love. When I,
with a far from mature idealism, opened up on almost any sub-
ject (I) from theology to social questions, I found a man-{)f-the-
world Christian, fighting the battle from within the fray, to help
me see phases which only such a one could bring to light. Mr.
Harris had learned the bitter lessons of uncompromising loyalty
to principle and of compromise when convenience and not prin-
ciple was involved. Thus, those years when I worked at the switch-
board of the Motor Mart, or stood directing traffic at the top of
the second floor ramp (reviewing German and French words or a
biological classification) from early morning to late Saturday eve-
nings, were years when financial aid and spiritual aid complemented
each other.
It was in my junior year that I became a beneficiary of the
Buck Fund. With this help much tension was removed and I
settled down to more ranging work and to broader contacts and
friendships with my fellow students. I was enabled to accept the
bid of a fraternity, to spend more time on extra-curricular activities
such as the Philosophy Club (Neo-Alchemist) and the Y.M.CA.
and, best of all, to go to the Presidents' Training School at Union
Theological Seminary in the summer of 1930 (I had been elected
president of the "Y" for 1931). In those six weeks I not only got
to know something of New York but I met a variety of students
and teachers for whom religion as Jesus saw it and the world as it
needed to feel the impact of his teaching were part of one concern.
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For the first time in my life, conditions for study were ideal.
Imagine having two rooms as my "digs," one for sleep and the
other for study before a cozy fireplace. With family concerns left
behind of necessity, with the time for odd jobs being absorbed by
rowing on the Cam and by teas in my rooms or in the studies of
other graduate and undergraduate students, with lectures almost
completely a matter of my own wish, and with the painstalcing
interest of Dr. F. R. Tennant, why shouldn't the incubations
of the past four years especially end up in a dissertation which was
finally published as The Empirical Argument for God in Late
British Thought (Harvard Press, 1938)? To go to Dr. Ten-
nant's home of a Sunday morning and spend an hour or so by his
fireplace discussing the chapter which I had submitted to him in
the middle of the week - these were experiences that warm one's
memories.
That year abroad meant six mornings at the Louvre (during a
Christmas holiday) and ten weeks, at least, in the British Museum,
and an inspiring fortnight in the English Lake District, during
which I spoke to no more than a handful of people and became
aware as I never had been before of the God in Nature. In that
one year of contrast to everything I had known, practically, there
was time to develop perspective and begin to see more clearly
one's own objectives and the task ahead.
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 129
Out of all this came much more than his right to add the
letters Ph.D. at the end of his name.
The following details of the story of the undergraduate and
graduate study of Albert Morris, now Professor of Sociology
at his Alma Mater, hardly bear out his statement that during
his four years at the College of Liberal Arts he was "happily
active in many enterprises, but made no contribution of spe-
cial note to any of them."
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Sleeper Hall and asked, "Is Mr. Albert Morris, freshman, here?
Will he come to the platform?" I did, in embarrassed wonder.
"I wanted to see what you looked like," said he. "Your examination
is the best in the class, and perhaps the best I have ever read in
this course. May I congratulate you." And he shook my hand.
In these days of educational counsel and vocational guidance I
marvel that anyone could bump along as I did and arrive at any
satisfactory spot. I didn't come to college in order to achieve some
more distant end. I just wanted to go to college. The fun of intel-
lectual exploration was an end in itself. Journalism interested
me - and I could always go back to the steel business. I majored
in sociology because I liked it and because Professor Groves was
an effective teacher. I never thought of the vocational possibilities
of the subject and never inquired about them.
At the beginning of the second semester of my senior year, Pro-
fessor Groves called me to his office, dropped a pile of course cards
on the desk and said, "You know what this means." I said I did
not. "It means I must have help." So in my senior year I took
over the Elements of Sociology course for discussion twice a week.
I took it because he asked me to and because it was another good
way to add to my income. I didn't think about the honor of it.
There were no qualms as to whether I could do it satisfactorily, and
I had no thought of a teaching career. The actual experience was
a different thing. It excited me as few things had before. It was
sheer pleasure - and one could earn a living at it. I was going
to be a teacher. (March, 1925.) There was the possibility of my
obtaining a Master's degree and of service as an instructor. No
one urged upon me the desirability of a Ph.D. degree nor suggested
that I obtain one. It did not occur to me that the Fund would
finance me that far and I planned to get married. In 1926 I re-
ceived my A.M. degree from Boston University, and in August of
that year I was married. For two more years I studied in the
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and taught part-
time at Boston University.
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 131
seem not able to alter much. And when the ending comes to
one who, because of youth, has had little or no active life, the
sorrow of those who are left is but the greater. Thirty years is a
long time for any group to remain unbroken. Again and again
that second irrevocable event has come to a Fund man at his
studies. Joseph Sullivan and Stephen Mfoafo met it while stu·
dents at the College of Liberal Arts. Those of the earlier day
remember them well. But because of the passing of time it has
become difficult to find material from which to reconstruct
their life stories.
Sullivan's name has already been met. When Albert Morris
was settling down to become a cog in industry or business, it
was "Joe" Sullivan who helped to tum him again to study. In
writing of the matter, Professor Morris says, "He had been
one of my good friends and he talked to me about Boston
University and the Buck Fund." Those who know something
of the results of that talk may well believe that Joseph Sullivan
did not live in vain. Later Professor Morris added the fol·
lowing:
His heart ailment Ieept Joseph from active participation in the
sports which most of us enjoyed outside school. He studied and
walked and talked. He was modest, friendly, and kind. In high
school he spent much time helping students who were less capable
of understanding their lesson assignment than he. His chief
extra-curricular activity was contributing to the high school year
boole. Joseph had a well developed and subtle sense of humor. He
was a good and faithful member of his church. I think all who
knew him respected his intelligence, his fine moral standards, and
his sincere interest in helping others.
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 133
I visited Steve's quarters in Boston and there met some extraordi-
nary people who all loved Steve. There was a little Jamaican with
a British accent and a white wife. There was also Xabe, the Hot-
tentot. And finally a beautiful native African woman, cafe au lait,
who gave lectures in native costumes - flowing robes such as Hindu
women wear.
Steve got into a weakened condition by having insufficient food.
This led to tuberculosis. If his pride bad not prevented his making
his straits known to the committee· or others of his friends he
might be alive today. I did not know this until he told me at
Rutland - too late. I was the only white person at the grave. He
was a fine man, and his going was a great loss, especially to his
people to whom he planned to return as a physician.
"
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 135
illcidentally, and the ones given find a place here by chance,
not by choice.
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 137
It was odd that such opposites as Wilm and Perrin should share
a common office. Never can I forget the day when Professor Wilm
apologetically brought some of his Harvard friends into their old
building and to his office, there to find Professor Perrin frying an
egg on an electric plate set atop an orange crate. We learned of
it from Wilm himself, who could not conceal his distress that
Perrin added insult to injury by inviting Wilm and his friends to
stop and share the meal.
I cannot adequately express in words my appreciation for what
the Donor of the Fund has made it possible for me to do, nor can I
explain how very real has been the inspiration which I have gath-
ered from the sense of integrity and downright honesty which I
have always felt to be inherent in the personalities of the men
who constitute the Committee on Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Scholars. I can only promise anew and with deep sincerity to keep
the faith and to stand ready to serve the Fund and its administra-
tors whenever the opportunity arises.
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 141
was rough work, and it put me while young into contact with defi-
nitely tough men, but the work did not hurt me and I do not think
that the contacts did. Although much of my time must have been
taken up by school and by these part-time jobs, I still had plenty to
do with games and sports and recreations.
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list of other books of that type, some of them pretty heavy going
for a seventeen- to nineteen-year-old. Among some that I recall
were Herbert Spencer's First Principles of Philosophy, Darwin's
Origin of Species, the well known works on political theory by
John Locke and Rousseau, and an assortment of "literary" master-
pieces ranging from Montaigne's essays and Boswell's Life of John-
son to the Greek dramatists. This reading was consciously an
effort to continue my education, since I regretted the fact that I
could not afford college. & I remember it, while in my senior
year in high school I had taken some of the examinations for
M.I.T., as was then permitted.
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 143
to go back to my work as to go to college. Moreover, the one
thing of which we had plenty in the army was time for detached
thinking. As I now recall it I finally decided in October or Novem-
ber, 1918, while sitting in a foxhole north of Verdun idly gazing
at the stars, that I would make the break and start to college.
He finally decided on Boston University, largely because
his brother Warren was a student there. He says:
I have never regretted the chance that brought that decision,
though many people in 1919 might have doubted its wisdom.
Of course Boston University was well known in Methodist circles,
and I must have heard the name without consciously noting it, but
it is absolutely true that, living only seven miles away, I had no
consciousness that I had ever heard of the place when Warren de-
cided to go there in 1916.
Except for disabled veterans, in 1919 there were no educational
allowances of any kind, and though the 1918 veterans were grasping
enough, I can remember no one who ever wept about the fact
that in a year and a half overseas I had had only one day's leave and
was not receiving terminal pay for that sacrifice. The grateful
people had given us a discharge bonus, I believe, of $60, which
was almost enough for a first outfit of clothes, and the State of
Massachusetts came through with $100.
From my work before the war and an allotment home during
the war I had, as I recall, saved about $600. This must just
about have covered tuition in my first two years. I believe it was
in !Dy junior year that I began to receive help from the Professor
Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund. I therefore held a great
variety of jobs and lived in a manner that probably would have
killed anybody but a man who was young and had been tough
enough to survive two winters in French billets and a year and a
half of Army food.
Lack of space forces us to omit the details of the great variety
of jobs, from teaching Latin and thereby learning more of it
than he did in high school, to digging post-holes. Continuing,
he tells us:
In spite of all my work, I felt the pinch of poverty more than
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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 145
fore. Incidentally, I spent far more time in the libIaI}' than I
really needed to, simply browsing around or making notes on
materials for which I then had no immediate use.
Since the First World War I have spent two years in Europe,
1925-1926, and 1930-1931. Those have been for study, especially
in Spain, FIanCe, and England, but have included some time in
most countries of western Europe and North Africa. Though be-
cause of my study needs I have put in more time in Spain than
anywhere else, I realized suddenly in 1930 that I felt most and
completely at home in FIance. Whether that is a natuIal affinity
for a New Englander I am somewhat doubtful. I was well ac-
quainted with a Spanish "gentleman" who was a member of the
royal court in 1930 and 1931, and as a result had many experiences
with a type of life which it may never be possible to repeat.
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CHAPTER VI
T rather, of theoffers
HIS CHAPTER a chance to take account of stock - or
men. Few of them who graduated from col-
lege by 1940 have failed to belong under the chapter heading
for at least a part of their lives and a good majority have made
teaching their life work. Men such as these tend to speak little
of the things that mean most to them. This circumstance
together with the fact that this is a book about men rules out
any extended consideration of a very important element in
their lives - their immediate families.
Before starting the ordered list, the story of Dr. Roland
Hussey, Professor of Latin-American History at the University
of California at Los Angeles, is to be continued.
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 147
family within the United States or of local sightseeing while in
foreign lands, but even in those cases I never travel without first
becoming acquainted with the history of the country, and I take
advantage of every opportunity to see historically interesting places
of which I have previously only read. In 1934, five of us from the
faculty took a two weeks' hike in the Hi&h Sierra of California,
packing our own burros (with the diamond hitcb, and no catas-
trophes). We often plan to repeat - but always at some future
time that has never come.
Music is overwhelmingly my greatest "outside interest." I was
born with a voice which would, I can agree, have caused no jealousy
to Caruso or Chaliapin, but which certainly was far above the
average. I never needed lessons to "free" it from the strain and
tightness heard in many otherwise good singers, and I could (and
for that matter still can) produce a tone of recognizable pitch for
more than three octaves. A good voice no more makes a great
singer than ownership of a Stradivarius makes a great violinist, but
at least it's no handicap. In my early home life, music was the
only one of the fine arts which received any recognition. Both
Mother and Father were good amateur pianists and Father had
sung in a big Boston church in his youth and had sometimes substi-
tuted at the church organ in Milford. We had a rather unusual
parlor organ, which had been built by Estey for the Chicago Ex-
position of 1893, intended apparently for the lodge room of some
natemal order. I cannot remember the time when I did not hear
fairly good music in the house, although it was mostly either
"sacred" or "light classic," rather than the heavier and more formal
orchestral music to which I was first introduced in any large degree
while in college.
Throughout my college days I sang in the Boston University
Glee Club, in the College of Liberal Arts Choir, and for Professor
John P. Marshall in the choir of First Church in Boston. I con-
tinued the latter singing while doing graduate work at Harvard.
The money was useful to me, but I should have done it for nothing
had that been necessary.
While I was in college, Professor Curl, who was acquainted with
many people in the music and literary world of Boston, introduced
me to Philip Hale, and I became his assistant. Hale was music
critic for the Boston Herald and most people would agree that he
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148 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
was the music critic of the United States. He was a gruff but
kindly and fascinating man. There was no pay, but lots of satisfac-
tion to my self-esteem, and I heard vast quantities of the best
music, and often of the most modem music, being performed in
the United States.
Book collecting is either a hobby or a part of my scholarly life,
according to the viewpoint. I have a genuine esthetic and/or
hobbyist interest in bibliophily, but carry on that side of booklore
largely vicariously. That is, in courses on bibliography for gradu-
ate students I try to inculcate a taste for rare and finely printed
books, and I am always on the lookout for such items for the
William Andrews Clark Library of the University of California
at Los Angeles and I pursue them for my own knowledge in ex-
hibitions and otherwise in the great libraries of the United States.
Naturally, most of my collecfing is in the field of American history
with emphasis upon the history of the Caribbean and on the life
and institutions of the Spanish-American colonies.
My ambition is mainly to be a better teacher than I have been
and to leave what influence I can upon my students. I shall
write and travel so far as my time and funds permit. Writing is
the only thing for which I have any specific plans.
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 149
plan the work for approximately eight volumes but realize that I
shall be fortunate if I complete four, or perhaps five, which will
take me somewhere into the eighteenth century.
Throughout the rest of this chapter, and the next, the order
of names is determined by the order in which the men entered
the University. Space is here given to every man who on re-
quest has supplied a life story.
ARTBUll NORMAN SHARP
A.B., 1919; A.M., Harvard, 1920
Though his name is the first on the list, his was not the first
appointment. It was the first graduate appointment. The con-
dition that men must be appointed by the middle of their
junior year in the College of Liberal Arts was a late introduc-
tion in the Deed of Gift. The committee was anxious to have
the Fund aiding all grades as early as possible, and when Mr.
Sharp graduated he was appointed Fellow of the Fund for
two years, from 1919 to 1921. He studied during this period
at Harvard and at the Sorbonne in Paris.
His father, who came to this country from England, was
"converted to Methodism by Peter Cartwright," and as one
result, Sharp tells us:
It was a busy Methodist parsonage in which I grew up. Seldom
did we sit down to table alone. The latchstring was always out.
We, as children, were early brought into contact with the high and
the low, and our lives and understanding made the richer for it.
What we lost by not having our roots firmly planted in the life of
one community which could be called home was more than offset
by the breadth of experience we acquired.
I was the youngest of four. Father's health broke from over-
work. He never regained his strength and died fifteen years later
after a long, painful illness. Because of his illness, it was necessary
for me to work and pay for a large part of my education, as well as
to help support our mother. As I look back upon my early ex-
perience and think of our home life, of the selBess service of my
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 151
For many years we had regular family devotions; and we were
always taught to practice the Christian virtues in our daily life.
This religious atmosphere was united with that strict authoritarian-
ism which was once prevalent in New England families and is now
considered unwise: Father demanded and received respect and im-
mediate obedience. Mother's domination stemmed rather from love.
After eight years of schooling in the local village, I went to
Chelmsford for the ninth grade and for the high school course,
which I terminated in June, 1916, as class valedictorian. My
French teacher, to whom I shall always be most grateful, urged me
to go to college and strongly recommended Boston University,
- but how afford a college education? My father, whose small
salary as station agent was inadequate to feed, clothe, and edu-
cate nine children, generously offered to assist me as much as
possible. Thus encouraged I went to Boston University to take
the numerous entrance examinations.
During my freshman year at the College of Liberal Arts I econo-
mized by going home week ends, often arriving with only a few
pennies in my pocket. Here I earned enough money for the follow-
ing week by substituting for my father at the station or by doing
sundry jobs (the preparation for Monday's classes was sandwiched
in somehow). A distant aged relative advanced me intermittently
for a few months varying sums of money. These were appreciated
yet accepted reluctantly because they were offered somewhat as
charity and were always accompanied by strong advice or rebukes;
for example, I should institute a detailed system for keeping my
financial accounts; in communicating with her I should have used a
postal card instead of spending two cents for a stamp; and I should
transfer at once to College, where she was willing to
defray all my expenses. Such was the situation when I was in-
formed that I had been appointed the first Professor Augustus
Howe Buck Scholar and that it was decided to inaugurate operation
of the Fund by offering me a stipend that very year. To be truth-
ful I must confess that as great as was my joy in hearing this news,
which meant that I could devote myself to my studies without
further worry about the next week's expenses, the happiness was
less than that experienced much earlier upon receipt of a letter
hom Boston University awarding me, in recognition of grades
earned the first semester, a scholarship of $75.
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 153
benefits by the statement that I sat under such eminent Sorbonne
schobu:s as Professors LeBreton, Reynier, Antoine Thomas, and
Jeanroy.
In the faD of 1923 I entered upon my first full-time teaching
position, an instructorship in French and Spanish at the Carnegie
Institute of Technology. To my happiness in teaching at that
school was added the pleasure of associating with professors and
students deeply concerned with literature, psychology, drama, and
the fine arts. During most of this first year of teaching I was a
sort of pater famiIias in that my father's continued illness resulted
in his coming with Mother and four children to live with me in
Pittsburgh.
In the spring of 1925 I accepted an associate professorship at
the University of Delaware in order, besides teaching, to assist in
the development there of a recently inaugurated educational project
of far-reaching implications: the Delaware Foreign Study Plan. It
seemed to me that this innovation, which permits students to
spend their junior year abroad, could advance appreciably the
cause of international understanding and I have labored innumer-
able hours, chiefly as secretary of the Committee on Foreign Study,
in furthering this movement. From 1923 until the outbreak of
war in 1939 nearly 800 students from approximately 125 accredited
American colleges and universities have spent a year abroad (in
France, Germany, or Switzerland) under the immediate super-
vision of the University of Delaware and have received full credit
upon their return to their institutions for the work done in the
foreign country.
Among the students who have studied abroad under the
Foreign Study Plan of Delaware University are two of the
Fund men, Gordon W. Smith and Walter J. Moberg. Many
of the men of the Fund have felt obliged to explain why their
life stories have been late reaching me. Among the reasons
given by Professor Byam is that he has "been busy getting the
Delaware Foreign Student Group organized and on its way
to Switzerland."
The gratitude of these students for what so many have termed
the richest and most broadening year of their lives is naturally a
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 155
soldiers the subjects of their own choice and of assisting them in
their readjustment to a nonnal civilian life after the infernal hor-
rors of war, this pedagogically unique experience was unquestion-
ably successful; to the majority of us it was, I am sure, most soul-
satisfying.
In concluding may I say that gratitude toward my benefacton
for my education has sought diverse fonns of expression. Modesty
forbids mention of monetaI}' assistance lent to others. Besides, such
acts might reflect but egotism. Less tangible foDDS of aid may be
more indicative of the altruistic spirit. As any teacher mows, teach-
ing calls for continuous self-giving. A true teacher labon incessantly
not only to instruct but also to instill a love of the beautiful, the
good, and the true. As we teach we either consciously or uncon-
sciously form characters. My particular field (modern foreign
languages and literatures) offen an excellent opportunity for com-
ments stressing the value of justice, tolerance, international brother-
hood and Christian love. Whether or not I have been successful
in my struggle against ignorance and materialism I cannot say, but
I like to think that the magnanimous donor of the Professor Augus-
tus Howe Buck Educational Fund would not be too displeased
with the efforts of the first appointee to show by his life and teach-
ing that the award was not made unwisely, but mther that the
noble example which he set will continue indefinitely to enrich
and inspire the lives of othen.
JOHN KINGSBURY CoLBY
A.B., 1920; A.M., Harvard, 1922
John K. Colby was the second appointment to the Fund.
He and Byam were good friends throughout their college yean
at Boston University and, if my memory is correct, they were
together for their first year of graduate study at Harvard.
Is brevity the soul of interest as well as of wit? In any event,
Colby's story is so brief and interesting that we are able to
give the major part of i~ here. He says:
I am most happily and fortunately situated in one of the coun-
tty's great schools. At Andover we have what many schools,
especially many of the public ones, have no more, standards of
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 157
trout brook in the shadow of Mount Mansfield. I always feel when
I get to Jeffersonville, or Underhill, or Jericho, that I am home at
last. Perhaps my fondness for this region is due to the fact that
many of my ancestors came from here.
JOHN PHILIP MAsON
S.B., 1922; A.M., Princeton, 1923; Ph.D., Princeton, 1927
Philip Mason, in common with the majority of the Fund
men, might if he wished place a string of letters after his name,
as shown above. As a rule, the more letters one gets the less
he values them, and Mason undoubtedly follows the rule.
His modesty is further shown by the following brief pam-
graphs in which he describes his useful professional career.
My first teaching position was as an instructor in chemistry at
George Washington University. At that time, Washington was a
delightful city in which to live, and I enjoyed trips to Mount
Vernon, Alexandria, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and many other
interesting places. Three years later I was invited to return to Bos-
ton University to take over the teaching of organic chemistry. I
considered this a high honor and was delighted to accept. The
intervening years have been filled with pleasant contacts with both
students and faculty members. One of the great satisfactions of
teaching, I think, is the pleasure of watching one's students go out
and earn various honors, distinctions and successes.
A number of articles, describing research done by me or under
my supervision, have been accepted for publication in the chemical
journals. I have been a co-author of one book, and I have every in·
tention of writing a textbook in the field of organic chemistry in
the near future. Other research is in progress, and undoubtedly the
future will be filled chie8y with teaching and research.
I have had the pleasure of serving as president of the local Parent-
Teacher Association, as chairman of the Youth Guidance Commit-
tee, as a member of the town Finance Committee and as a mem·
ber of the School Committee.
JOSEPH B. SULLrVAN
The brief story of his life and death has already been told
in Chapter V.
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 159
did receive upon becoming a beneficiary during the second semes-
ter of my first year, I should almost certainly have dropped out
of college at the end of that year. Both then and ever since I have
regarded my benefits from the Fund as manna from heaven.
After my Trappist (freshman) year I blossomed out socially to
the point of making a few very good friends, most of them within
a fraternity with many ideals and little money. I was on my way
to becoming a social being by tb.e time I graduated. Aside from
the factual courses which I used later in teaching, the college work
which has most influenced me led in two directions: toward appre-
ciation, and toward independent thought. I recall Professor Mar-
shall's Appreciation of Music with gratitude as an instance of the
former, coupled with my glee club and college choir activity. I
think of no outstanding course which led me to independent ideas,
but of the overall result there is no doubt.
From 1924 to 1936 I was engaged in teaching. English was the
major field throughout these years. I taught in two private schools,
one public high school and (for one year) in a teachers' college.
The last-named was by far the most enjoyable.
From 1936 to 1947 I was active in consumer cooperative work
as a store manager, first in Hanover, New Hampshire, and later in
Weymouth, Massachusetts. Aside from the purely commercial
problems I found my time fully occupied with committees on
education, economic affairs, and wholesale operations. Both my
wife and I have been keenly interested in cooperative recreation.
In 1947 I embarked upon librarianship as a career, with the
Boston Public Library my current training ground. Although cata-
loging and classification is my major activity at present, I am in-
terested in other phases of library work. In order to acquire
preparation for the field in general, I am studying at Simmons
College for a degree in Library Science.
ERNEST W AllD CARR
A.B., 1923; M.A., California, 1924; B.S., West Point, 1929;
M.C.E., Cornell, 1937
There are six institutions of college grade which have bad
Ernest Ward Carr as a student. From at least four of them
he received degrees; and in one, the United States Military
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 161
ing a tribute to the "good old days," that at his school "we
do not play when we work." Let us hope that by thus keeping
sepamte two important aspects of their pupils' lives they have
discovered "the way to be happy and gay." Just how a pupil
or teacher of Skokie School would respond to Colby's state-
ment as given above, I don't know. And as I am simply writ-
ing a chapter with and about pedagogues and not a text on
pedagogy, I don't have to know. I suspect, however, that the
two schools will continue on their different ways toward a com-
mon goal with gmtifying results.
But what has Skokie School to do with the Professor Augus-
tus Howe Buck Educational Fund? To answer that question
it will help to tum aside for a bit to see how the life stories
of nearly eighty men have arrived at the writer's desk. By far
the larger number have come by mail. It has, however, been
possible to have personal interviews, short or long, with over a
quarter of the men. These interviews have been held in various
points, in New England mainly, but also in the Middle West,
and on the Pacific Coast. Early in the history of the enter-
prise a small group of the men met at the college building
in Boston to discuss the kind of material the men should be
asked to supply in their life stories. While that meeting was
helpful and important in shaping plans, the most unique and
striking meeting was held in Chicago with the teacher in
Skokie School whose name stands at the head of these pam-
gmphs. And thereby hangs a tale.
On the Pacific Coast trip my train both going and return-
ing passed through Chicago, and the car I was in on both oc-
casions remained out in the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad
yards for some hours. I had written two of the Fund men
living near Chicago of this stop-over, asking them to see me
there if they found it convenient. Both made the attempt.
One failed to find me but looked me up later in Boston. The
other, Clark Cell, succeeded in finding the car and we talked
for perhaps an hour and a half. Subject: Skokie School.
Once or twice I tried to tum the talk to other interests in his
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"AND CLADLY TEACH" 163
parents, which is a pretty good commentary on the teacher
who is writing.
In closing let him have his say briefly on Skokie School, after
noting that two of its distinguishing characteristics are: first,
that the pupils have a large part in determining the activities
of the school; and second, that among the activities carried
on by the pupils are various business ventures such as banking,
printing, a livestock company, and many others.
It is Dot intended that these pages should give you any direct
help in writing about me but rather to offer enough knowledge of
the school so that you can see the importance of my own experi-
ences. You will see how difficult it is to separate my personal
activity from that of others in such a highly coordinated enterprise
as our school.
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terest him. He had a wonderful memory and a great fund of in-
formation. Dwight was ambitious and wanted especially to make
his life count in the world. He was sympathetic and fond of
people. He was greatly disturbed by the hardships he found the
French people were enduring while he was studying in France.
He gave them all he could afford while there and wrote and sent
them money after he returned to the States.
One summer Dwight became very well acqainted with Romain
Rolland, visited him, and there was much of common interest be-
tween the two, so much so that Dwight was planning to write the
life of Rolland and collected much valuable material.
He resented greatly "man's inhumanity to man." As a professor
be was greatly interested in his pupils, gave them counsel, had
them in his home, and encouraged those who were having diffi-
culties.
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These are the friends that were mine. These are the friends who
live in my cherished memories. These are the friends who continue
to be a part of my daily life.
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"ANI) GLADLY TEACH" 169
Of the last formality at Grenoble Chapman writes: "It
seems so good not to have any exams to worry about here, and
to think that next year I'll be on the soaking endll" And that
he was. A year's teaching at Syracuse University and two years
at DePauw led him back to his alma mater and to the position
of tutor at Harvard. Meeting me one day, soon after he re-
turned to Boston University, he casually remarked that he had
a French history of mathematics for me. When he brought it,
I recognized that the casual nature of his statement had been,
in part at least, to relieve me of embarrassment in accepting
a very beautiful and valuable gift. It was two volumes (full
morocco), Paris, 1799, of Jean Etienne Montucla's Histoire
des mathematiques. Of it, David Engene Smith says (see
his History of Mathematics, Vol. I, 1923, p. 540): "His work
was the first modem history of mathematics that may be called
a classic, and there are no early histories more highly esteemed
than his." The volumes are now among the treasures of the
College of liberal Arts library.
When I ponder on the passing of such young men as Dwight
Chapman, who died in 1934, I can but conclude: "Perhaps
they are needed even more elsewhere."
E. Ons DRAPER
A.B., 1924; M.A., California, 1933
"I well remember," he writes, "arriving in Boston at the
time of the police strike, walking down Huntington Avenue,
noticing the broken shop windows as I first reported to the
registrar's office. Ralph Taylor welcomed me and made me
feel at ease. So, from 1919 to 1921 I finished my first two years
at the College of Liberal Arts."
He continues with a tribute to the faculty, especially to two
of its members, of the second of whom he writes:
His method of approach to his courses and also to the general
inspiration of new knowledge was something that will stick by
me as long as I live. In my sophomore year I joined a fraternity
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170 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
which afforded the boy away from home a good headquarters and
taught him many things which a missionary's son from Japan did
not otherwise learn.
In 1921 it was possible to leave Boston University for one year
and fill out the unexpired term of an American teacher of English
in the Japanese Government schools at Yokohama, Japan. Living
at home in Yokohama and teaching English to these eager students
in the First Yokohama Middle School and the Second Yokohama
Middle School was a rare experience. Then I returned to Boston
for two more years and graduated with an A.B. degree with the
class of 1921-.
Although my major at the University was English my first teach-
ing experience led me to a new interest in history, and through a
number of summer sessions at Harvard University and the Univer-
sity of California together with a full year at the latter institution
I earned my Master's degree in history of the Far East.
He gained teaching experience in several schools in the East
and West, until finally in 1933 he joined the facultyofVentma
(California) Junior College where he now is chairman of the
Social Science Department and teaches courses in history on
both the high school and college level. He continues:
Among my civic activities at present the most interesting is the
chairmanship of the Program Committee of Ventura Town
Meeting. It is our plan this year to offer a number of excellent
speakers and promote this type of forum discussion so as to gain
more and more community support.
A thrilling experience which he had during the war he de-
scribes as follows:
The most interesting vacation trip I ever had was in the summer
of 1937 when I acted as a tour conductor for the Bureau of Uni-
versity Travel. I took a party from San Francisco through Japan,
China, and finally the Philippines. That summer's trip did not
go according to schedule because of the outbreak of hostilities in
the neighborhood of Peking. We were side-tracked from Kobe
to Shanghai, visited Hong-Kong area instead of Peking, and came
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 171
back through to Shanghai right after the bombing. This bombing
was the occasion of the fatal wounding of the leader of our second
party, Dr. Robert Reischauer. Our ship, the President Teller-
son, was then sent hom Shanghai to Manila with the first load of
American refugees. It was quite a trying time to crowd the ship
with 100 women and children and arrive at Manila in time for the
WOISt: earthquake in fifty years. However, the President Tellerson
was finally sent back to the United States without further incident.
CHAllLES UWllEN STEVENS EASTON
S.B., 1923; A.M., Harvard, 1926
This good friend of the Fund man Mfoafo from the Gold
Coast of Africa is himself of pure New England background.
For what could more fully meet that designation than the back
country of Maine and the island of Nantucket, with the asso-
ciated occupations farming and whaling? One great-grand-
father took four long whaling voyages, was familiar with the
Eastern Pacific from the Hom to Bering Sea, and had a daugh-
ter whom he never saw until she was four years old. One
pnd-uncle was for several terms state treasurer of Massachu-
setts, and another was the "Ambassador to Hawaii who raised
the Stars and Stripes over Hawaii in the last days of Benjamin
Harrison's administration, whose action was repudiated and
severely rebuked by the incoming Grover Cleveland." In the
main, however, Easton's more immediate forebears are marked
by deep piety rather than political prominence. Of his parents
he writes:
My father and I were always very close. He was a man of a
warm and deep nature. Never successful financially, he was a
bookkeeper all his life, having gone to work at the age of fourteen
after finishing grammar school. (His father had died two years
before.) Father always seemed like a great man to me. He was
prominent in the circles in which I moved; first, superintendent of
a department of the large Sunday School of the West Somerville
Baptist Church, later superintendent of the entire Sunday School,
and also a deacon. He was an excellent speaker, used the English
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went to teaching, a career which I had never contemplated,
but which was easy to get into. I needed a job, so I fell into
this." From 1924 to 1941 he taught in a number of different
schools mainly in the northeastern section of the country.
From 1933 on he was headmaster, first in Staten Island Acad-
emy and then in University School, Cincinnati. He has to
admit that,
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man he knew many of the Boston University faculty long before I
did as a student.
I was thoroughly unaware that I was bleeding my father white
financially. Appoinbnent to the Fund in the middle of my fresh-
man year took that burden off my father. I remember the look on
his face as I told him about it. From then on was the real job,
"staying with" those fellows. Phil, Roland, Dwight, AI, Newell
. . . "There were giants in those days."
He has been at Hunter College for some years, and was pro-
moted to Associate Professor there in 1948. He has also taught
at Case School of Applied Science, Princeton, Illinois, and
Rutgers. For four years he was Curator of Astronomy at Buf-
falo Museum of Science. He also was Lecturer at Adler Plane-
tarium during Chicago'S Century of Progress, and secretary
pro tern of the American Astronomical Society for its Harvard
Tercentenary meeting.
His list of publications contains well up to a dozen items,
/'
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176 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
The story of his heroic plan of life and its premature ending
has already been given.
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FRANCESCO LAURO PIZZUTO
A.B., 1923; AM., Webster, 1927
Dr. Pizzuto continues to teach at Boston University and else-
where. But as his principal task is ministering to a congrega-
tion of Bostonians of Italian birth or ancestry we reserve his
story for a later chapter, adding here the fact that a D.D.
degree was conferred upon him in 1942 by a school in Balti-
more.
JOHN ALExANDER FRET!
A.B., 1923; AM., Harvard, 1924
This story is a difficult one to write, not because it must be
gleaned in the main from old letters, but because of the tragedy
it holds. Of John Preti his brother writes that he "was as
good a Christian boy as ever walked the streets. Courteous,
thoughtful, conscientious - a gentleman. I had great expec-
tations for him." Everyone who knew John can approve that
statement
Miss Victoria Zeller, a niece of Mrs. Buck's, was his teacher
in Quincy, Massachusetts, High School, and she it was who
put him in touch with the Fund Committee. Mter an honor-
able undergraduate record leading to his first degree and also,
as is usual with Fund men, to Phi Beta Kappa, he spent a
year at Harvard gaining the AM. Then, as was noted earlier,
the Fund sent him for a year in company with Dwight Chap-
man to the University at Grenoble, France. The association
of the two in this year of study and travel abroad meant much
to both. In the files of the Committee are letters and cards
that tell the story.
The summer before they went, Preti had worked hard for
extra money to help out on the year's expenses in Europe and
also to aid his mother and sister for whom he felt responsible.
For a part of the time he held two jobs, one in a plant of the
Hood Rubber Company and the other in a restaurant. From
the former, where he checked out at midnight, he got to his
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178 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
home in Quincy after two o'clock iJ,l the morning. To help his
finances still further he succeeded in finding at Grenoble a
teaching job to carry along with his studies. He writes, in a
letter from Grenoble, March 23,1925:
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Carnegie Institute was the happiest one of my life - I enjoyed
teaching there so much.
When the fall of 1927 came around it was time to begin my
second year of teaching at Dartmouth. Right from the start I could
feel the nervous breakdown coming on and it was in November that
my right hand began shaking for the first time. I managed to
teach until December the tenth when I was forced to give up.
I'n never forget the hard time I had to correct quizzes with my
shaking hand. Dartmouth College treated me very well, paying
me for the complete year, though I taught only two and two-
thirds months of that year.
Preti's "nervous breakdown" was diagnosed by a Boston spe~
cialist as the dread Parkinson's disease. In spite of the serious~
ness of his condition when the letter of February, 1933, was
written, February, 1938, found him still living. It was not until
October of that year that he passed away, the disease never
having slackened its grip in all. the years.
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tinued for the remaining three years and helped defray expenses.
I was appointed to the Fund as Beneficiary at the end of my
first year, then as Scholar the third and fourth years. A list of
some of the offices I held in student groups is as follows: vice-
president, then president of the junior class; president, "Chemia"
(Chemistry Club); president, Student Council (senior year); vice-
president, Boston University Newman Club; general chairman,
Junior Week activities; student proctor, junior and senior years.
I was appointed Fellow of the Fund and studied for and was
granted the Master of Arts degree at Princeton University. My
work was entirely in chemistry.
In a seminar course on chemical metallurgy, Professor D. P.
Smith caught up with my ability to read Italian and asked if I'd
do some Italian literature research at the Widener Library at
Harvard on theories developed by an Italian chemist. I agreed but
there went my Christmas recessl I found enough background to
permit me to deliver three full-period lectures to the class on my
return I (How Professor Geddes would have chucldedl)
Life at Princeton was a delightful experience. The graduate
students were housed in the Oxford manner, i.e., we lived at the
Graduate College - a quadrangle apart from the undergraduate
areas - but attended classes and laboratory sessions as members of
the Graduate School in the undergraduate buildings. Breakfast
and lunch were informal affairs, but dinner was an entirely dif-
ferent matter. We donned our academic gowns, assembled in the
lounge and entered Proctor Memorial Hall in processional style.
This is a cathedral-like hall, paneled and featured by stained glass
windows depicting the Quest of the Holy Grail. Dean West said
Grace in Latin, and dinner was often to the accompaniment of a
full-scale pipe organ.
The complement of the graduate student body was made up of
men from practically every state in the union - in itself a means
of broadening friendships and reaching a better understanding of
the thinking and problems of other sections of the country. Among
the chemistry students it was a tradition that any student whose
experiment blew up and spotted the wall or ceiling must sign his
autograph alongside said blemish. I succeeded in joining the il·
lustrious band with a particularly large soiled area on the ceiling
of the organic research lab and had to get an extra long ladder to
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French vocabulary had to come into play with the ultimate result
that the guardians of the law were satisfied as to my intent and
the crowd was dispersed.
My itinerary took me to various sections of France, Belgium,
England and to Geneva, Switzerland, often to points off the beaten
path. In these latter cases, I really got to know the people and
their customs.
Thumb-nail impressions and certain amusing incidents come to
mind:
The one time my language failed me. It was while I was travel-
ing from Brussels to Antwerp and had taken the Netherlands Ex-
press which by-passes Antwerp but lets off passengers for Antwerp
at an outlying junction. Proceeding to a lone taxi, I spoke in
French, giving my destination. No success. Using in tum my
best English, German, Spanish, and Italian, I still got nowhere
with an uncomprehending driver. Finally, there came into sight a
tram car with signs in French and English and this I took via a
circuitous route to my goal. Eventually, I discovered that the driver
spoke and understood only Walloonl Apparently my German was
not good enough (or more correctly bad enough) to ring a bell
with one versed only in that dialect I
London on a Bank Holiday week end . . . A week end at Ox-
ford University - the Mitre Inn - Magdalen College (copied in
the Graduate College at Princeton) . . . A business trip to Stow-
market, England, passing through such towns as Needham, Ded-
ham, Quincy and Ipswich - not strange to a New Englander from
Needham, Massachusetts (settled by many folk from that section
of England).
Many performances at the Paris Opera House and L'Opers
Comique; also at L'Odeon ... The cathedral at Chartres on
Easter Sunday - high mass with full male choir accompaniment
. • • The Grande Corniche by auto from Marseilles to Nice along
the shore of the azure Mediterranean . . . Christmas Eve mid-
night services at Saint Sulpice, Paris . . . Notre Dame Cathedral,
Paris . . . Memorial services during American Legion Pilgrimage,
1928. The Star Spangled Banner played with all stops of the
grand organ wide open and to the accompaniment of many brass
instruments. Never before or since has the anthem literally
tingled and thrilled me so . . . Leisurely "covering" of the Louvre,
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My paternal grandfather was the adventurous one, serving with
the 13th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment during the Civil War,
trekking to the Klondike to gain nothing but hardship, leaving
the city to operate a farm, and late in life taking up residence with
an old army crony at the Cape. My maternal grandfather was a
harness maker by aade, who in later life served as a watchman on
the railroad in Maine. My father I lost through illness when I was
fourteen. Owing to the opportunity that the Professor Augustus
Howe Buck Educational Fund provided at Boston University I
became the first member of our immediate family to gain a. higher
education and to enter a profession.
Father's death was a sobering influence. I somehow considered
I had had my fun and, to stay in school, work was necessary. I
liked to work, but being tailor's errand boy, farm hand, postal
clerk, sand-pit digger, brick-yard helper, made getting back to
school in the fall that much more desirable.
At the small school at Turners Falls, Massachusetts, I acquired
a liking for mathematics and chemistry and took advantage of
school activities - plays, public speaking contest, social functions,
school paper. Incidentally I had to take time to work in a fish-rod
factory and to make an early morning mail collection to pay my
board and room and buy clothes. My college ambitions were
strengthened through the interest that a benevolent graduate of
Boston University took in this chemistry student of hers. She knew
what Boston University had to offer. She used Professor Newell's
textbook, encouraged me to go on by any possible means, and ad-
vised that I apply at Boston University for help. Exactly what she
did in my behalf I never knew, but there has been a large indebted-
ness for her advice. I clung to the possibilities that were presented.
During the summer after finishing high school the local bank
cashier asked me to join his staff. Though I knew nothing about
his business, he offered to teach me himself. But I held off until
final word should come from the Fund Committee. About ten
days before College opened, the chairman wrote that I could
come on and have a trial. My pleasure was supreme.
Boston University meant a lot to me. It meant that I got the
opportunity I wanted, that I became well equipped in the ground-
work of my field of chemistry, and that I acquired an appreciation
of the art of fine livi~. The experiences in and out of the class-
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186 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
rooms and associations with the members of the faculty and fellow
students have been matchless.
I had the rare experience of being special lecture assistant to
Dr. Newell, visiting him at Ogunquit, Maine, helping him move
in Brookline, and assisting him with arrangements for the Uni-
versity Commencement exercises at Symphony Hall. A three
weeks' stay in each of two seasons with Dr. and Mrs. Murlin at
their summer home in Southport, Maine, helping get the cottage
in readiness and teaching them and the German maid how to drive
a Model T Ford is never to be forgotten.
However, it was one whom I did not meet in a classroom, but
with whom I was associated in the department of chemistry who
inBuenced me most. Miss Helen M. Stevens helps in a most
kindly way all who are associated with her. Engaged as a gardener
on her estate in Needham and assigned to work with her in the
chemistry department I acquired informally an appreciation of
art, Bowers, astronomy, music, and literature, and above all a
valued friendship that has lasted through the years. [May I add
this tribute to Miss Stevens from the Fund Committee. She bas
for many, many years handled financial matters, acting for the
committee in giving out stipends - all without thought of a sti-
pend for herself. R.E.B.]
These college privileges were not all. Through the unique pro-
visions of the Fund I was supported by a fellowship at the Gradu-
ate School of Cornell University. There I specialized in chemistry,
earned the advanced degree, and qualified to engage in chemical
research for E. I. duPont de Nemours & Company.
I seem to have established a precedent for my sons by becoming
an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church. I have tried teach-
ing Sunday School lessons to a group of small boys, but a class of
nine usually consisted of four fights and one listener, and the latter
subject to change without notice. At present much satisfaction
is derived from a position as Director of Men's Work in the
Church.
I have for eleven years acted as chairman of the Organization
and Extension Committee of the local Boy Scout Council. As a
vice-president of the Council I have participated in all phases of
this character-building and citizen-training program.
As president of the Board of Trustees of the local library asso-
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 187
ciation I am making efforts to help provide a new library building
for the community.
When chemistry, the church, the local library and the Scouts
do not take my attention I enjoy gardening, mountain hiking, a
bridge game, ice skating (in season), and travel in New England,
Canada, and the Smoky Mountains.
Recent war service consisted of conducting research on the de-
velopment and improvement of synthetic rubbers. In our garden
we raised food on an intensive scale and we canned for each of
three years over a thousand quarts of fruits, berries, and vegetables.
I share with my wife an ambition to bring up two boys to be
Christians in a selfish, materialistic civilization. A further ambition
is to produce in the laboratory a synthetic rubber that has the
same structure as natural rubber. A still further ambition is to
raise a good crop of peaches, plums, and apricots before my wife
insists on cutting down the trees.
ALBERT MoRlUS
S.B., 1925; A.M., 1926
Having already given considerable space to the life story of
Albert Morris, baving indeed started him on his teaching career
in the chapter immediately preceding, we shall cut to the bone
what is placed here. Even so, his account leaves one matter
crystal clear. Such efficient life service as that of Albert Morris
buries any notion that the letters after a man's name provide
an infallible criterion of his work. His youthful lack of knowl-
edge of such matters, as already noted, caused whatever ideas
he had of graduate degrees to be exceedingly hazy until he
was well on his way to manhood. After cutting to the bone
there remains the following in his own words.
I managed while at Boston University to supplement my work
at the College of Liberal Arts with courses in journalism at the
College of Business Administration, jurisprudence in the Law
School, and studies in Old Testament literature at Theology. At
Harvard, I roamed equally far afield, as you shall see.
Since 1929 I have taught full-time at Boston University without
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"AND CLADLY TEACH" 189
of their major research worles entitled "500 Criminal Careers"
the authors record their indebtedness to me for some of the ma-
terials dealing with the Massachusetts reformatory system. In a
letter I once saw, which Glueck had written to a third party, he
said that I was the number one man in his classes while I was at
Harvard. (You said we must forget modestyl)
About this time Professor Groves, who was editing Longmans
Social Science Series, invited me to do their Criminology text.
It was first published in 1934 and in revised form in 1938. The
reviews were better than I had any right to expect, and the book
sold better than most of those in the series. The one that pleased
me most was the review by Austin McCormick, which made the
front page of the Saturday Review of Literature. It interested me,
also, to see the reviews from abroad and to get letters from Eng-
land, Rome, and Palestine about the book.
The Criminology was written as a college text, but the New
York State Department of Correction ordered one hundred copies,
and it was one of eleven booles on the required reading list for offi-
cers taking promotional examination in the Federal Prison Service.
I have had some amusing experiences when I have visited Federal
prisons and members of the staff have discovered that I am the
guy who wrote one of the booles they have to read.
A few years ago I was asked to contribute to a special volume of
the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sci-
ence on Crime in the United States. The resulting article,
"Criminals' Views on Crime and Its Treatment," was most satis-
factory to me because it is the only opportunity I have found to
publish the results of some time-consuming research that I carried
on in Massachusetts reformatory institutions for several years.
In one of the currently popular texts, Barnes and Teeters, New
Horizons in Criminology, you will find the index notation:
"Morris, Albert: first to point out new type of
crime, 17; on criminal attitudes, cited 83, 2M;
on Norfolk Prison, cited 79l."
Articles of mine have appeared in such professional journals as
Education, Social Forces, the Annals, Federal Probation Quarterly,
and the Georgetown Law Review.
By now, I have forgotten that I ever had any modestyl
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190 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
He who stays around one spot as long as I have done gets in-
volved in a variety of associations. My relations with many Boston
agencies have been pleasant and satisfying to me. The strength and
duration of the connections have varied.
Earlier I worked with the City Wide Boys' Workers Conference.
My linlcage with them was fixed when I made what was intended
to be a 6rst and last appearance as a spealcer at one of their meet-
ings and found myself carrying out for them a study I had sug-
gested they should do. One result of it was the establishment by
that organization of their own little professional paper which I had
suggested, and for which I wrote the 6rst policy-ma1cing editorial.
At one time or another I have served on the Board of the Boston
Y.M.C.A., the South End House, the Planned Parenthood Fed-
eration, and others. I have acted as a consultant for the United
Prison Association, served briefly as the chairman of the Social
Scientists' Advisory Committee of the Planned Parenthood Fed-
eration, and directed a study of the Seavey Settlement for the
Greater Boston Community Council, on whose Board of Directors
I now serve. Both the Y.M.C.A. and the City Wide Boys' Workers
Conference have made me an honorary member in recognition
of my services. These activities are illustrative, rather than in-
clusive.
MEYER NWKOFF
S.B., 1925; A.M., Southern California, 1926;
Ph.D., Southern California, 1928
Dr. Nimkoff tells of his preparation for teaching and his
exercise of that profession as follows:
My interest in social studies came to the fore soon after I entered
Boston University and led me especially to courses in history, my
undergraduate major subject. Despite this fact, however, as I
look back on my course in college, I can see that the principal
influence was exerted by Professor Groves who, I think, was truly
a great teacher for undergraduate students, not so much because
of what he had to offer in the way of content, but because of his
extraordinary personal influence. There were three of us in Pro-
fessor Groves' senior seminar, Albert Morris, Lee Broolcs, and I,
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 191
and all three of us became college teachers of sociology, and all
three were motivated by Professor Groves. I think that is an
extraordinary record for one teacher with a small group of students.
Throughout college I had an interest in music and played the
violin, but for some unaccountable reason I took up the trombone
also. My family did not exactly encourage practice at home, so
I used the locker room in the basement at 688 Boylston Street. And
in order not to disturb classes, I used to arrive early in the morning,
at seven o'clock or earlier (and I spent perhaps three-quarters of
an hour commuting from Roxbury), to give me a half-hour or so
before the office staff arrived. The only other early bird in the
building was an older student who was working his way through
school by driving a railroad engine, and he would generally arrive
after a night's run, thoroughly begrimed, and would wash up
while I went up and down the scales. He was awfully decent and
never complainedI
I was at the University of Southern California from 1925 to
1928, where I received my Ph.D. degree. After my 6rst year of
graduate study I took a position as a teacher of English to foreigners
in a night school of the city school system, and this helped me
with the expenses of my graduate studies. There was at this time
on the campus a certain Professor Clarence Richard Johnson who
had taken a leave from Bucknell University in order to complete
his graduate training. He had formerly taught at Robert College
of Constantinople and was a magni6cent person. I felt honored
when he asked me to return to Bucknell with him after we had
obtained our degrees, but our association was to be very brief
indeed. Only two months after his return to Bucknell in the fall
of 1928, he collapsed with tuberculosis, and for a time it looked as
if his life were in danger. His extraordinary will to live .kept him
alive, and he continued to do extraordinarily good deeds for eight-
een years, although he was con6ned to his bed for most of this
time.
At Bucknell University I am now Professor of Sociology and
chairman of the department. I have written four books and a
series of articles, mainly reports of research. One of the books,
Sociology (with William F. Ogburn of the University of Chicago),
has had wide adoption, making something of a record for a text
in any 6eld. The book appeared in England in 1947 under the
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192 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 193
am. I have always worshipped intellectual and personal integrity
in others and wanted them for myself; I stilI do. My college years
at Boston University and Harvard revealed countless manifestations
of beauty and opened all avenues to approach her; those years
gave much in the way of knowledge and more in contact with
intellectual integrity.
I know it is not considered in the best tradition this year to
borrow Russian allusions but life since college seems quite by
chance to have fallen into three "five-year plans."
The first of these three periods, 1931-1936. was the dullest and
must be quickly passed over. I was a clerk - just a job with no
interest and no profit to myself other than the general one that
it is impossible to be with any group of people for a length of time
without becoming wiser about them. There was a brief interim
during this period that was more stimulating - teaching Latin at
the Eastern Nazarene College in Wollaston for a season.
The next period, 1936-19+1, I spent in a very small hamlet with
a triple combination of activities: farming, writing, and tutoring.
I was not brought up on a farm, and therefore came to most of
the labors and pleasures as a greenhorn. They were the most satis-
fying years of my life so far, in spite of the fact that I was com-
pelled to realize that I was no writer and discarded that idea forever.
The tutoring was as always for me a lot of fun, often stimulating.
The last period, 19+1-19+6, I spent in the Army of the United
States. To anyone who knew me well it would be needless to say
that I was drafted. If I was thinlcing of anything the first day at
Fort Devens other than my own personal misery, it was to wonder
what Professor Aurelio would have said on seeing me in uniform.
But as with everything else, the newness passed, the misery became
deadened, the stupidities became amusing, the physical hardships
were tolerable; one made friends and since all my tours of duty
were in this countIy I had much to be thankful for. - I had no
wish to be heroic. My last three years in the service were even
pleasant for I was teaching all that time and though the subjects
were always alien and generally dull, still the teaching process is
at all times the same; never a week went by but what for an hour
or even several there was that unmistalcable unity of feeling be-
tween me on the platform and the men in the class that is one of
the most satisfying feelings in the world. I had all manner of
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 195
though I doubt if he ever gave up working upon it. The tech-
nical details of his research in London and Paris need not de-
tain us. So far as one can tell from his reports he worked faith-
fully upon the task given him. Why it was not completed one
can but conjecture.
That he got not a little incidental enjoyment and benefit
from his life in England and France, one may discover here
and there in letters that are in the main reports upon his re-
search. For example, in one letter he writes:
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WARREN ROBERT REm
A.B., 1929
His story was given in some detail in Chapter V. Given
there was his experience in teaching and change to an occupa-
tion more congenial to him.
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198 A CHRONICLE OF AClDEVEMENT
management work "with" rather than "for" each other. I look back
to those hectic hours with a great deal of pleasure.
In 1929, after a year of graduate work at Boston University and
one at Harvard, I decided to try my hand at teaching, for I had
already chosen that as my life work. I attempted to get a high
school job in the East where I thought I had the opportunity to
continue my studies, but at every tum I seemed to run against an
obstacle. Either I lacked higher degrees or I lacked experience.
Obviously there was something wrong but it never occurred to me
until one kind person remarked, "With a name like this you should
clean up if you are a music teacher." Fortunately for the music
lovers I did not attempt to teach music, and I reaIIy did not think
my name mattered so I decided once again to go West. My next
application at the teachers agency stated: "College position any-
where west of Mississippi." My fianc&: and I had decided not
to marry before I obtained my final naturalization papers but we
soon changed our minds and were married before the final papers.
My first teaching job was as assistant professor of physics at the
Colorado Agricultural (now State) CoIIege in Fort Collins, Colo-
rado. I will always have a warm spot in my heart for Colorado and
the West. As a young couple we had much to learn. But we were
fortunate, for here were friendly people that had truly a spirit of
the pioneer West. Each one seemed to take a personal interest in
our well-being and showed a genuine desire to make us feel at home.
Not only my colleagues, but the grocer, the baker, and the hard-
ware man as weII accepted us as a part of the community from the
moment we arrived and were eager to show us the best there was in
the West. Quite a contrast to staid New England\ We used to
say that those were the best years of our lives, but that was before
the children made the family complete.
Even today the word "Colorado" brings to us memories that
quicken the pulse. Not because I found there relaxation in one of
the most picturesque parts of the Rockies; not because I did gain
much experience in teaching; not even because it was here that I
made my first attempt at writing which eventually resulted in a
co-authorship with the other two men in the department and the
book General Physics for the Laboratory, Person, Goeder, Dim-
itroff. I will always remember Colorado as the place where I was
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 199
given a free hand in the deparhnent in spite of the fact that I was
the youngest member. Within a semester I reorganized the stand-
ard courses in physics and applied mechanics and each year I in-
troduced one by one courses in spectroscopy, photography, and
electrical measurements. Apparently every one was pleased and it
was suggested that I prepare to take over when the head of the
department retired in a few years, but my first love was astronomy
and I returned to Harvard in 193+ to complete the work for the
Doctorate. My experience as a teacher came in handy and I became
instructor in astronomy at Radcliffe, a part-time job which, sup-
plemented with the earnings of my wife, made it possible to carry
on.
I received the degree in astronomy in 1937, choosing as my
thesis ''The Atmospheric Extinction," and joined the Harvard fac-
ulty and the staff of the Harvard Observatory at once. I became the
first superintendent of the Oak Ridge Station of the Harvard Ob-
servatory. The next five years were years of great productivity.
My duties were: administrative teaching, research and develop-
ment. The Observatory was rapidly expanding. Much of the equip-
ment from Cambridge was being transferred to Oak Ridge, but
the most important thing was the new development in telescope
design. The reflector has light-gathering power but no field. The
refractor has field but is limited in light-gathering power by the
size of lens that can be manufactured (forty inches thus far). In
1932, Schmidt had considered a combination of lens and mirror
and had found it theoretically possible, but the shape of the cor-
recting plate (the lens) is a fourth order curve and difficult to
manufacture. Only amateurs had thus far (in 1937) attempted
to figure such a "lens" and only of small diameter (few inches)
though of great precision.
I was working for the second time under tremendous advantage.
Dr. Shapley (the Director of Harvard College Observatory) has
an incomparable spirit of adventure and implicit faith in the
ability of his staff. When he asks, "Do you think such and such a
thing is feasible?" and gets an affirmative answer, he will back that
person to the limit. I well remember the criticism once made by a
more conservative member of the observatory staff who objected
to some statements as "over-enthusiastic." Then Shapley replied,
"I am dreaming of the day when I will have a fund of ten thousand
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200 A CHRONICLE OF ACRlEVEMENT
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 201
long, can not bind more than 0.003 (three one-thousandths) of
an inch.
I wonder even now that I went ahead with the design and that
the Director went along with me. What is more amazing is that
we were money which get some day.
t h a t ' s headachel
The was not until
installed housing (the "lMM"I'''n<~_
tion) professors the telescope
memorial to his wife and gave the money that pulled us out of
the red.
The performance of this largest of Schmidts was remarkable from
the start. We could do with it in ten minutes what the Medcalf
refractor required three hours to do.
In the meantime the Mexican gmreDlmlent had undertaken the
building Astrophysical Tonanzintla. near
Puebla, the foot of famous extinct
volcano Mexico City. advice through
diplomatic and were Harvard Observatory.
The Schmidt telescope established it as the
telescope of the future and I was to act as an adviser to the Mexican
astronomers with the view of building the observatory instruments
around a Schmidt. Professor Rascillos came to Oak Ridge to work
with me and to plan the details of the telescope which was to be
built in Mexico according to the original plans. However, in view
of the fact that the greater part of the structure was of "Dow
metal, alloy, which treatment
machin' decided to telescope in
shop' Thus, the was finished,
assembled, up here to be and taken
truck Mexico. In 1942, as a guest
the Mexican government, I spent three months in Mexico during
the installation of the telescope, the inauguration and the astro-
nomical congress in connection with the establishment of the Na-
tional Astrophysical Observatory.
I should mention that even today the Mexican telescope is the
largest Schmidt in the world and I consider the Harvard and
the Tonanzintla telescopes my accomplishment thus
in telescope development.
202 A CHRONICLE OF AClUEVEMENT
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 203
hazy; apparently for some time my mind had been made up to go
there, for I never even considered applying for admission to any
other college. It is, however, a choice that I never regretted. I had
in my bank account enough money to pay my tuition for the first
year. My parents contributed to my living expenses, and I worked
summers waiting on table. I also received a scholarship. But the
great lift came when I was appointed a beneficiary of the Fund.
I shall be eternally grateful for the help which I received from
this. Without it, I certainly would not have been able to study in
France and do graduate work when I did. It made aU the difference
in the world in my professional career.
I remember most vividly the dismal, rainy September day on
which I registered, but the weather was of little consequence to
me. I was elated at being now in college, and thrilled by the prom-
ises which it held. And I was not to be disappointed, for I re-
ceived what I had expected: thorough instruction, friendly guid-
ance, inspiration, the opening to new fields of interest, the
development of sound bases of judgment from my instructors; and
friendly companionship from my fellow-students. I was eager to
be a part of as many activities as possible. I sang in the College
Choir, belonged to the Glee Club, was a member of the Men's
Union Cabinet, acted in the plays of the Dramatic Club and the
Cercle Fran~s, was an officer of the Cercle Fran~is, one of the
literary editors of the 1929 Hub, and a representative to the Pana-
delphic Council. The associations which I had in all these groups
were most pleasant.
The 1929 Hub said of me, "Here is one who mixes work and
play and earns success and friendship in each." If I may run the
risk of being immodest (You said, Professor, that in autobiogra-
phical writing there is no place for modestyl), I can say that from
my own point of view this statement is true. My academic work
was successful in that I gained from it what I had sought. The
play was successful in that it developed a more fully-rounded
personality.
My fourth year of undergraduate work I was privileged to spend
studying in France as a member of the University of Delaware
Foreign Study Group. This was made possible by the Fund and
a scholarship from the Institute of International Education. This
year was of the utmost value in preparing me for my professional
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 205
Lyons, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Avignon, Nice, Maneille, and mak-
ing a side trip to Barcelona.
During the spring of that year I was pleased to receive news of
my election to Phi Beta Kappa. I was initiated into the Society
after my return from France, and received my A.B. from Boston
University at the summer Commencement of 1929.
The following year I studied at Harvard and received my A.M.
in 1930. The year that I had spent in France made my graduate
study much more fruitful and significant. At the end of that year
I was appointed instructor in modern languages at Colby College,
Waterville, Maine, and spent the summer taking a course at Har-
vard University in the teaching of French to help prepare me for
that position.
Since that time I have spent another summer at Harvard and
have spent two summers studying at the Ecole Fran~e d'Ete at
Middlebury, Vermont. At the end of one of these sessions I was
awarded a medal for excellence in the study of phonetics. The
stimulus and inspiration which I received from these Middlebury
summer sessions, working and playing in a completely French
atmosphere, have proved of great value. .
I have been at Colby College since the fall of 1930 and now
hold the position of Associate Professor of Modern Languages.
For two of my courses I have written, and had printed in mimeo-
graphed form, a "Handbook for Students of French" and a "Man-
ual de Phonetique et de Conversation." The latter I am at present
revising with the hope that I may find a publisher interested in it.
I have greatly enjoyed the years that I have spent at Colby. The
students have been for the most part interesting and interested.
Among the members of its faculty I have made many close friends.
It has been inspiring to watch the growth of the college during
these years, and especially to playa part during the period when it
has been building a new campus and moving from its old location
to a new site. I have enjoyed every minute of my teaching, except
for the inevitable moments of discouragement which come to every
teacher when a particular class or student fails to perform as he
had expected.
For the past five years I have served as secretary of the Colby
Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, attending as chapter delegate the meet-
ing of the Triennial Council held last year in Williamsburg. Vir-
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 207
education that hired me that my wife and I could live on the
salary offered. (I took a position that a single girl had had and at her
salary.) We managed to save about as much money that year as
we do now at two and a half times as much pay.
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208 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
tumbledown shanty on it, tore down the building and with the
salvaged lumber as a basis built a small but very comfortable
cottage. My mathematics came in very nicely on the plans, and I
have always liked working with my hands. As a matter of fact,
Professor Kent of the physics department always said that anyone
who liked to work with his hands as I did should be a physicist,
not a mathematician. We hope to take our tent and go to the
western parks sometime in the future.
WALTER JOSEPH MOBEllG
A.B., 1930; A.M., Harvard, 1932
"My first contact with the Committee on Professor Augus-
tus Howe Buck Scholars," writes Dean Moberg, "came when
I was still a student in high school" He continues:
My sister was at that time employed in the publicity office at
Boston University and through her I heard about the Fund. I had
a pleasant meeting with Mr. Ralph Taylor, Registrar at the College
of Liberal Arts and secretary of the Fund. He encouraged me to
file an early application which I proceeded to do. My subsequent
experience has taught me how important it is to have the right
person in the position of admissions officer or registrar. Boston
University and the Fund have been very fortunate indeed to have
had the services of such a friendly, gracious, and efficient person as
Mr. Taylor. He played a significant part in the formation of my
attitudes both toward my college work and life in general. His
promotion to the deanship was a happy recognition of his talent.
I suppose a discussion of my early education would not be com-
plete without mention of an honor that came to me at the time
that I was graduated from high school. That was 1926 - the year
of the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia. As part of
the observance of the Sesquicentennial of the signing of the Dec-
laration of Independence there were selected from each state in
the Union a teacher, a girl and a boy to represent the states in
Philadelphia. I was very happy, indeed, to be selected as a repre-
sentative for the state of Massachusetts. The distinction was known
as the American Youth Award-American Teacher Award and in-
cluded not only a trip to Philadelphia but also receptions in Wash-
ington and in Atlantic City. For eleven days we were ~ests of
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 209
the Sesquicentennial Exposition. In Washington we were received
by President Coolidge and each one was given the gold medal of
the American Youth Award-American Teacher Award by the
President. This was my first long trip away from home and it was
the first time that I had, of course, seen New York City, Phila-
delphia, Washington, and Atlantic City. The trip took us to many
places of historic interest including Mount Vernon and Valley
Forge. The contact with young people and teachers from all over
the country was, indeed, a thrilling and helpful experience to me.
For a good many years afterwards I maintained contact with a
number of members of this group. [Among these "contacts" was
one with William H. Frackelton, another Fund man who, as he
himself tells us later, represented Wisconsin as Moberg did Mas-
sachusetts. R.E.B.]
My decision to enter Boston University was made when I was
still a junior in high school. There were, no doubt, two influences
that led me to this decision. The first of these was perhaps the
fact that my sister was associated with Boston University and I
had heard a great deal about the school from her. Also I felt that
the atmosphere of Boston University would be more congenial
for one of my religious views than would some other university.
Except for my oldest sister who had attended briefly the Massachu-
setts Normal Art School, no one in my family had yet attended
a college or university. It was therefore a great event when, in the
fall of 1926, I entered the College of Liberal Arts. I shall always
remember that occasion because of the sacrifice that it represented
for my family. My mother borrowed the money that was necessary
for my first semester's tuition, having faith that the means for
continuing my education would be found. Appointment as Bene-
ficiary of the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund in
the spring of 1927 was, I am sure, an answer to her prayers as well
as mine. It represented a wonderful opportunity for a boy from
a family of our limited means, and I have never ceased to be grateful
for it. Certainly. here was a moment of great importance to my life,
comparable perhaps with the decision of my mother and father to
migrate to the new world. Without this financial aid my subse-
quent story would have been very different. indeed. I should not
fail to record, however, that even with the advantages that came to
me from this Fund, and they were very many, it was still a great
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 211
departments of the bank and acquired a great deal of useful informa-
tion and experience. Perhaps more important, I had an opportunity
to know a great many men and women, most of whom had not
enjoyed the sheltered life of an American university. These contacts
were helpful and taught me a great deal. I realized before the year
was over that I did not desire to make a career of banking, however
desirable it might appear from a financial point of view. The
dramatic events following the crash of 1929 and the upheaval that
was taking place in government had interested me greatly. Mer
carefully considering the matter. I decided to resign from my posi-
tion at the National Shawmut Bank and return to school.
I was appointed a Fellow of the Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Educational Fund and in the fall of 1931 entered the Graduate
School of Harvard University to study for my Master's degree.
Althou2h I had not done much previous work in the field. the
head of the department, Professor Arthur N. Holcombe. assured
me that I could complete the requirements for the degree in one
year and this I succeeded in doing, receiving my degree in June,
1932. I continued in the Graduate School for two additional years
and would probably have been able to complete my Doctorate by
June of 1935. It was the opinion of the head of the department
this could be done. However, we were deep in the depression and
at the end of 1934. in accordance with precedent, I was not reap-
pointed to the Fund and therefore had to find other means of
support. It was my intention at that time to work for a year or
two and then come back and seek my degree. My family was in
particularly tight circumstances at that time and I found it nec-
essary to contribute substantially to their support. Moreover. at
North Park College in Chicago, where I had gone as an instructor
in government in the fall of 1934. I was quickly assigned to
various administrative posts which consumed more and more of
my time. An evening session had been attempted in 1934 and in
the fall of 1935 I was asked to assume the directorship of this
new department which I decided to do.
In the fall of that year we inaugurated on the campus a series
of lectures and concerts which we named Tuesday Evenings at
North Park. Being one of the founders of this activity. I took over
the directorship from the start and carried it for several years until
it was well established. This forum and concert series still con-
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212 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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lr=~---=------=---~-~==~~.-=-~-=--~-- .'
\'l\1JJA ,'S A\'DJI l'ER\'CIT
Bookplate designed by
Dt:AN EMERITUS \\'ILLIAM 1\1. \\'ARRt:N
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 213
essary for him to work for a year. He then returned to the
College of Liberal Arts but adds, "During all the rest of my
college career I helped my brother support the family-
mother, grandmother, and small sister. Summers I always
worked. After receiving my S.B. degree I returned for a year
of graduate work in organic chemistry, securing my A.M. in
1932. That following summer I taught the course in organic
laboratory work." Next, we find him teaching his chosen sub-
ject in the high school at Southington, Connecticut Continu-
ing, he writes:
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 215
watch your steps, not that we think they need it, but because
of the inspimtion we get hom it."
The temptation to insert book reviews in this volume is
stronger in no other place than here. Dr. Ferre has about a
dozen volumes to his credit and, counting reviews he has him-
self written, over three-score periodical articles. However, an
editorial is not a book review, and in the leading editorial of
Zions Herald of September 18, 1940, the editor, Dr. (now
Bishop) L. O. Hartman wrote: "Any scholar who, at the age
of thirty-two, is appointed to the historic Abbot Professorship
of Christian Theology in Andover Newton Theological School
is one whose writings may be regarded as significant Hence
the recent publication of The Christian Fellowship, by Dr.
Nels F. S. Ferre, deserves a sober appraisal," which then fol-
lows.
RAYMOND OxLEY Rocxwooo
S.B., 1929; AM., Chicago, 1932; Ph.D., Chicago, 1935
Dr. Raymond O. Rockwood is one of five brothers and sisters
all of whom went to college - not an unusual record for a
minister's family. But this family had two college professors
of history among the children, Raymond at Colgate and a
brother at Upsala. The beginnings of his own college mining
were at Antioch. Of the change of schools he writes:
Once started at Boston University, there was never any question
of returning to Antioch. This was absolutely certain when the
opportunities of the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational
Fund were made avai1able to me. And, I must admit, one of the
factors that determined me to apply for admission to Boston Uni-
venity was the existence of this Fund. I had to be elected to the
Fund by the middle of my junior year and just got under the
deadline. It would be futile for me to attempt to evaluate what
the Fund bas meant to me. The facts are obvious. It has meant my
career. I could have completed my college work without its as-
sistance. But it is quite doubtful if I would have had the resources
to tab graduate work. From the moment I became affiliated with
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 217
examinations for the Doctorate, I was awarded the Catherine Cleve-
land Fellowship by the University of Chicago history department,
the highest-paying fellowship at its disposal, to permit a year of for-
eign study. The period in Europe was professionally worth while
just to enable me to become acquainted with the resources of the
Bibliotheque Nationale and the Archives Nationales. Obviously,
there were many other tangible and intangible values to me, in-
cluding the opportunity to improve my knowledge of French, to
learn something about French life and culture at first hand, to
witness crucial events in Europe during a critical period and to
travel in rural France and Italy.
Living in a pension, I tutored in written and spoken French all
year with the mademoiselle in charge, a woman who had taught
French in England at one time. She was a hard tasbnaster. I still
have the copy book in which I inscribed her dictation. She de-
lighted in underlining my mistakes in red ink and in totalling the
lautes at the bottom of the page in large numbers. I had not had
French since high school and had revived a reading, but not spoken,
knowledge of it in graduate school. Before the year was up I could
speak understandable, though never fluent, French. After a year
abroad, one gets used to addressing people in French when trying
to get some service performed. I can still remember speaking to
an American porter on the dock in New York in French just after
the boat had arrived in port and can see his disgusted look as he
said: "What in hell did you say?"
The year 1932-1933 was a critical moment in Europe, as it turned
out; it was the transition to international anarchy. France was
just moving into the throes of depression and continued financial
and international crisis. In the fall of 1932, Herriot's insistence
on payment of the French debt to the United States led to the
inevitable demonstrations by nationalist groups outside the Cham-
ber of Deputies building and to his fall from the premiership. Paul
Boncour replaced him, only to fall shortly. I happened to visit the
Chamber the day before he fell and witnessed the nervous excite-
ment and heated debate. The President of the Chamber tried
vainly to keep order with his gavel and bell, a scene symbolic of
political instability and growing fissure between right and left. The
biggest event of the year was Hitler's rise to the Chancellorship of
Cermany in Janua?" 1933. The reaction in France was one of con-
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Rome. We, like other travellers, were impressed with the effi-
ciency of the railroad service. On our way down from Turin to
Siena, after a brief sojourn in Genoa, we sat in the same com-
parbnent with a Fascist official from Milan, a man who boasted of
having "marched" on Rome with Mussolini. We had to convene
through French and learned that he enjoyed reading American
novels, especially Sinclair Lewis, whose latest work he had just
completed. We should have been concerned when he celebrated
the rise of Hitler to power and predicted that within two or three
years the world would see things happening as a result of Italian-
German cooperation. Two years later the Ethiopian crisis un-
veiledl When asked to define Fascism, this official answered, "ac-
tion," "getting things done."
Siena threw you back to the Renaissance and the Middle Ast.es.
It was clean and attractive to foreigners on its main streets, but
your nose on the side streets soon revealed the extent to which
Mussolini had not succeeded in cleaning up Italy and modernizing
it. Italy was an education in Renaissance and Medieval art. We
were fairly serious students of cathedrals and art galleries and on
our·own steam, without benefit of guides, we absorbed a great
deal of art history, or a great deal for rank amateurs.
One evening, after tiring ourselves out in tramping through gal-
leries and churches in Rome, we decided to get our ticket stamped
at the Fascist exposition. We had had a relatively early dinner
and so arrived before the crowds had gathered. The first room
of the exposition was devoted entirely to a display of clippings
from the paper edited by Mussolini during the First World War,
Il Popolo, and we spent quite a long time, possibly an hour, moving
slowly about the room trying to translate the articles through my
friend's Latin and my French. By the time we reached the fourth
wall, we noticed some soldiers standing near us. Mr friend turned
to me and asked: "Was Mussolini ever a Socialist?' I had scarcely
responded in the affirmative when I turned to my left and there,
standing so close to my elbow that I could have nudged him in
the ribs, was Mussolini himself, grim, standing alone as one who
trusted no man in the world, pugnacious, attired in a dark gray
civilian suit. I could have been bowled over with a pin. I have
always regretted not asking him a question.
As I watched raw recruits practicing various military exercises
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and were impressed with the fact that not all Frenchmen spoke
French and that German was very much in evidence. We were
delighted with what we saw in the Switzerland represented by Basle,
where we ran into a colorful patriotic celebration, commemorating
their independence day; by Lucerne; and by Geneva, where Charlie
and I ate one of our picnic lunches of cheese and bread (as we
did so often to save money) under the shadow of a statue of
Rousseau, who would have sympathized with our simple repast.
At Grenoble, our next stop, we were delighted to be able to live
with a French family for a short while, as we caught our breath
and visited places in the French Alps. From Grenoble the journey
took us to Lyon, manufacturing center, and then to Avignon, home
of the popes of the fourteenth century Babylonish Captivity.
In southern France, we were not only reminded more and more
by the material remains, that Gaul had once been Roman, but by
the dialect, people and environment, that southern France merges
into Italy and Spain. Near ArIes (or was it Nimes?) we had the
strange experience of seeing a movie, entitled "The Delights of
Divorce" in a Roman arenal
From Montpellier, center of one of the earliest schools of medi-
cine in Europe, where the heat reminded me of India, we went to
visit one of the most complete examples of a Medieval fortification,
Carcassonne, built in part by the early Visigoths and later recon-
structed by medieval feudal lords.
At Bordeaux: we stopped very briefly. The trip then took us on
to the Chateau country of the Loire region, where French monarchs
of the Renaissance epoch had built their bastions, and then back
to Paris.
One cannot begin to record all the impressions left by a year's
stay in France. To a student of the French Revolution and French
history, Paris and environs were crowded with museums, galleries
and historical monuments recalling events of the past. The made-
moiselle at the pension roused my patriotic ire by emphasizing that
the United States had had no history. And she was right, at least by
comparison with France.
I would have liked to stay in Paris a second year, continuing my
researches. However, it seemed wiser for me to return to Chicago
where I was to have a University of Chicago Social Science Research
Fellowship, working in a collection of German newspapers for
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222 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 223
day to sell three books, that you must never pass up a house, no
matter how poor looking, and that selling is a lonely game, espe-
cially in rural areas. I turned down the offer of the position of
"tIainer" for future summers, at a very generous percentage. Gradu-
ate work seemed more important and satisfying.
Just before I went to Europe. I held another summer position
as editorial assistant on the Journal of Modern History. This was
an exceedingly valuable experience, although I was thrown into
it without much preparation. It was quite a fascinating job getting
one issue of the paper ready for the press. I am afraid that the
distinguished British historian, Harold Temperley, has never for-
given me for trying to transform his system of footnotes, in a very
profound article on the diplomacy of the Crimean War, into what
I considered to be the proper form.
In the middle of the school year, 1933-1934, I learned that a
history job was then available at Colgate and that a second might
materialize. Colgate had just received a $200,000 grant to inaugu-
rate a more personalized system of instruction and was expanding
its faculty considerably. Jobs in the immediate post-depression
years had been scarce and many PhD.'s had ended up selling sheets
in department stores. I had been fortunate to be able to do my
graduate work during the height of the depression. I went after
the Colgate job hammer and tongs and was thrilled to land it,
especially since I had not depended upon the Chicago department,
but had run it down myself. Obviously recommendations of the
department were the determining factor in my getting the job,
however. Since the job called for a PhD. before fall, I asked to be
released from the Social Science Research Fellowship in order to
write my thesis. I wrote madly, lived with my thesis day and night
until the world seemed to revolve about the cult of Voltaire, and
had a first draft ready by the end of the summer which, by special
concession, was accepted as the basis of my final examination,
given just before the end of the summer quarter. Thus, although I
had finished my final examination on my thesis when I came to
Colgate, I still had to revise and polish it, which I accomplished in
time to be awarded the degree in June of 1935.
I must confess that the detailed research into the relatively small
subject of the Cult of Voltaire left me with a temporary feeling
of distaste for research and with a desire to broaden out and learn
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of round tables or committees, especially in the field of popular
education on international problems, which is my primary con-
cern. The enterprise has been one of the most vital educational
experiences of my career, showing me the relationship between
education and the world of affairs, making me think through con-
crete problems, revealing to me how a community functions, and
bringing me into contact with many fine people throughout the
state. It has helped make New York State, rather than Hamilton,
my community, and has, more and more, catapulted me into being
the primary representative of Colgate University in the area of
community education.
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THOMAS M.uuNu
AB., 1935; Ph.D., Princeton, 1947
The story of Dr. Mariner's useful life faIls naturally into
Chapters IV and X, in both of which much anonymity has
been thought wise, with the result that only those able to pene-
trate the anonymity can tell when they are reading about Dr.
"Tom." This will not disturb the latter, but it does disturb
the writer who is responsible for this faux pas against one for
whom he has high regard. A few other stories barely escaped
the same fate, among them that of Dr. Philip Mason, the
present chairman of the Fund Committeel
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broke, sending her down into the well. There was no one at home
at the time but fortunately she caught herself on the broken
boards and a neighbor heard her cries and rescued her. In such a
farming community it was almost miraculous that she had a neigh-
bor within hailing distance.
My mother tells of an interesting experience which she had
when she was sixteen years old. She and another girl set out to
visit fishermen relatives on the island of Bjork. To get there, it
was necessary to walk over fifty miles across the ice over the Gulf
of Bothnia. They walked a whole day, and as night drew on, they
became alarmed at not reaching land. Luckily, a horse and sleigh
overtook them and they rode to a near-by island. Not only were
they given hot food and shelter, but they were taken to a village
dance for the evening. The next day the two girls set off for their
original destination and reached there safely after another twenty-
five miles on the ice. After an enjoyable visit, they drove back
across the Gulf with the postal delivery.
My mother's father, her only brother, and her only sister came
to America while she was still quite young. When she was eighteen
years of age, her sister sent her a ticket to come to the United
States. Though it meant that she would be left alone in Finland,
my grandmother urged my mother to take advantage of this op-
portunity and she did.
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 229
in college. When I went away to the UniveISity of Chicago to·do
my graduate work, she continued to help me as best she could.
Although she found it difficult to write English, she wrote to me
regularly, giving me advice and encouragement. I know that she
labored for hours writing those letteIS. I sincerely regret that my
mother did not go out to Chicago to see me receive my Ph.D.
degree; I know that this would have been a crowning event to her
dreams and aspirations for me. However, there were others at
home to be cared for and the expense of the trip prevented it. Also,
she had stayed very close to the home for many yeaIS and thus
found it hard to "go away." And so this real pleasure and satisfac-
tion was denied her. I am happy to say that she is still living.
Dr. johanson's father, Axel Johanson, was also of Swedish
nationality. He CCwent to work at twelve years of age as a
carpenter. At fifteen years he went to sea in order to avoid
compulsory military training. He sailed on freighters for three
years, traveling all over Europe. At nineteen he came to the
United States and landed in Boston. He started working here
as a machinist but the following year he ran into a depression."
Depressions were not the only difficulty.
His houIS were long and his pay was small. Finally in 1943 a
labor union became the bargaining agent for the employees. My
father got his first paid vacation in almost twenty yeaIS. Not only
did the union get the men a vacation, but the work-week was cut
down to five days with the same amount of pay. At long last, my
father was able to have a little free time for himself. He was al-
ways busy when at home, and there were more things to do than
there was time in which to do them. My father never paid a
plumbing bill in his life; he did and still does all the repair work
that is done in and around the house.
Of the early experiences of Ralph Johanson himself he writes
as follows:
When I was in the third grade one of my sisteIS was taking piano
lessons and naturally I wanted to take lessons too. After constantly
prodding my parents to give me. a chance, it was decided to stop
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230 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
my sister and start me. Since that time she has never fully forgiven
me the injustice I did her. However, it was the beginning of an
experience which paid enormous dividends later in helping me
to pay my way through college by pIaying the piano with orches-
bas.
In the fourth grade I became acutely aware that there were
two types of youngsters in our school- the many better-dressed
and better-trained children of American descent from the wealthier
homes on the "other" side of Fairmount Avenue, and the many
children of foreign parents and lesser means on "our" side. There
wasn't any open rivalry that I can remember, but I somehow felt
the influx of this aristocratic group when they moved into the
Fairmount School at the fourth-grade level. Up to that time I
don't recall any particular competitive spirit, but from that time on,
I felt myself in keen competition with this new group. I enjoyed
trimming the class consistently in arithmetic drills and I gave
them a good battIe in all other subjects except English. Here I
suffered the penalty of having been brought up in a home where
Swedish mainly was spoken. At any rate, there was a healthy
give-and-take throughout the grades.
The sixth grade saw the beginning of a wonderful friendship
with a new boy, Eldon Tucker, from St. John's, Newfoundland.
He was my closest friend from that time on through high school.
Since then he has returned to Newfoundland where he now oper-
ates a large grocery business. We still keep in close touch with
each other and our family has a long-standing invitation to spend
a summer in Newfoundland. Eldon was an all-around healthy boy;
we had a wonderful time together in sports - baseball, soccer, foot-
ball, tennis - and his outdoor camping interests led me into ex-
periences in camping and Boy Scout work which I shall never
forget. Eldon had particular trouble with his arithmetic, and in
the eighth grade after school I spent many hours helping him
with his dreaded subject. This was my initiation as a teacherl
Our sixth-grade teacher cried her heart out when our class moved
on to grade seven. We would glacDy have repeated the grade. My
memories of the seventh and eighth grades are mostly of arithmetic
and English drills. We had frequent speed contests in the arith·
metical operations and I was the winner consistently. In the
seventh grade I won a joint contest between· the seventh and
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 231
eighth gr.ades. The principal of the school and eighth-gr.ade teacher
was a hard dnll-master. We flourished under his guiding hand.
He was also a wonderful story-teller and on Friday afternoons for
one hour, he read either Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn and this
was a treat beyond compare.
I was destined to go to the Hyde Park High School. Fortunately
I was advised there to take the course which prepared for college
and engineering. I wanted a course with a lot of mathematics
in it, and that was it. As a high school freshman, I was frightened
to death of our high school teacher of mathematics, a tremendous
fellow, well over six feet tall, and weighing over two hundred
pounds. He threw rubber erasers and chalk to awaken "the
dead" and lumbered around the room with apparent evil intent
in his eyes. I decided that the best way to get along with him
was to do exactly what he said. I mastered my algebra, partly
out of fear of the man, and he never troubled me after I estab-
lished myself as his best pupil. In spite of his overbearing and
brutish manner there was a quality in his teaching which was
genuine. He was thorough and wanted us to be thorough.
I was fascinated with mathematics throughout high school. I
used to take my trigonometry assignments home and immediately
work all the problems and many more besides. At the end of my
senior year the teacher presented me with a copy of Granville's
Trigonometry in which he wrote "To Ralph Johanson, of whom I
expect much."
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232 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
not only were the doors closed before me, but my matriculation
fee of $10 and room deposit fee of $25 were forfeited! The au-
thorities would not listen to my urgent appeal for a refund.
Some time later a friend told me that he had been awarded a
Professor Augustus Howe Buck scholarship to Boston University.
I was happy for him but sad to realize that although my high
school records were equally good, sbl1 I had been unable to get
a scholarship. I went to my pastor, Dr. George W. Owen, and
told him my story and also what little I knew of the Buck scholar-
ships. To this day, I do not know exactly what he did, but pre-
sumably he put my case to Ralph Taylor, the registrar at the
College of Liberal Arts, or to the Fund Committee. I was advised
to apply to Boston University and also to apply for the same Buck
scholarship. My hopes were raised and I went ahead. First of all,
I had to borrow $10 from an uncle for my matriculation fee.
Then Dr. Owen loaned me $125 to apply toward my tuition.
The loan was granted on condition that I promise not to
smoke nor to drink! I found that promise one which was easily
made and just as easily kept - even to this day. And so I entered
Boston University.
I was fascinated and thrilled to be able to go to college. On
registration day, after a few bothersome preliminaries, I marched
up to the sixth floor of the old College of Liberal Arts building
and informed Professor Bruce that I wanted to major in mathe-
matics! He didn't show any undue excitement, but calmly advised
me to take Professor Mode's College Algebra course. That was my
beginning and no greater opportunity and privilege could have
been opened up to me. Shortly after, Ileamed of my appointment
as a beneficiary of the Fund and almost immediately I was able to
pay back the loan to Dr. Owen.
One of my fondest memories of college days was of a Mathe-
matics Club party held on a November the twenty-first. What a
surprise I got when a huge birthday layer cake, made by MIS.
Bruce, was set before me. I really couldn't believe itl How she
knew that it was my birthday I'll never know, but nothing like
that had ever happened to me before. I returned home that eve-
ning, and shared the cake and the exciting experience with my
mother and father, who were just as thrilled as I at what had taken
place.
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CoIIege was not easy for me. I still had to earn money for inci-
dental expenses. Fortunately I could live at home, and I had my
orchestra work. All in alII managed respectably well my first year,
but, although my grades were good, they were not up to what was
expected of the holders of the Fund scholarship. My principal
difficulties were in English. Again I went to Dr. Owen who
befriended me with another loan to apply toward my tuition. I
felt that I could raise my grades and get back on the Fund. That
first semester of my sophomore year was the vital one in all my
college years. At the close of the semester I was told that my
record had improved to the point where I was once again con-
sidered a good risk for the Fund. From that time on, until the end
of my graduate study, I received scholarships and fellowships from
the Fund which totalled over five thousand dollars. I was given a
wonderful opportunity for which I shall ever be thankful.
The Fund also helped me in an unusual way. During my sopho-
more year the Fund Committee received a report from the Boston
University Health Service that my teeth were very bad, requiring
elaborate dental work. I was told by the Committee to go to my
local dentist and have him write a report outlining the dental
work necessary and the approximate expense of the work. The
dentist stated that over a dozen teeth had to come out and that
there was a great deal of other work that had to be done as weII.
The Fund Committee was not satisfied with this report and sent me
to Dr. Maloney, head of the Prosthetic Department of the Har-
vard Dental School. After a careful examination he informed
the Committee that only one tooth was really bad and that it
would be possible to save all the other teeth. The Committee gave
the go-ahead sign and I was placed in the hands of the ranking
senior student at the School. I spent three entire mornings a week
for several months at the School Clinic. Dr. Maloney and his
associate, Dr. Smith, supervised the work and watched the progress
with eager interest. A short time after the work was finished I was
asked to appear before the American Dental Association that was
convening at Harvard. During the course of a morning I was "on
exhibition" as a long line of dentists inspected the work which had
been done. One inquisitive dentist asked, "How much did all that
work cost?" Before I could answer, another dentist standing nearby
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234 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
FRANCIS MARIA
A.B., 1936; A.M., 1937
Mr. Maria was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, and has spent
most of his life there. His parents were foreign born, and
though he is an American through and through, he has an
understanding of the problems of amalgamation that make
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 235
him a citizen of much usefulness. We have already learned
something of his early life in a previous chapter. Of his going
to college, he writes:
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"AND CLADLY TEACH" 237
International Relations, Science, Latin and English Clubs, and
Y.M.CA.
I valued my election as president of my fraternity more than
membeIShip on the varsity team or any scholarship honor, because
it was election to leadership of a fine group of college young men
by the men themselves. WeII do I remember the picnic at
Squantum and its significant climax. When the tide was out we
bad walked out to a rock on which we had our cook-out. By that
time, the tide had come in and we were surrounded by water; night
bad fallen, and the stars were brilliant in the sky. As the coals
burned low our conversation drifted naturally to more serious sub-
jects, and in our grappling with fundamentals we became tightly
bound together.
During my senior year I worked part-time as Director of Youth
Work and Athletics at Morgan Memorial, Boston's largest settle-
ment center; and in the summer I directed a camp program for
Morgan Memorial at South Athol. I enjoyed working on a staff
with such famous religious and social service leaders as Dr. Henry
Helms, Dr. William Stidger, and Dr. "Pop" Hartl. Assisting
me with the athletic program were a number of student minis-
ters at Boston University School of Theology and it was real
fun and education working with them. Because of my work at
Morgan Memorial, I had to give up varsity basketball, but I did
keep my hands in basketball CQaching, by directing the Morgan
MemoriaI seniors and juniors to championships in their respective
divisions.
I graduated from the College of Liberal Arts with Honor and
with election to Phi Beta Kappa. The various nationality and even
racial backgrounds that made up the small group of students who
won election to Phi Beta Kappa that year were dramatic proof of
the democracy of intelligence as well as Boston University's democ-
racy as an educational institution. My sole regret at graduation
exercises was the fact that Dad had not been able to live to see his
boy graduate, but the light in mother's eyes was reward enough.
Graduation made the many previous days of "going without," the
long hours of outside work, the strain of studying into the wee
hours of the night, all well worth the doing. I had done what had
almost seemed impossible - graduated hom college during fOUl
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 239
worked as interviewer and training supervisor for the Remington
Arms Company, LoweD Ordnance Plant, and much of the respon-
sibility for hiring, training, and actually getting the plant into opera-
tion was relegated to me.
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 241
mittee in the spring of 1933 and was awarded the first "tuition
scholarship" granted to a freshman.
At the College of Liberal Arts his interests were varied. They
ranged from the hockey team, class officer, student government,
fraternity, to scientific clubs and the Christian Association. Upon
graduation, with Honor, and with Distinction in chemistry, he en-
tered Northwestern University as a graduate assistant in chemistry.
At the end of his first semester he was appointed Commercial Sol-
vents Corporation Fellow in chemistry and began a full-time pro-
gram of study and research in organic chemistry. Graduate school
was mostly a program of laboratory work, study and "bull sessions"
interspersed with a small amount of athletics.
After receiving the PhD. degree in 1940 he moved downstate to
the University of I11inois where he was a special assistant. During
this period the young Dr. McPhee was appointed instructor
in organic chemistry at the University of Rochester. In the faU
of 1941 he took up his duties, which consisted mainly in directing
and conducting research. He had three graduate students working
with him; all obtained their Ph.D. degrees in 1944. By the wintet
of 1942, however, the Rochester situation was untenable. The war
had so changed things that the duties seemed inconsequential. At
about that time one of his former professors at Northwestern had
become director of chemical research at Winthrop Chemical Com-
pany, a large pharmaceutical company in Rensselaer, New York,
and he prevailed upon McPhee to join the staff he was forming.
Winthrop was deep in war work. One of the first problems
McPhee worked on was in connection with atabrine, the anti-
malarial drug so widely used by the armed forces. A later problem
had to do with organometallic compounds used in the treatment of
filarial diseases which are so common in the South Pacific. On his
own time he began to study patent law and at the end of 1944 he
was transferred to the patent department at Winthrop. In January,
1946, he was admitted to practice before the United States Patent
Office. In March, 1947, he accepted a position in charge of patents
and trade-marks with G. D. Searle & Company of Chicago, pharma-
ceutical manufacturers. He is busy building up a patent depart-
ment there and taking care of the multitude of technical and
semi-legal administrative problems.
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"AND CLADLY TEACH" 243
ton and never had any time to devote to me when he came home
tired from work. I am truly sorry to say this about him, for I
realize only too well what a beneficent influence a father can be
upon his son. As long as I knew my mother she had to work to
help support our family. My father never learned the English
language and never could quite accustom himself to life in the
United States.
The one great benefit that I derived from the fact that my parents
were recent immigrants and had difficulty learning the language
was that I learned to speak German almost before I learned to
speak English. This was both an· advantage and a disadvantage,
for I often got into trouble with my playmates when I could not
express myself properly and left myself open to ridicule so dis-
tasteful to children. When I entered kindergarten at the age of
five I quickly picked up English and displayed a certain virtuosity
by being able to spell the word "affectionate" at a time when most
children are struggling with "cat" and "dog."
When I was seven my parents bought a home in Everett. This
industrial city became my home off and on for the next thirty
years. My parents, like many foreigners, had far more courage than
reason and seemingly loved to speculate in real estate. In the
first twenty years of my life they bought and sold at least seven
houses. Never did they have any capital to work with, and if they
made a few hundred dollars on one deal, they lost a thousand on
the next. WOtry and care never strayed far from our front door,
and we moved quite frequently.
At the age of seven, I was considered old enough to start piano
lessons. As an example of my mother's ambition for me, she herself
took piano lessons just previous to this time, in addition to all her
other back-breaking work, for the sole purpose of being able to
give me a head start in music. I took my first halting lessons from
my mother, tired as she was, and with her fingers stiffened from
bard work and strenuous household duties. A certain Mr. Gordon
Brown was chosen as my mentor, notwithstanding the fact that
he lived in West Somemlle, then a good hour's ride by trolleys
from Everett, with three street car changes. In the seven years
that I studied piano with this excellent teacher I never missed a
lesson. He was an important influence in my younger life, because
he not only introduced me to the love for great music, but he
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 245
3isted that I attend Sunday School until I got to the point where
she could not have kept me away from church. When I grew older
I was permitted to join the young men's class. Its basketball team
was famous in these parts and its annual plays and minstrel shows
gave me ample opportunity to display my own talents in these
directions. I directed several successful minstrel shows and played
the piano and organ for many an important church function. This
sort of thing boosted my confidence tremendously and more than
made up for any inferiority complex that I might have developed
during my more tender years. My greatest fame came when I com-
posed and wrote the Class Hymn, which was distributed far and
wide under my name.
Ever since the age of twelve I have worked at some job or
another. While I was attending school my mother tried to de-
velop habits of thrift by getting me to earn money in various and
sundry ways. I worked Saturdays for a fruit and vegetable peddler
who, incidentally, was also my Sunday School teacher at that time.
How I loved to ride around on his team and use my powers of per-
suasion to sell vegetables. During the week I worked washing
windows in the stores of local merchants and made additional small
sums by polishing brass advertising signs. I was always able to earn
enough for pocket money and always felt independent and proud
that I was able to assist my mother in this way, for she worked
very hard all day long as a tailoress and used to come home tired
out from her long hours of sewing.
I was one of the last products of the nine-year primary system in
Everett, so I did not enter high school until I was about fifteen.
My high school work was only average and perhaps a little below
average. I hated Latin and just barely scraped through. In geom-
etry I fared but little better. In languages I found my German so
easy that I neglected to do the work, with the result that twice I
came home with reports of D in that language which I now con-
sider my forte. My teachers seemed indulgent about my work,
because they realized that I worked every afternoon and every
week end in a store to help support my family. In addition to this
activity I kept up my musical endeavors and was by this time pro-
ficient enough to play with dance bands quite frequently in the
evening. I had but little time left for such mundane matters as
school homework. Small wonder that I scraped through.
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malcing. After a few months on this job, I heard about a position
in Waterbury, Connecticut, which was open and paid even more
money. I applied and was hired for the excellent salary of $125
a week. I now felt even more important, living away from
home in a hotel in Waterbury and spending money like a drunken
sailor. After several months on this job union troubles forced me to
give up the position. Organists, however, were never long out of
work in those days, and within a few days I found myself in Leb-
anon, New Hampshire, in a very fine movie house that catered
to Dartmouth trade.
I stayed in Lebanon for almost two years. I enjoyed these two
years very much. Even though I made slightly less money than I
had been malcing, living was cheaper here and I more than made
up for it by holding a Sunday church position in the local Baptist
Church and by teaching numerous organ and piano pupils from
surrounding towns. Life in Lebanon, as a person next in importance
only to the head selectman, was pleasant, but I missed Boston and
began to look for a position nearer that city again. In 1929 I
finally managed to make an exchange with an organist from Boston.
He took over my position and I took his at the Strand Theatre in
Belmont. I was happy, but some dangerous handwriting began
to appear on the theatrical wall. Sound movies and talkies were
beginning to come in and to usurp the importance of the theatre
organist. I well remember the dismay with which the first talkies
were greeted by people in my profession. Soon I found myself
jobless and with the possibilities of continuing my musical work
as a teacher and radio organist and playing with dance bands, or of
giving up music entirely and following a new line of work. During
my stay at the Belmont Strand I had taken a position as organist
and choir director of the Cliftondale Methodist Church in Saugus
and I still had several pupils, so I did not starve, but I did begin to
be concerned. I signed up for a correspondence course in traffic
management and pursued this work in my spare time. Then I
began to attend the Somerville night schools to learn typing, short-
hand and salesmanship, none of which labors I now regret. Late in
1929 I found a job with the Standard Storage Company as clerk
for $18 a week, which was quite a come-down from the large
salaries I had been making. I could not have lived if it had not
been for my additional income from musical sources.
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That summer I found myself a position as counsellor and musi·
cal director of an exclusive Jewish boys' camp in Harrison, Maine.
This was the beginning of five complete summers spent in this
fashion doing such healthful work. Each summer I was able to
recuperate financially and physically, and I felt that another side
of me had been developed to add to an already eventful life.
In September, 1933, I entered Boston University as a lowly fresh·
man, but full of determination that a big job had to be done and
done well. In my first semester's work I did well enough to win a
small scholarship for the second semester. Now it was a case of
winning a real scholarship or quitting, so I applied. The rest is
history. for I was so fortunate as to be appointed to the Fund for
the ensuing year. I appreciated this financial and moral assistance
so much that I decided to take as little advantage of it as I could.
As a result I kept about twenty pupils and my church position on
the side. Not until my graduate work at Harvard did I find the
going too rough, and finally was forced to give up my pupils. My
church position I kept until 1942, for fourteen years.
Among my greatest champions at Boston University were Pro.
fessors Plath and Perrin who encouraged me at all times and finally
brought me to the decision to major in the field of Germanic
languages and literatures, a difficult decision at best, because I
was much taken with many fields of interest while attending the
College of Liberal Arts. I devoted my entire life, except for my
church work, to my studies. I had to make good.
My only extra-curricular activity while at the College of Liberal
Arts was the German Club, which I led for one year. When Pro.
fessor Perrin became too feeble to play the piano, I took over this
task and led the German Sings each week for at least two years.
These sings were very popular during my days at Boston Univer-
sity. The annual festival Tivoli was another source of great enjoy·
ment and satisfaction.
Between my junior and senior years the Professor Augustus Howe
Buck Fund made it possible for me to take a trip to Germany and
other European countries. This trip was taken in the company of
two friends. We crossed the Atlantic on the French Line. Since I
am a poor sailor, I shall never forget these ocean trips. We landed
in France and bo~ht bicycles in Paris. Then we started our long
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in 1941, and in the spring of 1942 I passed the greatest hurdle of
a11- the much-dreaded oral examinations. In June of 1942 I was
awarded the coveted Ph.D. degree so necessary for men who desire
to teach in college work.
In 1941 I became a full-time instructor at Harvard and began to
teach also at Radcliffe College. During 1942-1943 I was again
appointed to a full-time instructorship, and for the first time in
nine years was able to devote all my energies to teaching, unham-
pered by the drive of my own studies.
In the summer of 1941 my wife and I felt amuent enough to
buy a small car and made a twelve-thousand-mile junket through
the United States and Canada. The whole trip cost us only a little
over four hundred dollars because we cooked our own food when-
ever possible and lived cheaply. We took the southern route, via
Florida to California, visiting friends on the way, and came home
via the Canadian Rockies and Lake Louise. It was a most eventful
trip and a most worthwhile experience to have seen so much of our
own beautiful country.
In a later chapter an account is given of Dr. Watzinger's
service with the army in the recent war. Of his final discharge
and life since he writes:
The great day arrived on February 12, 1946, when I had sufficient
points for discharge. While still in army uniform. on terminal
leave, I began to teach German at Tufts College to Navy person-
nel. You should have seen their faces the first day I walked into
class. But I was soon out of uniform and teaching simultaneously
at Tufts. Harvard and Radcliffe. a few sections at each institution.
In the summer of 1946 I devoted all of my time to Harvard where I
taught summer school. In September. 1946. I accepted an offer
from Boston University to come back to the fold and join the
German department of the College of Liberal Arts. Here my saga
ends for the time being.
ROBERT ARTHUR BRUCE
S.B., 1938; M.S .• Rochester. 1940; M.D .• Rochester. 1943
Now that Robert A. Bruce has been awarded his medical de-
gree with honor, he has before him the choice of several lines of
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252 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
work, each very much worth while. His original plan, as noted
earlier, was to become a medical missionary. There is also the
possibility of teaching in some medical school, at Rochester or
elsewhere; and finally he might devote his life to practice as
a specialist or as a general practitioner. His story is continued
later in this volume.
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the laboratory, I find. Many of Wilmington's townspeople, and
surprisingly enough the technical variety are in the majority, have
found relaxation in the local Drama League. To myoId friends, I
would have it known, I do not, and have no desire to, "emote"
before the footlights. Being a "gadgeteer" at heart, I got into
backstage work, ran the light crew for a year, and am now in my
second tenn as vice-president in charge of productions. Also be-
cause of this hobby, I've become tied up with a local outfit known
as the Brandywiners, a Greater Wilmington group which puts on a
Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, or something like it, in the outdoor
theater at beautiful Longwood Gardens, a duPont estate near
Wilmington. Again I tend only to duties electrical.
Another relaxation, although I can seldom make it appear as
such, is golf. I'm in that unhappiest group of unhappy choppers,
the 85-95 boys who are too high to be good and too low to be
duffers. Tennis, you see, has been eliminated from my routine
by an insufficiency of practice and an oversufficiency of weight.
Let me try to evaluate what the Fund has done for me. Looking
back now, I'd say that two, possibly three decisions have con-
trolled my life to date. The first came in junior high school when
I was advised, almost ordered, to take a college course. The second
was my entrance to Boston University - although I'm pretty cer-
tain now that I'd have gone somewhere. And the third was my
decision to go after a Buck scholarship. That last decision meant
going to graduate school for certain and at least shooting for a
Doctorate. I could have gotten a job in 1939 as a routine analyst
in a glue factory or in a cranberry paclcing plant. Perhaps I'd even
be head chemist by now, maybe even with a better salary than I'm
now getting. Certainly I couldn't be in a worse climate or in a
more expensive place to live than now. But the odds against my
ever returning to school would have been pretty great. Only a
handful do. Always I should have wondered what fundamental
research was, where I would have gotten to if I had gone on. Now
I'm using my research training at pretty nearly its peak. If I ever
want to seek greener pastures - financially speaking - I do so
without wondering what I could do with a research job. As you
know, much of this training was obtained through the aid of the
Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund. I recall the
word "altruistic" in the deed of gift. Whether scientific research is
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When I got back from Service I fell very easily into a teaching
position at Boston University, where I am very happy in my work
and my associations. My civic duties consist of being a member
and secretary of the Board of Directors of the United Cooperative
Society of Maynard, one of the outstanding consumer cooperatives
in the country, with a membership of 2,600 and this year celebrat-
ing its fortieth anniversary. Here I am following in the footsteps
of my father, who for ten years on and off served as a director.
My hopes and plans for the future include getting my PhD. (I'm
finishing my class work this summer, 1947, taking my orals in the
fall, writing my dissertation next year), and continuing to ponder
on my philosophy of life, which is still based on the Golden Rule.
Then I look forward to years of trying to teach young people to
think straight, to express themselves coherently, to understand and
enjoy the great works of literature, and to get along with their
fellowmen.
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had been appointed. There followed one of the most terrifying
and confusing experiences of my life - registration at the College
of Liberal Arts. In later years I was happy to serve as an assistant
in the process, and I hope my aid served to lighten the experience
for some of the newcomers.
The first year of college was without special incident except that
I was required to learn to write German in Latin chamcters, a job
that required some concentration, for I had always used script in
my three years of high school study. During the summer I worked
as a carpenter's helper and gained useful experience. The second
year brought college physics, which was a distinct shoclt to me.
Having breezed through high school physics, I expected to do the
same in college. There I found it to be quite a different subject
and for the first two weeks wondered if I were in over my head.
That too cleared up, which was fortunate, for I had decided to
major in physics. At that time, also, I started as assistant in the
physics labomtory, which experience later proved valuable in teach-
ing.
After graduation with Distinction in physics, I continued on the
Fund at Harvard Gmduate School of Arts and Sciences, intending
to work for an MA. in physics. At mid-year I had an offer of a
position as instructor and physics laboratory assistant at Spring-
field College. This appeared to be a good opportunity to decide
whether I should prepare for engineering or teaching. I finished two
semest~ there to the satisfaction of all concerned and 1ilced the
work very much. By this time the dmft situation began to be a
thing to be considered so that when asked if I wished to return, I
declined, fearing that I might have to leave at an awkward time.
Moreover I had intentions of resuming my studies, satisfied that
the choice of my work would be college teaching.
On his discharge Mr. Boyd went into industry. Whether his
ambition to become a college teacher will ever be realized,
only time can tell.
DOUGLAS HENDEBSON
S.B., 1940; A.M., Tufts, (Fletcher School), 1941
Mr. Henderson is our only career diplomatist in the service,
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258 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
though other men now on the Fund plan to enter it. Writing
informally about his life, he says:
I can only climb my family tree a very short way, at least if I am
to be sure I am in the right tree. My Great-grandfather Henderson
came from Aberdeen, Scotland, where he had been a shipbuilder.
He brought his wife and family of thirteen boys to Antigonish,
Nova Scotia. One can imagine that the town was crowded, with
that many Hendersons, so my grandfather came to Newton, where
my father was born. My grandfather used the shipbuilding skills
in his new bade, carpentry, and taught them to my father, who
still is active in Weston. My mother's family name is KaI1och.
They are Maine folk, and a hardy breed, my grandfather being a
journeyman printer by bade, retiring at eighty-one because he could
stand only six hours a day at the composing bench, instead of the
twelve-hour shifts he had known from boyhood.
I was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on October 15, 1914, the
fifth of seven children, the fourth boy among six brothers. I still
have friends who envy my luck in having so many brothers. It is
like going through a battle: most soldiers are glad to have bad the
experience but they wouldn't want to do it again.
It wasn't all fighting, although some of the scrimmages would
have gladdened the heart of a prize-fight manager. We lived in the
country and there was still elbow-room, even though a more exact-
ing pioneer would have found it crowded. My father's workshop
was a good place for a growing boy, as long as nothing was broken
in the process. I learned early in life that I was not suited either
for the life of a carpenter or a farmer - there was just too much
hard physical work involved. Since then there have been many
times when, seen through the romantic haze of nostalgia, that kind
of life seems far more atbactive than the present one.
I think the first money I ever earned came from singing in the
Episcopal church choir. Later when my voice changed they
were glad to pay me twice as much to pump the organ, in order,
I suppose, to keep the small congregation from completely
disappearing. My father was determined that none of us should
escape exposure to the tools of his bade, and I have worked
during the summer months, sweaty and dusty, building certain
monuments to my industry which I am sure will endure for a few
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 261
teered for militaIy service. I don't know whether they chose the
better part.
I was sent first to Nogales. Mexico. a border post. The sharply
defined differences between one side and the other of a wire fence
made a strong impression on a New Englander. The Spanish lan-
guage. which had seemed so liquid and musical when I studied it
in college. suddenly took on a staeatto. machine-gun delivery which
made it completely unintelligible to me. The effort to speak it
even eight hours a day was a sheerly physical one. Fifteen months
on the border. seven months in the dreary Chilean port of Ariea,
three and a half years in the Eden of Bolivia, the city with the funny
name, Cochabamba. I'm too close to it to tell, even now that I've
been home on leave, just how those years have changed me, or
whether I like what I have become.
I have learned many things. some of which I had known ob-
jectively, but had not made part of myself. I think two things
are of value to pass on: the first is to question intelligently the
virtue of perfection. and the second is even harder, at least for me:
to avoid dealing in the generalities which prevent the growing-up
process.
Thus ends the story Douglas Henderson wrote for this
volume. A friend of his with whom he has exchanged letters
has made available one he wrote from Cochabamba, Bolivia.
in June, 1946. Its sheer interest earns parts of it a place here.
He writes:
News at the Consulate is scarce. Right now we are in a decreed
state of siege in Bolivia. and I should probably be careful of what
I write. Consular routine is pretty dull stuff of which to make an
interesting letter. and most aspects of existence here are just like
life in the United States.
The scenery is on a vaster seale, however. I recently retumed
from a trip to a river port which lies within my district, and the
trip is worthy of some description. The town is some 225 kilometers
from Cocbabamba and is within the rain jungles of the Amazon
River basin. Most of northeastern Bolivia. and nearly all the rivers
of Bolivia, lie within the tremendous spread of this basin. Con-
sequently commerce travels along water routes, but has a diflicu1t
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 263
hillside, a shelf ten or twelve feet wide with an unbroken fall of
a thousand feet into a ravine to keep the driver's mind on his
work. As one of our companions said, "You'd be awful hungry
before you climbed out of there."
Todos Santos itself is a small town at the edge of a river which
is constantly changing its bed. Because the land is so &at and be-
cause the frequent floods change the river's height, sometimes as
much as fifteen feet in a few hours, the town is flooded once or twice
every rainy season. Only a few years ago it was impossible to drive
to Todos Santos because of a river crossing about thirty-three kil-
ometers from the town. This crossing could not be bridged by
ordinary means because of the same factors which make Todos
Santos such a wet place in which to live, so the engineers put heavy
steel cables across, hung a platform from the cables, put tow cables
on either side, and now trucks, cars, freight and passengers are
ferried over. It's quite a sight to look down on brown, foam-8ecked
water and jagged rocks and then up at those cables that look like
cobwebs when the car gets about midstream.
On the way back we ran into landslides which had taken out
fifty feet of road. We had to rebuild it, shovelling away muck,
building up a retaining wall, cutting out roots and trees that the
slide had brought down. I have left my memorial in that part of
the world in the form of a few feet of road which should belong
exclusively to me, and I have the memory of the hardest bed in the
world, the one in which I slept that night - just two mahogany
planks with a poncho for a mattress.
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" 265
of their life work and all those who aided them in any way to
gain their preparation may take much satisfaction from that
fact. Reserved for the next chapter are the stories of some of
the later beneficiaries.
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CHAPTER VII
Youthful Promise
BURTON WILLARD
S.B., 1941; M.D., 1944
Dr. Willard is a practicing physician. Also, his story though
interesting is brief. It is left entire for a later chapter.
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 267
CIWU.ES ARTBUll Mmos
A.B., 1942; lA, Harvard, 1943
The earlier parts of the life story of Charles Mehos have al-
ready been given in the Backgrounds chapter. We here include
additional quotations, omitting for lack of space his account
of high school life.
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 269
more to me in terms of experience and education than all my school
and college training. I have tried to express why this is so.
Because of his statement about war service much of his
story is reserved for a later chapter. However, part of it may
well appear here.
My home town is a seaport, Gloucester, Massachusetts, and my
people have always been close to the sea. My mother's father was a
native of Liverpool and purser on one of the Cunard liners making
aansatlantic crossings in the 1880's. He married an Irish girl whom
he met in Dungarvan, County Waterford, where she was reputed
to be the most beautiful of local colleens. After their marriage
they resided in Liverpool for several years in a surburban section
which, as I discovered on a visit to that city in 1914, was com-
pletely leveled by German bombers in the recent war.
In 1885 my maternal grandparents came to live in the United
States, settling in Gloucester where, a few years later, my mother
was born, the youngest of four children. Her father skippered a
fishing schooner sailing out of Gloucester for the Grand Banks.
When ashore he dabbled in farming but was much more inclined
while resting after a voyage to spend his time with books; he was
an indefatigable reader both at home and at sea. My mother often
told me how a night seldom passed while he was ashore when he
did not read to his children before sending them off to bed. He
seems to have been a vigorous but quiet man with nearly aD his
interests centered in his family. He never made a great deal of
money and when he died, my mother being eighteen at the time,
the family found itself in rather desperate straits. My grand-
mother's Irish fortitude saw the family through this trying period.
My father came to the United States from Nova Scotia when
he was seventeen years old. His father had.been a fisherman and
aD his sons with one exception were to earn their livings from the
sea. For several years my father was a fisherman but in 1932 started
work in Gloucester for a wholesale fish distributing firm and has
been so employed ever since. My mother passed away in 1940. All
my grandparents are deceased. .
As a boy I virtually lived in the water at the many beautiful
beaches around Cape Ann. Sometimes I swam in the abandoned
granite quarries in Ro~rt. Divins naked with m)' companions
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off the Socony pier where the Boston & Maine railway bridge
crosses the Annisquam was a favorite pastime unbl commuteD on
the B. & M. complained to the railroad authorities. I remember
sliding down the giant sand dunes at Wyngaersheek Beach on the
Ipswich Bay, having weenie roasts and clambakes on the roch at
Wheeler's point and sailing in the Saturday boat races at East
Gloucester. I had all sorts of odd jobs as a boy. One summer I
went to work for a man who had market gardens in Riverdale and
who paid his young charges ten cents an hour. For this job I had
to get up early each morning and cycle some seven miles to work.
It didn't take me long to decide that he was paying slave wages and
when I quit in rebellion I told him so. This was the first time that
I had even a vague awareness that there was such a thing as ec0-
nomic exploitation.
In grammar school I was not a model pupil. My teacher in the
seventh grade, an ardent Methodist, was nearly driven to distraction
by my Roman Catholic practice of ending the Lord's Prayer after
the word "evil." My premature "Amen's" finally led her to warn
me that if I wanted to pray in such a manner I could pack myself
off to the parochial school. The principal subjected her boys and
girls to a barrage of maxims, her favorite, "Hitch your wagon to
a star," being written in large letters of yellow chalk across the &ont
blackboard.
The teacher who inftuenced me most in high school was the
head of the English department, a graduate of Boston University
and, incidentally, the lady who first introduced me to the Fund
Committee. What she taught me about English literature I re-
member today more clearly than anything I have leamed about
that subject in college. The piece of writing on which I spent the
most time, I am sure, was the letter of application for appointment
to the Fund at the close of my senior year in high school.
I can't say that I thoroughly enjoyed my &eshman year at Boston
University. I had to get up at a little after six each morning in
order to be in Boston in time for my first classes. What annoyed
me especially was the required gymnasium practice at the Boston
Arena. Imagine getting up at sunrise, or earlier, after having studied
until midnight, rushing to the Gloucester depot to catch the train
for Boston, boarding a jammed elevated car at the North Station,
tIansferring at Park Street and arriving at the Boston Arena in a
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 271
state of near exhaustion only to jump into a gym suit in order to
do push-ups and head-stands. The whole idea seemed so utterly
ridiculous that I finally began skipping these gym sessions even
though this meant a low grade in this "subject" on my semester
report. When the Fund Committee granted me a stipend to live
in Boston during my sophomore year I realized that I was to get
far more out of college than I could have as a commuter.
Aside hom studying I probably spent more time in debating than
in any other activity at Boston University. We made many long
and fruitful trips, winning a good share of the decisions. I remem-
ber discussing the Saint Lawrence Seaway question with the
French-speaking team hom Laval University, over a glass of beer
at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, and debating the effect of the
New Deal on business with a Columbia team over a radio station
in New York City. Later on we began speaking to high school
audiences in and around Boston. The work I enjoyed most was
arranging and directing a series of debates over station WHDH.
During one broadcast, which I look back upon with embarrassment,
girls &om Boston University engaged in verbal battle with two
girls from Simmons College over the question of whether women
should serve in the ADDed Forces. As chairman I was a complete
failure in keeping the women in check once the program had
reached the discussion stage. Listeners told me afterward that
above the confused cackling of the enthusiastic females, all speak-
ing at once, my voice was scarcely audible as I vainly pleaded,
"Please, ladiesl Please, ladiesl"
These radio roundtables did not last long. At the time, station
WHDH was not as firmly established as it is now and its officials
feared to offend anybody. When we were to debate M.I.T. on a
labor union question the program director of WHDH told us,
just before the program was to begin, that in all statements at all
disparaging we were not to give the name of the union or the union
leader. The debate, if it had taken place, would certainly have been
insipid. One member of the Boston University team argued at
length with the program director and finally, in anger, told him that
he was denying heedom of speech and that he would not debate
over such a station. Organ music replaced the scheduled roundtable.
It was during my junior year that I became interested in inter-
faith work. Dr. Powell was then directing an inter-faith pro-
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 275
worked at various things after my postgraduate year, and every-
where the stol}' was the same: pay was low, and work was seasonal
- the '1abor market" was over-supplied. I attempted to sell maga-
zines once: the sale we were supposed to perpetrate was a mass
subscription, the cost of which was $25, and no one could
afford such folly in those times. I got another "gumshoe" job, this
time with the Goodwill Industries. The work was seasonal, but
while it lasted a certain stipend could be counted on. I was a "bell-
hop" for a week in a third-rate hotel which received all of three
guests during my period of service. In addition to wages of $5 a
weelc and one meal a day, I collected one fifteen-cent tip. My most
profitable experience was a rather gruelling job in a wood heel
factOI}' •. where I worked nights for the most part, spraying heels
on a piece-work basis.
I do not wish to imply that life at this time was given over to
grubbing temporal}' employment and desperate efforts to overcome
educational obstacles. At least part of the period was pleasantly
spent: I put my imagined creative talents to work writing wild
yams for pulp magazines, which sent the manuscripts back with
neat, colored rejection slips; and I kept up my contact with the out-
of-door world around me. I had become fanatically devoted to the
new American winter sport, slciing. In the intervals between pe-
riods of employment, I strapped on the boards, hiked across countty
and practiced controlled downhill running. On two or three oc-
casions I went to the White Mountains with a few companions and
we brought all the technique we mew to bear on the fast, twisting
trails of the north countty.
I had managed to save a small sum; but the total was ridiculously
inadequate for my purposes. The final answer to the difficulty was
found by a sub-master at Haverhill High School who was a gradu-
ate of Boston University. He told me about the Professor Augustus
Howe Buck scholarships and through his efforts I was named as
a beneficiaty for the year 1938-1939. I was neither the first nor the
last whom he helped in this manner. Many a young man "of
insufficient means and scholastic promise" owes a great deal to
him.
The life of the church went on as before. The local dramatic
group presented plays, both secular and religious. A group of
young people formed a sort of musical society. lcnOWD as the Boiler
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276 A CHllONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
Room Hot Shots because they practiced in the boiler room of the
church basement by special indulgence of the authorities. With a
Spanish guitar and a cheap instruction book, I joined the group,
thus starting on another interesting by-road of experience, the in-
vestigation of folk-music and ballads.
I was introduced to Boston University undergraduate life through
the best possible medium - the vital and significant experience of
Freshman Camps. Here I met the leading upperclassmen and
many of the outstanding faculty members of the University. Here,
too, the keynote for the freshman year was set - the note of
adventure, of new experience. I established myself in the Boston
University dormitories on Bay State Road directly after the camp-
ing week end. My roommate was a sturdy and keen-minded New
Englander who was rarely without his Bible and never without his
pipe and his history book. We walked to Copley Square and back,
we studied hard, we joined clubs, and once in a while we went to
an opel3 or a play.
The first semester was one of adjustments - to the atmosphere
of Copley Square and Bay State Road, to the free but responsible
status of the college student, and to the healthy mental exercise
induced by close reasoning and extensive reading and composition.
The second brought a modicum of assurance, a feeling of adequacy
that permitted indulgence in extra-curricular activities. These ac-
tivities were wide in scope and various. One group with which I
maintained a constant affiliation was the Cercle Fran~is, a club
which reached a high point of popularity and made soirees the
outstanding social events of the year. For fellowship, for linguistic
training, and for pure fun, the French aub was an organization to
be discussed in superlatives only.
I remember one moment of acute and overwhelming embarrass-
ment, however, a moment which undid a good deal of the damage
that the exaggel3ted self-esteem of the sophomore year is likely
to do. I had been chosen as master of ceremonies at a soiree, and
in my fatuous confidence had not written out any introductory
speeches; I was quite sure that my knowledge of the language would
carry me through and that I could say all I had to say ex tempore.
The scene of my folly was the Little Theater; as I stepped upon the
stage I caught sight of my re8ection in the large mirror that covers
the opposite wall. I became instantly self-conscious and at the
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 277
same time was struck by the ridiculous side of the situation. I was
struck dumb for a moment. The audience laughed; I laughed. But
I was so perturbed by the whole thing that I mangled the language
most execrably. After that, I spoke from manuscript or from mem-
ory until I had attained mastery of the tongue as well as flueney.
If the French Club was academically helpful and inspiring, the
Astronomy Club (Urania) was no less fruitful as a source of fellow-
ship and entertainment. On many an "outing" we saw the stars
from hilltops unveiled by city smoke or dust. Occasionally, I used
the small talent I had developed among the "Boiler Room Hot
Shots" to produce something approaching music. It was through
these outings that I developed an interpretation of "Ivan Skavinsky
Skivar" that will probably be my only claim to fame - or infamy-
an interpretation I have never since been allowed to neglect.
The end of the freshman year carried with it a sad finality that
threatened to put an end to many plans. My father died early in
the summer of 1939, of bacterial endocarditis. His death was more
than a personal loss: he had been a faithful community servant
for many years.
I bad only a short time in which to re8ect upon that loss. Per-
haps that was fortunate, for no amount of reflection can bring
back the things or the personalities that are gone. At any rate, I
became a counselor at Camp Denison in Georgetown that season.
Our campers were for the most part underprivileged children from
Boston's Chinatown area - Harrison Avenue and Hudson and
Tyler Streets. Adjustment to camp life was difficult for some of
them and there were problems of all kinds. But our leaders were
more than equal to the task of guiding and training our campers.
With such co-workers, the toughest assignment in leadership and
guidance became a pleasure. I found the work inspiring enough to
warrant a return to Camp Denison each year; only the outbreak
of the war and subsequent changes in plans steered me away
from it.
My freshman year saw the beginning of an intellectual trans-
formation: the rather unruly romanticism of my early days was
beginning to come under the discipline of precise thinking and
hard work. Although I never became a thorough-going classicist,
at least I learned to channel romantic impulses into worth-while
directions, to recognize bard work as a better source of accomplish-
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278 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
ment than "inspiration," and to submit now and then to the re-
stmining inftuence of foon - the "whip of the classic."
The choice of English as a major subject brought with it much
interesting experience and much hard study. Many of these ex-
periences I shared with the University's outstanding and brilliant
blind student, Mr. John King. His amazingly retentive memory
and his excellent analytical and critical abilities made these courses
all the more valuable. His apt and pungent phrases extracted the
essence from everything with which he came in contact and pr~
sented it to his hearers in memorable foon. Friends of ours met
with us at noon in the basement of the College of Liberal Arts
building and discussed every topic under the empyrean. Thus was
formed the Cellar Seminar - a group that still gathers now and
then to solve, to its own satisfaction, the problems of the world.
I became literary editor of the Beacon during my junior year;
the choice of manuscripts led to many an anxious moment but the
work was invaluable experience. As a senior, I was editor-in-chief
and with help succeeded in presenting some interesting issues.
Those were days of great plans and far-reaching ambition; but the
threat of war, preparation for service, and the diversion of student
interest in the direction of the emergency were against us.
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ARTBUR JAMES CAIN
A.B., 1941-; AM., 1947
My family background [Mr. Cain writes] was one that the soci-
ologists would probably term "middle middle-class, a substantial
family of five children in a normal social and economic matrix, but
with an intellectual atmosphere that varied from slight to negIi-
pole." However, I turned out to be the bookworm of the family
- the fellow that "always has his nose in a book."
Happily the narrowing effect of such a bookish life was mitigated
by a strong predilection for athletics, and through the medium of
rough-and-tumble games I grew into an appreciation of the necessity
for adapting readily to the adversities that must inevitably come to
each of us.
In spite of considerable success in these two fields of scholalSbip
and athletics, I was drifting through a normal confused and con-
fusing adolescence when I reached my final year of high school.
Since I was very uncertain as to what I wanted to do, and I tended
to keep my problems to myself, I am deeply indebted to a very
thoughtful high school principal for referring me to the Professor
Augustus Howe Buck Scholarship Committee at Boston University.
I well remember my great apprehensiveness regarding that initial
meeting with the Committee, and my extreme relief at the reassur-
ing kindliness with which I was greeted by the members. Indeed,
I found that with the prodding of their questions concerning my
plans I was able for the first time to crystallize my ideas about the
future.
The further I proceeded with my study of the human mind the
more often I was struck by the inevitable interactions of body and
mind, and by the uncanny manner in which the mind tries to solve
the problems of the body, and, a fortiori, by the powerful attempts
of the body to solve problems of the mind. This type of speculation
was further intensified by the work which I carried out at Dart-
mouth College in 19+3, as I wound up my work for an A.B. degree
in the V-12 unit there.
Then followed a three-year hiatus in academic activities, a period
of war experience. My chief duty involved two years of wartime
experience on a gunboat in the Pacific, where I served as executive
ofIicer, gunnery officer, personnel officer, navigator, commis-
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 281
financial underwriting and their moral support in many personal
ways, they enabled this young man to pursue a course of develop-
ment which, it is hoped, will bear fruit in later years in his serv-
ices to others.
CESAREO PENA
A.B., 1947; A.M., 1948
Mr. Peiia is the only man of direct Spanish descent among
the Fund men. His brief story is as follows:
My ancestors were undistinguished tillers of the soil and hard-
working artisans. Recently, many of my relatives in Spain took
part in the Spanish Civil War, fighting on the Loyalist side against
Franco. Several spent years in concentration camps. One of my
uncles was released this year after six years' imprisonment. Since
censorship is strict in fascist Spain, news from relatives in that
country is scarce and of necessity not very informative.
My mother and father were married a year or so after arriving
in this country in 1918. My father lost much of his savings and
the couple has lived in straitened circumstances most of the time
since. I was the first child. Three other children were born and
lived. Three others died at birth. When I was six and seven years
of age my parents took their children and visited Spain for two
six-month periods. I can remember helping my father tend and
milk the cows, riding on a donkey to fetch new-mown hay, and
similar rustic occurrences.
nack in the United States, I ~ the first grade in Quincy
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 283
I entered the anny air forces on June 30, 1942, and served as a
weather forecaster in the United States and in the Pacific (Hawaii
and Okinawa) for about three and a half years. Three battle stars
helped quicken my discharge on November 20, 194,. Since that
time I have married, have received my A.B., and am now doing
graduate work in psychology at Boston University.
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was rather severe when I entered the second grade in the Lynn
Public Schools. But I was very fortunate in having superior teachers
for the first three years and the transition was made without losing
time. At the Lynn English High School I took part in quite a
few extra-curricular activities. For example, I was president in my
senior year of the Round Table, an organization to which all the
boys in the school were supposed to belong. The club ran a Foot-
ball Victory Dance evexy year after the football season (victory or
not, the dance went on). In cooperation with the corresponding
girls' organization, I wrote a script for a fifteen-minute radio pro-
gram which was given over the local station in Salem. I also bad
a speaking part on the program, a fact that bas always given me
considerable satisfaction, for when so-called wits say "Oh, so you're
Fred Allen; but not the one on the radio. Ha, hal", I can always
say, "Ob, but I am. Ha, Hal Or at least I was once for fifteen
minutes one day back in 1940."
I graduated from high school in 1940. I was still one year younger
than all my classmates, due to my having started at the age of five.
My future career was not at all settled in my mind at the time, so
it was decided that I should take a postgraduate course at high
school. Meanwhile I took a series of tests at the Boston University
Department of Student Counseling which substantiated my theory
that I was fitted for an academic career. I first heard of the Buck
Fund at the graduation exercises when it was announced that a
classmate of mine had been appointed to it. During the next year
the principal advised me to apply for the appointment, which,
somewhat to my surprise, I received.
We reserve Mr. Allen's account of his war service for a
later chapter, simply adding here a word as to his present work
and plans. In spite of his acceptance by a graduate school of
high grade, he has decided to try teaching for a time before
further formal study.
CLINTON ALBERT PIPER
M.D., Harvard, 1947
As some account of this young physician should appear later,
we reserve his story in the main fQr that time. However, as a
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 285
slight foretaste we may note that having stated that he worked
two summers for the state as a life-guard, he follows with the
sentence: "I saved two people from drowning." Just that,-
nothing morel He writes that his first degree was a "war
casualty." Probably not many men are now receiving the
Harvard M.D. without it.
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 287
her share of the expenses, while I prepared myself for a teaching
career. I received my A.B. degree in August, 1946. In September
I commenced my training at Harvard Graduate School. I received
my Master's degree in June, 1947, and am now studying for my
Doctor's degree in history. .
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 289
Many light moments and serious ones, too. I can remember
gathering in Jacob Sleeper Hall to hear Roosevelt ask Congress to
declare war, and reactions varying from fear to despair to enthusi-
asm.
One of my big and continuing hobbies revolves around music,
especially opera. For many years I have collected vocal and operatic
records, including the old acousticals found only in attics and sec-
ond-hand shops. Besides collecting records, in which my interest
is that of music-lover, collector, and historian interested in the
lore of operatic performance, I attend as many operas and recitals
as I can. Little time remains for the theater, but it is a favorite
pastime.
Three years of Graduate School at Harvard immediately con-
front me; then to begin teaching is the plan. Perhaps the chance
for writing or for action later on. The Ph.D. looks so far away
today, it is hard to look beyond it. Perhaps long-range planning is
dangerous.
In a later chapter we are to learn of Stembridge's war service.
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YOUmFUL PROMISE' 291
tlJat the most outstanding feature of my life is that I have early
found the work I want to do and I am determined to do my best to
do that work well.
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 293
after that year a peculiar thing happened. Upon going to the
doctor to get a physical check-up for summer camp. they discovered
I had very high blood pressure. That stopped the sports and
slowed me down considerably. It also started me thinking seriously
of things like life. philosophy, and the eternal questions of man-
kind. The next two years at Milton High School I managed to
be on the honor roll most of the time. In 1942. under clouds of
war and fearful tension, we graduated.
At sixteen. I worked during the summer in an ice cream plant
and during my seventeenth and eighteenth years spent odd hours
behind a vegetable and fruit counter earning for college, which
was my aim. One day, behind this same counter, my mother came
into the store and handed me a letter. Upon opening it I nearly
shot through the ceiling. It announced, simply, that I had been
chosen as one of five for the Professor Augustus Howe Buck
scholarship at the College of Liberal Arts of Boston University.
That was one of the most exciting days of my life. From then on
I don't think I did anything right - added wrong, couldn't staple
the bags, fumbled with fruit, tripped over everything, and was
generally balled up.
My freshman year was an exciting one at Boston University. I
took to it eagerly and participated in everything - student activi-
ties and so on. I liked my courses and tried hard in everything,
especially English, as I planned that to be my major. But came
the first semester finals, and I really chopped up the English by
overlooking part of the directions at the top of the page. Pro-
fessor Sneath took me aside and told me the sad news, that after
maintaining an "A" all the way until then I had ruined it. That
was a lesson learned early. The second semester was one of unrest
and tension for everyone as the classes gradually fell off and the
students signed up for the Service. The war fever gripped me too.
In February, the exodus took place.
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 295
and prejudice. I shaD return to finish studies, I hope, in May of
1948, then plan to do graduate work.
In the Fall of 1946 I was appointed one of ten from 980 appli-
cants from New England colleges for study and travel in this
hemisphere. The competition was based on an essay telling why
the applicant wanted one of the Fellowships and decided finaDy
by two personal interviews. In applying, I wrote: "It is my belief
that capable, energetic young men, with an understanding appre-
ciation for foreign peoples, is America's greatest asset for future
international cooperation and economic stability." The purpose
of my trip to Argentina was to gain a first-hand insight into the
machinations of the foreign service in the various Latin-American
nations, especially the Argentine. As I aspire to the Diplomatic
Corps, this was my primary interest. Secondarily, I carried out a
field study of labor conditions in the Argentine which climaxed
a year of research on the subject carried on in the States. My in-
terest in labor stems from the fact that the present regime in
power in the Argentine derives its support from the lower classes
of the laboring groups; thus to understand the presence of this
regime, it is necessary to know the peoples and conditions that
put it in power.
During my stay in Argentina. in addition to familiarizing myself
with the local consular and embassy set-ups and policy and com-
piling material on the labor report, I toured throughout the nation
and wrote a series of twenty articles for the Milton Transcript that
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YOU11U'UL PROMISE 297
and its people are the closest in the Southern Hemisphere to those
of our country.
In Argentina the United States Press is sensationalistic and goes
out of its way to find incidents to drum up a good story. Rather
than a coverage with continuity and explanation, theirs is one of
spomdic flashes or scoops that in themselves fail to tell the readers
in the States a progressive story that can be understood. Con-
ditions and results are always the culmination of causes and reasons
- they don't just happen. An historical and economic understand-
ing of the country is necessary to judge the effects.
Our business man's diplomacy is hardly representative of the
best interests of the American people as a whole. Should the beef
trust and the Department of Agriculture represent the State De-
partment in a diplomatic capacity? The succession of Ambassadors
and constant shift in policy is both confusing and detrimental to our
representation there. Our present Ambassador is head of the
National Dairy Corporation. Political appointees on the upper
levds of the foreign service upset the whole idea of a Department
based on merit and Civil Service. The lower levels of the Depart-
ment are under Civil Service and the qualifications are stringent;
to have political appointees step into the higher and authoritative
positions with no previous knowledge or training is neither con-
sistent nor beneficial.
The Peron regime is a military strong-arm dictatorship. This
fact is all the more reason for our understanding that state and
not avoiding it. If you have a wound you don't cut the infected
area from you; mther, you attempt to administer to it. The people
in the Argentine are not to be confused with the regime, and to
isolate them is to offend those who admire us and who one day
will rise against the present administration. The people must be
understood in the light of their background and the conditions
that led to their status today. When this situation is fully under-
stood, one realizes that for the time being the masses have vested
power in this government to gain for them some of the economic
advantages that they should have had generations ago were it not
for the stranglehold of the land-holding class on the Argentine
economy. In other words, the people have sacrificed political ideals
for an economic and social program. When the opposition of
those holding the land offers a plan that is sincere and progressive,
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298 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
Peron will be passe, but for the present there is no sign of this, and
the people know it. The number of rabid supporters of the regime
is few and it is from the ranks of the other parties that Peron de-
rives his support. In 1946 when he was elected, only one or two
Americans foresaw it, the reason being the failure of the press
members in Buenos Aires to realize that the people were more in-
terested in social than political news.
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YOU11lFUL PROMISE 299
Nights aloud with her under a fine old ash tree. We looked to-
gether at old National Geographies and played a veISion of "house,"
adopting the Taj Mahal or the Alhambra as our temporary address.
I loved snow because I rejoiced to feel the icy whirl in my face
as I slid impetuously ahead, glancing up at every street light to
glimpse the rapid fall and mark the fantastic pattern of branches
in the half-light, for it always seemed to snow at night. When the
sun would come out the next day, there was a still-different world,
- one in which our yard would take on the proportions of an
estate, a world strangely silent and unpeopled. I resented the snow
plow that destroyed the illusion of vast space and could only with
difficulty be persuaded to shovel, not so much from laziness as
from dish'ke to disturb the peace of the earth.
A family who exerted great influence on me were the Pykes, a
missionary family working in and near Peking. When I was in
junior high school they lived very near us and were active mem-
beIS of our church. Dr. Pyke is a great scholar, full of wise,
kindly knowledge of theology, eastern and western, of Oriental
culture and philosophy. He is greatly esteemed and respected
throughout the area near Peking for his tireless service to the unfor-
tunate, and his brilliant mind.
MIS. Pyke is an amazing woman, possessing unbelievable
strength, good humor, tact and executive ability. It was through
close contact with these people that I decided to work in China
in some capacity or other, an ambition I still hope to fulfill when
seas of tape can be waded through, and the proper niche found.
Their home was fuU of curious and beautiful Oriental things, and
a sense of urgent, compelling life I hope to make my own.
To fill the gap made by a lack of people, I turned to the arts for
companionship. I read widely and indiscriminately. I bought and
lived with as many treasures as I could; a fifteenth-century Italian
painting on glass, a Pompeiian lamp, an Inca idol, reproductions
of Botticelli, EI Greco, and the Chinese masten. Music helped
to fill the need for emotional expression. And always there was
the influence of my immediate family. I grow more and more to
realize how thoroughly their instruction permeated me.
My father is a clergyman. The son of a minister is put in the
unpleasant position of being a sort of model to the community.
It is impossible not to be conscious of this, and it is bard to decide
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 301
forget her fury on the day after capitulation when she told of hear-
ing the night before on the radio Schubert's "Marche Militaire,"
played by the conquering Prussians on their entrance to Paris in
1870. We shared her rage.
Much of my love of drama comes, I suppose, from tentative
essays in school productions. I will never forget the glory of being
Captain Applejack in our senior play and ranting about the stage
as a pirate to the extent that father couldn't be sure who I was
until after the middle of the first act. I had said little about the
nature of my role at home, not knowing whether it would meet
family approval; but they were delighted. I entered several public
speaking contests and acquired a pile of little medals that were
more joy to Mother than to me.
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 303
life tum one's whole course in a new direction. How diffelent
would my life be today if I had secured work early in September,
19311 As we grow older I suppose we manifest our maturity by
consciously choosing the course we take. But as for me, I am
glad that good Dame Fortune gave me a push in the right direc-
tion along the way even though I accepted the new course re-
luctantly at the time.
I recall another earlier case in which I believe my development
was promoted by good fortune. In the first three grades of gram-
mar school I could be described in no better term than "stupid."
Many of the bitter experiences of those early years are burned into
my memory. But in the year that I was to begin in grade 4B, the
class for the less brilliant, I was kept home from school the first
two days by my parents in order to help finish the harvest of crops.
When I did report, the 4B classroom was filled to capacity and the
only alternative was to put me in 4A with the more progressive
students. From that moment to the present I have always been
among the leaders, scholastically, in all my classes. Perhaps I read
too much into that episode, but I do believe that all my sensi-
tive nature needed was the encouragement that came with the
thought that I was identified with those who were not stupid. To
my more mature mind today that seems like normal psychology.
As we go along through life, how much we need to be encouraged
by folks who care enough for us to want the best in us to come to
fruition.
High school gave me the opportunity to begin developing many
of those talents which were now coming to light. On the request
of the editor of the school magazine, I wrote a short story which
was considered good enough for publication. With this befc:ing
I worked my way up to editor during my senior year. I also me
the first editor of the new monthly school publication which has
continued to this day. I'm very glad today that the editor asked
me to write that little story.
The Dramatic Club was another interest which claimed much
of my time. During the four years of high school I participated in
most of the productions which helped me greatly in developing a
feeling for expression and interpretation as well as giving me many
opportunities to appear before people. The natural feelings of
self-consciousness which come to adolescents came in full measure
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304 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
to me. Through the years that bas been my personal battle and
only now can I really feel some signs of victory. Dramatics in high
school and during the five years following became my principal
hobby and have been invaluable in my personal and social develop-
ment.
As graduation approached I again looked for work. This was
the natural thing to do, for college simply did not enter my mind.
I had not taken a college preparatOly course and, furthermore,
family circumstances were such in those hard days of the middle
thirties that I simply had to give assistance. Fortunately, the pub-
lisher of the high school paper had been impressed with some of my
writings and consequently offered me a job. This I accepted gladly.
My work there was entirely manual, but the $11 a week were
a great help to me and my family.
Mter less than a year of work in the printing shop, I left to take
a humble position with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity
Company. Here I was to remain until I entered college. At first I
was overcome with joy at having a job with a salary and two weeks'
summer vacation. Through my mind ran those thoughts common
to all young men, the possibility of marriage and a family. Of
course that would take time, for even in those days of low prices it
was not possible to support a home on a mere $14 a week.
But for a while I was perfectly content to work on and wait ex-
pectantly for the promotions and increases in pay.
The years went by one by one, and the joy I found in the new-
ness of my job wore off. I began to wonder what my life was going
to amount to. Always in the back of my mind was the thought
that some day I ought to "be somebody," or else my life would be a
failure. My ambitions and energies were running more to things
of the mind, of ideas and ideals, of right and wrong, of sorrow and
happiness, than they were to the intricacies of the insurance busi-
ness.
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 305
many conversations he impressed on me his belief that I would
eventually become dissatisfied with my present state and go on to
college. Until I did so I would find the path of progress blocked
by a stone wall. The hard climb over it could only come through a
college education.
About a month later my first positive reaction to this prophecy
came one night as my mother and I were quietly sitting in the par-
lor of our home. "Mother," I said, "I think I'd like to go to col-
lege." Two weeks later the final decision came. I went to Boston
and inquired about entry requirements at College.
Although this was not an accredited college, tuition was free and
therefore offered an academic opportunity to one whose financial
resources were extremely meager. That was in January, 1942. In
February I began the study of two courses in history under the
direction of a high school teacher. In June I took the high school
examinations in these courses and received credit as postgraduate
study. With these to my credit and with the understanding that I
would make up language requirements during my first two years at
college, I was permitted to enter in the autumn of 1942, at the
age of twenty-five.
War had been declared in December, 1941. I had already regis-
tered as a conscientious objector and was so classified, but when
the time came actually to leave for a public service camp, I was
reclassified because of a slight physical disability. This enabled me
to go to college. A year later, when such cases were being re-
checked, I was given a deferment for theological study even though
I was still an undergraduate.
I consider myself greatly in debt to society for the opportunity
to study while others risked and lost their lives on fields of battle.
A close friend of mine, talented and eager to begin study for the
Christian ministry, was drafted as soon as he finished high school
with honors, and within a year was killed in France. That was
the fate of many ambitious boys. That I was not only spared but
also permitted to go to college while the war raged makes me feel
profoundly the debt lowe. Only a life of devoted service to man-
kind can begin to repay what lowe to so many people and to
society as a whole.
My stay at - - - - College came to a close at the end of
the first semester. While I pushed a broom around the classrooms
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YOUTHFUL PROMISE 307
faith in me, and I find my spirit lifted up. I have dedicated myself
to Christian service through the ministry, but it seems tha~ I have
received far more than I can ever hope to return. Whatever mark
I can leave on the lives of others or on society will only be a re-
flection of my gratitude to those in various occupations and walks
of life who have helped me to receive the best possible education
so easily.
Armed now with adequate financial resources, I attended the
summer sessions at Boston University in 1944 and 1945. On August
11, 1945, I received the degree which I had so coveted - the Bache-
lor of Arts degree from Boston University, with Honor. I had par-
tially fulfilled the prophecy of that lieutenant four years before; I
was on my way over the wall that stood in the path of my greatest
usefulness.
JAMES SIMPSON PROCTOR
A.B., 1947
Proctor's entrance to Boston University was delayed after
high school days by a year at another institution, a year and
a half of illness, and two years of work. After telling us that
he was ''born to parents with the ability to make the most out
of limited circumstances," he pays gracious tribute to his col-
lege and its "attitude of friendliness and helpfulness."
He then continues:
At the moment I am up to my ears in work, teaching chemistry
full-time and taking some work in addition. Little enough time
is left to think of the deeper meaning of life, but that is not alto-
gether left out. The further I go with this business of science, the
more firmly I am convinced that science cannot explain all things.
Logic leads to the conclusion that the great unifying principle must
stem from God. I believe I can thank Professor Bertocci for crys-
tallizing that idea.
Proctor teaches at Iowa State College.
WlLLIAM ALLEN PERKINS
A.B., 1947
It is with a sense almost of climax that the story of William
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YOU'nDJ1L PROMISE 309
During these several years actively spent in youth and student
church work, I attended many church conferences, met many ac-
tive churchmen and young people from many places. Through
this, my tiny share in the work of the church, I gained a vision of
what it means on a greater scale, of its supreme importance among
other tasks in the world.
Thus did I first begin to consider the ministry as my vocation,
as I learned more of the nature of its work. I received no "call"
by a voice in the night, a bolt from the sky, or a sudden conversion
on the road to Damascus. Rather it has been the ever-deepening
conviction that in the ministry of the church I can best use my
abilities in the service of God and of others, continue my youthful
interests, and receive the greatest, though intangible, rewards.
I am now studying at the Episcopal Theological School in Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts. My conception of the church and its work
is constantly broadening - opening up new areas of challenge, con-
vincing me more and more of my inadequacy, and yet of my real
calling. Where my ministry will lead me several years hence it is
impossible at this date to say. Be it in a large city, or a rural town, a
college, an office, or a parish, in this country or overseas, my only
hope for the future is that I may, in some way, as best I can, help
bring the Christian gospel to a very needy world.
So with the story of a life just well begun the end of the
list of seventy-eight Fund men is reached. There have been
others, but here is a good cross-section, provided that word is
divorced from the idea of average.
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 311
shall be returnable within a reasonable time, to the University for
the benefit of the Income Account of the Fund.
Of the men ordained to the ministry the earliest on the list
is the Reverend F. L. Pizzuto. In his story he tells us:
An immediate ancestor was Tommaso De Pizzuto, who was sent
to represent the Pizzuto family in the army raised by the Count of
Molise for the Third Crusade in 1187. Baron Pizzuto, being a
vassal of Count Hugo of Molise, with the other leaders had to help
furnish an army to fight Saladin who had recaptured Jerusalem
during the pontificate of Gregory VIII. With the coming of the
Normans my branch of the family established itself in Monacilioni,
a fortified little town founded on the territories of the Pizzuto
family.
My grandfather, Francesco Pizzuto, was a Roman priest with a
theological degree; but when Garibaldi passed through the Province
of Campobasso, recruiting soldiers for the war of Independence, he
left the church and joined his army. This caused him much trouble.
He was excommunicated and after the war became a civil engineer.
He came to America in 1873 after most of his property had been
destroyed by bandits. This reduced the family to poverty. After a
few years in America, my grandfather returned to Italy. My father
could not continue to study for lack of means and was compelled
to take up carpentry. When I left for America he had a carpentry
shop with a g~era1 hardware store which served several villages.
I was born on October 7, 1896, at Monacilioni, Campobasso,
Italy. I came to America in March of 1913. Landing at New York,
I went immediately to Auburn, where I had a distant relative.
There I attended a special course in English at the YM.CA. My
father was one of those numerous Protestants in Italy who read the
Bible but do not belong to an organized church. I attended a
Presbyterian church, which I afterwards joined, my first Sunday in
Auburn. In the spring of 1914 I came to Boston and my member-
ship was transferred to an Italian Methodist Church. In 1916 I
was elected president of the Epworth League chapter which was
very active. In April, 1917, I was made a local preacher. Since I
had attended a technical high school in Italy, and was about to
graduate when I left in March, 1913, I attended an evening high
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 313
his coming among them and, in token of their esteem, the
pastor was presented a gold watch.
So absorbing is the story of the Reverend Waitstill H.
Sharp's active life that one is tempted to transcribe to this
chapter all of it not yet used. His suggestions of required
reading for the undergraduate Fund men, and for "frequent
tutorial contact and intellectual exchange between the Schol-
ars, the Fellows, the Administrators, and with minds drawn
from all over the University and from beyond" might well be
taken under serious consideration by the Fund Committee.
Of more immediate concern here is the fact that it took three
years at Harvard Law School to convince young Sharp that
he ought to preach I That, however, is but one side of the
story, which he tells as follows:
The call of religion was insistent during the years 1921-1926.
It seems best to omit the details of this insistence. He
continues:
These were gradual but finally determining inftuences in my
choice of the Unitarian ministry as a career. I had thrown every
walcing moment into the law study but I never felt at home in the
Law School. I took my LL.B. in June, 1926, with lasting gratitude
for its stem training in analytical and conceptual thinking. But all
the time I had felt a joy in the conduct of services; in work with
the children of the two churches where I had served since 1921; in
the friendships and purposes of the free church.
In July, 1926, I accepted the position of secretary of the Depart-
ment of Religious Education of the American Unitarian Associa-
tion, the national religious headquarters of Unitarian churches in
Canada and the United States. This worle, in which I was to be
engaged until mid-1933, involved travel to our churches allover
the country, the organization of regional conferences, editorial
worle, and much service in interchurch committees and boards con-
cerned with religion, education and social service.
The years 1927-1928 were important, for not only did they
bring the Srst two of many trips to Europe but the second ~s
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314 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 315
widely read, the churches well attended, the Boy Scouts generously
patronized, Community Chests for far-away Boston charities hand-
somely oversubscribed.
The other side of the picture, partly paraphrased, loo~ as
follows. "The pleasant social and financial routines lull these
Corinthians to smugness and slumber. They are sundered
from the dark realities in both their own nation and through-
out the world." Injustices everywhere figure but little in
the lives of these well educated and intelligent people. They
fear change. Yet the very institutions they are trying so zeal-
ously to guard will be "blown sky high" if these injustices are
not corrected.
We bought a little gray house on Lake Sunapee in Newbury,
New Hampshire, in July, 1936. This is our "Avalon" for these
eleven years of war and work and travel, whether we are here enjoy-
ing it during the two months of the "Unitarian summer," or see it
in the eye of inward solitude on winter nights from far across
the sea.
The Munich crisis befell Europe in 1938. It stirred the flight of
250,000 Czechoslovaks from the lands awarded to the Tiger, Nazi
Germany, and to the Jackals, Poland and Hungary. These latter
ganged up on a Czechoslovak Republic whose excellent army they
never would have dared attack, unless she had been fully engaged
by the greatest military power of Europe'S history. There had been
increasing affection between the Unitarians and the Czechoslovaks
since the establishment of the First Republic, October 28, 1918.
Mrs. Thomas Garrigue Masaryk (born Charlotte Garrigue) was an
American, a Unitarian of Huguenot descent reared in our Unitarian
Church of the Saviour in Brooklyn, New York. Also, the British
and American Unitarians had founded a strong mission in Prague
in the early 1920's. Also, 1,000,000 Czechs had seceded from the
Roman Catholic Church, and 750,000 of these had formed the
Czechoslovak National Church (today called the Czechoslovak
Church) with which new Protestant fellowship the Unitarian
churches of the world were allied in The International Association
for Religious Freedom.
These ties, stronger with every year since 1918, led the New
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316 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
World Unitarians (in Canada and the United States), with Ameri-
can Quaker advice, to form an emergency relief organization, the
Commission for Service in Czechoslovakia, particularly to aid the
imperiled liberals of this democratic Republic. In January, 1939,
my wife and I were selected to go overseas to Prague to lend a hand
where we could help. There was almost no money to start with;
we hoped some would appear. We went with no salary, only the
payment of our expenses.
We sailed February 4, 1939, on the Aquitania, stopping in Lon-
don and Paris for briefing by diplomats, social workers and intelli-
gence officers recently returned from Czechoslovakia, and arrived
in Prague on February 23. The air was full of sorrow, disillusion-
ment and foreboding. The Hacha Government, which bad taken
over at President Benes' resignation and exile, was powerless to re-
sist the Nazi bullying. Gestapo agents were combing the helpless
country. The power plant of the 1,000,000-souled city of Prague
lay within the Sudetenland cession, while the frontier, still unrati-
fied, was being pushed daily nearer to the capital city. The First
Republic was dying; its confidence and hopes and dreams were
blasted by the betrayal of its twenty-year role in Central Europe at
the hands of England and France who had encouraged that role,
and by the hopeless division between Russia and the West. A des-
perate opportunism, but with a national penumbra, burned every-
where; the Czechs were living again, each man to himself, as during
three hundred years of Hapsburg domination, but with faith in an
ultimate justice and the final integrity of the Republic.
We struck hands with the Honorable Wilbur Carr, American
Minister to Prague; with Dr. Alice Masaryk and a small circle
of her social work colleagues; with the Refugee Institute of the
Ministry of Social Welfare; with the Unitarian leadership, lay and
clerical; and with the Patriarch Gustave Prochaska of the Czecho-
slovak National Church. Our duty was to relieve the few whom we
could help among the 250,000 refugees swarming to Prague and
Brno and to the provincial towns from the ceded areas where the
newly arrived German and Polish and Hungarian masters were
grabbing farms and stores and chattels and were settling old scores
in a reign of terror.
Then fell the Einmarsch, the complete occupation of the de-
fenseless Protektorat. On March 15, 1939, every trace of Czecho-
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 317
slovak democracy vanished as the gmy troops poured in through
the falling snow. Social Democrats, Jews, Unitarians, Masons,
PEN Club members - all to whom the political inheritance of the
French Revolution, of the American Revolution, of their own
First Republic, and the religious truths of the Judaeo-Christian
faith meant life itself - these were trapped. Czechoslovakia, sanc-
tuary for free thinkers of Eastern and Balkan Europe since the first
Russian scholars arrived in 1918, had become a concentration
camp. The Gestapo closed the borders. Thousands stood before
our office doors appealing for our intervention to secure them visas
and the Gestapo Ausreise, and even for our aid in procuring pass-
ports with which to flee the Brown Shirts.
Our funds were desperately limited. Few in America after
March 15 believed that we could work at all; or, if we could carry
on, that we could prevent more American money from benefitting
the Nazi occupiers. We had been made disbursing agents for the
American Committee for Relief in Czechoslovakia, Inc., a national
campaign founded by Dr. Malcolm W. Davis, Director of the
Paris Office of the Carnegie Endowment, and by President Nicholas
Murray Butler and Mr. Thomas W. Lamont. But these funds
were limited by the same public doubt which, since March 15, had
struck at the Unitarian appeal. I could not dispel this doubt by a
public revelation of the fact that we were leaving all our dollars in
Paris and London and were financing our Prague operations with
~:Esurchase of Czech specie. Posting of dollar accounts in foreign
, against the acceptance of Czechoslovak currency in the Pro-
te1ctorat, was a criminal offense under the Protektorat law; instant
expulsion from the Protektorat would have been the least of the
penalties to follow detection of this by the Reichsban1c Gestapo.
Therefore we could only plead with our executives in Boston and
New York: ''Tell the people to give you every possible dollar.
The need is desperate. We can protect the dollars, and will ex-
plain later." Leaving $28,000 in banks in Paris and London and
Geneva, we purchased Czechoslovak paper money in I,OOO-Crown
notes to a pre-Occupation value of $74,000 at the regular rate of
exchange. We kept no books, having burned everything secretly
in the Hotel Atlantic on the night of the Einmarsch. We had no
bank accounts, because we would have had to make dollars thereby
available to the Reichsban1c authorities supervising the Czech
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PASTOR. AND PHYSICIAN 319
"political" and begging for clandestine aid to emigrate. But the
Czech Underground, whose Advocat Edvard Sulc was our contact
man (he survived the Occupation to hold reunion with us in
1945), was keener than the Nazis' best!
These were our principal services:
1. Emigration aid, both legal and illegal: cash grants for clandes-
tine 8ights to Poland or Trieste or Roumania; interventions to
secure visas for students, political leaders, professors, for anyone
who could. prove his ability to keep the memory and hope of the
nation alive during exile in a foreign land; interventions for the
grant of passports. Martha ran two trainloads of the wives and
children of Sudetenland Social Democrats through Germany to
England; and, while safe "outside," despatched cables from Paris
and London to American universities and to the Institute for Inter-
national Education in New York, reporting on the peril of teachers
and begging those invitations to teach in American colleges which
would justify the immediate grants of the American teachers' visas
at our Consulate in Prague.
2. Refugee feeding. We fed 350 refugees two meals each day
from mid-April through mid-October at the Salvation Army head-
quarters to give them the chance to visit Prague, merge themselves
in the confusion of the city, and there to devise their 8ights from
the Gestapo. Neither the refugees nor the Gestapo knew the
American source'of these meals. I financed the project by carrying
thousands of Czech paper crowns from the vault at the American
Consulate through the streets to a back room in the Headquarters
of Major Hladilc of Armada Spasy (Salvation Army). The brave
Major took the bales of cash without a word or a receipt, and bought
the foods for the refugees. I believe that he and his wife would
have died under torture rather than reveal the origin of the work.
One day the Gestapo came, lined the refugee men up facing the
wall, and an officer beat their heads with his clubbed revolver
until the men fell insensible in their blood. The Gestapo was look-
ing for a refugee reported to have eaten at the Salvation Army; his
remaining comrades refused to tell his hideaway. The lightning
was striking rather close. The Hladiks accepted my next bale of
cash with the usual smile.
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PASTOll AND PHYSICIAN 321
American Clipper for Lisbon, I to remain until my return home
October 6, Martha to convoy twenty-nine children and eleven
adults with her from Marseille to New York just before Christmas.
Dr. Frederick May Eliot, President of the American Unitarian
Association, had told me: "It is your mom obligation to go over."
We did.
Lisbon, Portugal, was the last sanctuary and gangway for the
thousands of refugees who could escape from Western Europe.
Hiding in camps and in filthy little hotels in as-yet Unoccupied
France, cowered the largest and most valuably diverse collection of
refugee intelligence in all the history of persecution. This was the
pool of Europe's hope, come V-E day whenever. On my last
visit to Geneva, August 10, 1939, my friend, Dr. Marie Gins-
berg. Librarian of the League of Nations and also secretary of La
Comi~ Pour Le Placement des Inte11ectuels, had shown me a bat-
tery of American-type filing cases containing the Curriculum Vitaes
of the 4,700 intellectual leaders of Europe who had registered with
her as needing sanctuary from the coming Nazi massacre. These
lawyers, editors, clergymen, authors, professors, research workers,
journalists, political leaders, were the carriers of all the culture of
the Continent I asked Dr. Ginsberg: "How many of these
4,700 have reached safety?" She replied: "Two hundred and thirty-
five." The war was twenty-three days away.
You can search the gallery of the crimes of officialdom from the
start of government upon this earth; I believe that none of the
misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance of officialdom in all his-
tory can compare with the failure of the Legislative and Executive
in the United States, Great Britain and France to open the doors
to these 4,700 intellectual leaders after March 15, 1939, made it
clear that they were doomed. The American visa was a mantle of
protection ~o almost every intellectual to whom it was granted,
until the outbreak of the war, and for many until December, 1941.
Thousands could have been saved. Europe today (1948) is stag-
gering for want of more than food. The massacre of these intellec-
tuals at Mauthausen and Buchenwald tells the story of the spiritual
hunger of the whole Continent.
This was the most moving of all the moving sights of 1939: these
filing cases. Our task a year later was clear, to help extract from
Southern France, transport across Spain, and move to safety in
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 323
East Mission of UNRRA. This was a paradoxical year. It was
rewarding for a lifetime as an experience in world travel and social
observation. The Mediterranean World - Egypt, Palestine, Italy
- came alive with all its poverties, its diseases, and its promise.
Promise there is in the Middle East, if reason and conscience can
gain a foothold, first for education, social service, and the formation
of labor unions, and then for a social revolution.
As an administrative experience, the year in this vast, cumber-
some, paper-cluttered machine called "Middle East Mission,
UNRRA" was as deep a disappointment as could follow two such
exciting and rewarding adventures as were 1939 in Central Europe
and 1940 in the Iberian Peninsula and Southern France. The
Middle East Mission was bedevilled by months of idleness, the
oversupply of personnel; black market corruption with supplies,
drunkenness, the result of frustration and boredom, hatreds and
rivalries between Americans and Americans and between British
and Americans. And the prince of devils was the British militaIy
intent to prostitute the whole UNRRA program in the Middle
East to serve Churchill's political enterprises in Greece, Yugoslavia
and Albania. Scores of us did not accomplish one single act in
that whole year; we sat about rustling papers, or ran about wangling
militaIy orders for travel to see refugee camps (and also Palestine) .
This was my first intensive experience with. the species bureaucrat,
the little man with the glossaries of ofliciallingo and his eye on the
next stage in the climb up the administrative chart; he shines apples
for the higher brass the while he plants fly-specks on the names of
his competitors for the next salary level. And the female of this
species is more deadly than the male.
I returned home in June, 1945, to become Field Director of
American Relief for Czechoslovakia, Inc., then organizing its V-E
program of aid to my first and best-loved friends, those colleagues
of the desperate days of 1939 to whom, in parting just before the
war, I had promised to return. I sailed September 23 on the
Queen Elizabeth to spend three dismal and deeply alarming weeks
in battered London and to fly to Prague on October 12. Martha
Sharp, who had been on a tour of refugee emigration duty in Lis-
bon from February to September, 1945, had flown to Prague in
September to bring back the urgent request of the UNRRA Mission
to Czechoslovakia that American Relief for Czechoslovakia alter
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324 A CHllONICLE OF ACIDEVEMENT
its original program. Our financial resources had long been iJl.
tended solely for the re-equipment of Czech hospitals bombed and
looted by the Nazis and unable to manufacture or to purchase
surgical instruments. UNRRA Prague asked us to postpone this
hospital re-equipment project and to feed as many children as we
could finance. This change was demanded by the frightful inci-
dence of children's deficiency diseases follOwing six years of war
and occupation. We acceded to the request and the New York
office began the search for foods while I went overseas to receive
them.
We imported tons of cocoa, dried milk, egg powders and what-
ever fats and rice New York could ship us to feed tubercular and
anemic children as follows:
67,000 - Winter of 1946
37,000 - Summer of 1946
100,000 - Winter of 1947
110,000- Winter of 1948
This program of importation, transportation from Bremen, wue-
housing in Plague and Melnik, and distribution through the MiJl.
istry of Social Welfare, was managed by two Americans with a
native staff of eight. It involved the closest cooperation with the
newly organized Ministries of Health, Social Welfare, Finance,
Food, Foreign Affairs, Agriculture, Transport, Post and Telegraphs,
Relief and Rehabilitation; with the UNRRA Mission to Plague
and with a host of other relief agencies like the American Red
Cross, the Joint Distribution Committee, the National Catho-
lic Welfare Council, the American Embassy, the Czechoslovak
Labor Unions, the National Protestant Council, the Catholic
Church. One of our chief contributions was to organize the C0-
ordinating Committee of Foreign Relief Agencies in which every
organization was represented and to which its chief of mission re-
ported problems or impending services to the Republic. At times,
nine Government Ministries were represented at our meetings.
Our Mission served also as shipping and warehousing agents for
the host of American clubs, social organizations and churches de-
siring to send tons of food, clothing and medicines to agencies ill
Czechoslovakia accredited by the Ministry of Social Welfare as
performing such essential, non-political social services as to entitle
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PASTOll AND PHYSICIAN 325
them to free transportation and storage of relief supplies consigned
to them from America and Canada. This service was called Aid-
In-Shipping.
During the summer of 1946 we started to equip with unique
American instruments fifty-seven bombed and looted hospitals
which had been raided by the departing Nazis, allowed to sink into
six years of obsolescence, or bombed in the final Russian push. The
food needs were not nearly met for Czechoslovakia's 1,300,000
children and adolescents, and throughout our work we were plagued
by the question whether, with limited finances, to feed children
or to supply the hospitals American surgical instruments never to
be made in Czechoslovakia and impossible for the Ministry of
Health to import because of the donar shortage. Hospital superin-
tendents were pleading for audiometers and crystal sets for chil-
dren deafened by explosions and war-time diseases. One in every
ten Czechoslovak births was premature, and pediatricians were
imploring us to rush American incubators with which 40 per
cent of all premature births can be saved. Every mail brought
prayers for X-Ray tubes to lighten excenent Swiss, Gennan and
Swedish X-Ray machines standing cold and dark under the dust-
covers where they had been stored when their last tubes burned out,
five and six years before.
The Nazis bad intended to exterminate these rebellious Czechs.
To this end, they forbade all nursing and medical education in
Czech hospitals and medical schools for six years, leaving the na-
tion the task today of training 5,000 physicians and 15,000 nurses
to fill the six-year gap. They meticulously defabricated Dr. Svej-
car's Premature Birth Clinic in Prague modeled after the pioneer
work for saving premature infants done by Drs. Blackfan and
Yaglou at the Harvard Medical School. Without the incubator
services of this Svejcar Clinic, 70 per cent of the premature babies
had been dying in the Greater Prague Area, and were dying when
we arrived. The Nazis forbade all hospital repairs or re-equipment,
except as it would serve the Gennan minority or the We1mnacht.
They looted every hospital in their retreat. The immense modem
Jablunkov Sanatorium, capable of receiving 800 patients, was left
only its soup kettles, and these only because they were so securely
cemented to the floor that removal would have tom out their bot-
toms. In one medical research laboratory in Prague, where 96
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 327
Sharp's thought-provoking answer to that question will be
given in the chapter on "The Main Chance."
If the work of the Reverend Waitstill H. Sharp for these
crucial years has been to leave the home fires to others that
he might light fires on cold hearths across the sea; the equally
vital task of Bishop Newell S. Booth has been to keep kraal
fires burning and Christian altar fires bright throughout the
length and breadth of his African mission field - a field
which according to the church press comprises "much of the
missionary activity of that continent."
The years of Dr. Booth's service to Africa began in 1930
when he went out as a missionary. A period of broader service
began in 1944 when he was elected Bishop of the Methodist
Church. But before writing of his life in and for Africa, some.
thing about his college days and nights too, is placed here for
contrast. Of his introduction to life as a student in Boston, of
his room and his job, he writes:
I had a little "cubby-hole" in the basement of an apartment
house in the immigrant section of Boston. My job was to empty
the rubbish and garbage from each aparbnent and carry it down
into the basement to be carted off. So with $40 and the
promise of a tuition scholarship I started to college.
Soon I moved out to live in the home and rich fellowship of a
minister's family in Allston. And the job changed to running an
electric dish-washer in the basement of a Commonwealth Avenue
hotel every night and washing windows on contract in homes and
institutions all over Greater Boston on Saturdays. I really got ac-
quainted with Boston from those trips and the orientation trips
on which Dean Warren sent us and the hunting for interesting
literary landmarks in the course on New England Writers with
Ralph Taylor.
In spite of all the work involved in those jobs, I just had to get
my record in the courses high enough to convince the Fund Com-
mittee that I might be worthy of help from a scholarship. It meant
long evenings of study. And I always left "Math" until last be-
cause I knew my interest would keep me awake to do that anyway.
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 329
I buttoned in the detachable double lining of my raincoat and
was ready. I went on foot for several reasons. The road is not
very good for a car and the car is none too good for the road or
for any road. My bicycle is laid up temporarily waiting for a new
tire. And furthermore I like to walk with the boys. I enjoy walk-
ing. Also I like to show the students here whom I am always asking
to walk that I am neither too lazy nor too weak to walk. The walk
today was just four miles each way.
When I got to the compound where I was to meet the boys
who were to go with me, I had an illustration of one side of the
boys' characters. Four of them ran at once to see who would be the
first to take the victrola from me and another wanted to cany
my coat. The other day chief Kanene was walking with me from
the house down to the church. He wanted to take my Bible and
song book, and, although I felt rather foolish handing them over,
yet it gave him a bit of pleasure. Well, when we started out, we
were quite a long file. Two other students besides the regular
two wanted to go along. Also four of the little boys went along
for the excitement and also to help with the singing in the village.
We walked two miles along the familiar road, down the big hill,
across the dike and over to the main road. Then we cut out across
the road onto a path that led to our village, Nkumbu. All along
both sides for nearly the whole two miles there were native gardens
of cassava, beans, com, and peanuts crowding back the woods
which try so hard to stamp out the gardens, and which need only
a short time to do it effectively, if they are not watched.
At about three we arrived in the village and a crowd immediately
began to gather because "Bwana," a white man, had arrived, and
as soon as I unwrapped the victrola the crowd rapidly increased.
I think that nearly every one in the village and also from another
nearby hamlet were soon gathered around, under, and near the
palaver house in which we were installed. There were about a
hundred ranging in age from sucklings at their mothers' breasts, to
white-haired women and gray-bearded men. They certainly did
enjoy the victrola and also the songs that the boys sang for them.
Then three of the boys spoke briefly, and after they had finished
I spoke.
Would you like to know the kind of things that we tell out in
the villages? I started in by asking them what they wanted most
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330 A CHllONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
of all. I said that I thought I could tell them in one word. They
want life, the good life. Then I tried to show them that the good
life is not in the things that can be stolen or lost or in the friends
that can go away, or in the medicines of the witch doctor. I asked
them where they were to find the life that brings real joy to the
heart. Where is the path? Then I asked what they would. think
of a man who was hunting for something in the dark, yet told
a man who came with light that he did not want it. I told them
that God knew that men wanted life, the good life, also that they
were hunting in the dark to find the way. So He sent Jesus to
show the way, to be the light of men. Then I asked what we could
think when they refused to use the light, refused to come to the
light in order to find life. I closed by pointing out what they must
do in the change of their lives and in their attempts to walk in the
light. They seemed interested in spite of the fact that there were
some rather surly-looking folks on the outskirts. I do not know
what the effect will be. They all wanted us to come again. But I
have a feeling that the phonograph was the biggest drawing card.
Anyway, it gave us a chance to talk to them all.
Now we are here all alone. My wife's nearest white woman
neighbor is twenty-eight miles away. But the black folks are very
nice. And we have a visit with home folks every Thursday night
when the mail comes. You could not hire us to leave. Newell,
Jr., says that Kanene is a nice place to live and we both agree
with him. We have been studying African agriculture and trying
to find out what and when to plant. We have planted rice, sweet
potatoes, beans, nenya, an oil-bearing grain, more cassawa, and
have set out fruit trees. Our planting is about dolle for the year
now. We are going to try some wheat and we want to experiment
with rice and com down near the river with irrigation during the
dry season.
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 331
We had thought that after school we might take a little trip
to either Sandoa or Kabongo. One needs some change now and
then. But we gave up the idea because of the condition of the
old flivver. Then the wife of one of our graduates hurt her foot
quite badly. We doctored it and at first it came along fairly well.
But we began to be afraid of infection. So on May 8 we started
out, the two of us and Newell, Jr., on the front seat and Kamina
and her husband Moses in back, hoping that we would be able to
reach the end of the ISO-mile drive with the old car. [In a later
letter Booth says: "It is rather far off to have your family physician
150 miles away over dirt roads." R.E.B.] We expected to make it
in one day but we had tire trouble from the very start. Five times
we fixed it and then after one tire and the extra were beyond
repair we proceeded on the rim. Just before we reached Kafun-
kumba, the government post about half way to Sandoa, the Ford
refused to go. There are no service stations on this road
but plenty of black boys, so we called out a village and eighteen
of them pushed us into the Post. We arrived with more noise than
dignity, for the boys have a peculiar call that they use as they work.
We started at 6.00 A.M. and arrived at 8.30 P.M.
We stayed in the government rest house that night and had our
meals with one of the officials. We tinkered the Ford the next
day. By the noon of the day after we were ready to start along and
we arrived in Sandoa that night, still on the rim, for we could get
no tire in Kafunkumba. Just before we get to the mission station
there is a wide river, the Lulua, that has to be crossed on a pontoon
poled by natives. We were thinking how good supper, a washup
and bed would feel when we arrived there and found that the river
was swollen and the pontoon out of commission. That meant
leaving our car, crossing in a dugout, and getting up to the mission
three miles away somehow. It was after dark so we did not espe-
cially like the prospect. However, no hippos upset our boat nor
crocodiles ate it up and we arrived safely on the other side. And
there waiting for us were folks from the mission with bicycles for
us and chairs with poles for Newell, Jr., and Kamina.
We were certainly glad when we were finally at the house, not
only for ourselves but for Kamina, whose leg was paining a great
deal. The trained nurse looked at it and next day we sent her to
the government hospital at Sandoa, where the last heard she was
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332 A CHl.ONICLE OF ACIDEVEMENT
coming along all right. We stayed three days with the folks. It
was good to visit and to talk English with someone besides each
. other.
Our trip back was easier in most ways than the one there and we
really expected up to the last minute to do it all in one day, even
if 125 miles of it was on the rim again. However, it grew dark and
as it is not pleasant riding over African roads at night when the
lights are not going, we began to look for a rest house. The govern-
ment has these about every twenty or thirty miles. There is one
right near our mission. We stopped in one just about thirty miles
from home. They are comfortable, clean places, though one is
supposed to carry camp beds in Africa. We were loaded, going,
so that would have been impossible. The boys built a fire in hont
and we ate some supper. We made a very comfortable bed for
Newell, Jr., out of a blanket on the two auto seats up on empty
oil tins and tucked him in under his mosquito netting. But what
to do for ourselves was a question. We had our mosquito netting
and a blanket. There was a small table and a chair. Not vet)'
promising for a bed, do you think? We didn't dare sleep on the
table for fear it would break. Finally I thought of turning the
table upside down. Then the legs held up the netting. It wasn't
particularly comfortable, as you can imagine, but when we couldn't
sleep we sat up and planned the future of Congo Institute.
The next morning after a quick breakfast we started on. We
stopped at one village to arrange for the coming of two teachen
for the dry season. The bright-faced children crowded around as
did the older folks alI saying how much they wanted a teacher.
Home certainly looked good to aD of us.
The mention of hippos and crocodiles in the letter above
brings to mind one of the Bishop's experiences which be
labels, "Hunting with a Big Weapon," and tells as follows:
I was driving a car along one of the sandy roads of Central Congo
when my secretaty in the back seat called attention to a wavy back
down the middle of the road. "Someone has been along with a
Oat tire on his bike," he said. Just as I started to say "It must
have been some tire," the owner of the car by my side pointed and
said, "Get him." There by the side of the road, moving slowly
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 333
along puallel with the track, was a fourteen-foot python. I did
get him; I speeded up and sent both front and back wheels right
over his spine just back of the neck.
His letter of February 2, 1933, tells of their Christmas and
New Year's celebration, not unlike our own. The account
ends as follows:
Altogether 295 were given gifts, so you see we have a big
Chrisbnas family. When we were counting up the children of the
right age to be given dolls we received rather a shock. I came to one
name on the Sunday School list and Joab, the superintendent,
said, "But she has married and gone to the village of her husband."
Imagine itl And we were figuring on giving her a dolll Poor little
girl, she can not be more than eight or nine years old, and already
starting in the difficult life of a village woman when she ought to
be playing happily, protected in her father's home. She is not of
a Congo Institute family, or it would not have happened, for they
wait until a girl is thirteen or fourteen at least. She is the child
of one of the workmen. If we had known sooner we would have
used our influence to delay the marriage, but the father took care
that we did not know of it by doing it while we were away. One
of the reasons these people have not advanced farther is the early
marriages.
The letter of July 30, 1934, tells of a long trip without tire
trouble. He writes:
Four of us made the trip through Angola and saw many inter-
esting things: two large diamond mines, a vast sugar cane planta-
tion, Leverville, the headquarters of the palm oil industry, which
sends most of the oil to New York to be made into margarine, a
forest of rubber trees, the bao bab trees of Angola (natural cisterns),
marvelous mountain scenery, coffee plantations, magnificent tropi-
cal forests with a profusion of wild flowers, monkeys, rabbits,
jackals, an antelope, wildcats, a black leopard. We crossed a score
of rivers on ferries. We travelled twenty-five miles over the road
bed of the old railroad. It is said to have cost a life for every tie
and telegraph pole. We crossed a hundred miles or more of hub-
deep sand. We dropped down into an old lake bed. We w~
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334 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 335
than 2000 pupils, supervisors of village schools, and District Super-
intendent of a territory with somewhere between fifty and a hun-
dred preaching places dividing into a score or so circuits and several
student charges,
In Booths were moved
until situation there
There that might up the church
tribal differences, scores of languages, different colonial back-
grounds, a dozen denominational beginnings of the faith of the
people - and yet one united worshipping, working, loving congre-
gation of the Church of Christ in the Congo.
Then in 1944 came his election as Bishop of Africa of the
Methodist At this were five candi-
dates position, was elected
the first
An of Bishop has been
writing. his books and long one; and
to his list is added that of his wife's, a graduate of Boston Uni-
versity who has published more than seventy stories, one is
amazed that people so busy with other duties could write so
much. The Bishop also preaches in six different languages I
Activities while here at home for a few months he summarizes
as follows of January 6,
CCllnncmcal Conference, Council Board meetings,
h services, Quadrennial,
studies, rence, consultations Board secretaries,
interviewing prospective missionaries, interdenom-
inational gatherings, Institutes, Retreats, traveling, writing, family
times: these make the pattern of our days,
And for contrast he has written this of his field and work in
Africa:
Five collterences five countries. ,,,,p,,'I't,.'hvp mission stations
and about churches, Nearly Missionaries
336 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 337
Rhodes; and the others of a trip with Professor Elmer A.
Leslie, of the School of Theology, and Mrs. Leslie through
Kruger National Park.
Cecil Rhodes' Grave
Worlds View
Matopos Hills
Southern Rhodesia .
July 19, 1947
I am here all alone amidst a mighty panorama of granite rocks
and kopjes. Last night after supper in Bulawayo I decided to drive
the thirty miles out here so that I could be at the grave at sunrise.
I slept in the car and awoke just in time to rush through dressing
and climb the hill to stand here as the ball of fire came out of the
hflls.
There is nothing but hills to be seen; hills and rocks. I have
seen the rock kopjes of Rhodesia before, but never such a gathering
together and such massive ones. If Rhodes wanted to have a symbol
of strength and ruggedness he certainly found it. The grave, as
well as that of Jameson nearby, is hollowed out of the solid granite
and covered with a simple slab of the same material. Rhodes' grave
is between a group of boulders perched in all kinds of precarious
angles on top of the hill. These rocks as well as the bare hill itself
are covered with red and green lichens that appear to be part of the
granite itself. It gives a beautiful color. To me the place impresses
with the grandeur in simplicity of the works of God and the in-
significance of what man, even Rhodes, might attempt.
Malvern
Johannesburg
July 2i, 1947
There was another dream come true and another grand feeling
when I saw Professor and Mrs. Leslie on the station platform this
evening. It is interesting to remember that it was twenty-three
years ago that I took my first course at the School of Theology with
Professor Leslie. I did not realize at that time that he had been on
the faculty only three years. He appeared to be one who had had
long experience teaching.
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 339
beests - about a dozen of each. They were very close to us. The
Leslies tried taking a movie of them. We bad to do it from the
car, for we are given very strict instructions not to gc:t out of the
car at all. We were pennitted to leave the car at the Hippo Pool,
so that we could go down close and watch the babies sport around
and hear the grunts and squeals. .
It is amazing the way the great big giraffes can just disappear
while you are looking at them. They do not run off. They just melt
their camouflaged sides into the bushes. Mrs. Leslie's quick eye saw
a crocodile sunning himself on a rock in a river we passed. We also
saw some baboons, water bucks, steenboks, kudus and lots more of
all the kinds mentioned above.
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 341
few weeks before receiving the degree of Bachelor of Divinity at
Andover Newton.
By this time it was clear that further graduate work was in order.
Nels enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sci-
ences and carried a full program of work for the PhD. degree in
the history and philosophy of religion. At the end of two years
he was granted the Sheldon Travelling Fellowship and the Ferre
family sailed for Europe. He divided the year into periods of study
at the Universities of Upsala and Lund, in addition to work under
the direction of one of Sweden's foremost creative theologians.
Upon his return, he was granted the PhD. by Harvard and was
appointed to teach in the department of the philosophy of religion
at Andover Newton Theological School.
An extremely severe attack of acute arthritis beset him at this
point. Two of Boston's top-Right specialistS, working together, were
unable to accomplish what Nels' faith and dogged determination
did. As his health improved, the power of the Spirit became ever
more meaningful to him.
Meanwhile, having been appointed to fill the Abbot Chair of
Christian Theology, Nels had begun to write. A steady stream has
followed, as the accompanying list of publications will indicate.
[That list of publications covers three typewritten pages - single-
spacedl And at the moment of this writing, in the spring of 1948,
Dr. Nels Ferre is still in his thirties. R.E.B.]
Activities apart from teaching and writing have been in connec-
tion with the National Council on Religion in Higher Education,
of which he is a Fellow, and with the Conference on Science, Phi·
losophy and Religion, to which he is a contributor. He has become
a sought-after lecturer to a number of denominations, including
Congregational, Baptist, Methodist, Dutch Reformed, Disciples,
Presbyterian and Mennonite. He has taught three summer sessions
at Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston, llIinois. Important lec-
tureships include the Wells Lectures at Texas Christian University,
the Gay Lectures at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in
LouisVille, Kentucky, and the Hyde Lectures at Andover Newton.
He is also a member of the Study Committee of the World Coun-
cil of Churches. During the academic year 1947-1948, in addition
to his regular work, he is teaching a course on Modern Theologians
at Harvard Divinity School, acting as chairman of the Religious
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 345
association with professors and fellow students. Nor did I fail to
participate in extra-curricular activities: I sang in the Boston Uni-
versity Glee Club for four years, in the College Choir for four years;
I belonged to the Neo.Alchemists' Club, the Student Christian
Association, and the International Relations Club. I joined a
fraternity with a group which seemed both 1D temperament and
lack of funds to fit in with. my scheme of living. I am disappointed
that I did not become better acquainted with my professors; per-
haps it was my own uncommunicative nature.
During the summer following my freshman year I went out on
the road selling books. I did very well, averaging an income of $8
a day. I had enough money saved up to pay the first term's ex-
penses for the sophomore year. Somewhere in my travels I picked
up the measles so that, when registration day rolled around, I was
sick at home. I got a late start and made my poorest scholastic
record during the first term of that year. However, I was appointed
to the Fund.
Immediately upon graduation from college I began to preach.
My first parish was located in the northeastern comer of Connecti-
cut: the Methodist churches in North Grosvenor Dale and East
Thompson. I had a full-time preaching appointment all through
my seminary and graduate study. For that reason, when I had re-
ceived the S.T.B. degree in 1936 I voluntarily left the Fund. I
seemed to be earning enough to care for the expenses of my pm-
jected graduate program and hoped others might benefit from the
Fund who needed the stipends more than I did. From the time
when I first began to benefit from the Fund I resolved to get all
the preparation possible, including graduate study leading to a
Ph.D.; although many years and many other interests intervened
before I finally received that degree.
In college I had stayed clear of liberal groups. But in the School
of Theology my whole attitude was changed. I became a pacifist,
a sympathizer with the cause of labor, and a Socialist in politics.
In fourteen years of pastoral work I have not departed from these
fundamental positions. Almost everything I am - what I preach
today and will preach and teach tomorrow - is due to the teachers
and the fellow students at Boston University School of Theology.
The professors the years I was there were giants.
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 347
college which has had a phenomenal growth during the post-war
years. In addition to teaching, I will act as sponsor for the Student
Christian Association and chairman of the chapel committee.
I do not leave the pastorate because I am unhappy or discon-
tented in it, though I admit some of the details of pastoral work 1
will readily give up. I shall miss the close contact that a pastor bas
with his people in all their trials and sorrows, their joys and pleas-
ures. But my ambition is to make the most of what I have and be
of most use for the Kingdom of God. I have always enjoyed the
classroom and the academic atmosphere; even in the pastorate 1
enjoyed most of all the summer Institutes where I could" work with
youth in study and fellowship. I will not be giving up the pulpit
work, which in the pastorate itself appeals to me most of all. If
I can inBuence the student mind I feel I will be touching one of
the vital spots of the world's need. The hope of the future, as I see
it, is in the world's youth.
I have had many interesting and valuable experiences in Chris-
tian work. All of my congregations have been most kindly in their
encouragements and most helpful in their criticisms. In my first
parish I had a towering white-haired man from the north of Ireland;
whenever he liked what I had to say on Sunday morning he said
to me: "Boy, that sermon had bones in it." I never did figure out
what he meant by it, unless something I said might have got stuck
in his throat. In another parish some of the young folk used to
talk back to me in the middle of the sermon. In a third, one young
lady told me one day (she was a visitor): 'WeII, that sermon
was well organized, but I disagreed with every word of it." (I had
preached that morning on "Our Brother's Keeper.")
I took an interest in labor during a strike in East Hartford. Under
my direction a committee to aid the strikers became very active.
We published a pamphlet stating the issues of the strike, conducted
a tag day and solicited funds for the relief of needy families. For
that I was called a Communist and a radical by some and a forward-
looking leader by others. My church people were very understand-
ing; and while they didn't agree with me 100 per cent, they
did not stand in my way and the trustees let my committee use a
room in the church for their meetings. As a result of that experience
I became close to some of the labor leaders in the state of Connecti-
cut. One of my most thrilling experiences was to speak in Bush-
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 349
inevitable that the past should be neglected. There are very few
pictures of our childhood. A more important reason is probably
that wish to forget already alluded to. I'm just going to let the
story ramble, hoping that you'll be able to make out what sense
there is to it.
I was born in Woburn on the second or third day of October,
1910. The doctor reported the second, my mother was sure the
midnight hour had passed. You may think it prophetic that the
doctor, after predicting great things for the new son of the Graveses,
the third, died in a hospital for the insane. We moved rather fre-
quently in the early days, my father being an upholsterer, and I re-
member nothing of Woburn. My earliest recollection is of run-
ning away; my sister refused to spend the pennies we had in the
way I wanted. They found me in a Malden police station. We
might call this the first outbreak of pig-headedness, which is still
with me. (I appreciate the seriousness of the old doctrine of de-
pravityl) I next remember getting my left arm broken by a fall
from the ice chest - I had been warned off, of course. Perhaps you
can see the connection between this childish prank and climbing
up to the crow's-nest on the Queen Mary and walking the rails on
the Carinthia.
I was never any great star in sports, but I did play them for all it
was worth. When I was about twelve or thirteen we had a neighbor-
hood track meet. I won the endurance race. Even though every
one lapped me at least once, they all dropped out. My last mem-
ory of these early Medford days is my first showing any hint of
scholastic abilities. We were asked to give the gist of a paragraph
just read and I gave it almost verbatim.
Mter a year in Everett we moved to Malden, where I finished
high school and college. (I learned Greek on the Boston Elevated.)
By chance we moved to a house opposite the Maplewood Meth-
odist parsonage. My father was Methodist by inheritance, though
not at the time by practice, and my mother Baptist. Acquaintance
led me into the Epworth League. I "got religion" while leading
a meeting. I can still recall the exaltation and enlargement of that
moment. I had a call to serve Christ and have always known
it as the one supreme obligation of my life, even when I have
failed to live up to it. At about the same time I began to work
seriously in school. I turned out for baseball but discovered I
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350 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
couldn't see the ball at bat. The optician was amazed that I had
been able to get along at all in school. After getting glasses, I be-
came an honor student. I have also to thank some fine teachers in
Malden High School.
After a year of work, and with the help of an Alumni Scholar-
ship, I applied to the College of Liberal Arts. I elected to study
Greek, perhaps because of a hunch that I would be a minister and
that Greek would be useful. Or was it because someone said it
was hard? It would be something new after Latin in high school.
At any rate, I took it and took to it, "it" including the Professor.
Praise God from whom all blessings flowl He made the analysis of
a word or a sentence fascinating. I caught his love of etymology.
What's in a word? Imagination, logic, history, humanity. And his
seriousness. He could be gay, but life was and is earnest for our
fighting peacemaker. He later opened up the study of the Bible
to me. The rest of my story could tum into a thank you to a goodly
number of Boston University professors. With the encoumgement
of one of them, I applied for the Buck Scholarship and was one of
the seveml men of my class to be made beneficiaries of the Fund
- this in the year 1930. Without its help, I might not have finished
college and I certainly would not have studied abroad.
My major was philosophy. We were encoumged to disagree, if
we could do it thoughtfully. And in all my theological peregrina-
tions, my major professor has remained the considemte and yet
critical mentor and friend.
In 1934 I was ordained deacon in the Methodist Church. In July
of the same year I was appointed student pastor at Old Mystic,
Connecticut. My wife stayed at the parsonage while I was away
during the week at Boston University.
In 1935, having received the degree of S.T.B., I went accom-
panied by my wife to Cambridge, England, with the generous help
of the Fund and some loans. Here I became a scholar in the
original sense - a man with leisure to explore a libmry. Cambridge
had a great libmry, and a great philosophical theologian in Fred-
erick Tennant. Peter Bertocci had led the way the year before. I
did a vast amount of browsing, dimly working out my convictions,
trying to get things straight in that borderland between faith and
reason. Events proved that I found no stable answer then. Dr.
Tennant encoumged my application for a University studentship,
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PASTOIl AND PHYSICIAN 351
which was successful. Hence the second year at Cambridge. I got
the Socialist bug rather badly that year but was soon cured when I
saw a little of the inner workings of the party.
In 1937 I resumed the life of a student pastor, this time at Rock-
port. After two yean there we moved to Wellington, Medford,
the scene of revolution in this man's life. The struggle to square
my faith with my church connection, precipitated by the strong
teaching of Karl Barth, led me finally, or so I thought, to Catholi-
cism. In 1941 I withdrew from the Methodist Church and turned
to Rome. I took a second-shift job in the Lynn General Electric
plant, continuing work at Harvard Divinity School, to which I had
transferred in 1940. In 1943 I let the draft board know that I was
available for drafting, which took place in about two weeks' time.
I wasted twenty-eight months in the Army, training and studying
for work I could almost as well have done without the long prepara-
tion - a common career in the Army. I did serve a few months in
the army of occupation, and did help sort some of the bad boys
from the good in the German army.
I was discharged, having reached the age of thirty-five, in Novem-
ber, 1945. I returned to the General Electric for just two weeb
and then went into substitute teaching in the Boston schools. I
took up my work for the PhD. in the spring term of 1946,~
myself of the G.I. Bill's privileges. My counter-revolution
shortly after the term began: I found myself unwilling to accept
the dictate of a confessor and soon realized that I had deceived
myself in failing to see the full implications of the change. Per-
haps the army yean were not entirely unprofitable from the point
of view of experience of men and ideas. At any rate, I returned
to the church of my youth, and have since had cause only for
rejoicing. In May of 1946 I was appointed student pastor of
the Lunenburg Methodist Church and am now a member of
the New England Conference on trial in the second year, with
my orders fully restored. Southbridge is the first church I have
served without some stint of school work to do on the side.
Unless called to some theological school, I expect to stay on here
as long as I'm wanted. [The call has already come. On July 17,
1948, Dr. Graves wrote me as follows: "Beginning next September,
I shall be Chaplain and Professor of Philosophy and Religion in the
Babson Institute at Wellesley Hills." R.E.B.]
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 353
friends. He, too, would take no foolishness and expected of us the
ubnost reverence and decorum in church. Back in those days
the services in the Episcopal Church were considerably longer than
they have been since they were revised in 1929, and our knees and
backs would sometimes grow weary from kneeling erect for long
periods of time. The choirmaster's rejoinder to our complaints was
that hunkering down on the seats was for rheumatic old women.
Even after my voice changed, my church career continued, since
by that time I had mastered the piano and organ enough so that I
could play simple hymns for the young people's group, who were
most charitable about mistakes.
High school was a fascinating experience. There were so many
new ideas to master, so many new fields to explore. Algebra and
geometry stimulated me by their irresistible logic. English and
Latin opened up so many new fields of thought; history seemed to
link things together so well in their cause and effect. Then there
were the school paper, which I helped to edit; the junior-senior
class play where by some whim of fate I bad the lead. My night of
triumph was a bitter fiasco, because we bad a terrible blizzard and
zero weather, and only the fond parents and closest friends braved
the elements to witness our production.
Then came graduation and my salutatorian speech, "Educa-
tion in Communist Russia." Application to the College of Liberal
Arts at Boston University followed that summer, under the sugges-
tion of one of my favorite teachers and one of God's most glorious
saints, herself an alumna of the old Beacon Hill days of the college.
Times were hard for the family. and Dean Warren's suggestion that
I make application for a Buck scholarship came like manna from
• heaven.
College opened up again a new world. Having learned the
discipline of study thoroughly and well in high school. I found
plenty of time for enjoying the excursions required in the course
in Collegiate Life and for side trips, too. Freshman English, Euro-
pean history, the deeper probing into Latin, acquaintance with
Greek, were all like visiting a new and stimulating country. There
were new friends to make. and the amazing experience of being
treated as an adult and of being friends with the faculty.
Summers I worked, which in itself was a wonderful experience of
meeting new people and new situations and having rough edges
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 355
In the late winter of 19+2, when all of us were wondering if we
ought not to enlist, the Dean called me into his office to tell me
that there was an opening for a man in the coal section of south-
western Virginia, and would I be interested. The Bishop of that
diocese would pay my expenses to go down and taIIc with him and
visit the place. I was interested. Bishop Phillips was an inspiring
man. A graduate of the University of the South and one of the
most famous of the South's football players of the early 1900's,
he had begun his ministry in a cotton mill town in Georgia.
Big Stone Gap, where the church was located, was sixty-five miles
from the milroad stop. I was met there on a miny morning by two
of the vestrymen. All the way to the Gap they apologized for the
weather and the climate. "It is lovely in the spring and summer
and fall," they promised. I was taken to see the church and the
rectory. The roof of the rectory leaked, and the wallpaper was
hanging in festoons. The furnace in the little church smoked
abominably and there was dirt on the walls. I only half took that
in. This could be my own church and my own parishl I was taken
around to visit the people of the parish and was introduced to
southern hospitality and southern fried chicken - which greeted
me whenever I had a meal. I was scared to death, but thrilled too.
From Washington I wired the Bishop that I would come. [Welsch's
absorbing interest in his theological studies and in Big Stone Gap
has apparently erased from his mind the fact that he was granted
the degree of BD. in 19+2. R.E.B.]
On a beautiful day in June, with the lofty experience of ordina-
tion behind me, I came to start work in the coal-fields of south-
western Virginia. I drove down in the old family car, which I had
bought from my father who had had a bad stroke and had to retire
from business. It was during a gas shortage and every time I came
to a filling station that had gas (and most of them didn't), I'd get
the three gallons I was allowed under the old X mtion ticket.
Big Stone Gap is in many ways cosmopolitan, for always many
northerners have been there with the coal companies since its be-
ginning in 1890. But in many more ways it is a sleepy country
town. Many people own cows, and they are allowed to roam the
streets at will. Everyone Iaises a garden, 'and property has to be
well-fenced to keep the cows out. Partridges, mbbit, quail, deer,
mnge the mountains at the back doors of the town.
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PASToa AND PHYSICIAN 357
own devices. The night clerk still continues to smile whenever he
sees me.
And so my work here goes 00. I took over the Scout troop and
managed to build it up from about three boys to forty. Like all
country clergymen, I follow Saint Paul's example of being all
things to all men. I am the sexton of the church, the tender of the
garden, a substitute in the public school, a house painter, an ambu-
lance driver, a nurse, a country doctor, an undertaker, a tutor, an
encyclopedia, a welfare worker. And mainly, I am the pastor of the
Church of God and a preacher of His Word, for all the other odd
jobs are part of that.
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 359
and I felt myself to be in the company of those who would trust
in the simple ways of reconciliation and good will against the trends
of a whole culture, which in bewilderment and retreat seemed des-
tined to destroy itself in internecine strife. We had heard Norman
Thomas and John Haynes Holmes and Stanley Jones and Dr.
Brightman, and we were persuaded that there was a mission to
which the world's vast needs summoned us and to which we should
commit all that we had and all that we were.
In 1942, Boston University School of Theology became my
school. I was graduated in 19+5. I have had Congregational student-
pastorates in East Taunton and in East Lynn. On October 14,
1945, I was ordained to the Christian ministry in my home church
in Wenham. In 1946 I was called to be pastor and teacher in the
Congregational Church in Littleton, Massachusetts, a church rich
in the prophetic traditions of "the New England way," and alive
to the profound demands of "an age on ages telling." Littleton is a
quiet New England village, but I trust that I am not disobedient
to the vision which these times urge upon every alumnus and upon
all thinking pastors, viz., "My parish is the world; my parishioners
are all mankind."
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 361
once a week to discuss such problems. We teach students all kinds
of techniques for making a living and fail to give them a purpose
worth living for. Churches contact only a small minority of the
student body. I am going to continue this voluntary class in the
high school, trying in the immediate future to have it put on a two-
hours-a-week elective basis with school-purchased textbooks and
credit given. This past year the students (average number per
meeting, twelve) bought their own.
Now come the men who perhaps see little of the Pastors
on the first day of the week but much of them and their min-
istrations to the sick on all the other days - The Physicians.
Here, then, is the connecting link mentioned earlier in the
chapter, Dr. L. Curtis Foye. He is both an ordained minis-
ter and a doctor of medicine. On reading the story of his life
crowded with "good works" one is surprised to find that only
two major fields, theology and medicine, have awarded him
high formal status I He writes:
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 363
special type of work they were to do. I was to go to West China,
with the idea of going into Tibet if that country ever opened ib
doors. Therefore, while in the College of Libeml Arts, I also went
to Newton Theological Institution and took special courses and
then studied prescribed subjects independently. At the beginning
of my second year in the School of Medicine I went before the
Ordination Council and passed the examination to become a Bap-
tist minister in full standing. Since 1924 I have been a member of
the Massachusetts Baptist Convention.
At the end of my third year at the College of Liberal Arts, I took
a church in the lumber district in Maine for three months. This
little church was open only in the summertime and it was my privi-
lege to be ib pastor for three summers. I enjoyed especially work-
ing with the men. I called in the homes, but several days each
week I spent working with the men in the woods. This gave me
many opportunities to talk with them and reach them in a way I
never could have done by the church services alone. Many of them
began to come to church and eventually we were able to have the
first service for men only that had ever been held in the more than
100 years of the church's existence. Before I finally said good-bye
to the town, I had the happy privilege of baptizing several of the
young people. During medical school days I continued with my
Sunday activities. Sunday afternoons we had over 100 young people
in two groups. I continued with the Student Volunteers. Follow-
ing my third year in medical school I became camp doctor and
director of nature study in one of the Boston Y.M.CA. camps
and during the following Christmas vacation I had charge of the
Boston Y Winter Camp.
After graduation I began an internship in the Mountainside Hos-
pital in Montclair, New Jersey. We expected to sail for China the
following year, but during the year sickness in the family made it
necessary for us to give up the idea of going, at least for the time.
However, God had other plans and I was called to become resident
physician and my wife office secretary at the Medical Mission
Dispensary, 36 Hull Street, Boston, owned by the Women's Home
Missionary Society of the Methodist Church and staffed by the
Massachusetb Memorial Hospitals. This was located in what was
then a definite slum area, according to census the most thickly
populated per-square-acre in the United States. After three years
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 365
day School Association for one year. For six years I was superin-
tendent of the Sunday School in my church. I have been chairman
of the Board of Deacons in two churches where I have been a mem-
ber. For a number of years, I have been on the Board of Directors
of the Evangelistic Association of New England, an interdenomina-
tional organization. As time permits I address many young people's
groups, men's classes and supply an occasional pulpit. I still teach
at Gordon College and act as college physician. While overseas I
assisted the chaplain on our ship in many ways, sang for the boys
at our services, and did much personal work among the wounded
and with the men under my charge. The first two months after
being released from active duty and before reopening my medical
practice I took a country church to help them out when they could
get no pastor.
Space limitations make it advisable to omit the long and
creditable list of Dr. Foye's community activities which follows
at this point. Continuing the story, we read:
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 367
years of some necessity. She began work in oils; a shoulder dis-
abHity and limitation caused her to transfer to the somewhat finer
work of China painting in which she became internationally known.
In her later years - inuminating. I can remember her working in
her late seventies, often without her glasses, over the most ex-
quisite illuminating parchment.
Scouting filled the need in my own boyhood for many of the
activities which the schools have now taken over in the grade and
high school years. Not so then. It was scouting that gave interest-
ing competition, woodcraft, a sense of values. the appeal in striving
for merit badges, Eagle scouting. and other activities.
My church attendance - including Lutherans, Presbyterians,
Episcopalian, and even Christian Science during my earlier years
- somewhat depended upon older associates who took me to Sun-
day School. My father and I felt particularly close to Saint Paul
Church in MHwaulcee, and although my father had attended there
in his youth, his early travels and life in many parts of this country
and abroad may perhaps account for the postponement of his study
in confirmation class to a period when the two of us were enrolled
together and together were confirmed. My mother guided us during
part of this period in the church where she had been a Sunday
School teacher and in which she and my father were married years
ago.
Scientists and doctors have often been considered men of less
religious tendency than others. This criticism may be justified as a
matter of faithful church attendance and observance of creed, but
certainly not in the matter of faith. Who better than a scientist
can appreciate the Infinite Power of God?
Meeting Walter Moberg was an outstanding thing. Walter was
the representative from Massachusetts and I hom Wisconsin to
the American Youth Award group in Philadelphia at the time of
the Sesquicentennial of American Independence in the summer of
1926. He was a fine-appearing chap, likeable, and one of the lead-
ers in activities during the short ten days that all of us were together.
The group was comprised of a teacher, a girl, and a boy chosen
as representatives of the respective states. One always wonders why
he should be selected. The citation mustered up for me bears such
things as good scholarship, scout record, civic selection for various
~ctivities and representation, valedictorian, high class scholastic
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 369
black bear when the father was away, how she hid the little child
in the wood box until the bear edged its way out of the unlatched
door again, of accounts of hard work but happiness in the new
life in America. That letter was part of the Thanksgiving tradition
at my cousin's. '
At Christmas time a generous family friend sent a railroad ticket
to Milwaukee and return to Boston. The rest of the year, and in-
deed all of the time in Boston, passed quickly. Graduation was
upon me in 1932 with farewells to many friends I had come to
know in the past two years. The last week in Boston in 1932 was
certainly a busy one - class day activities, along the Charles River,
the sunset picnic, certain worries about the construction and de-
livety of a valedictorian address, Boston University night at Pops,
the processional of the faculty at the Baccalaureate and Commence-
ment - all of these pictures are running before me as I am writing
this.
The next fall I was in Baltimore. I had been accepted at Johns
Hopkins and Harvard Medical Schools and had elected to begin my
medical work at the former. Much of this decision was carried by
a desire to learn more of the field of chemistry as related to medi-
cine. This interest continued during my medical school year at
Hopkins, but became subordinate to my interest in patients them-
selves. The appeal of the laboratory was not as great as the prob-
lems of the clinic patient. The scholastic freedom at Hopkins, of
spending one-half of one's entire time in the investigation of his
choosing was certainly alluring, but I forsook it at the end of the
first year to transfer to Harvard to continue a more general and
prescribed medical course for the last three years. Medical school
was largely a study proposition. Perhaps it should have been even
more so for me. Again the life in New England offered week-end
time for symphonies and visiting.
My scholastic standing was not the highest of my class by any
means, but was sufficiently good to secure an appoinbnent for post-
graduate work upon graduation at one of the larger hospitals in
Boston. Before finally accepting such an appointment, however,
and because of the sickness of my mother, I had gone to Mil-
waukee. It seemed wise to obtain a hospital appoinbnent there if
possible, and this I was able to do.
Accordingly, in 1936, I began my hospital training in Milwau-
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be, a busy time of taking care of patients, too little sleep, and
insufficient fresh air and exercise. I did have time, however, to visit
with my family on occasion, and, as Mother failed, was able to have
her at the hospital where I was an intern during her last sickness,
the last part of 1936 and the first part of 1937. Mother always felt
that one of the most pleasant times of her last years was a trip to
Boston and a chance to meet some of the people of whom I had
written so often in my letters. She was able to see three members
of the Fund Committee and a few Boston University school friends.
One of the incidents during my early hospital training I believe
had an effect in leading me into my present plastic and reconstruc-
tive work. I recall one night an injured workman coming into the
emergency room. I called his physician who was unable to come to
the hospital, and who suggested that I carry out a program of re-
pair. The incompleteness with which I was able to do this at this
period of my training impressed on me all the more the need for
further study. How well I remember, in the inadequate light of
the emergency room, attempting to carry out a difficult nerve and
tendon repair - all of my own acceptance if not choosing. That
the patient progressed to healing and return of a useful arm has
always been a wonder to mel
Through the references of my medical school teachers and scien-
tific literature, I had come to know of Drs. Kanavel and Sumner
Koch of Chicago. Dr. Kanavel had at this time retired. Dr.
Michael Mason had become associated with Dr. Koch. These
men carried out at Northwestern University Medical School one
of the most active clinics in this country in reconstructive and
plastic surgery. I felt most fortunate indeed to gain a surgical resi-
dency under their guidance. My interest in reconstructive work
and particularly reconstructive surgery of the hand grew tremen-
dously under their teaching and encouragement. In the late part
of 1940 I returned to Milwaukee, having completed my hospital
training. I became associated with the professor of surgery at
Marquette University, and engaged in teaching in the Medical
School and in starting a private practice in surgery. Reconstructive
work came to me in increasing amounts and many hours of prepa-
ration for medical school lectures filled the last months of 1910.
[In order not to interrupt Dr. Frackelton's narrative, his account
of war service is placed here. R.E.B.]
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 371
In 1941 I was called to active duty as a first lieutenant of the
Medical Corps. My first and only assignment of almost six years
of military service was to William Beaumont Geneml Hospital at
. El Paso, Texas. This was one of the six permanent geneml hospi-
tals of the Army. In the beginning I took care of trainees. The
hospital acted as a funnel for some two million in the Southwest.
Vehicle accidents, gasoline bums, accidental gunshot and cannon
injuries formed the reconstructive surgery section of patients in
the early years.
Then came Pearl Harbor and, when the wounded soldiers could
be evacuated for further reconstructive work in the United States,
the plastic section at William Beaumont Geneml Hospital received
these men. Because of my past training I had been sent there and
had been assigned to take care of these cases. The care of facial
injuries, skin graft replacement of bums, trauma, restoration of
function for damaged arms and legs with tendon, nerve, bone and
sIcin grafts formed the bulk of our work. With the extension of
the active theaters of warfare to Africa, Europe. and the Pacific,
patients came from all fighting theaters and all sections of the
United States. In the five years and eight months of military
service it was my privilege along with my associated workers in the
plastic service of Beaumont Hospital to take care of over five thou-
sand plastic reconstructive cases.
A lay person often thinks of plastic surgery as a beautifying type
of surgery. Such it may well be to those who have had injuries to
the face or tumors or deformities requiring correction. But plastic
surgery means to remodel or reform a part, and "a part" of the
body has not only appearance but function as well. Much of our
attention was focused toward this latter aspect. Beaumont became
one of the so-called "hand plastic centers" and many of the prob-
lems of reconstructing parts to gain function were presented to us.
On the basis of principles known before the war, on the needs of
the injured men before us, various techniques and developments
were carried out.
V-E Day and V-J Day came. Life continued in a happier mood
on broader objective aspects, but the immediate problems of our
many patients remained large. The bulk of work was at peak
rather than less. Full operating schedules, morning and afternoon,
six days a week, were maintained. Evenings and Sunday mornings
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 373
nade, taking bone, nerves, and other things needed from
various parts of the patient's body.
•
There seems to be no line of division between study and
practice in the life of a doctor. Perhaps there should be none
in any life. Having ended an installment in the life story of
Dr. Robert A. Bruce in the chapter on "College and Univer-
sity" with the date when he received his degree, we now carry
forward from that point. We must note, however, that in
the interval circumstances took over and he began his intern-
ship not at Strong but at Highland Hospital in Rochester. He
tells us:
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 375
In June, 1945, I started my final year of hospital training as chief
resident physician. This involved supervising five assistant resi-
dents (later, ten, as veterans discharged from the Armed Forces be-
came available), and ten interns.
Much of his work in this final year and later after his return
to the Medical School as postgraduate fellow and instructor
has necessarily been of highly technical character. It seems
wise then, to go at once to Dr. Bruce's account of future plans.
He writes:
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 377
tion in Boston after discharge. A short time ago I came into pri-
vate practice in Malden.
As a recently married man starting practice, I am thankful for
my years at Boston University with its excellent training. Because
of it I am looking forward to the future with confidence. I want
to get additional training in neura-psychiatry and, in time, to devote
most of my time to this field.
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 379
mental soliloquies and considerable reading, with the result that I
was a more thoughtful individual than before.
I was now active in Boy Scouts, school, and delivering papers.
High school engulfed me soon and the numerous activities which
whirl around most adolescents swept me into dramatics, athletics,
traffic squad, various committees, as well as schoolwork. As the
months sped by and graduation approached, so did my high school
principal, telling me that Boston University College of Liberal
Arts wanted me. The 1938 hurricane blew in at 688 Boylston Street
at the same time I did.
I knew what I had come to college for. I wanted to be a doctor.
I started my premedical studies by breathing noxious odors in fresh-
man chemistry, declining Latin nouns (and I declined rapidly in
that course), watching an assortment of English instructors pass
by, drawing pictures of worms in zoology, purchasing the proper
kind of paper in the bookstore on which to copy my mathematics
problems, racing half-way across town to take an hour of gym, and
undergoing hazing by the faculty in a course called Collegiate Life.
I had supposed collegiate life consisted of raccoon coats, girls, foot-
ball cheers, and campus activities, but as I recall the course it was
something else indeed. My chief accomplishment during my first
year was winning the annual prize in Latin Poetry while getting a
D in my Latin course.
During this year I was also working as a laboratory assistant in
the biology department; this high-sounding title meant that I
washed trays and put nasty little bugs back into their bottles when
each group of students got through contemplating their structure.
In an attempt to pledge me to a fraternity a couple of influential
seniors had appointed me as temporary freshman president until
elections could be held. This accounted for the fact that several
times in succeeding years I was voted into various offices because
enough unimaginative individuals in the class would always vote
for someone who had already been something for quite a while.
In the outside world F.D.R. was coasting along the same way.
Mter I had put behind me some of the required courses that I did
not like, and began to choose those which interested me, my marks
became less anemic and by the middle of my junior year had risen
to such dizzy heights that the Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Scholarship Committee recommended me for an appointment.
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 381
the Naval Hospital in Corona, California, where I was to remain
for eight months worlcing on a tuberculosis service, trying to do
things that would give nature every chance to heal those smoulder-
ing lesions. I could hear Aesculapius telling all of us physicians,
"We dress the wound; God heals it."
It now appears that the few remaining months of naval service
I have will be spent as naval medical officer aRoat. This is very
distressing. There is no medicine to be practiced on a ship with a
hundred healthy boys aboard and a hospital a half-mile away on the
shore. There are a few pleasant sensations at being a member of a
ship's company. These consist of the vague stirrings in a man's soul
as he contemplates the surging sea, the blinlcing harbor lights, the
subtle whisperings of the vast ocean lying beyond and beckoning.
There is something eternally seductive about the sea; and to stand
at dusk and watch the crafty fog come in across the deck and to
see the dim shape of an unknown vessel slip by talcing out to sea,
with only the lonely note of a foghorn and the clang of a tossing
buoy as a processional, - these things can arouse some long, deep
thoughts. But after a while there is a need to be up and doing, and
the vagaries of the tide and the ships it carries cease to be enough.
That is how the present moment finds me. My future is very
indefinite. What I will be doing a year from now is totally un-
known. It will be something medical, and I will do it as a civilian.
I hope to be able to obtain a certified residency in surgery so as to
further my training along such lines, but that remains to be seen.
Life is short. Mine has just been complemented by the arrival
of my first child, a son, who knows little of what is in store for him,
either. In a way I feel that I am not much ahead of him in finding
out what life consists of. I have merely experienced more sensations
than he, but remain considerably bewildered about many of the
essentials of existence. Perhaps that is why I hesitated to attempt
to write anything of my life at this time. I still feel that the best is
yet to be. I have a myriad of pleasant memories, and I have much
satisfaction in the present, but I have great expectations in the
future. I wish you had waited about forty years before aslcing me to
write this.
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for his life story with the intention of expanding them later.
To date, the opportunity to do the expanding hasn't arrived.
However, a story in terms of headings may entice the reader
to make his own fanciful expansion of the items, somewhat
in the style perhaps of the last previous story. In any event,
here is the opportunity.
Ancestors:
Matemal- Virginians.
Paternal- From Canada. Grandfather settled in Boston in
early 1900's and practiced medicine.
Father and mother both went to Asbury College, Wilmore, Ken-
tucky. Father in World War I. Settled in East Bridgewater,
Massachusetts, in 1920.
Early life:
Typical happy existence of small-town boy. Graduated from
East Bridgewater High School with no particular distinction.
From early times had the ambition to be a physician. In youth
collected all sorts of bones, frogs, turtles, snakes, anatomic plates,
et cetera.
Active in Methodist youth organizations.
In 1936-1937 worked in various factories in an effort to obtain
funds to start a college education.
School life and early interests:
Only real interest in college was study and education as a means
to gain entry into medical school. In 1938-1939, freshman at
Massachusetts State University. A very enjoyable year in a campus
college with beautiful countryside.
I obtained a position as night switchboard operator in a medical
building in Boston, enabling me to fulfill my long-standing desire
to attend Boston University. Entered there as a sophomore in
1939. I remember my first year at Boston University in three ways:
hunger, love and learning. I was hungry most of the time, I met
the girl I was to marry in chemistry class, and I studied hard.
In my junior year I was elected a Scholar on the Fund and my
lot was greatly simplified. I even gained back some of the weight I
had lost the previous year. I remember with particular gratitude
Dr. Mason's interest, advice and guidance during this year.
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 383
I entered Boston University School of Medicine in the fall of
1941. I really appreciated medical school and, furthennore, it was
possible for me to continue because I went as a Professor Augustus
Howe Buck Scholar. At the end of the freshman year I received
the Samuel Gold Award as the outstanding freshman student.
The third year in medical school also started under the auspices
of the Fund. In the middle of the year the A.S.T.P. went into
effect and from then on the government eased the burden. I gradu-
ated in September, 1944, a memorable day. I received my degree
cum laude, graduating at the head of my class.
After graduation I took further training at the Malloy Institute
of Pathology for three years, being successively resident, third as-
sistant, second assistant, first assistant. This was an excellent period
of study of the anatomy of disease.
Civic and war activities:
A.s.T.P. in June, 1943-0ctober, 1944. Reserve Lt. medical corps
from then until now.
Hobbies:
Woodworking, photography, and medicine.
Ambitions:
My wife and I are now trying to develop a pathology center at
Fitchburg, Massachusetts, to serve middle Massachusetts. This
area is without people trained in our specialty. At present we are
associate pathologists to the Burbank Hospital, Fitchburg (285
beds), the Henry Haywood Hospital, Gardner (135 beds), and
consultant pathologists to the Baldwinsville Hospital. We are
developing the laboratory rapidly and are still expanding. In addi-
tion I am devoting a major portion of my time to clinical training
at the Salem Hospital.
At the time he submitted his skeleton story, Dr. Sparling
was in the process of joining several professional societies
and had published three or four technical articles, with others
in preparation.
As stated in the last previous chapter, Lieutenant Bruce
Collier Ferguson, M.D., had from earliest memory the am-
bition to become a doctor. How that ambition was to be
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 385
When I was twelve years old, I had my first real vacation. I went
to Nova Scotia with my parents and then for the first time won-
dered why my folks ever thought to leave such a home to live in a
city like Boston. In later years when I grew old enough to go on
fishing trips with my Dad, I understood. He, too, had ambitions
when young but through no fault of his they all seemed frustrated.
Consequently, he wanted all of us children to be nearer opportuni-
ties that he had missed. I have never had any regrets.
After I finish my tour as an Army physician, I hope to return
to hospital work in or around Boston. After two more years of
hospital work, I should be able to settle down and practice medi-
cine somewhere where I am needed; where, I don't know. I have
never cared to plan too far into the future. I am not a fatalist, but
somehow, as I have approached each milestone or turning point
in my life there has always been somebody or something to "steer
me right."
Finally, what means my life to me? As I look back briefly I just
see the road that led to my becoming a physician. Having had
the opportunity to stay on this road has meant everything to me.
The practice of medicine, now and in the future, means my life
to me. One ambition I failed to mention. I have no grand ideas of
earning a vast fortune, but someday I hope to earn enough to do
for somebody else what the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educa-
tional Fund, the Edwards Scholarship Fund, and the United States
Army have done for me.
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boarded in her house and did a lot of hunting. From these visits I
early developed a liking for hoISeS and guns.
My mother, forced (by argumentation) the Amesbury school
board to reconsider me for their first grade when I was only five
years old. They sought to squelch me with an intelligence test.
She bad trained me well, and I passed with flying colors, thus get-
ting off to an early start.
My sister and I were close playmates. We spent much time
playing Indians and similar outdoor pastimes in which makeup
and costumes could be used.
Grade school was rather routine. My first four years were all in
one room with one teacher and an average of six children per
grade. Studying never occupied all of my time and I was able to
work afternoons and Saturdays on a nearby farm after my thirteenth
birthday. I participated in many school activities, basketball, s0c-
cer, dramatics and music being my favorites. I sang first tenor in a
male glee club and played first violin in the high school orchestra.
Probably the greatest thing the school years did for me was to
direct me in an organized way toward choosing a career. Vocational
guidance courses are a standard part of Merrimac High School's
curriculum. Through this medium I early determined that the
medical profession was for me. I believe an early realization of
what one wants to do is very helpful in giving one drive to achieve a
definite goal. A great benefit from college was learning to live with
and get along with others. Intramural athletics occupied much of
my spare time. I was early given an assistant "slave driver's" position
at the gymnasium due to my efforts to keep myself physically fit.
From an early age my mother saw to it that I attended church
regularly. In high school I was president of the Christian Endeavor
Society for three years. While in college I attended Mount Vernon
Church and was active in its young people's group.
My vacations are generally spent in northern New England, ski-
ing, hiking, camping, et cetera. One of the most enjoyable was
two weeks spent back-packing food into the Appalachian Mountain
Club huts in the White Mountains. I once carried 110 pounds of
potatoes and powdered milk on a packboard one and three-quarters
miles in forty minutes over very rocky mountain paths. The com-
plete wilderness north of Mount Katahdin in Maine is one of my
cherished memories.
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN 387
My war service consisted of four and a half months at Chelsea
Naval Hospital as a corpsman and two years in V-12 while at
medical school.
I am now interning in surgery at the Boston City Hospital and
hope to years of surgical I hope to
tice in England but over more
United I decide, Pacific Northwest.
Eventually like to become child surgery.
CHAPTER IX
The Service
"Service" has so m~ny meanings, and has been so prolific
in sprouting new ones that "serve" and "service" together
cover two large quarto pages in one large dictionary - to
say nothing of "servant" and many other words from the
common root. The Latin "servitium," a forebear of service,
suggests servitude, "the state of subjection to a master; slav-
ery, bondage." Thus service unadorned inclines toward bond-
age. Adorned it becomes voluntary service or, in extreme
cases, instead of doing a service one does a favor.
In his "Essay on Man," Pope writes:
"Reason, however able, cool at best,
Cares not for service, or but serves when press'd."
Had Tennyson been reading Pope when of a group "in serv-
ice" he wrote,
"Theirs not to reason why .
. Theirs but to do and die"?
The old formula for ending a friendly letter by subscnbing
oneself, "Your humble and obedient servant," has gone out
of style. It just isn't according to the facts. Yet the connota-
tions of that old ending are present in this chapter heading.
A worn-out suit has "seen service." With like words, those
who have endured the onerous labors suggested by the head-
ing are welcomed home. However, if they saw service, they
also saw its opposite. For in all its centuries civilization has
suffered no other disservice greater than that done it by the
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"services" of the Second World War. The Huns and Genghis
Khan go to the foot of the class when it comes to unrestrained
colossal waste and destruction, physical and spiritual. Among
the few things salvaged from his service by the soldier is a
hate of regimentation - a method of military service and
penal servitude accursed elsewhere.
The above may seem harsh. Yet it is written by one who,
far from being a pacifist, has been forced to the humiliating
conviction that mankind still has use for "The Service" -
military service. Nevertheless, such service in its immediate
implications is as far from the type of humanitarian service
fostered by the Fund as night is from day. Voluntary service
to humanity - yes. Bondage - never. Since, then, this
chapter is out of line with the main interest of this volume,
what is given may well be taken as but a random sample.
However, with the exception of a few conscientious ob-
jectors, the Fund men whom the Country called, and they
were in the majority, responded courageously. When a Fund
man is named a conscientious objector the emphasis is on
the adjective. One of them, Francis Carlson, tells us, as
already recorded in an earlier chapter, that he considers him-
self "greatly in debt to society for the opportunity to study
while others risked and lost their lives on fields of battle," the
lost including a "close friend"; and he concludes that he can
repay the debt only by" a life of devoted service to mankind."
We repeat his words simply to point out that they would un-
doubtedly be echoed by the few other conscientious objectors
among the Fund men.
The interest here is in men who, by and large, are not as
other men, and one purpose of this volume is to emphasize
the differences. Many an unimaginative dolt may well have
shown courage in the hour of battle above that possible to
imaginative men of intelligence. Were it not for the fact that
the men of the Fund were prepared, by training, for special
services of various kinds there would be little point in cata-
loguing their war experiences here.
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The next two years were spent there as plebe and yearling, and
in the summer of 1927 we were granted the usual ten weeks' fur-
lough. Approximately six weeks of this I spent in going with a
classmate to Europe, where we traveled without a rigid itinerary
and with little money, but managed to see parts of England, HoI-
land, the Rhineland, Switzerland and France.
Upon graduation I again went to Europe. on a somewhat wider
tour that included more of Switzerland, Munich, Nuremberg and
Berlin; returned to New England, and in September, 1929, re-
ported to Fort Humphreys (now Fort Belvoir, Virginia) for duty
as a second lieutenant of engineers. In 1932 I was transferred
back to West Point, where I spent four very happy years as aD in-
structor in the department of civil and military engineering,
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teaching cadets of the first (senior) class. In 1936-1937 I spent a
year at Cornell University as a graduate student in the School of
Engineering, and upon conclusion of that year went to Panama.
where I lived at Corozal, near the building built for and occupied
by deLesseps during the French occupation of the Canal Zone.
After his return from Panama in 1939, he was assigned
various duties in the homeland for several years. Then came
another trip abroad, this time to Asia and not for pleasure.
I have been in Japan since May 21 of this year, 1947, on a new
tour of foreign service. I left Washington May 5 by train for the
west coast, then left Fairfield-Suisun Air Field by plane over the
usual route: Hawaii, Johnston Island, Kwajalein, Guam, Tokyo. I
am stationed in Yokohama, which if I remember correctly was
the home of E. Otis Draper (C.L.A., 1924) many years ago. The
residential areas of the city were largely destroyed by air raids, and
those Japanese still living on their plots occupy for the most part
wooden shanties or shacks, with corrugated iron roofs. A number
of houses of substantial construction and many downtown build-
ings remain. Many of these have been taken over by the Occupa-
tion forces and are utilized as offices, billets, warehouses, et cetera.
Japan is fascinating and, although there are many difficulties in
Japanese and occupation problems, duty here is very interesting
and in some ways rather agreeable. My particular work at the
present time is concerned with the supply from Japanese sources
of the requirements of the occupation, in which the ability of the
country to meet these demands must be balanced against the
requirements of the Japanese economy for its own maintenance.
Arthur N. Sharp, the first Fellow of the Fund and for
many years a teacher, was called in early middle life into the
service of his country. He writes:
At the age of forty-three I was put through infantry basic train-
ing and could indeed be thankful that I had led an active, out-
door life. After some trying, some very amusing experiences, I was
finally assigned to the Military Intelligence where my knowledge of
German and understanding of the German mental processes were
fully exploited. .
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assistance. I had been for some time a consultant and later a
"physicist" (technical adviser status) at the Navy Yard in Boston
and the Bureau of Ordnance in Washington. I was still on the
University staff and was only "on loan" to the government. I was
well off financially for in effect I had two jobs, one of which at least
was very lucrative. One day I received a telephone call from Wash-
ington. This was not unusual except that the person speaking did
not wish to give me his name, simply asking me to meet someone
at a given place and time without making my movements known to
anyone. I do not feel that I am at liberty to discuss even now all of
the fantastic details that followed, as in a "G-man" dime novel.
Suffice it to say that eventually the question resolved into whether
I was more useful to the armed forces because of my training or
because of the accident of birth. In the end, the Bureau of Ord-
nance won over the joint Chief of Staff and I became a naval
officer. It was years later when we invaded western Europe in-
stead of the Balkans that I understood the long discussions and
final decision.
The die being cast, I was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance:
section, underwater; sub-section, degaussing. My work was of
scientific nature and our group was concerned with developing
methods for the protection of ships from magnetic mines. I be-
came acting chief of the sub-section and later chief of the analysis
unit. We established a network of stations for checking and
treabnent of every merchant as well as naval ship that covered the
entire globe. We knew the magnetic conditions of every ship,
both United States and allied, and we set out daily "watch lists"
so that they would receive the necessary treabnent whenever they
entered any port. The laboratories in which the developments of
methods were carried out employed several hundred top-notch
physicists and were working for months on a twenty-four-hour basis.
The magnitude of these operations can be conceived perhaps by
examples. It was necessary to make actual magnetic scale models
of each class of ships and in many cases of individual ships. The
cost of producing a single scale model often reached $30,000 to
$40,000. A single station for the demagnetization, or degaussing,
as it was called, cost up to $5,000,000 and every major port had at
least one such station, while in the Pacific the Beet was followed
by 80ating laboratories.
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the political juggling and maneuvers were based upon or who was
back of it all, but I have a very strong feeling on the matter of scien-
tific and technical equipment which we left behind. Granted that
we (the United States) wanted none of the war equipment and
heavy industry and scientific laboratories that made it possible for
Germany to strike with such fury, I still cannot see why we allowed
the Russians to take over the very things which we fought so much
to destroy. How can these ill-conceived instruments of war so
ruthlessly employed by the Germans - how can these same instru-
ments and the equipment that produced them be so essential for
the peaceful development of the Russians? The thorough study
and valuable reports on the scientific and industrial development
on the continent I will always be proud of, but the maneuvers, the
short-sighted political buying of good will by turning over guns,
planes, cruisers, submarines and the like to the Russians, Italians,
and others, I will always be ashamed of.
I returned to Washington in May of 1945, looking forward to
inactive duty and return to teaching at Dartmouth. (I was called
to Dartmouth and had made the decision to come here before I
entered the Navy.) It seemed that my training and experience
were no longer urgently needed by the Navy and I certainly was not
a deck officer.
However, the developments in the Pacific theatre had rapidly
changed the picture and I was ordered to Pearl Harbor where the
nucleus of the Naval Technical Mission to Japan was being organ-
ized. We entered Japan at Sasebo and one of the first targets I
visited was Nagasaki. Needless to say that, had the enemy employed
such weapons under similar conditions, the indignation of the
people in America would have been just and far-reaching. It was
my privilege to accompany some of the medical people on many
missions and to observe at close range the victims of the atomic
bomb. I was impressed by their stoicism, their peculiar philosophy,
and fascinated by their culture and way of life. I was equally im-
pressed with their scientific endeavors and admired their spirit and
perseverance. Let me emphasize that it is two years now since I re-
turned from Japan and I have had ample time to let the novelty of
the experience settle down.
I am also aware of the fact that this opinion is not held by all
who visited Japan. On the other hand, I was fortunate, for by the
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Next in order is the story of the service for the Navy of
Dean Walter J. Moberg.
Although I had received successive draft deferments and was
acting as an adviser to the young men going into the Army, I
realized that I must take a more active part in the war and, there-
fore, applied for a commission in the U. S. Navy. I was commis-
sioned a lieutenant junior grade in the Naval Reserve in the
spring of 1943 and in April of that year received orders to report to
Fort Schuyler in New York and later to the Naval School of Mili-
tary Government and Adminisaation at Columbia University.
Although the major part of our program was directed toward the
Pacific, and I studied Melanesian Pidgin English, and Dutch
Malay, I also had a refresher course in French and Swedish and
prepared myself for Europe as well. In anticipation of the invasion
a number of us were selected to go to Europe before our course
was completed, and late in February a group of us embarked on
the Mauretania to proceed unescorted to the British Isles.
After months of preparation as a plans officer in London and in
other parts of England and Scotland, I proceeded to France by
way of Utah Beach and became Senior Civil Affairs officer for
the Commandant in Cherbourg. I think one of the factors that
had determined my selection as Naval Civil Affairs officer and
also my particular assignment in France had been the fact that I
had studied for a year in France under the auspices of the Professor
Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund. When I had been operat-
ing in the port of Cherbourg for only a short time there was
created a task group to include all of the Naval Civil Affairs officers
on the continent. I was ordered back to London to receive instruc-
tions as commander of this new task group, entitled Naval Civil
Affairs Group, France. I think I should point out that this honor
came to me by default because the officer who would logically
have been designated, a lieutenant commander, had broken his
ankle when going ashore on a PT boat. I would have preferred to
continue to operate just in the post of Cherbourg which was then
probably the busiest and most exciting spot in Europe. Our armies
had only a toe-hold on the Contentin Peninsula and life assumed
an urgency that can be experienced but not described. I was busy
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THE SEllVlCE 399
period of liquidation, I joined the Naval Division of the U. S.
Group Control Council for Germany and proceeded to Berlin in
stages via Versailles and Frankfurt. There I functioned for about
four months as plans officer in the staff of the Naval Advisor to
the Military Government.
In December of 1945 I came back to the States to be demobilized
but at the request of the Navy, I returned to London early in 1946
to assist in the preliminary historical work for the U. S. Naval
Forces, Europe. In February, 1946, I received a "spot" promotion
to lieutenant commander. Although I was asked to remain as
staff historian, I decided to decline and returned to the United
States in July. In September I resumed my duties as Dean of North
Park College in Chicago.
ELMORE D. LUNDGREN
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the war. It seems very remote now and I am very happy to be just
a civilian again.
ARTRUll J. W ATZINCEB.
In January, 1940, responding to a "8attering offer," he joined
the F.B.1.
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one of my former Harvard students. My answer to his query can
be left unstated. I recall another similar situation which confronted
me in the middle of the war, .when I was in Intelligence work
and billeted in a small house somewhere in Thuringia, Germany.
I was a staff sergeant by then, but still very lowly and humble.
Our small unit of five men had taken over a few small cabins for
headquarters. I slept alone in one of these cabins where a telephone
was installed. In the dead of night I was awakened by sharp rap-
ping on the door. I slipped on a pair of trousers over my underwear
and went to the door. Three officers were standing there and
asked permission to use our phone. One was a major, the others,
lieutenants. They frantically tried to reach Frankfurt by phone, a
difficult task on field phones, with the result that they stayed there
for over two hours. After a short time, the Major turned to me and
said, "Aren't you Dr. Watzinger of Harvard University?" I
acknowledged that honor. "\Vhy, I am your former student, Mr.
Johnson," came his reply. I admitted that the war brought strange
people together and patiently waited for them to complete their
call and leave, not so much because I was tired, but because it was
getting chilly, and I was determined to freeze to death before I
would go into my side room and put on my shirt, which would be-
tray by its stripes that I was but a lowly sergeant. To this day
Major Johnson probably thinks I was at least a colonel.
To return to Devens. I finally was told that I was intended for
the Intelligence Corps and shipped off for some basic training.
I landed in Camp Croft, near Spartanburg, South Carolina, an in-
fantry camp and noted for the severity of its training. I suffered
plenty and will not go into detail about my miseries. I only know
that I could never do it again. After six interminable weeks I was
one day called in from the field and told that I had been requi-
sitioned and would be transferred to Camp Ritchie, which lies
picturesquely in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Here I underwent a
very intensive thirteen weeks'> course in that branch of intelligence
known as Interrogation of Prisoners of War. The Army was plan-
ning to use my talents I Here we learned by ingenious methods to
deal with prisoners and to extract informatjon at any cost. I gradu-
ated in December, 1943. I must commend Ritchie and its curricu-
lum, for every known device was put at our disposal to teach us the
most efficient methods. Even make-believe prisoners ran around
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THE SERVICE 403
nary personnel- often alone and unaccompanied - and often got
into tight spots from which we extricated ourselves only with diffi-
culty. I shall never forget the receptions we used to get from the
joyous liberated French citizenry as we entered small towns in Brit-
tany on our drive to Brest. "Brest or Bust" was our motto. Our
jeeps looked like hearses, so strewn were they with flowers thrown
by the grateful French in their joy to see us, the first Americans.
Despite the many, many dangers encountered during this difficult
period, I seem to remember only the great satisfaction of a task
well done, and the tremendous thrill of staying alive and unharmed
through all the horrors. We became masters of trickery at interro-
gation and extracting information. Our reports were the delight of
headquarters. We were taking thousands of prisoners almost every
day and many lives were saved by the agency of our information.
In December of 1944 came the sad news of the Rundstedt coun-
ter-offensive at the Bulge in Belgium and Luxemburg, and the
whole Third Army including me was rushed up to stave off the
attack. We landed in the beautiful city of Luxemburg, almost
untouched by war. Here we stayed for exactly two months, living
like kings in a luxurious mansion recently vacated by hastily de-
parting Nazis. I loved Luxemburg and its people, and made sev-
eral fine friends while there. How wonderful it felt on free evenings
to sit with friends among civilized people or to go to movies and
shop in real stores. I had further ample opportunity to make use
of my spoken German, for the Luxemburgers speak German as well
as they do French and their own patois.
In March of 1945 the Siegfried Line was broken through and
we had to leave Luxemburg and go into the field again. Now came
more and more thousands of prisoners. There was no respite. Every
night we slept in a different place, when there was time for sleep,
but now we often had soft beds to sleep in, because we were on
enemy territory. Finally in May, 1945, V-E Day was announced
after two false announcements, and we rejoiced amid a camp of
18,000 prisoners at Cham in Bavaria, near the Czechoslovakian
border, and in the Bohemian Forest. It was at this prison cage
that I had the interesting experience of meeting two famous prison-
ers. One was Kurt Rehm, a well-known opera singer and the last
singer to sing Hans Sachs in Wagner's Die Meistersinger at the
famous Festspie1haus at Bayreuth, which we had been privileged
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as liaison officer between the general of the Fourth Armored Di-
vision and the general of a Russian division which was meeting the
American forces on the following day. This too was a great thrill,
as I interpreted Russian via Gennan into English. I was thrilled
to become personally ,acquainted with the Red Army of which we
heard so much. Here in Strakonice I also served as liaison officer
between the Fourth Armored Division and the general staff of the
Gennan 17th Army Group, which lay in captivity in that locality.
Late in June I was transferred to Counter-Intelligence Corps
work. I was given my own team of men and detailed to screen
and apprehend Nazi war and political criminals in various delight-
ful Bavarian towns. I filled the local jails and found great satisfac-
tion in this work, which made full use of my abilities in langaage,
and full use of my intelligence in general. It was continually a
game of matching wits.
In August of 1945 I received by cable the sad news of my
mother's death. On the very same day I was transferred to Eng-
land, where I was to be put in charge of the German department of
the newly formed American University for Gl's at Sbrivenham.
I had flown to London only three weeks before this time on a
furlough, and now I was flying there again. I thoroughly appre-
ciated the opportunity to work my way back into the academic
field. I tIaveled much while here, for my working hours were few.
I again attended many performances of the Shakespearean com-
pany at Stratford, and even managed to spend eight days in Scot-
land, which I had long desired to see.
Watzinger finally succeeded in getting an emergency fur-
lough home, but as told earlier it was not until February, 1946,
that he was finally discharged.
ELMERW. SALENIUS
I was working for my PhD. when I was drafted, on October 15,
1941. I had looked forward to going into the Army as a welcome
change nom books and study, but I wasn't happy during basic
training. Once when I was on KP the mess sergeant yelled to me,
"What's the matter, Whitey, you look as if you was miles away."
I was - there was nothing in dumping garbage to keep my thoughts
near at hand. Although I had remarked to my platoon leader, "My
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after the invasion our outfit crossed
Though we troops
e:q)eclted to leave England things were safe
comfortable Continent, leave landing on Omaha
Beach (happily with no enemy to greet us), pitching our tents in
an apple orchard in Normandy. In October we moved to Choisy-
Ie-Roi, near Paris, where I stayed within half an hour's train ride
of the darkened but still graceful City of Light until the end of the
war with Germany.
After cessation of hostilities Army established
two GI one in Biarritz, other in Shriven-
ham, England. transferred outfit to teach
Shrivenham. enjoyed this first experience college teaching
although France, I was glad in England.
Shrivenham into Arthur Watzinger, arrived there
teach a short time after me. There I remained until my trip home
for discharge in November, 1945.
I have no regrets for the four years I spent in the Army. I was
lucky all the way through. I went in a buck private, reached the
rank of captain. I had the opportunity to live and travel in Eng-
land and France. discovered that I friends anywhere
I went, I forgot books and enjoyed
for som being in the conducive to making
one good time and one how. to do it
even conditions. I care of myself,
to assume responsibility; I gained teaching and in
living. In short, I grew up.
MERLE R. BoYD
On June 10, 1942, I reported to Fort Monmouth as a second
lieutenant the Corps. months' train-
ing on army matters, shipped to Eng-
land on Mary. Thereafter ·od of about nine
months all branches of Force, Fighter,
Bomber, Command. assigned to the
Eighth Fighter Command and finally Eighth Air Support
Command where I received my first permanent and important
assignment as radio officer. This headquarters became the Ninth
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A. KENNETH SWANSON
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Before the end of 1941 I was in the Air Corps and stationed in
Texas. My anny life was not very exotic. After training as an air-
plane mechanic I went, in September, 1942, to New Caledonia
in the Pacific area and moved from island to island for the next
thirty-eight months. My memories of New Guinea, Biak, the New
Hebrides, the Admiralty Islands, the Philippines, and others, are
not very pleasant and I would rather not linger over them. The
Anny was a necessary institution but as far as I was concerned a
very oppressive institution. The hierarchy seemed to me to get
progressively more stupid as it got higher, and the thing that I
marvel at is that we did so well considering the general messed-up
condition that seemed to prevail everywhere. I returned from my
extensive sojourn in the Pacific in December of 1945 and with
great relief received my discharge from the anny the same month.
PHILIP P. POIRIER
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sounds like witch-hunting, and I must admit that at first it im-
pressed me as such. The main aim of the government was to obtain
information on these groups, not to suppress them. Such work was
certainly necessary where men like the leader of the Christian
Front in Boston, Paul Moran, were concerned. Moran had a
peculiar genius for exploiting the anti-British sentiment of the
Boston Irish. Even after the war began he stated that he hoped
Hitler would defeat America. Months after Pearl Harbor certain
groups in Boston, behind locked doors, were hearing Japan praised
as the only civilized nation in the East and the United States ac-
cused of having deliberately provoked the war. I think it fair to say
that during this war the United States Government leaned over
backward to avoid witch-hunting.
My contact with leftist groups was invaluable to me in testing a
notion that I had somehow picked up in college that leftism and
broadmindedness go hand in hand. By reading Communist litera-
ture day after day and associating with Communists and their more
ardent sympathizers, I discovered a narrowness and dogmatism of
approach that was almost entirely immune to reason, a state of
intellectual sterility that left its possessors incapable of any dis-
cussion beyond spouting the current party line. Like the adherents
of the extreme right, they require and embellish a rigid and often
mystical system of faith. The similarity of intellectual approach of
extreme rightists and leftists impressed me greatly and appeared
even more striking when, on studying the political party system
under Vichy, I discovered how many French Communists had
found it easy to transfer to the Fascist camp.
I left Boston in July, 1943, and, after an intensive course in in-
vestigation and cryptography at Baltimore, went to England in
October. I spent my first few months in London, received a per
diem allowance and rented a small apartment in back of Selfridge's
off Oxford Street. What an unforgettable experience it was to read
DeQUincy's Confessions with his haunting descriptions of this sec-
tion of London by night and then to walk the very streets he knew
so well
I lectured at an Intelligence school in London on Vichy political
parties and also studied French. I did not see much of the city;
I was busy with the school and believing that I would remain in
London longer than I actually did I continually postponed my
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been duped, not realizing that the rest of France had not fared as
well as Nonnandy. Matters were not helped much by the American
policy of reducing towns to rubble by amllery fire in order to save
American lives. We in the Counter-Intelligence Corps, working
closely with the civilian population, saw that the people of Nor-
mandy often regarded us, not as liberators, but as the destroyers of
their homes. Only the active members of the Resistance appeared
truly friendly.
It was a relief, therefore, when we heard that our team had been
chosen to operate the Counter-Intelligence Corps office in Paris.
I had prayed for this. The thrill of entering liberated Paris, a Paris
rejoicing; of hunting down a room and finding one in the Hotel
Wagram overlooking the Tuileries gardens; of walking among the
crowds on the Champs Elysees that first night and seeing the Arc
de Triomphe ... what a memorable and exquisite day. I fell in
love with Paris at first sight. The following year was the most won-
derfulI've ever known.
The work itself was fascinating. There were but twelve of US;
we worked alone at first but after the first few months were asso-
ciated with inspectors from the various departments of the French
police. To go out on a case, free from the cramping restrictions of
Anny red tape; to write up a report when the case was finished and
then start out on a new case, all the time learning more and more
about Paris - this was ideal. We investigated reported German
agents and deserters, French citizens who, according to records, had
been active collaborators, members of the American colony in
Paris suspected of having worked with the Gennans. The interro-
gation of suspects was one of the most demanding of jobs. Such
interrogations often lasted for days. I learned more about these
suspects than I ever hope to learn about such strangers again; their
faces are etched in my memory. In a few days I learned perhaps
more about human nature than one might ordinarily learn in a life.
time. I loved the work and could sometimes keep at it for ten to
twelve hours a day without getting tired. If there is any conclusion
I can draw from this intensive period of close contact with these
rejected people it is this: that there is good even in those we think
the most evil; that a man who betrays his country can be possessed
of sterling virtues in his family life and in his relations with his
friends; that in dealing with human beings it is folly to speak in
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all-inclusive terms. My experiences make it extremely difficult for
me to react affirmatively to any attempt to encouIage the hatred of
a group or of a people.
I liked both the British and the French, although I felt much
more at home in France and more like an observer in England.
The French with their joie de vivre are more like us. I do not
subscribe to the argument that the fall of FIance was caused in
large part by a lack of moral fibre in her people. They are not as
"stiff-upper-lippish" as the British, but they are no less courageous.
A much more intelligent explanation of the fall of France lies in
an examination of her tremendous losses in men and material in
World War I; ours were infinitesimal in comparison. France would
have been defeated no matter how much moral dedication her
people had, when her forty million, predominantly agricultural, had
to face, alone, eighty million Germans industrialized for war. I re-
ceive letters from friends in France today attacking our plans for
reviving German heavy industry. I can't help sympathizing with
their point of view.
Paris stands out clearly in my mind's eye; it is my second home.
When I returned to the States in 1945 I came close to returning
to Paris to work on the Paris Herald. Two of my friends had news-
paper jobs there and I hoped to join them. I decided, however, that
Paris would always be a temptress, that if I went back I probably
never would complete a doctoral thesis. I therefore returned to
school. I now have my M.A. degree. My doctoral thesis will prob-
ably be concerned with France under the Second Empire. My
research may carry me to Paris, but, malheureusement, I'm quite
sure that the material I need can be tracked down here in Widener
Library.
Lately I've been studying harder than ever before; long hours of
work have been rewarded by those fleeting moments of complete
comprehension which are a spur to further study. I see much that
is wrong here - the abysmal ignorance of many who overstress
specialization, the constant pose of knowing, the sententious spout-
ing and overqualification. But I also see men of profound integrity
devoted to their work. If some are dull, others are witty and inspir-
ing. I enjoy encountering and recognizing the fresh breeze in the
hackneyed field. I sense a need to be part of that tension that arises
from eternal reinterpretation and eternal resistance to it. Although
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WILLIAM E. SELLERS
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THE SEllVICE 417
harassed "non-coms" in charge never quite knew who was who or,
what was more significant, who was where. Under those circum-
stances, we learned the value of those standard GI maxims, "Keep
your nose clean, your mouth shut, and NEVER VOLUNTEER."
We were moved, after three weelcs, to Camp Mills, an old in-
£antI}' post of World War I, located across the street from Mitchell
Field. Here, we lived in what were optimistically referred to as
"winterized tents," pyramidal canvas tents pitched over wooden
frames. I remember gloating, inadvisedly, as it turned out, over the
fact that we were spending part of the summer in these tents but
would be well out of the camp and into heated barraclcs by fall.
We got to the barracks; that much of my dream came true. After
a twenty-eight-day period, during which we plotted charts and took
observations and calculated pressures and dew points, an order
came around stating that all observers taking in-station training and
having completed twenty-eight days or more of such training were
to take the forthcoming observers' examination. We took the test;
I passed with a seventy-six; the other eight trainees failed. Three
days later I had orders transferring me to the Twelfth Weather
Squadron, a new group destined for unknown regions. That was
the only occasion I can recall on which I regretted my ability to
pass examinations.
However, as things turned out, I did not regret my transfer.
Twelfth Weather was a congenially inefficient organization. Passes
were obtainable on the slightest provocation; training for overseas
work was haphazard and not too strenuous; life in tents was rela-
tively free of the misery that besets the over-inspected and officer-
ridden barraclcs soldier. As time went on, we got used to minor
hardships and learned how to make the "winterized tents" almost
livable - and to stay out of them when they weren't - and we
became the heroes of Hempstead, the men destined to invade the
unknown lands "over there somewhere" - the first tactical weather
squadron ever created.
Tactically speaking, weather men are likely to be about as effec-
tive as a mob of Chinese peasants armed with hoes and rakes. But
we picked up, in spite of ourselves, a little information about codes
and cyphers; and we learned to field-strip a Springfield rifle, vintage
of 1908. And we learned, a fortiori, a good deal about remaining
alive in the field. It was cold in Camp Mills in December. The
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418 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
arctic conditions of our life led to rumors that we were heading for
Greenland. But we could not reconcile the issue of tropical gear
and typhus and cholera shots with thoughts of the Arctic wastes.
Official corroboration came with a little pamphlet issued by the
Office of Information, a booklet which contained assorted informa-
tion, some of it true and all of it rather strange, about the Arabs
of Morocco and Algeria.
Our voyage on the restless waters of the Atlantic was relatively
uneventful. There were the usual rumors about enemy submarines
and there was one alert made lively by the firing of the ship's anti-
aircraft guns. But storms were mild, waves were only high enough
to be interesting, and the nights were calm and beautiful. Once in
a while some Texan from another company would bring his guitar
on deck; sometimes, a few of us sang without accompaniment, but
reasonably close to the pitch. There we picked up the famous
"I've Got Sixpence" of the Royal Air Force.
Our ship was the Uruguay, a converted South American liner
subsequently sunk on convoy duty in the Far East. She was not
large as liners go, but she had the appointments of the average
troop-ship: bunks in tiers about a foot apart, a dispensary, nurses'
and officers' quarters, and a mess-hall with stand-up tables. There
was a Post Exchange, too, but after the first day out, it didn't count.
I was a bit disgusted about that because the night before we left
port, a number of us were rooted out of bed to load PX supplies
which few enlisted men were able to get their hands on except
through the agency of obliging officers. Showers were hard to get,
too. I remember a lad called "Swede" who led a couple of us to a
spot between decks where showers might be had. As we were about
to enter one door we were hailed by a sour-looking soldier who
informed us that that shower was for officers only. Swede asked
him about the one down the line and we were told it was for
MP's only. Swede yelled impatiently, "Where's the one for plain,
ordinary dogs?" While the soldier was scratching his head trying
to think of a suitable answer, Swede slipped into the MP's shower
and locked the door. That was the beginning of a long feud be-
tween Swede and MP's in general.
A few days' sailing brought us in sight of the colorful little port
of Casablanca, swarming with French sailors and Arab dock-
workers. On landing, we marched to the outpost of the area of
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THE SERVICE 419
Cazes Airport. While we were waiting there for an American
officer from the interior regions of the post there was an alert. A
siren wailed somewhere in the distance and our officers told us to
scatter. We stood anlde-deep in the mud of a large plowed field,
singly or in pairs, scanning the black sky for planes. After a couple
of hours, during which we saw neither planes nor fireworks, we
proceeded to our area. I say "area" because there was nothing but
another plowed field where we had hoped our quarters would be.
Our shelter halves had been loaded into trucks along with our
barracks-bags, and of course the trucks got lost. So we stood around
in the damp and cold of the December night wishing each other a
Merry Christmas.
Christmas at Cazes was, to say the least, unusual. The night 00-
fore, we were called out by an alert, in which one German bom-
bardier let a stick of bombs go across the street from our camp.
On Christmas morning, a few of us wandered over to the French
area, where we were hospitably received by some French flyers,
who gave us some wine and passed the time of day with us quite
pleasantly. On Christmas afternoon we had to move the shelter
halves we had pitched more or less haphazardly. Our Christmas
dinner was a box of K-rations apiece; in fact, we had to make that
box do for the other two meals of the day. And at night we got a
free fireworks display by courtesy of the Luftwaffe.
Life at Cazes settled down to a routine in which we gradually
learned how to adapt ourselves to sub-marginal living. It rained
incessantly, but we managed to find enough straw to keep dry and
learned to ditch our pup tents more thoroughly than is the custom.
Food was problematical- even conjectural- our supply depended
largely on the kindness of the mess sergeants of other outfits; and a
mess sergeant, if he is charitable, believes that charity begins at
home.
Ultimately, we established ourselves so well at Cazes that our
squadron commander, on a tour of inspection, informed us that
we seemed too comfortable and would soon have to move. If we
were well off, it was due partly to a certain ingenuity that the en-
listed soldier acquires as a prerequisite to survival and partly to the
kindness of our French friends. A family in the Maarif section of
the town, M. Coquereau and his wife and children, were especially
good to us. Madame once baked a cake for the entire complement
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of men left in the camp and the family invited many of us to par-
take of the best they could provide for dinner.
If Casablanca was hospitable, Fez, our next station, was certainly
no less so. We 8ew to the little airport of Ras-el-Ma, not without
misgivings, for Fez was, we thought, an Amb town in the semi-
desert country of the interior. We found the place quiet but in
some respects more comfortable and more pleasant than Cazes.
Winter nights in Fez are quite cold; we saw the advantage of pup-
tents when we froze for a couple of nights in the big pyramidal
affaia we had at Fez; and we realized what it was to get up in the
cold and take the midnight shift in an unheated weather station.
But there were compensations. Fez was a picturesque town, the
scene of the old-time glory of the Amb civilization in North Africa.
The French quarter was pleasantly residential, and its inhabitants
were remarkably hospitable and tolerant of the shenanigans of
American GI's. When some youngster we knew absorbed too
much of the foul cognac of the region and assaulted a couple of
MP's, these people took him in, calmed him down, and put him
to bed and watched over him. "Pauvre ~n," they explained to
me, "il a Ie cafard." (Poor boy, he is homesick.)
I stayed in Fez for six months. I wish now that it could have
been longer. The medina was, at first, "off limits," as Amb quarters
usually were; but after many American outfits had left and police
patrols relaxed, some of us had an opportunity to see this most
fascinating city. Its gardens, its souks, its surrounding hills, even
its vile odors, wove a spell. For all its decadence, Fez is a city of
undeniable, exotic charm.
My surprise was considerable when, instead of seeing mobile
weather units sent right up to the front lines, I found Mobile Unit
Number Eleven stationed in the back country of Tunisia, long
after the Jerries had been chased out. Mateur was a dirty, provin-
cial, battered, benighted little town. Our unit was situated on a
dried-up lake bed inhabited by scorpions and grasshoppers. We
had one pyramidal tent for about fourteen men. We built ourselves
bunks out of odds and ends of lumber and hung our mosquito baa
as protection from the scorpions.
Mateur was dull, hot, and miserable. All I can recall of note
about it is that I got my teeth repaired at a field dentist's establish-
ment equipped with a drill operated by foot-power and that I
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"I"IIB SBRVlCB 421
read a copy of Pere Gorlot I had brought from Fez and was con-
siderably depressed by the whole effect of the book. We were not
sorry when orders came to move. The move merely brought us out
of the frying pan, however.
We were marooned in the semi-desert near Enfidaville, a village
smaller and more provincial, if possible, than Mateur. As official
laundryman and translator for my station, I got to know something
about the inhabitanb of Enfidaville. They were largely of Italian
extraction and wasted no love upon the French administrators who
taxed their wine production and made them study the French
language in school. They were moderately friendly, but there was
a reserve in their manner that distinguished them from the French
North Africans.
We settled down to what looked like a long siege; but the unex-
pected happened - we loaded our loose equipment into a C47
one partly cloudy day and took off. Over the Mediterranean, on
over the coast of Sicily, over green grass (the first real green hills we
had seen in a year) we 8ew, north to San Pancrazio, Italy.
Here, in the province of Puglia, on the heel of the boot, we were
to spend the next three months. We moved into a barracks, a ram-
shackle building used by members of the Luftwaffe a short while
before. The Germans had left souvenirs on the walls in the form
of sketches painted by some amateur artist. One I remember well
was a huge club under which was the motto, "Unsere Hausord-
nung." Another was the picture of a cowboy with a Stmon about
three feet tall and a large, black-handled revolver in a holster. He
was sitting across a bar from a rather voluptuous barmaid. Under-
neath was the subscript, "Texasbar." Ab, ubiquitous Hollywoodl
San Pancrazia was a poverty-stricken little village about half a
mile from the camp. The city of Leece was about thirty miles from
camp, but trucks ran to and from the city rather often. We
frequented tlte Red Cross there, where good ice cream could
be had for a nominal price and where one occasionally caught a
glimpse of an American girl. Leece had an opera company, too,
but ib talent was not always of consistent quality. I remember a
performance of Lucia eli Lamennoor in which the Scotsmen were
played by swarthy paesani in Mother Hubbards. Modesty of a sort
forbade the wearing of genuine kilts.
I was transferred again, this time to Cagliari, Sardinia. We found
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422 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
when we arrived that the station at Elmas had plenty of radio opera-
tors and that there was a shortage of observers. So we went back
to map-making and keeping records.
Elmas was not far from Cagliari, a rather large though not very
modem city which had been hit very hard by some American
medium bombers. Americans were about as popular there as Re-
publicans in the deep South. There was a very small Protestant
church in Cagliari; it represented the work of some Baptist mis-
sionaries and had a very small but devoted congregation. Many
members had been driven out of the city by the air raids and were
still unable to get back, since some quarters were still completely
in ruins. Some Americans attended services at this little church.
Some of us helped translate a pamphlet containing the history of
the church and a graphic account of the air raids.
Our unit moved, eventually, to Borgo, Corsica, where we stayed
for a couple of months before moving up to Dijon, France. The
Corsican countryside was truly beautiful, and I did not feel impa-
tient to leave it. However, we were curious about France and
arrived at Dijon with a certain eagerness to see the surrounding
counlly.
The airport was really a long way from Dijon ville; for some time
we were too busy to see much of the city. We operated at fever-
pitch in this area, since weather was changeable and fighter activity
was extensive. Other stations were always trying to reach us by
'phone and the French operators had their hands full. Every morn-
ing, the Major had to call long distance to Marseille in order to
let units of our group know about landing conditions at Dijon.
He used to yell for ten-minute periods: "Donnez-moi Marseillel
Urgent! Comprenez? Urgentl" Once, I tried to get some informa-
tion from a French weather station by 'phone. I used my very best
French and got an answer in perfect, cultivated English. There-
after, I operated on the assumption made by most Anglo-Saxons
that everybody speaks English, or ought to.
When orders came for me to go south to our old region, I was
not greatly displeased. I landed at Borgo, Corsica, and got a scenic
truck ride to Ghissonaccia, a village by courtesy buried in the
maquis of the eastern coastal district. The region was isolated, but
beautiful; the mountains to the west of us were towering white
majesties of snow and rock. The mobile unit at Ghissonaccia had
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THE SERVICE 423
been immobilized there for many a day; its personnel were con-
genial philosophers reconciled to their immobility. The work there
was light after the hectic days at Dijon. I spent much time read-
ing and walking in the woods and lying in the sun. I had caught
a cold in France and the warm weather of the Corsican plains cured
me rapidly.
We finally got orders to move to northern Italy. After a couple
of days' hard work (immobile mobile stations pick up a tremendous
amount of junk after a few months of immobility), we were ready
to go. We went across the northern Appenines, by Lake Trasimene,
through Perugia, to Rimini and down to Fano.
Fano is a fishing town very largely ruined and impoverished by
the pranks played by retreating German troops. Carefully placed
mines ruined its ancient walls and destroyed two-thirds of its famous
and colorful fishing fleet. Most of the inhabitants of the town were,
however, friendly and willing to try to rebuild what had been
wrecked. Units of the Eighth Army were stationed in Fano, and we
were permitted to visit them and drink tea. We were at Fano
when V-E Day came. There was dancing in the streets that night
and some of the boys celebrated wildly. I went on shift at mid-
night according to usual practice; there is weather twenty-four
hours a day, and someone has to be on hand to record it. A few
days after the great moment, stations began to disband. Most of
mine went to the Twelfth Weather Replacement Center at Pomig-
liano Airport, outside Naples.
Naples is a filthy citY, for the most part, but its surroundings,
Castellammare, Torre del Greco, Torre Annunziata, Pompeii, Sor-
rento, Capri, Vesuvius, all are beautiful. I saw the city from Vesu-
vius; I visited Pompeii; I traveled the road north from Posillipo;
I swam and sailed at Sorrento. Our tactical operations were over,
the war in our theatre was a thing of the past. I had duties, of
course, but these duties were light for the most part and had
nothing to do with the grim business of killing people.
On our trip home we flew in a B-21- to the Azores, to Gander
Field, Newfoundland, thence to Bradley Field, Connecticut. The
. trip was a chilly one at times, as we got to some pretty high alti-
tudes and had not been equipped with heated flying suits. There
were some thrills on the journey and one rather terrible moment
when we found a gas-tank cap loose. The pilot was a man of iron
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FREDERICK G. Au.EN
I was called to active duty in April, 1943, and reported to Fort
Devens. After a week there I was sent to Camp Edwards to be
trained for military police duty, to be assigned at Fort Devens for
"the duration." I was in limited service due to weak eyes, so it
seemed unlikely that I would ever leave the United States.
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ceived at Fort Devens in February, 1946. I did not make any
money in the anny, nor was my career very glorious. I received but
one promotion in almost three years. But even I must admit that
I benefitted a great deal from my time in the service. Besides seeing
so much more of the country and the world than I ever would have
been able to, otherwise, I think the anny taught me an im-
portant lesson. And if I may be pennitted to suspend all modesty
for a moment, I should like to tell what I think it is. Perseverance.
I may have given the impression above that I was happy to leave
the MP's and go to the infantry. I wasn't. I was frightened over
what I had heard about that ann of the service; I feared that it
would be too much for me. But in the end I found that by hanging
on I had in reality become an infantryman. In December of 1914
I received a little badge known as the Expert Infantryman's badge.
Not even my Phi Beta Kappa key made me any prouder. I don't
believe my buddies who had always been in the infantry appre-
ciated the honor as much as I did. It is no great credit to me that
I hung on, for there was nothing else to do at the time; but I think
the experience stamped forever on my consciousness the fact that
an exceedingly difficult task need not necessarily be impossible.
Our company was made up of a great many young fellows with one
year of college; bright young boys, but very few athletes, muscular
types. I remarked one day to a friend that one would never take
ours for a very rough outfit by looking at it. He answered: "It
doesn't take much muscle to get along in the infantry; just a lot of
guts." I do know one thing: there is a vast difference between the
high school boy who rather doubtfully after much urging asked
Mr. Bernard about the Fund and the one who applied hopefully
this year for acceptance to the Yale Graduate School.
KENNETH G. RYDER
War imbued all things with a spirit of haste and urgency. This
was increasingly true throughout my sophomore year. The aca-
demic program was accelerated. There were summer sessions and
a fragmentization of class spirit. Strictly "practical" subjects like
mathematics, physics, navigation were urged on the young men.
One by one the men of my class said good-bye and went into uni-
fonn. Those of us who remained engaged in the sentimental reBec-
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THE SEllVICE 429
the duties of executive officer as well. I was released to inactive
duty at the end of February, 1946.
STANLEY R. STEMBlUDGE
Shortly after I left Boston University and entered the V·12 pro-
gram at Harvard, Dean Hanford told us that, while some of us
felt that we were losing by the interruption of our college careers,
we would some day realize that Navy experience, however unim-
portant it might seem, would give us something unobtainable in
other ways. We laughed at this "pep talk" then, but Dean Hanford
was right. And while my three years in the Navy resulted in very
little positive assistance to the war effort, it was the broadest kind
of experience for me - invaluable in developing an interest in
people, in avoiding pedantry, and in achieving a somewhat better
perspective of life.
As for my service itself, I cannot claim any heroic part in the war.
After getting my commission, I spent nearly one year in routine
minesweeping off the East coast, accomplishing little more than
putting severallobstermen out of business and easing the minds of
the high command. Then I was set down for a year on a delightful
Pacific atoll. The natives, who were Congregationalists as the result
of nineteenth century missionary work, and who wore clothes, were
otherwise fairly untouched by civilizing influences. They lived well
away from the military establishment on a distant island, which
was perfect in every way, living peacefully, very much as they had
always lived, remote from the world, a simple and happy existence.
My duty on this atoll was to pose as an expert on insurance, edu-
cation, and veteran's benefits. I had studied it for two weeks and
was thus, in Navy eyes, an "expert." But I was many months de-
veloping the ability to parry the questions of business men and
insurance salesmen twice my age.
COBURN V. GRAVES
The simple church services and the fellowship of the Army chap-
lains have left with me a feeling that will never be forgotten.
After my entry into the Army in April, 1942, I went to Camp
Croft, South Carolina, for basic training. From there I went to
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430 A CHltONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
ARNOLD C. HANSON
At Fort Devens I was classified for the Air Forces and sent to
Miami Beach. From there we were transferred to the radio opera-
tor's school at Sioux Falls where I took the cadet examinations.
The mental went all right, but on the physical they found I had a
submucous restriction which probably accounted for high blood
pressure. An operation followed and then I went back to Miami
Beach for cadet basic training. From there I proceeded to Michi-
gan State College where we were given college pre-flight training
for five months. This college life was a wonderful interlude in the
monotony of Army routine and I enjoyed every minute that we
were able to break from the schedule to enjoy campus life and the
college atmosphere. They had us fly in Piper Cubs for ten hours
and after the first three about half the class was ready to quit,-
airsickness. However, after a psychology pep-talk by the flight
surgeon everything was all right again. San Antonio and classifica-
tion followed. I asked for bombardier and got it. I graduated a
se.cond lieutenant. Then came my first leave and I came home
before going to Charleston, South Carolina, for overseas training
in B-24's. With the rating of bombardier-navigator we were sent
to Mitchell Field, New York, and flew overseas via Bangor, Maine,
Bermuda, Azores, Morocco, Tunisia, to Italy and the 460th Bomb
Group of the Fifteenth Air Force.
After the war I managed to get to Naples, Rome, Pisa, Florence,
and a few other cities in Northern Italy before coming home. I
was determined that after getting all the way over there the least
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THE SERVICE 431
they could do was let me see a few things. We flew home via
Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal, Brazil, British Guiana, Porto Rico and
Savannah, Georgia. After being sent to Tampa. Florida. we were
discharged and I came baclc to Boston University. The Army did
several things for me other than interrupt my formal schooling.
All experience is a teacher. In the first place, it threw me in with
all types of people with all kinds of backgrounds from all sections
of the country. It got me out of a sectionalist attitude which I
think people tend to acquire when they live in only one place.
Then, it put me on my own - a test of my mettle. I loved every
minute of the traveling, took aD the tours and saw everything pos-
sible under the circumstances. I learned patience with stupidity
and inefficiency and a clearer insight and interest in government.
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CHAPTER X
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THE MAIN CHANCE 433
of a court at law and the altar of the church. Did space per-
mit, the number of these might be much enlarged. Those
given run the gamut from men who find satisfaction for the
life of the spirit in the conservative ritual of the church, to
others who have passed through the fires of readjustment
from a conservative to a liberal theology, but all exemplify
"positive Christian character" through humanitarian service.
With possibly one exception, none of the quotations given
below comes from a pastor unless this word is stretched to
cover various allied fields in which theological training is
needed, and even so the pastors are in the minority.
The first testimony is that of a young man who advanced
a long way toward maturity through his experiences in the
War.
My religious life was largely placid and uneventful before I en-
tered the armed forces. My mother is a devout Methodist and she
had worked hard to keep my church attendance regular in my
youth. Until the war years I largely looked on religious worship
as a duty, rather than as a source of strength and inspiration. Per-
haps it was the life at sea with the reddish glow of sunsets reflecting
on a peaceful, limitless ocean, or the savage breaking waves of an
oriental typhoon. Perhaps it was the reality of com bat and the
realization of the impotence of a human being when he faces the
forces of war. I only know that during the war I realized, perhaps
for the first time, the true value of religion.
There is a picture that lives on in my memory of a religious
service on shipboard. A small ship like ours had no chaplain and
during the first part of our journey to the war zone it became the
custom to disregard Sunday completely and treat it like every
other day of the week. In the combat area, however, there was a
widespread desire among the crew that Sunday services be held.
I helped to organize regular services with such materials as we had
at hand. One religious group had sent us a dozen paper-covered
hymnals; we had a Bible, and an Oklahoma farm boy with his
guitar to lead our singing. We gathered on the open deck, some
sitting on the deck itself, others perched on inverted buckets or
bQxc;s. We said a few prayers, one of the officers gave a short in-
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spirational talk, and we all joined in singing those few hymns which
the Oklahoman could pick out on his guitar. I remember think-
ing, as I heard his whining, hillbilly voice leading "Nearer My
God to Thee" and as I studied the serious young faces around me,
that this was probably the most impressive religious gathering I had
ever attended. There was not a shade of hypocrisy in the worship-
pers at this service. The singing was bad, the sermon was common-
place, the prayers were simple, but there was a devout and worsbip-
ful spirit in each heart that surmounted external imperfections and
. made the shipboard service a heart-warming religious experience.
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THE MAIN CHANCE 4f.35
than now in the necessity· of the personal experience of God and the
experience through Him of our fellow men.
The two following quotations are by men who, like so many
of the Fund beneficiaries, have sought a consciousness of
God's presence in the daily round of such religious activity
as has ever been the habit of good churchmen.
The story of my life would be sadly incomplete without an ac-
count of my relationship with the church and with my minister.
As a youngster I had a perfect attendance record at the Congrega-
tional Church. At the age of ten, I joined the Episcopal Church
choir, and received each month a sum not exceeding one dollar for
attending practice and for singing in church on Sundays. My
Sunday morning started with the Episcopal Church Sunday School
from 9:45 to 10:45, followed by my singing in the choir from 11:00
to 12:00. Immediately after this I dashed over to the Congrega-
tional Church where I attended Sunday School from 12:15 to 1:15.
This full morning schedule continued for two or three years, and
for several years on Thursday afternoons I attended the Week-Day
School at the church.
I have always felt very close to the Sunday School. When I was
in college I taught in the elementary grades and since I have been
teaching tenth-grade boys. I am a member of the religious educa-
tion committee of the church and of the pastoral committee.
The Sunday School sent me as its delegate to the International
Sunday School Convention at Des Moines, Iowa, in the summer
of 1947.
My pastor, who is retiring this year, has been a constant source
of inspiration and guidance throughout my church life. His minis-
try has been a consecrated one, his reputation is wide-spread and
he lias had many opportunities to move on to larger fields. How-
ever, long ago he decided to stay with our church and he is now
finishing his thirty-seventh year. On many occasions when I
needed help I turned to him and he was always willing and ready
to help me.
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THE MAIN CHANCE 4f.37
Besides being interested in various mission societies, I am a
member of the Holy Name Society and have in recent years be-
come interested in the work of the Laymen's Week-end Retreat
League. This last group maintains establishments or retreat houses
at country sites in the United States where men can forget the
cares and problems of the everyday world and spend the intervaI
from Friday evening to Sunday evening in an atmosphere of prayer,
spiritual reading. services and meditation on the context of dis-
courses presented by a qualified Retreat Master on subjects pertain-
ing to religion and morals. Silence periods are maintained at stated
intervals. Radios, newspapers and outside contacts are precluded
as are all forms of entertainment or other distractions during the
retreat. A distinct spiritual uplift is the reward of each retreatant.
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THE MAIN CHANCE 439
the usual activities, whose sense of logic and consistency prevents
them from gaining full satisfaction in religious formalism. With-
out a conviction that there is purpose in human existence, some
such persons will destroy themselves; others will lose their mental
balance; and, to the misfortune of their fellow men, others will
substitute the pursuit of an artificial objective in the vacancy left
by the lack of conviction in purpose.
I believe that the perverted social ideologies, of which Hitler's
was an example, are born in this way, and grow because the sub-
stituted objective is something in the pursuit of which many lost
souls unconsciously find relief from the pain caused by lack of
conviction that there is a real reason for the existence of humanity.
My own depression was something that grew on me slowly, but
irrepressibly, until I analyzed the cause for it as a lack of convic-
tion in a purpose for human existence. It did not take me long to
realize that search for the purpose itself was futile; but I soon
found evidence enough to give a firm basis for the hope that a
purpose really exists, which in tum leads to the less well-founded
hope that the purpose will eventually become universally known
(if man does not destroy himself beforehand). I believe that the
purpose has been revealed to some few, notably Christ; but that
the limitations of language and average perceptive ability have
restricted dissemination of the knowledge. I believe further that
the geneml development of man to the point where the purpose
can be comprehended is amenable to acceleration through the in-
dividual effort of persons who recognize the need.
I believe that the problem of finding the fundamental purpose
in human existence is the basic problem of life, and I believe that
more persons of high intellect or spiritual insight should devote
their attention to this problem. It is certainly not to be expected
that the purpose will be discovered in a time comparable to an
individual's span of life; but, certainly, enough weighty and con-
sistent evidence could be assembled and disseminated within that
time to give to a significantly greater number of persons than now
hold it, the unshakable hope that the purpose exists. I believe
that the universal holding of such a hope would be the most potent
possible force in tempering human conduct, with respect both to
the actions of individuals and the actions of groups. Not only
should it nearly eliminate the birth of the artificial objectives which
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THE MAIN CHANCE 441
to him what I would do and who I would become. But calmness
and poise have come only as I accepted the commissioning - "even
so have I also sent you" - and went on with whatever strength I
had to do for this day, in my world, the things that Jesus did and
to "finish the work that is given me to do." And the joy of my
experience has been that when I really have accomplished that,
there has been a sense of fellowship with God that has stayed with
me.
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That was late in 1941. Since then this man has never
wavered in his purpose. His college course is complete and
but little remains of the training in his profession. He contin-
ues:
The theological student stands at the growing edge of a great
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movement whose heroes fonn a continuous line back to the begin-
ning of the Christian era. We inherit the results of their struggles
with men and with the problems of ultimate truth. Humbly I join
myself to this movement and accept my heritage. Whether I shall
fight the good fight or retreat to the safety and comfort of the
backlines, I cannot teD, but if I do retreat, I shall have lost faith
with those to whom I owe so much, and with those who are out on
the battlefields of life awaiting the encouragement of a helping
hand.
Following the completion of my first year in the School of
Theology, I had the opportunity of going to Poland on an UNRRA
horse ship. Crossing the ocean for the first time was a great ex-
perience in itself, but the impression that is most lasting came
from the experience of seeing a whole nation in desperate need.
Everywhere we felt and heard the fear of the people lest they be
swallowed up by Russia. Everywhere we saw hunger and ragged-
ness. Desolation and ruin lay on all sides. Children without parents
and without care followed us wherever we went. I pray for the
ability to feel with those who suffer, though my own stomach be
filled and my own path smooth. Therein is the test of brotherhood.
As I write, I am just beginning the last year of my theological
training. I am still the proud beneficiary of the Professor Augustus
Howe Buck Educational Fund. I have been further honored by
being elected to Phi Beta Kappa. My days of preparation draw to
a close and the broad road of opportunity lies invitingly before me.
The fields on all sides are white for harvest. Through the goodness
of others I have been prepared for the task. It is their faith that
shall drive me on to do the very best of which I am capable to
promote noble living and to write a sequel to this story in the
lives of men and women to whom I shall minister.
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THE MAIN CHANCE
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+f6 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
because we are not lit to use it." His prayer was denied. Men
smashed the atom, and in their first use of the power science
had thus placed in their hands they seemed almost like irre-
sponsible children playing with matches in a powder maga-
zine. Is, then, a moratorium in order for science? Not while
the results science gives are true, however incomplete that
truth may be. Rather, this broken world demands a moral
and spiritual crusade of such magnitude that the future his-
torian writing of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will
find in that spiritual awakening even deeper import for the
ages to come than in the renaissance of science in the same
period. Such is the final message on which this writing con-
tinues to dwell.,
Someone has said that scientific problems are simple "com-
pared with the problems of the quest of the public good."
The dangers of the days ahead are not in the advances of
science but in the absence of control of its results by men
whose dominant life interest is not alone in science but far
more in the welfare of humanity. Men hold today in their
hands physical powers too great for their moral strength.
Earlier the evidence of this was incomplete. Such was the
allure of the last century of scientific progress - the coming
of lights that tum night into day, the use of waves that carry
messages around the world, the development of engines that
not only conquered space on earth but made man equal to the
birds of the air and the fish of the sea - such physical powers
man had seized that he seemed ready to run his affairs alone,
to ''bow God out with thanks". Then came Hiroshima, the
answer of science unguided by morals.
Nearly two thousand years ago there flamed for a few brief
days in the 6rmament of earth a Light that showed a way,
perhaps the only way, by which men may climb the heavenly
steeps. The years since then have been vastly different years
because of that one life, and today as never before mankind
can choose the road ahead with knowledge of the destination.
The tum toward uncontrolled science leads to other Hiro-
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shimas and the death of humanity. The tum toward the Light
leads toward the Sermon on the Mount and the Kingdom of
God.
Development in science resulted from the training of men
of promise in that field, and the development in the body
politic of the moral sense demanded for today would probably
follow the same pattern. Hence the importance of education,
not so much for the theologian but for men of "positive
Christian character" in all walks of life.
In a democracy, the educational system provides for all
with regard to naught save intellectual capacity. Such a sys-
tem has in it obvious inherent dangers. For it leads to greater
trained efficiency for each in his chosen line be he saint or
devil. The majority are neither. But unless some method is
found for turning the training gained by this majority not
simply toward a more scientifically efficient life but definitely
toward a better life, suicidal con8ict at all levels may well
continue to be the order of the day. Thus, though higher edu-
cation in America will probably never become a monopoly of
the well-to-do, the idea or feeling that if enough people, rich
and poor, are given enough education everything will be all
right vanishes in the darkness of the last four decades. To meet
successfully the complex problems that face mankind today,
more is needed than high intellectual attainment however
important that may be. Graduates fifteen years out of an old
and honored American university, founded by men of deep
religious convictions, have recently afforded the public,
through the medium of a popular magazine, the spectacle of
men of high intellectual attainments who according to their
own admission have little interest in religion but much in
booze. Such exhibits are serious indictments of any educa-
tional system that is interested simply in the intellectual and
economic needs of its students. It might conceivably be bet-
ter to wind up mundane affairs with a few atomic bombs than
to leave the rebuilding of this shattered world to irreligious
bacchanals. So while it would be unwise, even if possible, to
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
A Partial List of the Publications of the Beneficiaries of The Fund
Benson, Ernest B., Manual and Workbook, SOCIAL BIOLOGY. Culver, Culver
(Ind.) Academy, 1937.
- - , Articles in Proceedings of American Physiological Society and in the
Culver Alumnus.
Bertocci, Angelo P., A TALE THAT Is TOLD. New York, Henry Harrison, 1939.
- - , CHARLES Du Bos AND ENGLISH LITERATUllE. A Critic and His Orien·
tation. New York, King's Crown Press. In press, 1948.
- - , Article: "Charles Du Bos." New York, Columbia Dictionary of Modem
Literature, 1947.
- - , Articles in the following periodicals: Modem Language Journal, Harpers.
Symposium, The Bulletin of the New England Modem Language Associa-
tion, Winged Word.
- - , Verse in the following periodicals: Poetry Magazine, Spirit, The Per-
sonalist.
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450 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
Chapman, Dwight I., and Brown, Joseph, Jr., FRENCH COMPOSITION AND
CoNVERSATION WITH REVIEW CLUOIAB.. New York, The Century Co.,
1928.
- - , and Menut, A. D., eds., Jules Romains: KNOCK, ou LE TaJOMPIIE DE
LA MtDECINE, New York and London, The Centul}' Co., 1927.
- - , and Menut, A. D., eds., Romain Rolland: Lz JEU DE L'AMoUE ET DE
LA MORT. New York and London, The Century Co., 1928.
- - , and Brown, Joseph, Jr., eds., SHORT STORIBS BY CASTON CBERAU. New
York, Henl}' Holt. Co., 1929.
Colby, John K., A LATIN CROSS WORD PUZZLE BOO!:. Boston, Allyn' Bacon,
1925.
- - , LATINI HODmRNI, Societas Latine Scnbentium, 1944, 1946.
- - , READINC LATIN. New York, College Entrance Book Co., 193...
- - , THE ROMANS COULD READ IT, 19.. 5.
- - , Articles in the following periodicals: ClassicalTouma1, Classical Outlook,
Classical Wee1ly.
- - , Verse and translations in the following: Classical Tournal, Classical
Outlook, Cowley, Folia.
Dimitroff, George Z., PerSOD, F. C., and Coeder, F. P., A Couua IN C ........
PHYSICS POB. THB LABORATORY. The Salida Press, 1931.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 451
- - , and Baker, J. G., TELESCOPES AND AccEssoams. Philadelphia, The
Blakiston Co., 1945.
- - , Articles in the periodiaal, SI:y ad Telescope, and in the Annals, Cir·
culars ad Bulletins of Harvard University.
Hanson, Arnold C., Series of reports from South America to The Boston Globe
and the Milton (Mass.) Transcript, 1948.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 453
- , Weekly Radio Talks, Buffalo, 1932·1936.
- - , Exhibit of Star Models, Cambridge, Hamard University, 1936; and
Atlantic City, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1936.
Moberg, Walter J., Articles in the following periodicals: TOUlDal 01 the Amer·
ican Association of Collegiate Registms, Tunior College Tournal; Bulletins
of North Parle College.
Morris, Albert, CRIMINOLOGY. ,New Yorle, Longmans, Green & Co., 1934;
revised, 1938.
- - , A STUDY GUIDE IN ANTHROPOLOGY. Boston, 1936; revised, 1939.
- - , Articles in the following periodicals: Annals 01 American Academy of
Political and Social Science, Bostonia, Education, Federal Probation Quar.
terly, Georgetown Law Review, Social Forces, The Churchman.
- - , Articles in Encyclopedia 01 Criminology, Encyclopedia of Public WeI.
fare. .
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INDEX
Allen, Frederick C., 283, 284, 425· Bruce, Robert E., 17, 18,48,232
427 Bruce, Mrs. Robert E., 232
Buck,Augustus Howe, 1.12, 13, 25, 358
Barth, Karl, 351 Buck, Mrs. Augustus Howe, "I, 10, II,
Beg, A1eunder S., 365 177, 282; Luise C., 12
Behring, Pebr, 84 Buck, Dudley, 5
Behring, Mrs. Pebr, 84 Buck, Henry, "I
Bell, Alexander Craham, 5 Butler, Nicholas Murray, 317
Benel, Edvard, 316 Byam, Edwin C., 29, 150·155
Benson, Emest B., 99·101, 225
Benton, Carl, 248 Cain, Arthur J., 279·281
Bernard, Kenneth A., 427 CAuneron,~d,136, 152
Bertoc:ci, Angelo P., 28, 126, 196,214 Carlson, Fmncis W., 301·307
Bertoc:ci, Peter A., 28, 126·129, 214, Carr, Emest W., 159.160, 390
307, 350 Carr, Wilbur, 316
Boncour, Paul, 217 ~~Peter,149
Bliss, Cilbert A., 2M Cell, Clark W., 160, 161, 162, 164
Black, Ebenezer Charlton, 129, no, Chamberlain, Sir Neville, 320
lS2 Chapman, Dwight I., 1...., 164-169,
Blackfan, Kenneth D., 325 175, 177, 178
Booth, Evangeline, 182 Chapman, Walter, 164
Booth, Newell 5., 29, 45, 175, 179, Chapman, Mrs. Walter, 164
327·339, 356 Chipman, John, 357
Booth, Newell 5., Jr., 330, 331, 332, Choquette, Charles, 220
336 Churchill, Winston, 283, 323, "In
Bowne, Borden Parker, 7,358 Cleaves, Alden P., 105·108, 214
Boyd, Merle R., 255.257, 407-408 Cleveland, Crover, 171
Brigham, Lewis A., 88, 138 Coffin, Robert P. Trlsbam, 212
Brightman, Edgar 5., 135, 359 Coi~ Judson B., I, 10, 152
Bristol, Roger P., 158·159 Colby, John IC., 155·157, 161
Broob, Lee, 190 Collar, William C., 4, 5
Brown, Cordon, 243 CooHdge,~,209,287
Brown, Joseph, 1~5 CoqlleresU, M., 419
Bruce, Robert A., 119·124, 251.252, Curl, Mervyn, 147
373·375 Czar Nicholas II, 33
i55
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456 INDEX
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INDEX 457
Kent, Norton A., 208 Montucla, Jean Etienne, 169
King, John, 278 Moody, Robert E., 216
Knox, Albert L., 206-208 Moran, Paul, "'11
Koch, Sumner, 370 Morrell, Charles F., Jr., 268, 377·
381
Lancaster, Hemy C., 154 Morris, Albert, 20, 129.130, 131, 137,
Lamont, Thomas W., 317 175,187·190,254
Lane, Ernest P., 2H Mott, John Ro, 3H
Lavoisier, Antoine L., 182 Murlin, Lemuel H., 14, 15, 186
LeBreton,~, 153 Murlin, Mrs. Lemuel H., 186
Leslie, Elmer A., 337, 339 Mussolini, 218, 219, 220
Leslie, Mrs. Elmer A., 337, 339
Lewis, Sinclair, 219 Neal, John L., 125; "Jack," 125
Linncl1, Irving. 318 Newell, Lyman C., 17, 18, 182, 185,
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 445 186,210
Lundgren, Elmore, 111.113,226,399· Niebuhr, Reinhold. 31 ...
"'00 Nimkofl, Meyer, 32, 190·192
Lutz, Brenton R., 100 NowaIt, Frank, 136, 137
Nygren, Anders,"'H
MacKay, Odin C., 126, 127
Maloney, Arthur M., 233 Ogburn, William F., 191
Maria, Francis, 32, 234·239 Olson, Axel, 85, 86
Mariner, Thomas, 32, 113, 227 Olson, Mrs. Axel, 85, 86
Marsh, Daniel L., 25, 134,235 Owen, George W., 232, 233
Marshall, John P., 147, 159
Mason, J. Philip, 20, "'5, 137, 157, Palmer, George H., 358
175,227, 254, 382 Panunzio, Constantine, 188
Mason, Michael, 372 Pcarson, Drew,"'26
Masaryk, Alice, 316 Pefia, Cesareo, 281·283
Masaryk, Mrs. Thomas Garrigue, 315 Perkins, William A., 307·309
McCormick, Austin, 189 Peron, Juan D., 297, 298
McPhee, Warren D., 240.2"'1 Perrin, Marshall L., 1l0, 136, 137,
Mchlbach, Louise C., ...; Loise, 12 152,2"'9
Mehos, Charles A., 32,267·268 Phelps, Elizabeth S., 5
Melmub, FrantiSek, 318 Phillips, Henry D., 355
Merrill, John E., 174·176 Piper, Clinton A., 284-285, 385·386
Meyerhof, Otto, 322 Pizzuto, Francesco L., 177, 311·313
Mfoafo, Stephen B., 131·133, 171, Plath, Otto E., 2"'0, 2...9
176 Pliny, 250
Moberg, Walter J., 29, 32, 99, 153, Pollock, Henry M., 365
208·212, 366, 367·368, 397·399 Poirier, Philip P., 268-272, ... 10....16
Mode, Elmer B., "'8, 232 Pound, Roscoe, 188
Moffatt, James, 314 Powell, \Varren T., 271
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Preti, John A., 165, 167, 168, 177· Sharp, Waibtill H., 25, 29, 'IS, 179,
179; "Alex," 166 313·327, .... 3--t.. 5
Prochasb, Custave, 316 Shaw, George Bemarcl, 125
Proctor, James S., 307 Smith, Richard B., 233
Pyke, Frederick M., 299 Smith, D. P., 181
Pyke, Mrs. Frederick M., 299 Smith, David Eugene, 169
Smith, Gordon W., "5, 153, 202·
Rascillos, Felix, 201 206, 3....
Rehm, Kurt, 403 Smith, Howard A., 212·213
Reid, Warren R., 101, 197 Sneath, George M., 293
Reischauer, Robert, 171 Socrates, 358
Reynier, Custave, 153 Sparling, Harold J., Jr., 278, 381·
Rice, Alexander H., 152, 156, 288 383
Roberts. Kenneth H., 298-301 Stef:msson, Vilhjalmur, 212
Roberts, Lansing, 368 Stembridge, Stmley R., Jr., 287·289,
Robinson, John C., Jr., 113-117, 252· ..29
254 Stevens, Helen M., 186
Rockwood, Raymond 0., 29, "5, Stidger, William, 237
215·225 Strowski, Mm., 200t
RoDand, Romain, 165 Sulc, Edvard, 319
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 289, 379 Sullivan, Joseph B., 68, 131, 157,
Roosevelt, Theodore, 357 180; "Joe," 165
Rosenberg, Alfred, ..0.. Svejcar, Josef, 325
Rousseau, Jean J., H2, 221 Swanson, Arthur K., 263·264, ..08-
Rust. Fred W., 126 <f09
Ryder, Kenneth C., 285.287, ..27...29 Swenson, Emil, M.85
Salenius, Elmer W., 32, 254.255,
Taylor, Bayard, 3
..05...07
Sandburg, Carl, 212 Taylor, Joseph Richard, .., 113, 152
Sayre, Francis B., 188 Taylor, Ralph W., 18, 25, 68, 112,
Schmidt, Bernhard, 199 11", 115, 125, 129, 169, 208, 232,
236, 254, 312, 327
Schnackenburg, He1lmut, ..Oot
Schubert, Franz, 301 Tedford, Edward B., 192·19-t
Temperley, Harold, 223
Sellers, William E., 272·278, "16- Tennant, Frederick Ro, 128, 3S0
..2..
Setton, Kenneth M., 239·2..0, 290, Thomas, Antoine, 153
291 Thomas, Norman, 212, 359
Shapley, Harlow, 199
Tolley, William P., 31 ..
Sharp, Arthur N., I-t9·150, 391·392 Truman, Harry S., 296
Sharp, Dallu Lore, 136, 152 Tucker, Eldon, 230
Sharp, Martha, 3H, 318, 319, 320,
321, 322, 323 von Pheil, Gmf and Gn&u, 11
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Wagner, Richard, 404 Whiting, Kenneth R., 117·119, 264,
Walker, Herbert W., 184-187 409-410
Wallgren, A. Samuel, 212 Wilfert, Edwin W., 108, 226
Walter, Paul, Jr., 188 WilJard, Burton, 266, 376-377
Wamn, William Fairfield,S Wilm, Emil, 136, 137
Wmeo, William Marshall, 1, 4, 6, Wilson, T. Woodrow, 188
9, 14, 25, 136, 137, 138, 327, 353 Wolcott, Oliver, 366
Washburn, George E., 136 Wright, Bruce, 314
WatziDp, Arthur J., 242·251, 400- Wright, John Irwin, 194·196
405,407 Wy.mao,LebDd, 100, 121, 122
WatziDp, Julius, 242 Yaglou, Constantin, 325
Welsch, George T., Jr., 252, 351·357
West, A. F., 181 Zeller, Victoria, 11, 177, 282
Whitehead, AJfred North, 128,434 Zipper, H~, 426
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