A Chronicle of Achievement

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EXCE
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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
"The unexamined life is not worth living"

Plato, Apology
BOSTON UNIVERSITY PRESS BOSTON, MASSACBUSETI'S
1948
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COPYBIGBT 1948
BY
THE TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVDSrrY
EXCH
PlUNTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMDIC4
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DEDICATED TO
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E R OF
AUGUSTUS HOWE BUCK
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Foreword ...
THIS IS A BOOK OF MEN:

OF A HEAD MASTER WHO BECAME A PROFESSOR OF
GREE~ OF THE FUND ESTABLISHED IN HIS HONOR
A FEW MONTHS BEFORE HE DIED IN A FOREIGN
LAND, AND OF FOURSCORE MEN WHO SHARE AND
ENHANCE THAT HONOR. IT MAY BE THAT THE
STORY HERE TOLD IS A STRAW IN THE RAGING
WORLD HURRICANE POINTING TO ONE POSSIBLE
PATHWAY FROM CONFUCT TOWARD COOPERATION.
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- ---- - ----
Table of Contents
PACE
Foreword . vii
Introduction xi
Chapter I The Man 1

II The Giver and the Gift 13
III Introducing the Men 26
IV Backgrounds . 30
V College and University 98
VI "And Gladly Teach" 146
VII Youthful Promise . 266
VIII Pastor and Physician 310
IX The Service . 388
X The Main Chance 432
Bibliography 449
Index . 455
Illustrations
Professor Augustus Howe Buck . Frontispiece
Grave of Professor and Mrs. Buck 12
Committee on Professor Augustus Howe Buck Scholars 28
Beneficiaries of The Fund, Groups I, II, III, and IV . 124
Bookplate . 212
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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
September 15, 1948
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
Bayard year as Augustus

H. Buck. years at a total
pense hundred pounds return home, wrote
an account of his experiences in Views Afoot, which was pub-
lished in 1846. The reading of Taylor's account aroused in
Buck a determination to visit Europe, and in December, 1850,
he started on the first of many trips across the Atlantic. "Christ-
mas Eve was spent sitting with others by a stove in a small hotel
in " (C) At Dresden, months were spent
the language." (C) This about a year,
cash outlay . . . trips across
than three " (C)
The year was an important Man. Amherst
granted him his first degree at commencement. The following
August he was appointed headmaster of the Roxbury Latin
School. Moreover, though there is some question as to the
date, he was probably married on New Year's Day of that year.
The fourteen years Buck spent at the Latin School, together
with Boston University, over forty years,
make active service such granted to but few.
School, where headmaster,
hundredth 1945. While there
were in America it may well
that this one has had the longest period of uninterrupted ex-
istence. John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, helped to found
and maintain the school, which passed through many difficul-
ties, financial, legal, and other. One of the greatest, at times,
was finding and keeping efficient headmasters. Buck's prede-
cessor stayed five years and a distinguished
career president.
A history of this famous school
recently Richard Jr., and to that
tum connected Man's term of serv~
ice there. From the start, Buck showed himself to be the Head
Master. He refused to let the senior class of his first year gradu-
ate, as he considered their training insufficient. Money received
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from the town of Roxbury permitted some expansion of the

teaching force; and in 1857 Buck brought to the school from
Amherst as his assistant William Coe Collar, who became his
successor. In 1860, on Buck's insistence, the length of the
school course was increased to six years, a change which led to
growth both in numbers and in the character of the work. An-
other change due to his insistence was the dropping of the
preparatory department.
In 1863 Mrs. Buck died, leaving an only son, Henry. This
and the following ten years brought many changes in Mr.
Buck's life. In the summer of 1864, having obtained leave of
absence from the Latin School, he left for a two-year trip to
Europe, taking with him four boys, three of whom were from
the school. While abroad Professor Buck married Louise C.
Mehlbach, whom Dean Warren has described as a German
woman of the best type.
It was during these years perhaps that the following incident
occurred, told by Professor Buck to his successor, Professor
Joseph R. Taylor, and passed on by the latter to me. It illus-
trates a side of his character that probably few of his students
saw. Injustice or disrespect, whether to himself or another,
roused in Augustus Howe Buck all the latent passion sent on
to him by his resolute, inflexible colonial ancestry. But once
did I see evidence of this in the years I knew him, when with
five short words he silenced a disrespectful student. But to the
incident. Buck went into a store in Germany, but finding
nothing he wished to buy started to leave. The wife of the
storekeeper began to weep, begging him to buy. When he con-
tinued to refuse, the storekeeper made the mistake of locking
the door. An instant later the glass of the door was shattered
and the storekeeper was outsidel At the police station the size
of Buck's letter of credit was sufficiently impressive to secure
his immediate release.
The story of the years between Mr. Buck's return from
Europe and his appointment to the faculty of Boston Univer;. ",
sity is soon told. He spent two more years as headmaster o~'
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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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with his work on the telephone and other inventions, and

closed his address as follows:
Gentlemen, these things which I have described are the by-
products of my work in your institution and were made possible
because of the encouragement of your University.
If among his colleagues there were intellectual giants, Pro-
fessor Buck was their peer. Not only so, none of them out-
classed him in impressive physical presence. His colleague,
Professor James Geddes, Jr., has written of Professor Buck
that he was "a man of mark physically . . . possibly six feet
tall and well proportioned." The impression he made "was
that of the sturdy type of the New Englander, hale-fellow-
well-met, together with that of the German professor. He had
the blunt, frank, outspoken, and pleasing informality of the
one, and something of the formal bureaucracy of the other,
that kept one guessing." His dress, including his Prince Albert
coat with long tails, the black bow-tie, and the tall silk hat,
suggested the professor of an earlier generation when they
were perhaps quite willing to be thought by students and gen-
eral public alike to be set apart from, if not above, the ordinary
run. That day and attitude have probably gone forever. No
college professor of the present is likely to rebuke the over-
familiar student with the well-known classic: "I'm your teach-
er - not your friend."
Professor Buck's students will never forget the dominance
of his powerful personality in the classroom. At this point one
can do no better than to quote extensively from Dean Warren.
He had no love of method for method's sake and no praise for
those who vigorously work the handles of dry pumps. In describing
for the early periodical called Boston University Notes his own
offered courses, he made it plain that he was not teaching Greek
but guiding students of Greek.
It was from a boy's school that he came to his duties in the open-
ing College; most of his earlier teaching had been in schools for
boys. It was with boys that be had spent some years of study and
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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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in morals and religion, all these usual staples of collegiate instruc-

tion never in his teaching hours detoured a difficulty or stripped
the gears.
He used recondite words and odd turns of speech; he used com-
mon words oddly. He gave challenging directions. He loosened
impacted vocabularies. The terms he brought into play sent the
eagerer students to dictionary, lexicon, and source-book. One day,
after a girl of shy type and domestic interests had finished her
tIanslation of a stanch passage in Demosthenes, he inquired, with-
out staying for an answer, "You noticed the paratactic construction
of the triads?"
This consciously playful use of language had support, perhaps,
in oldtime Greek precedents. It gave tang even to Professor Buck's
ordinary talk and particularly his letters to his friends. During the
war the German censors of outgoing mail were thorough but hardly
keen enough to see what he had written between his lines. On
one postcard he included the significant statement, 'We need but
little, and (underlined) we get it."
Professor Buck's interest in his students was not methodically
forced: it was natural and individual. If he seemed to like some
particularly, no one suffered in consequence; their classmates saw
the grounds for his interest and approved his judgment. Everyone
knew the essential kindness of his heart and his quiet generosity.
When he gave the College the special relief fund that like the Edu-
cational Fund will bear his name through the years, he was only
making perpetual the lend-a-hand charities that had been his life-
long habit.
Such, then, in mere suggestion, was the man whom the College
honors as its first-chosen teacher, - chosen for his mental powers;
for his thorough education abroad, an education he never ceased
extending; for his experience in Boston schools of highest standard;
and even more for the integrity, the dignity, the kindness of his
character.
Having known privation, he helped those who were in need.
Feeling the beauty and the power of what men in times ancient
and modem have wrought with words, he taught his students how
to search for the matter in the form, for the truth in the rhythm
and the phrasing, for the warmth and color in the sunshine of life,
and for the imperishable treasure in its ruin. Seeing men as man-
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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.
Professor Buck's "playful use of language" (W) led to the

preservation by his students of numerous examples of his
speech. These have become "a part of the older College's van-
ishing tradition," (W) and as such, a few samples, including
some from Dean Warren's sketch, are recorded here.
"Large ramifications of synonymy."
"Female scullions who performed the Cinderella duties."
''The tricksy diabolism of countless devilkins."
"Our moribund subjunctive."
"Doesn't that smack of the effete?"
"Rhetorically knock-kneed."
"Your theta's rather cracker-fed."
"That is an excellent passage to ruminate on; it will bear
much chewing of the cud."
"Read it and feel your heart throb with a new revelation
of human grandeur."
Many of these examples may have been used at the same
point year after year. But to the end of his teaching Professor
Buck's meeting of a sudden unlooked-for situation was timely
and pat. It was his custom to tell a student who had finished
translating a passage to call upon another, usually of the oppo-
site sex, to continue. Certain words, denoting sex, which are
not very commonly used were a part of his classroom vocabu-
lary. Year after year, in the translation of a passage from the
Memorabilia of Xenophon, he insisted that the student use
"the good old Anglo-Saxon word, bitch." When he referred
to a member of the class, a man was "one of the stronger
ones," a woman "one of the weaker ones." A young woman
had been translating, and the professor asked her to call on
"one of the stronger ones." But the "weaker one" called not
on a "stronger one" but on Miss Hilll Professor Buck
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glanced up from his text with that delightfully quizzical smile

of his, and in less than three seconds ejaculated: "Good! From
the hills cometh our strength!" And he was then in his sev-
enty-second year. A year later, writing a reply to a note from
a former student with whom he exchanged many letters, he
thus disarmingly explained his long delay: "Your note came
to me like a draft of new wine and it has taken all these days
to bring me to a fair state of sobriety."
During his years at Boston University, and for three years
previous to that appointment, Professor and Mrs. Buck main-
tained a home on an estate purchased on the main street of
Wellesley a short distance east of the square. Many of his
students have pleasant memories of the hospitality of that
home. Had the land been of less substantial stuff than the
physical foundations of New England, it might well have suf-
fered from the tramp, tramp, tramp of successive generations
of Professor Coit's students in surveying who year after year
checked its bounds and determined its area. One of the ama-
teur surveyors recalls that the Man playfully criticized Mrs.
Buck who, it will be remembered, was of foreign birth, for
mixing English and German in what he called ''hybrid words."
A little later she was able to throw the accusation back at the
accuser, whereupon he insisted that the words he used were
not ''hybrid'' but "high-bred"!
After his retirement Professor and Mrs. Buck lived at various
places both in America and in Germany. In June of 1907 they
were at Oak Bluffs and from there he writes:
I was born in the year 1825 AD. and that means that there is a
probable weakness in one or more of the mortal instruments which
make life tenable. I have had no such health as a teacher needs
since 1849, and how I have lived to this date is a wonder that for
me is as little explicable as the mechanism of the starry heavens.
He continues that he is "asked to join the giddy chorus of new
generations while secret enemies are watching for the open
gate to enter in. But enough unto the day! For I am greatly
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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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The stone bears the following inscription:
Hier ruhen in Gott

Luise C. Buck
geb. Mehlbach
geb. 7 Mai 1840
gest. 28 Februar 1917.
Prof. erner
Augustus H. Buck
geb. 9 Dezember 1825
gest. 15 April 1917.
The Fund was given in his honor a brief four months before
Augustus Howe Buck passed away.
GRAVE OF PROFESSOR AND MIlS. Bua::

at Rostock, Germany
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CHAPTEll II
The Giver and the Gift

Tconcerned.of The
HE STOllT the Man is complete, insofar as this volume is
story of the beneficiaries is still to come.
Here between them is a story of the market and of one who,
finding there that "to him that hath shall be given," made ap-
plication of the lesson in the realms of intellect and of charac-
ter. For the man of the market turned magician, and investing
the profits of his years of struggle in the lives of men, he set in
motion influences for good whose spread may never cease. To
speak no longer in riddles - this is the story of a Fund given
to educate young men that they may the better serve humanity.
The First World War was in full stream when Boston Uni-
versity College of LIberal Arts became the custodian of the
Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund The flow
of the stream had carried that world calamity into the ocean of
the past before the Fund's experimental period was over.
One may conceive various reasons for tying the gift to the
memory of a man like Augustus Howe Buck. The Giver was
deeply religious and having known Professor Buck all his life
he may well have thought that he could find no better mark
for the men of the Fund to aim at than that strong-hearted,
right-hearted, stalwart New Englander. Perhaps the character
of the times in which the Fund was established suggested to
the Donor, intense conservative Christian that he was, that
something more was demanded of men fitted to bring the
world to the haven of peace after the storm of war than
intellectual ability, even when it is coupled with such traits
as are usually denoted by the much worn stereotyped phrase
"good moral character."
13
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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
words are no more. If so, it may be that the Donor, knowing

more intimately than he allowed himself to know while here
what his gift has accomplished, praises the slall that kept him
from a rash step that even on earth he would probably have
lived to regret. .
The Contract, or Deed of Gift, in its various forms was, of
course, an agreement between the Donor and the Trustees of
the University. One of its peculiar provisions, but by no means
the only one of that nature, was that, although the Fund was
the property of the University, the Donor throughout his life-
time was to have direction of it to the extent of determining
from time to time what securities should be sold and what
bought. This gave him the power to increase the principal by
trading in securities that were not perhaps sufficiently con-
servative to meet with the approval of those governing the
other investments of the University. So successful was he in
this matter that the Fund, originally one hundred thousand
dollars, had almost doubled before the Donor passed away, in
October of 1933. The Fund then, of course, was placed in con-
servative securities. Throughout this period of "trading" the
Donor was careful to maintain dividends at a high level in or-
der that the real purpose of the Fund might not be endangered.
The result has been that at no time since its establishment has
the yearly income strayed far in either direction from nine
thousand dollars.
For determining how the income shall be spent, the Con-
tract recognizes two powers. All appointments are made by the
President of the University acting on nominations sent to him
by the Faculty of the College of Liberal Arts. These two pow-
ers were quick to realize that there were too many details in-
volved in this whole matter for either or both of them to
handle. For a single example: the Contract, aside from stating
many details governing the type of men to be selected, pro-
vided that one appointed, if he continued to show himself
worthy, might be reappointed from year to year "through the
College of Liberal Arts and a following professional course and,
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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
was exceedingly helpful in determining enduring policies and

his passing, two months after the Donor, in December of 1933,
took from the Committee a member hard to replace. Dean
Ralph W. Taylor, who as Registrar of the College became cor·
responding secretary of the Committee early in 1922, wrote a
note for the minutes on the occasion of Professor Newell's
death which concluded with the words, "Wise in counsel, ef·
fective in service, generous in friendship, devoted to the welfare
of students."
The minutes of that first meeting of the Committee held in
March of 1917 state that the call was by the chairman, Robert
E. Bruce. Just how he was selected for the position, careful
examination of the minutes of the faculty and of the Commit·
tee fail to show - nor does his memory aid. Perhaps he found
the chair unoccupied and took possession I In any event he can
now say, after thirty years of undisputed occupancy, that for
genuine satisfaction few tasks of life have equalled and none
have exceeded the work for the Committee on Professor
Augustus Howe Buck Scholars.
In this Committee, as already indicated, originated practi·
cally all actions pertaining to the Fund which were not defi·
nitely assigned elsewhere. There would be little point in at·
tempting any complete cataloguing of the duties which, in
the main without direction from either the faculty or the
President, the Committee has taken over simply because the
things had to be done and there seemed to be no one else to do
them. The recognition with which the work of the Committee
has been received by the powers throughout the years leaves
little doubt that relief from a considerable burden, plus eBi·
ciency of administration, has more than compensated for this
assumption of tasks not specifically delegated.
The most important duty of the Committee has always been
that originally assigned by the faculty, to suggest to the latter
body names of men to be considered for nomination to the
President as beneficiaries of the Fund. The cases in which
either of these two competent powers has, in this thirty·year
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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:
The support which the establishment of this Fund has given to

the scholarship ideals of the College is unquestioned. The large
group of men who are on this Fund, or are striving to make them-
selves worthy of a place upon (it), has a very definite effect upon
classroom standards of scholarship. This year, for probably the first
time in the history of the College, the faculty was embarrassed
by the large number of high-grade candidates for proctor among
the men of the two upper classes. Every man mentioned for this
honor was a Beneficiary or Scholar of the Professor Augustus Howe
Buck Educational Fund.
This strengthening of the scholarship of the College was by no

means the only effect upon the institution unforeseen by the
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20 A CBllONICLE OF ACIIIEV£MEN1'
Donor. A dozen or more of the beneficiaries have at one time

or another been members of the faculty of Boston University.
During the past year there were seven, five of whom held pro-
fessorial rank. Among these latter were two members of the
committee as at present constituted, Professors John Philip
Mason and Albert Morris. The latter is chairman of the Uni-
versity Depamnent of Sociology and Anthropology; and the
former is the recently appointed chairman of the Committee
on Professor Augustus Howe Buck Scholars.
In conversation the Donor made it clear that he supposed
his Fund would aid but two or three men in any given year.
It was his idea to place such men as fulfilled the very definite
and restricted conditions described in the Contract financially
on a level with the rich man's son. The Committee did not
favor this, and pointed out that the results as seen in the rich
man's son were not always such as to commend the idea. We
then believed, and have had no reason to change with the pass-
ing of the years, that the natural order in the lives of such men
as the Donor wanted to help was, as someone bas declared,
challenge followed by response expressed in struggle and
achievement. Thus to destroy all the financial struggle was to
lose a section of the road to the final goal. So such help was
favored as would relieve beneficiaries from financial worry but
not from careful planning to make both ends meet. It was
pointed out that if this latter method were adopted it would
be possible to help a greater number of men; and that, in
general, it would be good training for the beneficiaries not
only in matters financial but also in promoting in them the
fundamental purpose of the Fund, since what each man saved
could be used to help another. The Donor seemed to find
definite satisfaction in changing his viewpoint in this matter.
The result bas been the aiding of a much larger number of
men than would have been possible had the Donor's original
idea been followed. In thirty years the total number aided has
been well over a hundred, though some of them have remained
on the Fund for a short time only. On the other hand, many
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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.
It may be difficult for the candidate and it certainly is for the

College to determine when a career is chosen for its "material
returns." In the relatively few cases where it has seemed to
the Committee that the career was so chosen it has proved dif-
ficult to the point of impossibility to convince the manl There
are as a rule a sufficient number of candidates about whose
chosen careers there is no question; and these, as the Contract
directs, are "given preference."
Section C of the Contract says:
The Fund is a gift . . . established . . . to enable young men of
unusual promise and of positive Christian character, but with in-
sufficient means, to receive a very much more thorough education
than they could otherwise obtain.
And in the following section we read:
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All appointments are to be absolutely free of denominational in-

fluence or political bias. Mental ability, sound physique, positive
Christian character, and those personal qualities which indicate to
a probable degree much usefulness in life, are to be the basis of
selection.
Every phrase in these quoted passages has been given serious

study by the committee. The death early in the history of the
Fund of six of the beneficiaries, three while still in the Col-
lege and three after a few years of effective work as teachers,
led to the establishment of thorough physical examinations
before and after appointment in order that the requirement of
a "sound physique" might surely be met. Who is of "insuf-
ficient means"? In a series of statements once prepared by the
Committee amplifying the various phrases of the Contract, it
was stated:
This condition is in general met when the applicant himself is
practically without funds and when his family is unable to help
him financially to any large extent, beyond supplying board and
room
if he lives at home. In determining the applicant's mental
ability, his scholastic record and mental tests are used.
When it comes to "unusual promise" and "personal quali-
ties which indicate to a probable degree much usefulness in
life," criteria are more difficult to find. It is clear, however,
that much may be learned from the position a man gains
among his fellow-students. By far the most difficult test to
administer is that of the twice-repeated phrase "positive Chris-
tian character," and upon it the Committee with the help of
others has spent many an hour. What is it to be a "positive
Christian"? Does the adjective add anything? It didn't in the
Apostolic Age nor for some time thereafter. The noun alone
might then mean persecution and death. Today it may be
little more than one of various marks of respectability. The
Donor meant much more than thatl Not to labor the matter,
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J
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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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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-_ ...- ... .. __ ..
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.
Occasionally, so-called "Recognition Meetings" are held to in-

form recently appointed beneficiaries and to remind alumni
and those of earlier appointment of the nature and purposes of
the Fund, as well as to pay honor to the Man, Augustus Howe
Buck. In the report of the chairman in 1940-1941, the follow-
ing account is given of one of these occasions:
As a fitting observance of twenty-five years of work, the Commit-
tee on February 28, 1941, held a Recognition Meeting in honor of
Professor Augustus Howe Buck, to which all present and past bene-
ficiaries were invited, together with the President of the University,
Dr. Daniel L. Marsh, and Dean Emeritus William M. Warren.
The meeting was held after a dinner at the University Club and
was marked by many reminiscences by past beneficiaries of the
. Fund, including Dr. George Z. Dimitroff, Director of the Oak
Ridge Observatory of Harvard University, and the Reverend Wait-
still Sharp of Wellesley Hills, who had recently returned from
refugee work in Czechoslovakia and the Latin countries. Dean
Taylor and President Marsh brought greetings from the administra-
tion and Dean Emeritus Warren, in the main address of the eve-
ning, paid a fine tribute to Professor Buck.
It is from this address that much of the quoted material in

the chapter on the Man was c;lrawn.
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CHAPTER III
Introducing the Men
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:
It is difficult to write you anything about my life because I am

acutely aware of lack of accomplishment. I have written no books,
held no offices, had no lucrative jobs, have never had the word
"successful" applied to me, and have no particular ambitions nor
plans for the future. For the other side of this picture it is difficult
to speak not necessarily because of modesty but because of the
inherent reticence one has about such matters; however, a friend of
mine with whom I discussed your letter bas made me promise to
include the following: here and there in this world there are a
number of persons - I may say many - who, because they have
talked to and with me, have continued to pursue an idea or ideal,
or have accepted a responsibility with more understanding, or have
strengthened their love for truth or beauty. This does not sound
26
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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.
Does this quotation bear out the author's self-accusation of

"lack of accomplishment"?
During the first thirty years of its existence, the Professor
Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund, as already stated,
aided well over a hundred men. Some of them, however, are
still in college, and some were aided for a relatively short
period. Under the circumstances it has seemed best to cut the
list in this record to seventy~ight names. Some of the men
reached early middle life while others were lads hardly yet in
their teens. They come from divers races, from every conti-
nent save Australia, and in their life vocations they are scat-
tered all over the altruistic map. Their differences, however,
are largely incidental and unimportant. In matters that count
most the group is in the main homogeneous. For these men
are of "unusual promise" and accomplishment, and they are of
"positive Christian character."
In length, their life stories vary from two or three pages of
long-hand to nearly one hundred typed. One was written in
Yokohama; one is on the letterhead of a hotel in Stockholm;
another came from Buenos Aires; and still another was writ-
ten in part on a transcontinental flight. Many of them might
bear the label "An American Saga." These men have as much
right as the Donor to remain anonymous and where they ask
it their wishes are scrupulously observed. But aside from this
anonymity there is nothing "hush-hush" in this volume-
quite the contrary. One may say then that any dissimilarity
between names of persons and places mentioned in this book
and the actual persons and places is purely coincidental.
During the experimental period before the last draft of the
Contract, or Deed of Gift, was approved, various letters were
exchanged with the Donor. In one of these the types of evi-
dence used by the Committee in determining action on partic-
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ular candidates was described, and some account of certain men

then on the Fund or being considered for appointment was
also included. The Donor must have been in a pessimistic
mood when he answered I He wrote, "This is a gamble worse
than oil or mining stock." After one or two more sentences
equally pessimistic he added, "I hope I am wrong." He wasl
On another note to him which he finally returned to us, the
Donor commented somewhat more optimistically. A quota-
tion from the note with his comments added is as follows:
The man first appointed came into the office while I was writ-
ing. . .. In talking to me of the Fund he expressed very high
appreciation of what it had done for him, and stated that without
it an education for him would have been an impossibility. This
statement came in the midst of our conversation without any sug-
gestion from me. I believe it comes near to being the universal con-
dition among the men we are helping. . .. Another of the men
is the son of a Congregational minister who entered the Y.M.C.A.
war service. It would have been impossible for him to do this and
for the boy to come to college, had it not been for the Fund.
(Donor: "Fine.") We are now considering four men who propose
to enter next fall. Two of these are high school boys of the very
first class from Greater Boston. The third is the son of a missionary
in Japan. He plans to enter that work himself. (Donor: "I hope
he will get it. Each one of us should help all he can to better our
relations there.") The fourth is a native African from the Gold
Coast, a thoroughly interesting man, we judge from his letters.
He is preparing for medical work among his own people. (Donor:
"Sounds very good.")
So at last we come to the men. For a specimen list, picked
somewhat at random and suscepbole of considerable exten-
sion, we might name the following: There are the Bertocci
brothers, Angelo and Peter, the former, Professor of Romance
Languages and head of the Department at Bates College prior
to his joining the faculty of Boston University in September,
1948, as Professor of Comparative Literature; and the latter,
Professor of Philosophy at Boston University College of Lib-
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o
cg
~
~
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~
~
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
I NA pleasant section of rural New England (and how could

one be less specific in writing of that region?), there is a
highway which, starting at comparatively low elevation, runs
to the top of a mountain. For some years the last mile or so
has been given back into nature'~ keeping with not unforesee-
able results. It is not, however, to that nor to any other par-
ticular part of the road that attention is directed. Rather, it
is to the general nature of the progress from the low land to
the mountain top. The grade is by no means uniform. Some-
times a valley intervenes that must be crossed, and so the road
dips down for a little. More frequently the upward trend is
broken by long stretches of comparative level, the elevation
being gained in the main on short, steep pitches between
them. The whole road thus becomes a gigantic stairway with
broad treads between short risers. The treads, then, have little
to do with gaining the top. That is the office of the risers.
As each new one is conquered, the climber views earth and
s1cy from a higher level in ever-broadening vistas.
No wonder the poets have used such figures to picture the
upward progress of mankind. Few perhaps have ever picked
from the wave-washed shore of ocean the cast-off shell of a
chambered nautilus, but the majority have climbed ladders.
used stepping-stones. and wandered up mountain roads. One
poet writes, "we build the ladder by which we rise from the
lowly earth to the vaulted skies," while another has men "rise
on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things."
Though lacking the poetic touch, the mountain highway seems
to belong here with the other two.
30
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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.
It is interesting and perhaps important to note that in this

group of men the foreign-born plus the native-born of foreign
parents just about equal in numbers the old-line Americans.
Moreover the measure of their intrinsic worths is as equally
balanced.
Consider, for example, six chosen from each group, sand-
wiching the old-line Americans in between the native-born
of foreign parents, and the foreign-born. In later chapters
anonymity may be disregarded. At this point, however, in-
terest is centered on the struggle and upward climb both of
the family and of the individual. Hence it seems only fair
that a certain amount of anonymity be maintained. As already
indicated, these men have been implored to banish modesty
from their minds as they wrote. This has undoubtedly been a
difficult thing for them to do. For even though they are able
to pass good judgment on their own worth, they have also
more than the average quota of the banished trait
First, then, for the six native-born of foreign-born parents.
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The nationalities represented are English, Finnish, Greek,

Russian, Swedish, and Syrian; and the surnames of the mem-
bers of the group are Maria, Mariner, Mehos, Moberg, Nim-
koff, and Salenius.
Because of the changing complexion during recent decades
in the nationalities of our immigrants, it has not been prac-
ticable to find for this group a man both of whose parents
were born in England. Between two, one whose mother and
the other whose father was born there, the latter has been
selected. Let him speak for himself, aside from the single
statement that he now holds the Ph.D. degree conferred by one
of the oldest and best known of our universities. He says:
The mechanics of living have so fully occupied the time of all

my known relatives that there has been little if any leisure time in
which to inquire into even our not-too-distant past. My own father
was an English bricklayer who came to this country in order to
pursue his trade. He died here while I was still an infant and I
have no personal recollection of him at all. Direct knowledge
concerning my mother's family is scant. Most of the stock on that
side of the family was Pennsylvania Dutch; but my grandmother
recently told me that her father's grandmother was a full-blooded
Indian. My grandmother's father built and operated the old Buck-
horn Tavern in Buck's County. It was here that my mother was
born. My grandmother'S husband was killed in a railroad accident
before any of the three children was at the usual age for shoulder-
ing responsibility. However, my mother left school at the end of
either the third or fourth grade to carry her share of the load.
My stepfather was probably the strongest single in8uence in my
conscious living. Mother married "Dad" when I must have been
about four. I believe he felt a special sort of responsibility for my
brother and me, which, in addition to his obvious fondness for us,
led him to give more of himself than most fathers give to their
own sons. No son could have asked more of his own father than
"Dad" gave me. From him I learned respect for the qualities of
honesty and fair play, and consideration for the rights and privi-
leges of others. LikeWise I learned the importance of living on
speaking terms with one's conscience. On the utilitarian side
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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
His high school class numbered well over five hundred at

graduation.
The man of Finnish nationality writes of his background as
follows.
Finland in 1902 was a Grand Duchy of Russia under Czar
Nicholas II. A system of three years' universal military service
had been in effect, with the army of Finnish soldiers under Finnish
control, but now a new plan was being introduced, a plan calling
for five years of service in Russia for every able-bodied young Finn.
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Many of these independent, freedom-loving young men decided in

the spring of 1902 not to report for their physical examinations to
enter the service of a foreign czar in a land hom which they quite
possibly would never return. Clergymen and Finnish public offi-
cials were generally in sympathy with them and helped them to
avoid the Russians. My father was one of these twenty-one-year-
old youths. He did not appear for his examination. Nothing hap-
pened during the summer of 1902; Father continued in his trade
of painting in Helsinki and its suburbs. But by fall Russian secret
service agents were calling for men in the night, men who were
never heard from again. One day Dad's brother-in-law came to
him where he was working outside the city and said, "You'd better
get away now. The Russians came to the house at midnight last
night and asked for you." That was on Tuesday. On Friday Dad
was on the ship bound for America, the land of freedom, traveling
on his brother's passport - unable to risk getting one in his own
name. In the United States - a country entirely foreign to him,
whose language he knew nothing of, where he had not one ac-
quaintance except his fellow-passengers - my father made his way
alone from New York City to eastern Massachusetts, found a job
in a woolen mill there (it being the off-season for outside painting
work), and in two months at a weekly wage of $5.75 mana2Cd to
save enough to return the $20 that he had borrowed to hefp pay
his passage over. A few years later he visited Finland, re-entered the
United States with his own passport, and became a citizen.
Like my father, my mother went to work after finishing grammar
school in Finland at the age of thirteen. Dad was a painter; Mother
worked for five years as clerk in a village grocery store near Kuopio.
Mother, though, had always wanted to be a school teacher. During
these five years she saved enough money to go to Verko Seminary
in Helsinki - a grammar school teacher-training institution. But
the money it had taken Jive years to save was gone after one year.
Mother saw one chance to finish her training. She had a wealthy
aunt to whom she appealed for help. "Lend me enough to finish
school," asked Mother. "1'11 pay you back, every cent." The aunt
looked at Mother coldly and said, "There are enough educated la-
dies in the world already." So Mother went to work again, until
her brother, already in the United States, sent her a ticket and she
joined him in 1910.
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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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throughout my school days and in the summer while going to col-

lege and went so far as to get a teacher's diploma from the exten-
sion department of Sherwood Music School, Chicago. I gained
some local fame as a pianist. For my life's work, nevertheless, I
decided that I wanted to do something more practical, something
more directly beneficial to the thinking of mankind than the en-
tertainment of audiences at concerts. I made up my mind to follow
another childhood ambition and become a teacher.
In the meantime, however, I went through high school; was edi-
tor of the school magazine; dabbled in art (I had nineteen of my
"works" on view at one school exhibition); won an essay contest;
was valedictorian of my class; was voted the most artistic, most
musical, most intellectual member of my class as well as class
genius; gave a piano recital the summer of my graduation.
This boy of Finnish ancestIy grew up to realize his child-
hood ambition. Though born in an immigrant home where
a foreign language was habitually spoken he became a teacher
of Englishl
Why depart from direct quotations as interesting as these?
Here, then, in his own words is the account of family and
early life of the man whose parents came from a land to which
the Western world owes so much that in these days of her dis-
tress even our greatest liberality can pay her but little on ac-
count - Greece.
I have been called on before to set down the vital statistics of
my life, but this is the first time that I have been given free rein.
Although I have longed for such an opportunity. now that it has
presented itself, I find it difficult to lose myself in the story and
to become thoroughly subjective. Therefore I hope you will for-
give me if at times I become too factual and dull, since I am by
nature one who does not freely express his feelings to others, espe-
cially on paper.
Both my parents were born in a town called Megalopolis, in the
Peloponnesus, a peninsula in southern Greece. They did not meet
until they had been in the United States for a few years. They
both came here just before the First World War and began to make
their way in a strange land with different language, customs, and
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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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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.
Space limitations forbid much further direct quotation from

this story. Let it suffice to add that in describing his' many
high school activities the writer has occasion to use the sug-
gestive words "President," "Editor-in-Chief," "National Honor
Society," and others. That these are but indicative of a con-
scious purpose is shown by the last sentence in this section.
"It is my opinion that scholastic achievement is significant
only when accompanied by accomplishments in other fields."
Of the remaining three native-born of foreign-born parents,
one is now a college dean, a second is director of industrial re-
lations and personnel manager for a large manufacturing con-
cern in his own home city, and the third is a college professor.
The last has written several books. He is co-author of a suc-
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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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Unable to speak the language of this country, Mother could not

comprehend the forced separation of her daughter and her son
from her at Ellis Island. Apparently there was some question as
to Mother's eyes, and she was p1aced in a detention room to await
further examination. In her panic and fear over the children she
went from one person to another asking in troubled Arabic for
information about them. She offered her gold bracelets to a female
attendant who readily accepted them promising she would bring
back word as to the whereabouts and safety of the children. No
word ever came back, but the next day mother and children were
joined together and entered the United States in January, 1912.
Dad had gone to Boston to meet his family, but mother and
children came directly to another city in which they were to live.
With the help of an address written in English, Mother enlisted
the assistance of a cabbie (horse and carriage) who took them to
the address, actually about two blocks away, and then insisted by
holding up two fingers that he wanted two dollars for the ride. Two
dollars in 1912 was a small fortune, but Mother was to learn like
so many immigrants that ignorance of America would make them
a prey for many selfish individuals. A year after, on January 1,
1913, I was born, and it was in the heart of this cosmopolitan and
industrial city that I was raised.
The hegiras of the other two families here considered, from

their homes across the sea to this land of promise, have much
of interest in them, even though they may lack such near
tragedies as were recounted above. From Russia and Sweden
they came in early life. The Russian family found this land
"wonderful in many ways, but not quite a land of milk and
honey, and life was one of economic struggle." The son of
the family who is telling his own story and who has just been
quoted, writes that his father "became a citizen of the United
States as soon as he was eligible, but he also identified himself
with his own ethnic group. He helped found a foreign lan-
guage daily paper, The Forward." This father, like so many
others, had left Europe to avoid military service. Will the sons
of our "land of the free" ever be forced to flee to far distant
places at the ends of the world for the same reason? The three
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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."
The Swedish family came here on the wave of "American

fever" that swept Europe in the last years of the nineteenth
century. The father came at the age of twenty to work for
over fifty years for the same firm of tailors. During the child-
hood of his only son the hours of labor were so long that he
had usually gone when the boy rose in the morning and re-
turned at night after the latter was in bed. Thus it was to his
mother that her son "turned most frequently for counsel and
guidance." He tells us that she first came to Chicago at the
age of sixteen for a five years' stay. Then after a year spent in
Sweden she came back to America and settled in Boston.
She felt that, being there, she could more easily return to the old
country. Since that time she has never returned to Sweden al-
though she has kept in constant and intimate correspondence with
her family there.
My mother's migration to the United States has always puzzled
me a little because she was the only member of her family who
came here and permanently settled. Certainly there was not the
economic pressure that was the cause of my father's migration.
My mother's family was comfortably situated, perhaps even well-
to-do, certainly much better off than they would have been in the
United States. I think my mother's decision to come to the new
world was based on her dislike of class distinction and privilege
in any form and her great love for democracy. Perhaps another
factor may be found in the restlessness that has characterized mem-
bers of her family. One brother went to sea and later settled down
in Rhodesia in Africa where, with a partner, he owned and operated
a ranch for many years. At another time he operated a business in
California, and again in Stockholm. When I met him there a short
time ago he was yearning to return to Africa again. Another brother
spent some five years on the western plains of the United States in
the nineties as a cow puncher before he finally settled down as a
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businessman in Stockholm. The younger sister also traveled widely.

She was a college graduate, a school teacher, and an accomplished
artist. At one time she was governess in the Nobel family made
famous by the Nobel peace prize. She traveled on a scholarship
in continental Europe and countries of the Mediterranean and
eventually came to the United States to continue her studies. It
was perhaps the same restless spirit that caused my mother to break
with the old and seek the new when she was only sixteen years of
age.
When I was born on March 4, 1908, our family: circle was com-
plete. There were three other children - all of them girls. I sup-
pose as the only boy and the youngest in the family I might easily
have been spoiled by my older sisters. However, mother had been
brought up in the older tradition of family discipline and ours was
a well-ordered household in which respect and obedience were
expected of the children. We were a very intimate family and re-
main so to this day. Mother was the leader of the household both
in our work and in our fun.
The quotation above was spoken into a dictaphone at odd

moments by a very busy manl
The early years and education of these three men themselves
now claim attention. That two of them started their climb
from a distinctly higher level than would have been theirs had
their parents remained in their own homelands goes almost
without saying. That is probably true to a less degree even
of the boy whose parents came from Sweden. Here in America
at the top of all the added privileges stood the free public
schools in which all three of the boys won high honors. This,
however, should not be taken to mean that they enjoyed the
confining routine of school life - quite the contrary. One of
them writes:
The greatest unhappiness of my childhood was going to school.
Although my teachers were all friendly and competent, they had
been trained in the educational philosophy of that day. Experience
had made me receptive to discipline but the unmotivated lock-step
character of classroom procedure found no responsive chord in my
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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.
The experiences in Boston of the boy of Russian parentage

tell of startling alterations that followed the upward march
of his family from Europe to America. He writes:
Gr.munar school days bring back memories of coasting down

Beacon Hill and the Boston Common. Both were really hazardous
and we youngsters suffered our share of casualties. I do not have a
clear recollection of my teachers with the exception of eighth
grade, the first male teacher I had had. He was a splendid person,
a man of high standards who communicated his values to his stu-
dents. Many of my high school teachers are vivid in my mind,
especially the men, but this may be because the experience is more
recent. I had many excellent teachers at the Boston English High
School. The year of my graduation, 1921, happened to be also the
centennial year of the founding of the school and as I chanced to
be class president I was appointed to the Centennial Committee
which held frequent meetings with some of the politicians of Bos-
ton. Of these meetings I now have vivid memories of disillusion-
ment. There were drinking and 8agrant and shameless effort on
the part of the committee to use the centennial program for their
own personal benefit. One incident I remember quite well con-
cerns an outstanding member who had been given the responsibility
of handling the programs for the occasion. I discovered that he was
pocketing a good share of the proceeds from certain of the events,
and in great dudgeon I fqlOrted the matter to the committee. To
my great surprise, and dismay, they laughed the matter off, and I
remember that one of the group remarked, "He'll make a good
politician." That occasion was to celebrate a century of progress in
educationI
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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.
I enjoyed school and strove successfully to earn the teacher's ap-

proval and to be first on the Honor Roll. In the third grade I won
the city-wide reading contest, and as one of the indirect rewards
was given access to ~ library of children's books, which I hungrily
read in eager batches. I read much through all my school years.
The city teemed with various nationality groups. It was neces-
sary for me to prove my right to be considered an American and
this was done through superiority in the classroom, through prowess
on the athletic field and when necessary through power of the bare
fist. One young bully who was wont to call other youngsters
"guineas" and to challenge those younger than himself finally suc-
ceeded in provoking me to a fist fight, and as a result we were all
spared his taunts in the future. My intense pride, a definite inheri-
tance from my parents, was challenged more than once. Well do I
remember an incident at the Boys' Club. Every Wednesday night
young boys from the teeming heart of the city crowded into the
gymnasium to see the free movies, which were always preceded by
the singing of World War I songs and the Pledge of Allegiance.
The director, a World War I veteran, had issued orders that any
youngster who did not salute the Bag was to be struck over the head
and then "thrown out." But on this particular night the director
was in his element. "Listen," he said, "you frogs, wops, guineas,
etc., the Pledge of Allegiance has been changed; instead of 'I pledge
allegiance to my country's Bag,' it is now 'to the Bag of the United
States of America.' Mter all, this is not your country, so remember
to say 'I pledge allegiance to the Bag of the United States of
America:" Immediately at these words something within me re-
belled and I said to myself, "If what he says is true, I don't care to
salute"; and I held my hands tightly by my side and closed my
eyes in preparation for the blow that was expected to come at the
hand of one of the director's stooges. No blow came, for apparently
no one saw the nine-year-old boy's defiance of authority. In later
years, when pressure was exerted by politicians to do something
contrary to the code of fair play, the memory of that small boy's
defiance was helpful to me.
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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.
Next in review pass six men each descended from genera-

tions of American ancestors. The names selected from a long
list almost at random are Booth, Foye, Mason, Rockwood,
Sharp, and Smith - the order of stories being independent
of the order of names. This account of the normal early lives
of six American boys is to be followed by a description of the
courageous breaking away from early life by boys of alien birth
to bmld new lives across the seas. Some of these latter came
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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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his or her position as vigorously as possible. Perhaps that is where

I developed a liking for a good argument.
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."
This rural isolation carried its real costs - deficiencies in music;

in mathematics (as Professors Bruce and Mode might testify);
strangeness to games and dancing and other amenities. But for all
these "outs," I look back upon it now with deep gratitude. Seven-
teen years' unbroken anchorage on a commuter's farm is a long
time as leases run these days. The winds of the four seasons blew
for years upon us six, and we could look forward to one of the
most precious assurances of childhood, the unending habitation
of one beloved spot. It was early to bed and early to rise. No maids
or hired men would endure such isolation. There was the cow to
milk and to bed down for the winter's day, or to water and shift,
during the summer; ice to saw and to store in the ice-house;
chickens to feed; apples to pick over; wood to saw and split and
stack; pigs to keep happy at their tasks with bedding and fragrant
bran-mash; dusty-blue grapes to gather on a fall morning from the
arbor on the ice-house; watermelons to probe for in the cool saw-
dust until Thanksgiving. And there were Saturday afternoons with
the axe and the brushfire clearing the woodlot. The sweet savours
and the contentment of these seasons are gathered in my father's
books. Those were golden years. Among my many gratitudes is
this: I was broken to the hamess of steady, efficient manua1labor.
[That makes him close kin to Augustus Howe auck. R.E.B.]
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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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- a pleasant monotony ending with graduation from high school

in 1919. Public schooling seems now in retrospect no more inspired
than a ladder of requirements. Uncouth though the verdict may
appear after the devotion of my teachers, nothing which happened
to my mind in either public school or college can compare with
the in8uences of home and farm life and the gracious memory of
a few Sunday mornings in the ancient church. I am appalled when
I think how without history these years would have been if I had
been raised in Arlington Heightsl
We meet this boy, grown to manhood, in the chapter on

Pastor and Physician, to discover that to aid peoples in dis-
tress he crossed the ocean again and again.
In spite of the common elements in the first part of the
next three life stories, there is so much of incidental variety
that no two of them can be woven together. All three boys
first saw life in rural New England. Beyond that we must
tum to the individual stories. The necessity for this becomes
increasingly apparent in the later parts. For but one of the
three has, of definite purpose, remained in the land of his
birth. He is an associate professor in a fine old New England
college. A second, after spending years on the Fund in gradu-
ate study of theology and medicine (he is an M.D.), with the
purpose of using his trained talents in the service of China, is
as yet necessarily held in this country by chronic illness in his
immediate family. The third "boy" sees the homeland only
for brief periods, after months or years in the distant lands
across the sea where his life work lies.
That the Professor in his choice of life location is running
true to form is at once apparent from his story. He writes:
Perhaps some important factor of my own personality may

derive from the fact that all my forebears have lived not more
than twenty-five miles from the spot where their ancestors first
settled in this country after their arrival here from the British Isles
in the early 1600's.
One of my grandfathers was a farmer, another a typical country
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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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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.
The next "boy", whose homemade crib was incomplete

when he arrived "somewhat ahead of schedule," began life in
"the bottom bureau drawer of the back bedroom." After
giving a brief account of his Hugenot-English-Scotch ancestry
he writes, and we can imagine the squaring of the shoulders
as he does so, "I am a New Englander." Continuing we read:
Dad's father was a stone-mason; mother's, a country physician.
Other ancestors were teachers, shipmasters, manufacturers and
farmers. Both my parents were college people. Dad went to New-
ton Theological Institution and became the first minister in the
family since the days of Dr. Fuller, minister to the pilgrims. Even
though on a limited income, both mother and dad planned from
the beginning that their children should go to college. My memo-
ries of childhood and youth include a mother who quietly and
lovingly soothed our hurts and helped us wfth our school work,
as she taught us the more gracious ways of life; and a father who
was a companion and guide and who taught us the power of God,
the dignity of labor, perseverance, and love of our fellow-man.
Boyhood from age three to age eight was "spent in a small
manufacturing town in the rolling Litchfield Hills of western
Connecticut."
The town itself was in a depression along the banks of the
Naugatuk River, which supplied the power for the mills. But it
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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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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.
Fortunately for this volume, the third member of this New

England born group, whose home has been in Africa for many
years, is at this writing in America. It has thus become prac-
ticable to establish more satisfactory lines of communication
than were possible earlier, when a letter recently sent by us
to Africa followed him to Stockholm, then to New York,
and finally found him in his temporary American home less
than ten miles from the point of origin I
One of the many evidences that we are here dealing with an
exceptional group is the fact that this man is the first we have
met to admit that John Alden and Priscilla were among his
forebears. His family thus came to America early. It must
however be recorded that they were surprisingly ignorant of
real estate values, for having "owned a large section of what
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is now Boston when it was only an elder swamp" they let it

slip through their hands with little profit. This, however, as
may be imagined, was long before the young man of the
present section of this narrative appeared on the scene. Before
that date the family had taken up its abode on a Massachusetts
farm. Of life there his story records:
I lived on a farm - right out in the country, four miles from
our small town. I grew up with vegetables and chickens which
my father marketed in weelc1y trips. Most of the hours not in school
were spent doing the chores of the farm and home. When I started
my education, I walked a mile to a small one-room nine-grade
school. I was so young that the teacher sent me home - but I
soon went back and stayed. I had so much fun doing the lessons of
the class two years ahead of me that before many years I was
moved up the two full years and so started in my long experience
of being about the youngest member of my class - all the way
through the School of Theology - from which I graduated while
I was still twenty-three and even on to membership in the College
of Bishops - only forty when I was consecrated II It all started
back in the little white - not red - Washington District School.
Most of our playtimes had to be with the two brothers and sister
of the family, for no other children lived near me. But we were
usually quite sufficient to ourselves - in games, reading, and even
in earning money from the sale of blueberries which we picked by
the bushel from our swampy pasture.
At high school I was not only the youngest in the class - but
also the shortest and the little "fatty" of the group. But I never
let it faze me apparently. If I could not play ball or other games
too well, I could still beat them all at checkers - even malcing our
semi-professional principal work hard to keep his score ahead of
mine. I led them in studies year by year and was valedictorian of
the class with an average for the four years in all studies of more
than 95 - and probably I was "stuck-up" enough to think I was
always right. It took quite a lot of living to take it out of me. At
least that is what others say. I still insist that it is hard to get a
balance between conceit and assurancell
One of the things that sticks in memory is the diflicu1t time we
had giving the junior class play because practically none of us had
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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.
Because of the sheer interest and worth of the life of this

man, we shall meet him again.
And now we strike the old controversy between heredity and
environment. For the sixth member of this group of young
Americans, born of American parents in a city of the Middle
Atlantic states, was carried to India while still a baby and spent
much of his boyhood there. Before his eleventh birthday he
had circumnavigated the globe I If heredity wins the debate
he is simon-pure American, but if environment, he may have
in him something of the Asiatic. Indeed, he seems to have
much in common with the Fund man of the next section who
was born in Japan.
This young circumnavigator was born in Harrisburg, Penn-
sylvania, in June of 1907. He classes his family as "average
American of fairly early vintage," coming from England in the
mid-seventeenth century. They were a restleSs lot and after
pausing a while in New England wandered to the Middle
West. This move was distinctly an upward climb. For they
settled in a college town, and his father and all but one of the
numerous brothers and sisters in that generation took ad-
vantage of the opportunity offered. Then the restless urge
again asserted itself so that the mother of the family, a grand-
mother of the "boy," was wont to say that ''her children were
like the British Empire, the sun never set on them."
Of bis father, the "boy" writes, "He was a bundle of rest-
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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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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.
In America, he found schools less advanced for the same

grade than those for English boys in India. This fact plus
undue encouragement from his family led him to skip from
grade to grade at a rate which put him in the graduating class
of the Newton, Massachusetts, High School at sixteen and
left with him the conviction that he had "missed much by
being pushed along." However, as one reads his account it is
hard to believe that he missed anything I Just touching his
story here and there, we read:
High school soon became my world, a world of ever-expanding

activities. I held class offices, ran class dances, participated in junior
varsity football, but became primarily involved in journalistic ac-
tivities. A high school weekly was founded when I was a junior,
and I worked on it as reporter, an editor, and then editor-in-chief.
This was one of the great experiences of my life. By the time I was
editor-in-chief we had a staff of some 150 members and an adver-
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tising policy that gave us ample income to run pictures and

cartoons.
My high school world was so full that I hated to leave it. I was
awarded a scholarship for college, $300, for each of four years. But
I was really surprised to receive the cup at graduation awarded each
year to the most all-around boy in the graduating class. Frankly,
and not speaking from any sense of false modesty, I never felt the
award was deserved.
For a second time we meet this high award to a beneficiary

of the Fund by the same large suburban high school.
The foreign influence in the life of the first of the men who
were born abroad was perhaps but little greater than in the
case of the one whose early life has just been considered. Born
in Yokobama in the first month of 1901, of missionary parents,
he remained in Japan but two years at that time. "Then," he
writes,
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.
He writes that an ancestor of his father's came from York-

shire in 1647 and settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts. His
father, while still a student at Syracuse University, married the
daughter of the Chancellor and together they went to Japan
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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."
In 1915 my parents brought me back to the United States with

them. When father's furlough was over and it came time for my
parents to return to Japan, they deposited me on the back steps of
Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, Lima, New York. It was a desolate
evening. It was at first difficult to learn the ways and vocabulary of
young America. I had to forget such terms as "chit," "tiffin" and
"greengrocer" and start to learn new and strange expressions. Gene-
see Wesleyan Seminary was perched on College Hill. It was a
denominational coeducational boarding school under the aegis of
the Methodist Church. Its classical course prescribed four years
of Latin and three years of Greek. It was through the Preceptress
of this school that I was encouraged to take out an application for
the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund. She is a
graduate of Boston University and sponsored my application.
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
By what power you have persuaded an ex-Englishman, who

treasures the privacy of his private life more than almost anything
else that is his, to attempt to write an autobiography I do not
know. The experience is both embarrassing and sobering. You
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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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home and I enrolled in the commercial course at high school.

During my school years there, I had become active in the Episcopal
Church. When I was eight a new minister, a bachelor of about
forty years, became the rector of the church. He established a boys'
choir which I joined and in which I sang for many years.
The new Rector had a strong influence on all of his boys, and
his influence upon me was more profound than that of any other
man. Girls he tolerated but did not wholly understand; boys he
understood and enjoyed. He was strict, but absolutely fair and
kind. We roughhoused with him in the parish house before eve--
ning rehearsal, to the distress of some of the parishioners. When
he said, "It's time to stop, boys," we stopped - instantly.
Once an older boy, who acted as church organist, cut the evening
choir rehearsal to attend the high school Senior Dance, secure in
the knowledge that he was indispensable. Sunday morning the
Rector met him at the vestry door.
"Arthur, where were you Friday night?"
"At the Senior Dance, Sir."
"Had you asked me, I would have changed the hour of rehearsal
for such an occasion. Go and sit in the congregation this morning."
And we sang (?) the entire Episcopal service that morning with-
out musical accompaniment. We had an afternoon rehearsal
weekly, also, and the Rector bought baseball bats, balls, and gloves
out of his own income for us to play with after rehearsal and to
borrow for individual use during the week.
One year we skated (in two installments) the whole length of
the Charles River, and in the summer we explored it from source
to mouth in canoes. During the Rector's August "vacation" we
went to camp with him on an island leased from the Connecticut
Valley Lumber Company. Every boy who had not missed a church
service or rehearsal during the year, except for illness, got two weeks
of camping at the Rector's expense.
We became experts at swimming and canoeing. We worked
with the lumbermen who ran the river, rolled logs with them,
dove from the roof of their tug-boat. The more experienced of us
took long trips on the Connecticut from Canada to Long Island
Sound. We camped, without tents, without much of anything but
a canoe to crawl under when it rained, and a few pots and pans.
We bought fresh produce from farmers. We ran the rapids. Most
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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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eluding editing the high school annual and serving as president

of the senior class. In my junior year the principal again ta1ked
with me and offered to finance my first year at college and get me
a scholarship to help with the succeeding ones. I hardly knew
what a scholarship was, and had only the most vague and Holly-
woodish notion of what college was like. No one I had personally
known, except the Rector, had ever been to one. Neverthless,
I wanted to go on with my studies, and I was overwhelmed by the
principal's interest and his generous offer of help.
There was more involved, however, than just financing myself.
For years my sister had supported us both on earnings that, except
in war-time, seldom went above $20 a week. It was time I began to
support myself and perhaps help her if I could. So I graduated
hom high school and, through the good offices of an older ac-
quaintance, got a job as an office boy with a steel jobber at $8 a
week. I hated the dirty city street where the office and warehouse
were set. I disliked the stuffy hot air of the building when the air
was &esh outside. I disliked the confinement and the routine.
I couldn't understand the way some of the workers soldiered on
the job. .
Then we had a reunion of our high school class and after it I
walked home with Joe Sullivan. He had been one of my good
friends and he was the class valedictorian. He talked to me about
Boston University and about the Buck Fund Scholarship that he
held and urged me to try to get one. Joe had heart trouble, and
all he ever had done during school years was to study. I never
doubted that, given that chance, I could do as well as or better than
Joe. There was no reason why I might not get a similar scholar-
ship. So I visited "688" and met and liked Ralph Taylor and was
told I would be accepted as a student; and I gave notice that I
would leave my job, but older acquaintances, in their ignomnce,
dissuaded me, and I stayed at work.
All through the next year I thought about college. I knew I
would not be satisfied if I did not make the attempt, but I knew
it would throw me back upon my sister for at least partial support
again and I felt I had no right to ask it of her, though she was
always agreeable to whatever plan suited me.
The next August I gave my notice again. An officer of the com-
pany called me in and spoke highly of my services and of my pros-
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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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and to the mystification of most of their Italian neighbors for-

warded their education in every way they could, though natur-
ally there was not much material aid. To meet the ambition of
the parents there was the American public school in which
these two boys were star pupils from the start, and the college
with the Fund. Last, but by no means least, there was, near by,
a Christian mission with wise and consecrated mission work-
ers; wise, in that they made their service attractive to the people
among whom they labored; consecrated, since associating with
them led both these boys early to seek conscious association
with the God the workers served.
I t is hardly necessary to call attention to the steep ascent
conquered by these two immigrant boys in order to reach their
present position. As many of the details of their climb as space
permits will be given, economy of space being aided by com-
bining at many points the story of two brothers who differed
less than three years in age. As a rule, we shall not attempt to
distinguish among the many quotations from their life stories
those belonging to the brothers individually, but we can hardly
do better for a start than to quote briefly from that of the
elder. "I write this," he says, "to recapture a past. It is the
past, I daresay, never to be duplicated on these American
shores, of the Italian immigrant as I have known him. Again,
it is the past of an Italian family similar to many another and
with pretensions to no especial gifts or experiences. If I am
to revive the gestures and meanings of a drama seemingly long
off the boards, I need to call up only the image of my mother.
Immediately we are all in our places, the play is about to com-
mence and, as never before, we understand the significance of
our lines. This therefore shall serve as the evocation of re-
membrance in the presence of my mother. It is an attempt
to close with early experience and comprehend it at once as
actor and as spectator."
These two boys were born near the tum of the first decade of
the century in a small Italian town not far from Naples. Their
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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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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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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
The list of things a poor boy can do to make a penny, honest

or otherwise, in the slums of a big city is much greater than the
returns one would be led to expect, and these two boys urged
by their competent mother did most of theml
For them, public school seems to have been taken as a
matter of course. Their achievements apparently impressed
their father much more than they did the boys themselves.
One, even at this later date, writes: "School for me was a
necessary but not too pleasant experience one underwent"
The other, with more detail, writes:
My career in school before the fifth grade is easily descn"bed in

two words: I was a cautious rascal! I was too much of a coward
to be really bad, to steal from the teacher, or to pour inkwells into
the waste-basket; my mischief was of the inane type, born not of
ill-will, but of "nothing to do." When my brother was bringing
home report cards which set my father's eyes ablaze with pride,
I was being kept back a second year in the fiISt grade; by and large
school was a place one got chased to by thumping one's chum on
the back and running for dear life (thus getting there on time
despite that last game of marbles) and from which one came to sell
papers or do any of the other jobs that seemed to be on hand. There
was no idea, least of all in my head, that I might go to college-
even high school was a question - for I had already accepted the
appraisal of my mother and father who, looking at my big grimy
hands and growing muscular physique, used to say that such hands
were not made to push a pen. But when my teacher praised me for
being able to write outstanding word-pictures (to exemplify the
meaning of a word, like echo, for example), this "dunce" began
to think that there might be some hope.
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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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the considerate manner with which that Christian English teacher

helped me at that difficult time.) The total effect of her death
was to pull the family together tighter than ever. I was making
more money and since I could take care of myself to a large extent
financially, I was encouraged to go on to high school, where I con-
tinued with the commercial course until the middle of the sec-
ond year. Then, with a year and a half to go, the family decided
I should try to get ready for college. It was understood that if
anything happened to father, I would immediately quit and go
to work. Father, had he needed any urging, would have had it
in his determination to keep the family going as "she" had planned.
I suspect that my growing conviction that I might become a
minister was a strong factor in my own determination to t:Iy it.
Yet no amount of determination could have made up for the help
my brother gave, and, even more, for the kindness, patience, and
personal Christian inspiration of my teacher of mathematics,
Greek, and Latin. I managed to do well enough to make the Honor
Rolls and the National Honor Society, and even got a chance to
do some debating.
Though the selection of men whose backgrounds are being

considered has been not altogether easy, the difficulty of the
task has but made it more beguiling. In the main those picked
are pedagogues since they are the most numerous. Having in
mind the predilections of the Donor we have also included a
few of the ministry, and to one of these latter we now tum.
No man who has enjoyed the benefits of the Fund has been
more enthusiastic and constant in expressing his appreciation.
He has, however, escaped the double dilemma of being too
modest and too busy to write his own story by persuading a
close friend, well acquainted with his life, to write for him.
This has shifted some of the burden to the shoulders of the
editor. For example, to preserve the promised anonymity, it
has been convenient to rename him Fredl
His father, Frans, was a Baptist preacher in Sweden who,
by the time he married at thirty-nine, had crossed the Atlantic
nine times. He had studied both in Stockholm and at various
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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.
The family life of Fred's mother, Maria, was by contrast "full

of warmth and affection and Christian piety."
Her father, a railroad station-master, had been converted to the
Baptist fold, had foresworn his "worldly" habits (chiefly that of
taking snuffl) and become in his spare time a colporteur and some-
thing of a lay preacher. Red-headed Wickman was known and
welcomed for miles around for his hymn-singing, his hearty laugh,
and his ability to wring tears from the hardest heart by his preach-
ing. His gentle wife, Clara, rejoiced in her six sons and two daugh-
ters, and there was never a day in their home without prayer and
Bible reading, and the consciousness of the Spirit's presence.
By the time Frans and Maria met, through the close-knit Baptist
circle of that part of Sweden, Frans was already a smooth, traveled,
erudite clergyman in his mid-thirties. To this young girl's eyes,
everything about him was utterly admirable, from his curly flaxen
hair and piercingly bright blue eyes, that somewhat belied the
dignity of his pointed blond beard, to his very taciturnity. Even
more than the man, she admired the minister. Marriage had not
been in Frcms' plans since his early unhappy love affair, but he was
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attracted by the freshness and genuineness of this girl, fifteen yean

his junior, and he knew her to be, besides a warm Christian, the
acme of perfection as a housekeeper, thrifty and efficient, and a
superlative cook, even among Swedish girlsl In the course of
another of his trips to America they kept up correspondence. Per-
haps wanting to be at least on the same side of the Atlantic, or
perhaps unable to resist the restless urge of her Viking blood, Maria
took leave of her family over the protests of her brothers, who had
by now established the foundations of a flourishing clothing busi-
ness, and took passage to America. For a few months a branch of
the Vanda:bilt family in New York and Newport enjoyed her
masterpieces of culinary art; then Frans could stand it no longer
and gave in to marriage as his inevitable destiny.
They were married in New York, and sailed for Sweden for a
honeymoon, intending to return; but in the course of the summer
he was called to a parish in northern Sweden, where the first two
children were born in quick succession. Then the parish at Lulea,
a busy little Baltic seaport just south of the Arctic Circle, beckoned.
It is a "plum" among Baptist churches in Sweden. At the time
of the birth of their third child, Fred, Frans was at the peak of his
career.
He was very firm, perhaps stubborn, in his opinions. This
trait led to a break with the church at Lulea.
"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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children living on a slim pastor's salary further education was UD-

thinkable. Accordingly he took employment, first as a house-to-
house bill collector - a hard assignment for a timid boy, particu-
larly since most of the bills were months and years overduel - then
as a haberdashery salesman. Here his success was phenomenal.
The shop proprietor never did find out his technique of surrepti-
tiously offering the customer a 10 per cent markdown - after
quoting him a marked-up pricel
In the meantime Fred's older brother, George, had gone to
America, the land of opportunity, to try to work for an education.
An evangelist from Minnesota chanced to speak in the Falkoping
church, and spread a rosy glow over all things American. Fred
was on fire. Would the evangelist agree to be his sponsor and sign
his immigration papers if he should go to America? Oh, sure, sure.
Fred wrote to George, asking his advice. George replied in no UD-
certain terms: "For heaven's sake, don't comel The life is too
hard." But the fire would not be put out.
So it was that one morning in early September of the year 1921
a little band of family and friends stood on the station platform
at Falkoping, singing hymns and gospel songs and the ever-poig-
nant "Till We Meet Again," in honor of the thin, excited, blond
thirteen-year-old. Maria's tears Bowed freely. To her mind, book-
learning might be well and good, but the dangers and temptations
of the World were too great to be risked. As the train pulled out
of the station his mother's last words, breathed through a mist of
tears, seared themselves into the boy's memory: "Fred, remember
Jesus." Frans said little on the train ride to Gothenburg as he
accompanied his son to the boat, but his blue eyes were eloquent
with fatherly feeling, and perhaps - who knows? - a touch of
envy. In spite of the hardships which he knew might lie in store
for the boy. he envisaged and coveted for him the rich. untarnish-
able treasure of higher education. As the boat drew away from
shore, Fred stood at the railing and watched until it disappeared
the little figure in black Prince Albert coat, slowly waving a silver-
headed cane.
The early dawn of September 21 saw a slim boy keeping vigil
on deck while his shipmates slumbered below. Eagerly he strained
for the first sight of the famed New York skyline and trembled with
joy when at last he could discern the Statue of Liberty in the mom-
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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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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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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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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:
Such a move meant the transportation of an entire household

by ox-drawn little wooden-wheeled carts. Included in this was the
family organ (a foot-pedal type of instrument) and my father's
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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:
I must mention parenthetically that in the custom of the coun-

try the marriage of my mother and father was a made match. This
fact is of importance in my development. I consider my parents'
marriage one of the most perfect I've ever knoWD. I was indoc-
trinated with the idea from my earliest childhood that marriage
is based on mutual give-and-take and the firm determination that'
it is going to be a success.
This illustrates again the fundamental training which I received
at every important step in my life - namely, that success depends
primarily on the will to succeed.
To my parents I wish to express my ever-growing admiration and
gratitude for setting before me a pattern of life that has constantly
served as an inspiration and an example to follow whenever diffi-
cult decisions had to be made. I can not conceive of a richer child-
hood than to grow in a home that surrounds one's every move with
tenderness and love coupled with a profound responsibility to suc-
ceed in every undertaking which tempered every decision, however
hurried or difficult.
Not only is this man impressed with the Bulgarian type of

marriage, he also finds in its school system certain definite ad-
vantages. To mention but one, he stresses the periodic exam-
inations which eliminate those not mentally equipped to con-
tinue but keep the fit in the system right through to the uni-
versity. He ~ clearly amon~ the fit. For we Gnd him at th~
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elementary school American school

VIlJ'."'. Robert College"
"' . . . . u ... sort of scholarship.
was over he went interview with an executIve
of in which misunderstanding about the scholarship
seems to have played the obvious role. Then, out of sight,
occurred a sublimation, a transmutation of liability into asset,
that opened the door to all his later life. For as he faced what
he feared would be the termination of his work at Robert Col-
memo:ry showed him flash life as he had seen it
uu",u,_u teachers there elsewhere. And
mOmel!lt in the heart taught from
"success depends will to succeed.
deternUDl:lticin that caused of the moment
come trivial- the determination go to America.
counting the experience, he says:
In the thirty seconds or so while I was looking at the rug pattern
I made a detailed evaluation of America and all I had seen thus
far. I hurriedly evaluated the American teachers I had known,
. the last four brie8y the I\mencans
in Bulgaria, them with
he lacked he tact. To me he
colors in that by themselves
aDtJearl~ unbearable. However, combination of
brilliant and striking and modestly nnllSSlml-
ing under touch of the master weaver had produced a pattern
that was rich and beautiful. So the pattern of America woven of
many-colored characters appeared at the moment more beautiful
than ever before. When I lifted my eyes from the rug and thanked
him, I was looking far beyond the desk and the little man that
stood it. I was already the ocean to
day to be my f'nmnm1
that followed dllll""""'U
trays of food
partial payment
trays of dirty dishes. class. I played
and was considered a promising forward for next year's team. I even
joined the FUP that took lon$ walks in the hills of Be~. I ex-
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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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children referred to as "Auntie" in the custom of the country. She

had made a comfortable living for herself as an agent of the Singer
Sewing Machine by teaching people to sew and selling them ma-
chines. She had come for an afternoon visit and expressed the desire
to see me and say good-bye, for the time of my departure must be
near at hand. We chatted for a while; she wished me good luck,
and then expressed regrets that she would not be able to see "the
tallest building in the world." I had been talking so much about
my trip to America that I had come to think of it as a real thing,
so I asked, "Why don't you come with me and we can see it
together?" I stopped short as my eyes met my mother's. CeFtainly
my mother had never thought that I would carry things that far.
But the lady did not see what went between my mother and me
and she continued, laughingly, "A lot of good I'd be to you. I
haven't even got a tongue." (Meaning, I cannot speak the lan-
guage.) I grabbed at a straw, trying to keep the conversation going.
"You come along," I said, "and I'll be your tongue if you will
be my purse." Almost as if she were waiting for such an open-
ing, she looked intently at me and said in a business-like manner,
"How much do you need?" "I am afraid all," replied I softly. "I
haven't any."
"How much?" she repeated in a stem voice. "Twenty-one thou-
sand," came the reply. Then, "I am sure your father will guarantee
a note for you," she said.
My mother, who had been paralyzed with the foolish talk I
carried on just before the conversation turned business-like, re-
vived for the first time and said: "I am sure his father will do that."
The next day I carried a little satchel from the bank with the
bills neatly tied up in lOOO-leva packs and on the third day of Feb-
ruary before midnight I sat at the window of the crowded compart-
ment in one of the cars of the Orient Express. My chin in my hand,
I took a last look at the milling crowd at the station in Sofia as a
slight pull of the coach reminded me that I was on my way to the
pro~is~ land, marking the end of another chapter in my life and
beginDlng a new.
The trip was inconsequential though it took nearly a month.
Although I visited for the first time Italy, Switzerland, and Paris,
there was no thrill in it for my eyes were set farther west across
the ocean. I had no illusions and no disappointments. I <lid not
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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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ciation too that led me back to the restaurant work eventually.

as I will mention later.
In the meantime my paramount interest was saving. I was be-
ing paid $16 a week and by taking an inexpensive room at
Egleston Square and saving the carfare by walking to the Back
Bay I was able by the end of the summer to save a hundred
dollars. I was very proud of the fact and mentioned it to a country-
man of mine who had come long before to America, had married
an American girl and already had a family of three children. It
was agreed that if I would accept his personal cheque and send it to
my father (who, incidentally, had known him as a boy), it might
be somewhat of an advertisement for him, since private chequing
accounts were rare in Bulgaria, and would, incidentally, save me
the "bank charge."
So he gave me a cheque and I sent it to my father. I doubt
if the transaction had any beneficial effect on his reputation as
a financial wizard, but in due course of time the cheque was sold
on the open market, transferred from person to person, went from
one bank to another, and arrived at the bank in Boston at a most
embarrassing time of the month when he had carelessly all but
depleted his bank account. The bank in a very impersonal and in-
considerate business way affixed the stamp "No funds." The reac-
tion all along the line was as could be expected and my father was
confronted before. the law with a bogus cheque on which the
original purchaser in Bulgaria demanded immediate payment. And
once again the dear "Aunt" that had originally given me the money
came to the rescue.
Of course as soon as I received the cheque and explained the
situation, my friend gave me another with the assurance that this
time he would make certain of his balance. I had however learned
already the weak points and the instability of private banking and
discovered that my own savings bank would gladly give me a draft
on a New York bank. I combined another $50 with the original
and sent it back.
In the meantime, the exchange had dropped so much that by
the time my father had received the second cheque the value of
the original $100 had more than doubled, whereupon the buyer
of the first cheque relented and demanded that he be given the
second cheque (or a part of it), claiming that the money which
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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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the pebbled beach or booming as they hurl themselves against the

rocks, the fog on an early morning and even the gray skies and
foaming breakers of a real northeaster. But above all, I met people
- folk that have stem faces and dry humor mellowed by a phi-
losophy that is typically New England's; folk that appear to do a
thing for others only because it is their duty but actually do it be-
cause they enjoy helping. I remember once after a few years of
continuous help and encouragement from the family on the Maine
coast, I felt the sincere desire to express again in words my appre-
ciation, and spoke words to the effect that I regretted that I could
not see how I was ever going to repay the debt lowed them. The
man looked at me again with his gray eyes that seemed even deeper
than the ocean and said calmly: "There is a way you can do it
- do it for the other fellow when the opportunity comes your
way." Yes, for you do it as much for Me when you do it for one
of these my brethren.
It was here that I began my teaching career. I had learned
swimming and life-saving at the "Y" and there were dozens of
youngsters at the beach eager to learn. I began to show them in-
formally in groups of two and three and later in classes of ten and
twenty until it became a tradition at the beach.
The man from the Balkans who is at this writing at least

95 per cent American has failed us at this point. Seem-
ingly the 5 per cent European took over at just the wrong
moment and put modesty in the saddle. Not that I am loath
to write about such a thrilling incident. It is only that the
thrill for the reader would be greater if the words were those
of the principal actor. I am leaving out but eight colorless
words of his story at this point where all that I now write
should have appeared.
One day when this teacher of swimming was patrolling the
beach as was his wont, he heard a cry for help from one of his
little pupils who had rashly gotten way out beyond a reef on
which every wave of the tide was breaking. The teacher at
once swam out around the end of the reef and soon had the
youngster safe in his arms. Then he realized that the way he
had come was too great for him to swim back with the added
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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.' "
In addition I also received a special award of $50 for the best

. rescue of the year. I wanted to put the money into something
that would be lasting and I bought a camera that started me on
my photographic hobby which later developed into a second pro-
fession. [This finally brought him, as he tells in a later chapter,
an important appointment on the staff of Harvard University.
R.E.B.]
After the first summer at the beach I felt that I needed more
money. I could not quite take a chance on beginning school with-
out sufficient funds for at least one semester. But a long ride from
the beach in a Model T Ford plus the advice of the man whose
creed I have already mentioned made me make up my mind.
He at once went to Boston and entered the University. Here

ends the chapter on the backgrounds of but eighteen of the
many beneficiaries of the Fund.
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CHAPTER V
College and University

~HE BOY is father of the man." This and convenience are
1. the excuse, if one is needed, for introducing the boy into
his own background in the last chapter. There the man has
been seen as a shadowy figure emerging from the dark, to be
followed step by step unbl there appears the unusual promise
that bids fair to eventuate in a career of much usefulness. Life
for such men as these begins at eighteen - or thereabouts.
To avoid cutting individual stories in two, they are fre-
quently placed entirely in single chapters without too much
attention to chapter headings. The present chapter, for ex-
ample, spills over into the territory of more than one other.
In leaving this subject the editor may as well confess that he
feels somewhat as though he were walking a tight-rope with
the devil of a biographical dictionary on one side and the deep
sea of a composite photo on the other. To write of fourscore
men in such a way that a good picture results both of the indi-
viduals and of the entire group is no easy taskl The danger
may at least be partially met by continuing to let the men do
most of the speaking forthemselves. Moreover, by this method
the stories of their lives reveal so much of their character and
ability that any finespun analysis by another is uncalled for.
As we read the stories of their college days it is well to re-
member that with the passing of the years this period tends to
take on a golden hue hardly to be equalled by any other in
life. Dingy classrooms become in retrospect bright halls of
learning, college mates stand out as brilliant lights among the
drab crowd of their contemporaries, and the head of every
teacher is crowned with a rich halo. So marked is this last
98
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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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Through the years at the College of Liberal Arts and in the

Graduate School my fortunate experiences with teachers were
many. Two outstanding associations were those with Drs. Lutz
and Wyman. Although I had the advantages arising from being
one of the few students majoring in biology and from my work
in the laboratories as an assistant in biology. my most vivid learn-
ing experiences were outside the classroom. Under the auspices
of the Fund I traveled and studied in Bermuda with Dr. and
Mrs. Lutz and in the Southwest with Dr. Wyman. The knowl-
edge gained on both of these trips and the effect of the stimu-
lating associations contributed greatly to increasing the breadth of
my understanding and appreciation. I still remember the trip
across the United States to New Mexico where Dr. Wyman
relieved the monotony of the riding by giving me a condensed
course in anthropology and ethnology to fill the gaps in my back-
ground. This was in preparation for the work in ethnobotany done
among the Navajo Indians that summer.
After we arrived in New Mexico I had an opportunity to view
and participate in one impressive Navajo healing ceremony. Al-
most through an entire night without respite, we sat in a Navajo
hogan listening to the rhythmic chant of the medicine man and
the periodic response of the audience. Additional color was given
to the ceremony in the preparation of colorful sand paintings that
told significant stories of the mythological origins of the Navajo
world. At the least, patients seemed to derive psychological bene-
fits from the ceremonies as handled by the very intelligent medicine
men. It gave me an eerie feeling to be present in this age at a
ceremony so primitive and yet still significant to many people.
Viewing that part of the ceremony or "sing" that was concerned
with applying herb medicines to the patients to the accompaniment
of appropriate chants, did much to create in me the feeling that I
was being transported back in time to another age.
With the completion of my work for an A.M. at Boston Univer-
sity, I moved to the Harvard Graduate School of Education, still
under Fund auspices, to do special work in education with em-
phasis on the teaching of science. The formal work and residence
requirement for the Ed.M. degree were completed in the summer
of 1935, and I was awarded my degree in June, 1936.
While I was a graduate student at Harvard, I had met Colonel
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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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102 A CHllONICLE OF ACIDBVEMENT
In my earliest years at school I was considered perhaps a bit on

the precocious side, and I was advanced through a nine-year
course in grammar school in seven years. This I now consider a
great mistake - but that is another story. I was always an under-
sized boy, and this, together with the fact that my schoolmates
were two years older, kept me out of athletics. The most I could
be was an ardent rooter, and I was and still am. Growing up in a
musical atmosphere, my chief interest lay in that direction until
after I went to college. Then, as now, my greatest participation in
religious activities bas been in this field - organizing, participating
in, and playing piano accompaniments for various church musical
events.
I very nearly did not go to the College of Liberal Arts or to any
college. Lowell, the once prosperous textile town, was in a state
of continuous depression following World War I. During the
war it had enjoyed a temporary boom as a result of the demand
for cotton goods and the location there of a plant of the U. S.
Cartridge Company. By 1920, however, the munitions plant was
permanently closed and the effect of competition from the South
was proving to be disastrous. The population dwindled and sum-
mer jobs for high school graduates were almost non-existent. But
luck - or Providence - was with me. In the summer following
my last high school year I landed a job as office boy and messenger
in the Billerica car shops of the Boston &: Maine Railroad. I stilI
shudder when I remember the noise of riveting and of overhead
cranes, but I stuck it out. By September I had enough, together
with my savings built up from childhood Christmas presents and
the like, to see me through the first year, providing I lived at home.
So off I went in September, 1925, to begin the four happiest years
of my life. As an intellectual experience the College of Libeml
Arts was simply incomparable. My high school teaching had been
excellent in quality so far as learning the fundamentals was con-
cerned. But my Latin teachers, for example, were quite satisfied
when I had learned my "A, ab, ante, con, de" et cetera; they were
quite unable, or unwilling, to give me the glimpses into the civi-
lization of ancient Rome that were made an integraI and daily part
of the freshman Latin course at the College. This was an experi-
ence I was to meet constantly - even in courses in mathematics
and the physical sciences I was given a feeling for their historical
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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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to that of residential universities. It was different, but it was just

as good. Organized athletics may have suffered. It was difficult to
provide the atmosphere of an October Saturday afternoon in New
Haven. But this one phase of life in the larger American univer-
sities is, I believe, itself open to criticism as juvenile, or as a pro-
longation of the attitudes and practices of pre-college years. In
all other respects we commuters were the beneficiaries of every
social advantage that can come from contacts with other indi-
viduals in a learned background and in a great metropolitan city.
We not only had an opportunity to rub minds with our classmates
at the College of Liberal Arts, but we also met, some of us for as
long as two hours daily, commuting students from our home towns
who were attending other schools in Boston.
My decision to go to the Yale Graduate School was based partly
on the fact that it was recommended by the history department at
the College of Liberal Arts and partly on the famous names which
Yale's catalog recorded. The University, although its physical
equipment was superb, had a less friendly atmosphere than I had
found in Boston. However, I spent seven not unhappy years in
New Haven, the first three in the Graduate School, the last four as
a research assistant and part-time instructor in history.
Probably part of my attitude toward Yale is the result of the
period when I was in attendance. I can still remember the head-
lines in the Boston papers when I left for New Haven in September,
1929. Daily the news of the condition of the markets grew worse,
and the depression which followed was to color the lives of all of us
in the decade that followed. Attendance at schools and colleges
declined sharply, and by 1933 it had become extremely difficult to
secure a teaching position. By 1934 I had married and become the
father of a little boy, and for a few years the sledding was quite
hard. I held part-time instructorships at Yale and in other colleges
and junior colleges in the vicinity of New Haven, but I could not
seem to locate a permanent position. Part of the trouble, I was
beginning to realize, was that I lacked some of the skills and per-
sonality traits which made for a really first-class teacher. However
full my head was crammed with facts I could not arouse the en-
thusiasm of most of my students. This fact, together with a slight
speech defect which I could not seem to shake off, led to my d&
cision in 1936 to abandon teaching for research.
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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:
On July 1, 1910, a boy named Alden P. Cleaves was born in the

small town of Harvard in eastern Massachusetts. His matema1
ancestors had been among the first white settlers in that region,
some arriving there before 1700. His father's family had in these
early years resided in Maine. Grandfather John Harlow Cleaves
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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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duties and broadened the scope of his investigations to include

more applications of physical methods and chemistry to the analysis
of various materials used in aircraft powerpIanb.
The next story, that of E. W. Wilfert, is not the only one

that starts on a somber note and ends in success.
I never knew my mother; she died when I was four. Yet I've been
claimed to possess her characteristics, and such ideals as I have I
like to believe must first have been impressed on my mother by
the Heaven-aspiring grandeur of her native Switzerland. My father
brought me back to earth. He was a native of rural Germany and
not without the disciplinary nature often associated with that land.
Nevertheless, we were a problem for him - my sister a year younger
than I, my brother a year older. For to leave us all day with our
ailing and aged grandmother, no match for three active children,
sometimes called for more than gentle persuasion when he returned
from work. Yes, I'm sure my grandmother's daily readings to us
from the Old Testament were usually chosen to jolt us into Iinel
And I'm thankful for the little discipline I was able to absorbl
At twelve, I saw that wonderful woman go happily to what I knew
was a great reward.
Up to the momentous day of obtaining the scholarship, I was
seldom without a job, one grocery store to another depending on
my center of activities, sweeper in the sausage factory and pleasant
trips with the go-getter boss on a delivery truck. Then on c0m-
pletion of high school, the hosiery knitting mill. Little time there
to play baseball, my favorite pastime.
What did I want to do or be? 1 never knew. I took a "general"
course in Boston English High School (none of the family went to
college). There was a matter of money. A friend in a hosiery knit-
ting mill made good pay. I mastered a machine in good time and
made good pay; in two years I was a knitter. Savings accumulated
rapidly, on a boy's scale. A night school course in mechanical
dmwing was fascinating, but not satisfying. The influence of
church friends was great. The kindly and wonderful old man with
a world of patience for his active Sunday School class, the poor but
kindly minister, the families of the church, met through their
daughters, the friendly college studenb of the congregationl Our
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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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110 A CHRONICLE OF ACIDEVEMENT
experiences and accomplishments, the late Professor Perrin, of

whom it was truly said: "It doesn't matter what course you take
with him - the idea is to get to know himl"
An offer as laboratory assistant at Temple University, leading to
a Master's degree, seemed the opportunity to take. Philadelphia
was drab to me - the monotonous, Oat, squared-off appearance of
central Philadelphia was tiresome to one used to the winding
streets of Boston. Nights were spent in the laboratory for laclc of
other interests. But Philadelphia was good to me and gave me a
channing student whom I promptly recognized as the girl for mel
Obtaining my Master's degree in chemistry on a very hot day in
1936, and not having a sou, I figured r d better hurry off to a job.
An offer hom E. R. Squibb and Sons to join their research labora-
tories was accepted and I left for Brooklyn.
In late '36 I was fortunate to be assigned the problem of pro-
ducing sulfanilamide, which the day before had made the headlines
as the new, foreign miracle drug which cured the President's son
of a serious streptococcic sore throat. All things appear simple in
retrospect but only the hazard and difficulty of the suggested
method prompted an added search in the literature which gave a
clue enabling the House of Squibb to get this revolutionizing cure
promptly to the public. Fascinating days followed - helping to
start the rapidly constructed plant in New Brunswick, New Jersey,
where I stayed to help supervise production and in time graduated
to assistant department head of the plant producing the delicate
refinements of Ehrlich's arsenicals. New arsenicals, anesthetics and
a host of intravenous solutions constantly presented challenging
problems of development, research and refinement. In 1910 the
position of head was granted me in this highly specialized depart-
ment.
The decade of the miracle of the "sulfas" also gave the super-
miracle - penicillin - and though greater things no doubt will
come in the future, it is a source of satisfaction to have had some
little hand in the production development of two such history-
making boons to mankind.
The press of the war called for all hands to speed the output of
penicillin and in this manner I got in on the ground floor - de-
veloping methods of extracting the elusive and unstable Iife-saver in
good purity and precious, small amounts, hom thousands of gal-
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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.
There are many more stories centered around college ex-

periences, amoDg them that of Elmore Lundgren, who writes
as follows:
My parenb were working-class people. My father was a machin-

ist, working mainly in the various mills and shops of Lowell,
Massachusetb. He was a natwalized citizen of the United States,
having been born in Sweden. He arrived in this country at an
early age, however - two years. My mother was English. Her
father, whose name was Forbes, traced his lineage back to Elisha
Forbes, born in 1758 in Canaan, Connecticut.
Early life is rather vague. I know I was supposed to have been a
quiet child. My mother could take me with her when she went
calling and not have to worry about keeping me amused. One
call we made when I was about three or four years old ruined my
reputation. They left me in the cellar for a while with the cat,
and I found some green paint which I used to advantage. I can
still remember the screams of horror when they saw the cat. I
don't recall the whipping I must have had.
From twelve to eighteen years, the happy time of my life was
the summer. Then I went to my uncle's farm in Quebec. Now,
I'd probably call it work, but then it was great fun. Working with
the animals, handling the horses, haying, doing all the work that
comes up on a four-hundred-acre farm in the summer was a wonder-
ful experience for a city boy. Going back to school in September
was a dreadful task.
High school is now somewhat hazy to me. I didn't know what I
wanted to do after school. There was no chance of college, for
financial reasons. My parents and I never thought of it, even though
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I did well with book learning. So I concentrated on shop work in

high school with the vague notion of being a carpenter or machin·
ist. I'm not sorry, as I still like this kind of work and do it as a
hobby. At high school graduation I received the biggest shock of
my early life when they announced the Carney Medal scholars
and I heard my name. (These medals are awarded to the six
highest students in the graduating class, and we had a class of about
six hundred.) It was also a very embarrassing time, as we had to
make our way from a rear stage around through the Memorial audi·
torium to the platform in front where the speakers were, to receive
the medal. I got lost in the tremendous corridors of the auditorium
and held up the proceedings for five or more minutes.
After high school, I went to a business school for a year, and
then worked for five years in a clerical position in an advertising
agency. This was not particularly satisfying work, though I might
have stayed in it but for the depression, which caused me to lose
my job in 1931. I had been toying with the idea of further school·
ing and a different career for some time. I had saved a little money,
enough to carry me through a year of college. So I looked around
for a college that would take me. This wasn't easy, as I hadn't had
college preparatory subjects in high school. I remember weD going
to see Dean in early June of 1931. He was dean of
admissions at College. He listened to my story, then
went over to a bookcase and reached for a booklet of College
Entrance Examination Board requirements and gave it to me.
He said if I could pass those examinations (occurring two weelcs
later), then we could talk businessI
What a difference at Boston University. Mr. Ralph Taylor, now
Dean, was then Registrar. He sat down with me and we talked
and figured until we found a way for me to meet the entrance Ie--
quirements. We found a way by summer school and extra courses.
I've never forgotten how helpful Mr. Taylor was that day. He told
me about the Buck Fund and the chance it offered me. I am very
deeply indebted to Boston University, Mr. Taylor, and the Fund.
They gave me the chance to go to college and also to stay in col·
lege. They gave me a career, teaching, in which I am happy and,
I believe, useful.
At the College of Liberal Arts I recall Professor Aurelio's class
in the Bible as Literatqre - th~ discussions that usually gave us
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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.
The story of John C. Robinson, Jr., worthy of a place in any

event, is assured of one since it shows that he who starts as
a drifter may become anything but! It is doubtful if those who
knew him would have suspected any "relative inertness" did
not the story written by him clearly state it. Here, in part, it is.
Where to begin isn't much of a problem but I'm stymied on

how to begin. I fear my life has not been very picturesque to date;
there has been no climax to build up to, and I have no famous
ancestors or relatives in whose glory I can bask. The Robinsons
were in general Scotch, Irish or Welsh way back. It might be
interesting to note that a granduncle was supposed to have picked
up the thread after a diligent search only to find a Robinson hung
for sheep-stealing in the old country. At this point he quit and
refused to divulge his source.
My maternal relatives were of German and French-Canadian
extraction. I easily recall my great-great-grandmother who died
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when I was in high school, my great-grandfather who died when

I was in Illinois, and his wife who passed on only a year ago. Need-
less to say, my grandmother is still going strong. Except for my
a chemist, I stand a pretty good chance of
mortality tables I
parl~ts have always Boston and
:v e:ood that they sight of the
I joined the clan in Reading,
January 18, 1918. My were pretty young
and after my brother joined us a little over a year later, we all grew
up together. Pop was (and still is) a skilled metal and wood
worker and at the time was fabricating organ pipes. I suppose my
current penchant for tearing into anything from an electric alann
clock to a Buick is inherited from him. As I write this, I am trying
instance of visiting our home but I
none. Neither of attended college.
high school a two before graduation
mo'tue:r, one of eleven, fonnal education
that. Certainly axes to grind
coUege.
About the time I entered high school, a combination of the
depression and the sound movies hit my father's occupation a severe
blow. As a result, I thought I wanted as practical a course as I
could find - business. Not that I didn't have vague ideas about
college. Due to the efforts of a vocational counsellor and the
. cipal pushed into preparatory ;)"""1"'-""
School. Algebra much more fun than
with the So, in 1934,
ably fit for graduated from
1, with About all that meant
in the class I speech. Being
unassuming and completely naive character, I undertook to evaluate
in all its ramifications and potentialities the then new "New
Deal." This I knocked off in something close to fifteen minutes.
The summer of 1934 appeared to be a bad year to hunt a job so I
returned to Reading High School for a postgraduate year, ageing
it were.
year sometime, Taylor happened
the valedictorian following class. Somehow,
COUoEGE AND UNIVEllSITY 115
got to talk to Mr. Taylor and, a day later, to a scholarship commit-
tee (it might even have been the Buck Committee) about the
possibility of my entrance to Boston University. When I was of-
fered a nominal scholarship which would defray about 25 per
cent of my tuition costs, I reviewed my ambitions and my pros-
pects. Harvard was famous, M.I.T. had the best science depart-
ments in the East (or sol thought then), Northeastem'saltemating
work and study system looked attractive and practical. A bank
account of $500 or even the smaller sum of $200 by fall was
well nigh impossible. So, not because I was registered there when
I was a week old, not because I'd cherished a life-long ambition to
study there, and not even because an ardent alumnus had steered
me there, but only because a group then unknown to me offered
partial defrayment of the necessary expenses did I matriculate at
Boston University's College of Liberal Arts.
After about four months the college placement bureau was asked
to furnish a student for part-time employment in Gilchrist's audit
department. So as preparation for becoming some sort of a scien-
tist (I was undecided then between chemistry and mathematics)
and with a hatred for any sort of business procedure inspired by a
couple of years of business practice and typing in junior high
school, I became a night employee of Gilchrist's. All in all, it
wasn't too bad. The work was mechanical in nature. involving the
reading, re-setting and adjusting of all the seventy-five cash registers
in the store. It might be noted that I was jokingly referred to as
the store burglar, inasmuch as I carried on my duties with the aid
of a 8ash1ight in the darkened store.
n what success I have had to date may be considered as a series
of breaks, my next break came at the beginning of my junior year
in the form of a letter from the Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Committee. They wanted to know why I didn't apply. Frankly, I
was dubious. I definitely did not have a straight A average. I was
an "attending" Methodist, but, because of parental difference in
religion, not what would be considered a very good one. I wasn't a
natural mixer and was a very bad leader. Besides I had a part-time
job at which I was doing well, certainly well enough to see me
through a couple more years. It appears that somebody there knew
me better than I knew myself because I accepted the invitation,
applied and was appointed to the Fund. Appreciation of the aid
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from the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund is diffi-

cult for me to express. It enabled me to gain a position in which I
should be able to be of considerable use to society.
I'm glad this tale is being tied to the Fund rather than to Boston
University as such. For it wasn't 'til I got to Illinois University that
I realized what I had missed in Boston. It was the next four years,
either totally or partially under the wing of the Fund, which gave
me the most fun of my college career, and developed my self-
confidence by adding further to my professional training, the latter
being the primary goal, of course.
After a summer as an arts and cmfts counsellor in a Connecticut
YM.CA. camp, I entered the Graduate School of the University
of Dlinois. I had previously applied to several gmduate schools for
an assistantship in chemistry. Some had turned me down firmly
and gently, some just firmly. Illinois had been cautiously optimistic
about my chances, provided I could manage a year there without a
staff appointment. Thanks to the Fund, I got the year. If stepping
from Reading High to Boston University had me upset, stepping
from there to Illinois had me jittery. I was out of New England
for the first time in my life, a thousand miles out; I was among Mid-
westerners whose schools had turned me down and, worse yet, most
of whom were after the job or jobs I wanted. When one review
course, which we all had to take, proved to cover the material I
had taught two years before at Boston University College of
Liberal Arts, when two courses I had to take proved to be repeats
of equivalent courses at the College of Liberal Arts, when I found
I wasn't struggling half as hard as some of my friends from the big
schools, and when, at the end of the first semester, I was offered a
job leading to a special research assistantship for the following year,
I relaxed, blessed my undergmduate training and even showed some
signs of confidence. Figuring I might stay a little longer, I accepted
the invitation of a national professional chemical fraternity, and in
my last three years lived at the "house." It was the residence of
about forty-four of our hundred student members. Most of the
members at Illinois were gmduate students who opemted on a
budget of $60 a month which was allowed on assistantships and
scholarships. Our interests being alike, our incomes being for the
most part alike, the fact that we ate together, worked together,
drank an occasional beer together, sweated out the same examina-
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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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began to drop, instead of sliding down the ladder with them

he started the other way. Like many another climber he soon
met friendly hands. He tells us:
I decided to go back to school. I'll admit that the first few
months at high school were not the most pleasant in my life. I
found it rather hard to adjust myself to the company of fellow
students who were from five to six years younger than myself. But
I was fortunate in that I picked Brockton High School as the place
to continue my schooling, and the fine staff of teachers in that
school were extremely helpful. They did everything in their power
to make things easy for me in my adjustment, and I think that
without this kindness on their part I would have given the whole
thing up as a bad job.
My three years at Brockton High were really an awakening for
me. Although I had tried hard to educate myself on my own, the
. unguided reading had been so vague and cursory that the discipline
of the high school was like getting into another world. I shall al-
ways believe that I learned more in those years than in any other
three-year period in my life. This is not to imply that my college
education was in any way unsatisfactory, but I knew so little when
I entered high school and there was so much to learn before being
eligible for college that this period seems to have been crammed
with new learning.
Finally in 1936 I went to Boston University. I think the thing
that decided me was the fact that a friend had gone there and was
a Buck Scholar. We worked together in a market every Saturday
and spent a great deal of our time talking about Boston Universityp
where he had gone two years previously. He was so enthusiastic
about the college and spoke so glowingly about the advantages of
the scholarship, I decided to go there myself.
The four years that I spent at Boston University College of
Liberal Arts were undoubtedly the four most pleasant of my life.
Now that I look back from the vista of four years of graduate work,
I don't think I would change it if I had it to do over again. It
was a period of my life when new ideas and new attitudes were
filtering in, and there is no way that I know to speed up this
process. If I had been more of a grind at that time I would un-
doubtedly be a far better scholar and a far narrower one. The
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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.
On his discharge from the Service, Mr. Whiting changed to

the Harvard Graduate School where he is a candidate for the
Ph.D. degree. Teaching history at Tufts College is an ac-
companying activity.
The friends of Robert A. Bruce encouraged him in early life
to think of the ministry as his life work. These friends, how-
ever, belonged to a church that was conservative in its teach-
ings, and later experience led Bruce to tum from what he char-
acterizes as "restricted dogmas that could not be integrated
into twentieth century scientific knowledge and social needs."
It was not until his sophomore year in college that young Bruce
began to discover that his life work was to be in the field of
medicine. Then, at first, it was quite definitely medical mis-
sionary work. But fate stepped in and made it necessary to
drop for a time, perhaps for all time, the middle word of the
three. Continuing the story in his own words, we read:
During the second semester of my sophomore year I felt that I
had at last found myself in college, and could work for a goal
that really appealed to me. With that clarification of purpose my
record for the first time revealed four grades of A-. The following
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spent in summer Intensive study

comparative anatomy vertebrates almost seemed
the hot weather contact dermatitis
yde preservative. enjoyable work I only
gained eight hours of A, but an appointment as student assistant
to the department of biology at a stipend of $60 a semester for two
years. By that time my resources were low, and I was borrowing
all I could from my church to keep going.
In 1936 the University purchased a building adjacent to the
Liberal Arts and was in progress. found
night watchman to talk the adrninisoa-
appointing me when summer school.
nights in that building remembered, for
wlIldelws doors were all noises from
up through the Each passerby's
step had to be discriminated from some intruder prowling around
the building. And with no lights but a Bashlight, I had anxious
moments more than once. In fact my hair stood on end one night
when I was suddenly blinded by a bright light two feet from my
face as I walked from one room to another on my rounds. It was
no joke, to that one of the engineers
cn(~Ck:1D2 up on me. feature of
occasionally to the roof the
Boston skyline. job week ends
winter in order money. In addition
night wal:chlmall, it entailed being night janitor inasmueh
building was then occupied. Sweeping and polishing Boors', empty-
ing wastebaskets, and so on, made the hours pass more quickly.
This, together with help from the department of biology and tui-
tion for the fall semester from my church, kept me going, but by
the middle of my junior year I was weary of struggling. Appeals
the Committee on Professor Augustus Howe Buck Seholars the
had been the members
better perfonnance. that was my last crulnoe,
ir help I could my way clear to mamtam
,,"UUUJI .• "Uj,1-' while through the ren:lalDiaer
resentful of parents for the cost
ing me, but they never failed to encourage me, knowing that som~
how I would make it.
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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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of New Mexico. A few miles short of Gallup, in the community

of Coolidge, we made our headquarters where Dr. Wyman had
built a hogan in former years. Since the other inhabitants were
a rancher and combination Indian-trader and post-office clerk
(fourth class), our arrival just about doubled the population.
Coolidge is situated in the Wingate Valley Banked on the north
by a brilliantly colored sandstone mesa. To the south were the
Zuni mountains. The Continental Divide is a short distance to
the east. Twilight in the desert was always beautiful, culminating
in the most brilliant multicolored sunsets encompassing the whole
sky. The clear, cool nights were quiet except for the occasional
hair-raising barking of the coyotes, and the distant whining roar
of the Sante Fe streamliner. All around us, but literally invisible
even in the day, were the isolated hogans of the nomadic Navajos.
From time to time some would visit us, sitting on horseback at a
respectable distance from the hogan for minutes until we noticed
and greeted them. They were impressive folk, short of stature,
brownskinned, somewhat Mongolian in their features, friendly yet
distant, hospitable and self-respecting. They were always soft-
spoken, almost inaudible. At that time they numbered about fifty
thousand, comprising the largest single Indian tribe in the country.
They were fine weavers of colored woolen blankets and craftsmen
in silver and turquoise. Their philosophy of life seemed to be
one of quiet resignation, but their almost inexhaustible folldore in
all its vagaries revealed a highly intricate complex of ceremonial
practice.
Being inadequately nourished and sheltered, victimized by poor
sanitation and cold winters which necessitated overcrowding of
family groups, they naturally experienced unusually high morbidity
rates for the infectious diseases. Dr. Wyman was primarily inter-
ested in the Navajo culture. My interests centered around their
health problems.
Having found the Southwest a new and fascinating world, I re-
turned to the East with enthusiasm to study medicine as a means
to becoming a medical missionary to the Indians. Such was not to
be, however, for medical school rechanneled my interests towards
investigative pursuits of a biological character. Yet the experiences
in the Southwest provided me with an opportunity to observe the
practice of medicine on a primitive level and the need for extending
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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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ship in pathology for a year to allow a gmdual return to full ac-

tivity. I refused, for I was too anxious to "get going." Fortunately,
my health kept pace with my enthusiasm, for the hours were both
long and hard. It seemed wonderful to be at last working with
patients rather than to be a patient. It is hard to say what I en-
joyed the most, probably surgery and medicine. Day after day work-
ing up new patients, presenting them on rounds and clinics kept
us perpetually rushed. But it was fun. Almost before I mew it,
I was in my fourth year which started the following March (1943).
By that time I had to line up an internship, and since I was
promptly accepted at Strong Memorial Hospital (University of
Rochester) on the Medical Service, I looked no further:
. The three men, parts of whose stories follow, have appeared

in an earlier chapter. Sheer interest demands that they appear
here also.
First, a little from the story of the college life of Dr.
George Z. Dimitroff, Professor of Astronomy at Dartmouth
College. He had studied English, as a foreign tongue, in his
native land and also in a neighboring country. Unfortunately
for him, that work was evaluated at Boston University as
though it had been taken by a native American in an American
school. The not unforeseeable result was disaster. He writes:
While I should have been taking sub-freshman English I was

placed in the sophomore English class my first year at Boston
University. I was floundering, with ten to twenty spelling mistakes
per page of theme. In the middle of the term I visited the English
deparbnent. I asked if I should drop out. It was obvious that
even on pure basis of probability I had a fifty-fifty chance. Besides,
I .needed English of some kind. But notwithstanding my usual
good fortune and in view of my background training and per-
formance, there was only one possible outcome.
I was disgusted but not discouraged. I had spent my summer's
earnings and I had to quit at least temporarily. Somehow I felt
that I must get away. It might have been the instinct to ron away
or maybe it was the momentum of my westward migmtion which
had been only temporarily arrested in the East. Maybe I had bv
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BE:\EFICL\RIES OF THE FUND AS THEY LOOKED WHEN IN CC
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GROUP 11- Left to right: Back row, Fitzgerald, Fogg, Booth , Carr, Easton, Cell, Carpenter, Foye, Dowd,
(V Front ro\\', W . Sharp, Bristol, Hussey, Merrill, ~Iason , Walker, Chapman, Pizzuto.
CROUP III - Left to right: Top, :\. Bcrtocci, Nimkoff.
ROttOIll, ]l.forris, Dimitroff.
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~.....- GROUP IV - Left to right: Back row, Ferre, Rockwood, Knox, l\foherg .
rv Frollt row, G. Smith, Tedford, Reid.
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.
Again, we find a man who, having already climbed many

steep ascents to reach his present level, turned a liability into
an asset. For he writes that this "haunting ghost" of English
stands by his side, and he hears "the old skeleton rattling
whenever called upon to consider a foreign student's record."
Of his Alma Mater he writes:
I am not only happy but proud to be a Boston University man.

I can truly say in the words of George Bernard Shaw that "if I
had to do it twice over I'd do it again; yes sirl I'd do it again I"
I've often wondered what it is that Boston University has that
other institutions do not. I am sure that one must experience it
in order to understand it. I have no word for it. I call it the
Boston University spirit. But it is not the kind of a spirit that we
talk about on the campus, for we have no campus. Yet it is a very
real thing - that something which makes it possible not to hCSl-
tate to go into any other office just as easily as I used to go into
Jack's. ["Jack" was John Neal, the faithful custodian. of the Col-
lege of Liberal Arts building at 688 Boylston Street for nearly the
entire period of its location there. He died in April, 1945. R.E.B.]
It is that something that made you look for an excuse to go into
the registrar's every time you went into Jacob Sleeper Hall. It is
that feeling of friendliness you found in the gym, in the Men's
Room, on the sixth floor. Perhaps it was the fact that not being on
a campus we had just today to get to know the other fellow. There
was not another time, another day.
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We take up again the story of one of the Bertocci brothers.

Peter, now Professor of Philosophy at his Alma Mater.
Most of my friends went to Harvard, but I followed my brother-
hero to the College of Liberal Arts, with the secret hope that I
too might become a Buck Scholarl How my heart sank when my
friends were being offered scholarships of $400 to Harvard and I,
who had similar grades, discovered that Boston University had no
scholarships for the first semester and could offer me no more than
$100 a year. It looked as if hero-worship was not going to pay, for
all I could see was about $150 from summer earnings.
It was at this point that the Boston Rotary Club came to the
rescue. It had been loaning Angelo money. Thus, through my
brother, the door was opened for me.
It was the custom of the Rotary Club in those days to have a
new candidate interview the members of the Boys' Committee. I
will never forget the half-hour I spent in awe at the tasteful fur-
nishings of the office of Fred W. Rust. To my simple mind, such
furniture, ten times better than our "parlor" afforded, seemed
questionable in a place where one was supposed to be working!
Mr. Rust made me forget even the furnishings, for he was most
reassuring. It must be remembered that I thought of myself as an
ugly duckling whose voice, whose manners, whose appearance
seemed always more or less to jar with an environment of nice
things and nice people. About all I could ever be sure of was my
own sincerity and willingness to work. The short chat must have
impressed this kind man enough to make him say that he would see
me through himself, if the other members of the committee felt
reluctant about recommending me. He must have known that
most of the committee of which he was chairman were quite skep-
tical about helping boys from high school to enter college. - Let
them get in first and then when we can be sure of the color of the
horse we'll lend the moneyl- That's fine - especially if one is
to invest in a boy's life as if it were a horse'sl Fortunately the in-
terview with Odin C. Mackay of the Quincy Market Cold Storage
Company was in the spirit of that with Mr. Rust and the loan
was granted, to be paid without interest if paid on schedule de-
termined by the convenience of the debtor. During my college
days I was able to borrow $700 in this way.
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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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Here I decided to become a college teacher, and to do on the

campus, with young lives, what I felt had been done for me at the
College of Liberal Arts. The task of my senior year and my
graduate work there took definite shape.
He pays tribute to the various teachers under whom he

studied during a year and a half of graduate work at Harvard,
saving the best for Alfred North Wbitehc;ad "the range of
whose intellect and imagination were the highpoint" of that
experience. "But," he adds, "if philosophy was in 'the grand
style' and a kind of 'profession' at Harvard, it was a way of life
at Boston University." And so we find him returning to his
Alma Mater for more study and finally going to Cambridge,
where, he says:
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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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."
It was, I believe, in the second semester of my freshman year

that I became a beneficiary of the Fund, which thereafter made
possible my undergraduate and graduate work. For three and a half
yealS the Fund paid me for the pleasure of attending class, the
Library paid me for keeping an eye on the Library Study eighteen
houlS a week while I prepared my lessons, and a variety of outside
agencies at one time or another paid me for my labors away from
school. Notwithstanding these activities I joined a fraternity and
held offices in it. I sang in the Glee Club and the Choir (the latter
another minor but welcome source of income), and at one time
or another played in the Dramatic Club, wrote for the Beacon
and served on its staff, wrote for the Boston University News, edited
the Hub, was president of the Student Council and of the Senior
class, and was Boston University correspondent for the Christian
Science Monitor (more income).
The experience of English Literature and Bible with Ebenezer
Charlton Black has been of continuing delight. Still do I repeat
the passages of beauty which he encouraged us to memorize. Still
do l recall with envy of his rich sonorous voice the dignity and
beauty of his readings.
I had been told the old tale: that Black would give A's only to
seniOIS, and to a freshman no grade better than a D; and I was
then, I think, a freshman. The class, held in Jacob Sleeper Hall,
was large, perhaps 125 or more were enrolled. The grade was to
me of little concern. (Not until Ralph Taylor called me in as a
junior to express the Committee's concern about a C+ mid-term
mark did I become conscious of the importance of grades.)
We had taken a mid-term examination in the History of Eng-
lish Literature. Professor Black stood before the class in Jacob
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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.
Though present at both events, only by hearsay does one

learn of the beginning of one's life, and in the main we ap-
parently know but little more of its ending. The beginning is
usually a time of joy - the ending, one of sorrow. That we
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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.
A difficulty constantly met in this editorial work inheres in

the great difference in amount of material available about dif·
ferent men, even when obtained from the men themselves.
This inequality is very evident as we write of Joseph Sullivan
and Stephen Balfour Mfoafo. The home of the former was
in a suburb of Boston; that of the latter was five or six thou-
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sand miles away in Africa. Nevertheless, though both stories

are incomplete, that of Mfoafo is much fuller. The two main
sources of information about him are the Fund records and
Charles L. S. Easton. The records state that Mfoafo was born
in Lartch 'on the Gold Coast of West Africa on or about May
14, 1895. He ~me to America in 1914 to study to become
a medical missionary to his people. After five years spent at
Tuskegee and Wilberforce, he entered Boston University and
was appointed on the Fund in 1919. A year later he transferred
to the Medical School. But soon after that his health broke
down. In November, 1921, he entered Rutland State Sanato-
rium where he died September 5, 1922. In one of the papers in
the files of the committee, Mfoafo wrote that after graduating
from Medical School he intended to take "a year's work in
tropical medicine at London or Edinburgh. Thence I intend
to go home and help my people."
Charles L. S. Easton also entered the College in the fall of
1919. The two men became good friends and it is from Easton
that the following details of Mfoafo's life were obtained. The
young Gold Coast African was distressed to discover that the
story that he was an African prince was being circulated, and
he told Easton that while there were princes among his kin
he himself had no claim to the title. "At any rate," says Easton,
"Steve did not grow up as a primitive tribesman."
His people had lived under British colonial civilization for at

least a century; and I believe a considerable native civilization
existed before the coming of the British. Steve was born a Chris-
tian, the missionaries who converted his ancestors being Germans.
And the First World War brought about a situation puzzling to
native Christians. "At home, I always thought of America as just
like up there," said Steve, pointing heavenward. Here, at Tuske-
gee, he ate the bitter bread of the Southern Negro - a very dis-
illusioning experience. But he learned from it. He said, "There
was a group of people back home whom we always looked down
upon and treated much as whites treat Negroes in the South.'
When I go back I shall act differently." He was never to go back.'
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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.
A third man, Stanley Clifford Foote, Jr., died while an

undergraduate in the College of Liberal Arts.
Before putting down what little there is to say of him, let
this obvious fact be specifically stated - viz., that appointment
to the Fund, in any grade above that of Tuition Scholar, is a
very high honor and one that has been desired by many good
students who for one reason or another have failed of appoint-
ment. Scholastic weakness in anyone department is usually
enough to lead to a negative decision, and the appearance of
such deficiency after appointment makes reappointment
doubtful. It is unfortunate, though in accord with human
nature, that such failure of reappointment usually overshadows
in the mind of the man concerned the honor of appointment.
Having been a beneficiary of the Fund for two years early in
his college course, Clifford Foote was then discontinued. His
response to this action was instant and gratifying. He improved
his scholastic record to such an extent in a single semester that
at its end he was considered for reappointment. A minute of
committee action taken at that time reads as follows: "Mr.
Foote's scholastic record for the first semester of 1932·1933
was so high that the Committee suggested to him that he apply
for appointment as a Fellow for the college year 1933-1934.
Before action was taken, and on the same day that be was
"
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I A CHRONICLE ACHIEVEMENT
local chapter Kappa, Mr.
of his death recently been elected

president, holding that office for third time. A University
periodical spoke of him as "easily the outstanding undergradu-
ate at the College of Liberal Arts." The President of the Uni-
versity issued a statement closing with the words: "When a
boy like Clifford goes out into the unknown, it is easy to change
Job's into an affirmation, declare, 'if a man die,
he ,,, Other written by a ...unu...
classmates, by the Student '-JU'U"'!,.U.
College of Liberal Association.
the end of and the beginning
the next are parts of a story which serves as a good connecting
link between the two. But before turning to that, we must
fulfill an earlier promise and see what some of these men think
of their college and their former teachers.
We shall not go outside the list of the men who have already
this chapter include all of these. What
typical and, were could be
again from at quarters of the
A serious the haphazard O>!,.ll;;;!,.L"UU
that the names only limited number of
ers appear. Chance and chance alone has determined
While no accurate check has been made, I doubt if there is a
man who has been on the faculty for fifteen years, say, who
fails to come in for his meed of praise by at least one of the
Fund men. Moreover, the editor thinks that there are some
names here that might have been omitted and many missing
that included. Indeed the strength of
that has kept exercising his ptii'i-nri!ll
this matter - getting into a "",nnn"
he will anyway I
are a few tributes College and its
that have come unsolicited from the men of the Fund. a
rule, they seem to have been dropped into the stories almost
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illcidentally, and the ones given find a place here by chance,
not by choice.
It is difficult to localize the influences of the faculty on my life.

At the College of Liberal Arts as I knew it one met not only
personalities but a total spirit, an atmosphere of friendliness within
the function of teaching and of personal interest which knew no
obstacles in the attempt to be helpful to the needy student. In the
course of four years I came to develop my own ideal of what a
teacher should be by realizing, as a result of both casual and
extended acquaintances, that a teacher can exact labor and scholar-
wp without being ungracious or forgetting that development is
more important than achievement as such. These teachers remem-
bered that a student was more than a brief inhabitant of a seat in
their classes.
My introduction to the meaning of a liberal man was to be en-
couraged and find intellectual rootage in the teaching of Professor
Edgar S. Brightman, the man who became my ideal of the liberal
scholar and Christian gentleman.
The Fates were pretty good to guide me to Boston University.

At least as I look back at things twelve years later, I wouldn't have
had it very much different. By now I've seen the products of quite
a few schools and have come to the conclusion that the big, na-
tionally known education mills don't do nearly as well by the
student on the undergraduate level as do their smaller counter-
parts. I figure the foundation I received in Boston was just as good
as, and in some cases far superior to, the foundation received by
my friends of the chemical world. Actual contact with the profes-
sors is something I know many big schools don't offer their under-
graduates. And the reason I know that so well is because I myself
served a year as a buffer between student and professor during my
later graduate training.
The healthy intellectual environment at the College of Liberal

Arts was conducive to the formation of excellent relationships be-
tween students and teachers. There were no formidable barriers
between the two in or out of classrooms. Contributing much to
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the achievement of the sound academic situation was the influence

of Dean Warren.
The stimulating introductory courses in history under Nowak
represented a high point of my freshman year. For the most part,
it was the inspiring teaching that excited me. This leaming ex-
perience was in sharp contrast to anything I had previously met.
Coming this early in my College of Liberal Arts career, the rush of
facts and ideas presented in superb fashion had an accentuated
stimulating effect. There were other high points in this year: the
almost unbelievable assimilation expected of us in Washbum's
Survey of French Literature which brought with it a high sense of
accomplishment; and Cameron's stories that enlivened and in-
creased the appreciation of Cicero, Horace, and Livy.
My undergraduate years at the College of Liberal Arts were busy

years, but full of inspiration, of intellectual browsing, of good fel-
lowship, good talk, of exciting aspirations. I came at a good time.
College seemed to be accepted more as a present value than as a
coldly calculated means to getting established professionally.
Dallas Lore Sharp crackled and he seemed a celebrity because of
the renown of his published books.
Marshall Livingstone Perrin was a man I had tried to imagine
ever since my contact with his admiring former pupil, my high
school German teacher. I liked Perrin's earthiness - his demo-
cratic ways and his love of his fellows. He stimulated my imagina-
tion.
Dr. Fall's unique characteristics have left their indelible im-
pression. I recall one amusing occasion at a Men's Oub banquet
when Dr. Fall, who was hard of hearing, sat within the hollow
square formed by the tables and moved from speaker to speaker,
setting up a pile of glasses upon which his hearing-microphone was
precariously perched, to the great .distraction of every speaker but
Dean Warren, who calmly picked the gadget up, held it before
his lips, and said, "Dr. Fall, this is the first time I have ever been
privileged to broadcast."
Professor Wilm impressed me as being an aristocrat. His diction
was superb; his analysis of a chapter incisive; his sarcasm, disturbing.
His discussion of Trotter's Instincts of the Herd in Peace and
War and his commentaries on Emerson were magnificent.
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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.
Professor Morris' classes were always interesting and instructive

in re-orienting one's concepts about the development of man and
patterns of behavior. Professor Nowak is still remembered for his
sly smile and twinkle in his eyes as he made the panorama of history
become alive for his fascinated students.·
Dr. Mason's teaching was splendid, but my lasting regret was
that I should disappoint him by failing an examination a few
days before he, as the presenting officer, awarded me my key to
Phi Beta Kappa to which I had been elected.
[NOTE: No such good teacher as Dr. Philip Mason would
expect a student to pass an examination while laboring under such
an emotional strain as the man quoted was under that day. R.E.B.]
The first vivid recollection that I have of the College is the

course in orientation given by Dean Warren. I remember racing
about the city of Boston and its environs looking up all the places
that Dean Warren said it was necessary for all freshmen to know.
I stood in awe of the man at this time, and to tell the truth, I still
do. He seemed to embody the ideals of the College of Liberal
Arts of Boston University. both intellectual and moral. Another
memory I have of Dean Warren was formed in the second semester
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of my freshman year. I hadn't done very well in Latin and was

called in to see the Dean, as I had applied for a scholarship. He
told me that he still read Latin every morning and had gone
through the Confessions of Saint Augustine several times. Then
+.. ",n,.,,,. toward the window he "It's raining; say that
Latin all the everyday expressions.
UUIIlQ,;)<;;U by this and although I can't borlestly
Latin improved considerable degree,
the scholarly Dean left an indelible
memory.
Above all we had teachers. They were not necessarily the men
whose eminence was measured by the dazzling height of their
discoveries, nor even by the number or the variety of their aca-
demic degrees. But they loved to teach and had an enthusiasm for
their subject that was contagious, on these things
the point of view, and that there might
been a quirk or hatching
boy watching the unhampered by
or city Still I am sure the simple desire
look through a telescope was necessary to tum my whole life to
the study of the cosmos. I know all that would not have been suf-
ficient if it had not been for the very first lecture on astronomy I
heard from Professor Brigham.
I don't remember what he said. I have never tried even to guess
what the subject-matter was. But I can still feel the impetus of
his the clear, exposition as he
not the book nor the science
once we felt the U"JUAlI,'"
I fel t the cha

the own calling for I know Professor
ham was not giving us a recruiting talk or a revival meeting, yet I
was converted - I had signed up to be an astronomer.
It is not only Professor Brigham. He is but an example. I
found inspiration in every classroom. It was there I found the
teachers I hoped some day I could equal. Teachers that not only
knew the subject but also loved to teach. Teachers that would
than do anything that do not
teachIng, teaching is their soul.
Returning to the subject of the paucity of names in the
above list of tributes, let attention be called to the obvious
fact that no member of the Faculty will be disturbed by the
omission of his name - only those of his former students who
held him in high esteem and whose gracious tributes have been
ruled out by chance, not choice.
The last report in this chapter and the first in the next,
is from the story of Dr. Roland Hussey, Professor of Latin-
American History at the University of California at Los An-
geles. Himself a Fund man, he has been mentioned above
by another as his teacher. (Dr. Hussey reserves to himself
Uall copyright privileges" in his account, allowing use in this
volume only. The story was written in Washington, D. C., at
the end of a long leave from his teaching post, for government
service during the war.) Of his family he says:
Some were Huguenots; most were "Pilgrims," Puritans, or other
types of dissenters. Many of their descendants in America were
Quakers, although I do not recall that any came to America al-
ready members of the Society of Friends. One man cannot be
traced farther back than about 1760, when he tumed up in Milford,
Massachusetts. In the middle of the nineteenth century the family
accounted for him as a sailor who had jumped an English ship.
For the sake of romance, I hope the story is true.
In one woman I have always taken great pride, since I share her
dislike of petty laws. She was a tavem-keeper who was several
times brought before the authorities for charging double the legal
price for her ale. She regularly proved that she put in twice the
hops which the law called for, thereby "beating the rap." A
Plymouth ancestor was frequently in trouble for too vigorous
language, including one horrible occasion when he swore on Sun-
day and upon the very church stepsl Though nearly half of them
were Quakers, several were in colonial wars and at least two were
officers in the American Revolution.
In his predominantly New England ancestry, he numbers

Nantucket seafarers, West Indian merchants and a grandfather
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who was a Methodist and a cabinet-maker. Of the latter he

writes:
He was a strong prohibitionist and rigid teetotaler, but every
year he prepared his "choke-cherry tonic." This consisted of pick-
ing choke-cherries - the black, astringently sweet sort everybody
in New England is familiar with - and soaking them, about a
cupful to a quart, in good old New England rum. When they had
soaked long enough they formed a tonic of which he regularly
took a tablespoonful or two before each meal. I am sure the old
man was entirely self-deceived and never realized why the tonic
made him feel better.
Professor Hussey's mother and father were both forced by

circumstances to enter mercantile pursuits, she in a printing
office and he in a bank. The father was affected by deafness at
an early age, which forced him into other lines of work until
finally "he went west to Oregon to work in the lumbering
industries there. He always had work enough to support him-
self and to send a little money back to New England, although
he started in the year of the 1907 panic. He was never, how-
ever, able to get money enough ahead to move the family to
Oregon, as I know to have been the plan, and he rejoined us
in New England in 1911." .
Hussey himself spent his boyhood in towns of eastern Massa-
chusetts. In Melrose from age twelve he found such part-time
jobs as boys do. He writes:
At the first, I delivered newspapers twice a week, and did odd
jobs such as lawn-mowing and putting cane seats into chairs. The
latter was a craft which I learned from a man who was doing it
as a business and was kind enough to teach me in order to help out
my parents. For a summer I worked for the then famous Boston
architects, Peabody and Steams, with the intention of learning the
trade. (Some of my lettering can be seen on the Angell fountain,
in Post Office Square.) My family or the firm - probably the lat-
ter - changed my mind and I returned to school. Then for a
year I worked afternoons and Saturdays in a small machine shop. It
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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.
He lists various games, including soccer and cricket, also

baseball and various winter sports, as well as many indoor
games, though dancing was still taboo in his "good Methodist
family."
Of his school days, Professor Hussey says,
Perhaps I really had the glory of attendance at a Massachusetts
equivalent of the one-room '1ittle red schoolhouse," which is be-
coming today what birth in a log cabin used to be to presidential
aspirants. I attended no less than four other schools during the
nine years, and have always suspected that in the transfers I must
have missed formal study of some subjects. My last four years were
spent in Melrose High School. I finished up on the honor roll,
and in my senior year carried off the first prize in mathematics (a
book) in a traditional contest sponsored by a town club, which
attracted an almost unbelievable amount of competition both in
English and in mathematics. I remember taking part in debating
societies, which spent more time wrangling about the "rules of
order" than about any subject of debate.
But all this time he was growing up.

By my middle teens reading was one of the two or three major
interests of my life. Much of it, perhaps too much, was what is
now called escape literature, including quantities of "sword and
cloak" historical romances. However, I had also a basis for it in
the same tremendous curiosity that has driven me into so many
by-paths of knowledge in more recent years. Even in high school
I sometimes read the type of book that is habitually talked about
in all good literature discussions, but rarely read except under com-
pulsion. I continued this on a more formal basis after I graduated
and went to work. In my twenty minutes on the train morning
and night as a commuter, I deliberately began to read through a
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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.
Instead of entering college, he went to work for a large

shoe manufacturing company. Let him tell the story:
I worked for several months as a messenger, a cross between a

glorified office boy and a private mail carrier for their numerous
contacts around the city. I then moved into the pay system, which
had sixty employees and where by the spring of 1917 I had become
the chief clerk. At that time, although I was only nineteen, they
talked of sending me as an assistant department manager to one of
their small factories, but as I was trying to enlist we finally de-
cided that that would be foolish. Those two years with the shoe
business were a valuable part of my education. There seems to be
little in general that can be done about the fact that, typically and
in spite of many exceptions, men in the teaching profession have
never "earned an honest living by the sweat of their brow," or had
intimate contact with the problems and the people who carry on
the world's production. Whatever inherent ability I may have
brought to my lifelong studies of human development was, I am
sure, assisted to develop usefully by my work.
It was my hope to go to college, even when I took the job with
the shoe company, on graduating from high school. Whether, had
it not been for the war, I would in fact have made the break with a
job which had so much promise, especially in view of my constant
reluctance to change a familiar environment or face a new one, I
think very doubtful. The war compelled me to break with one
environment, gave me no temptation to continue the new one, and
it would have been almost, if not quite, as difficult an adjustment
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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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a little, but I never went into debt, and fortunately Boston

University was largely inhabited by people for whom money
did not grow on bushes or slip out of parents' pockets. I do
not see how a student as poor as most of us were could have
had a life as full in a place where the student body was better
off; in Boston University we were largely on the same low ec0-
nomic level and our life was adjusted to that fact. I didn't
study enough to hurt me, though I came out with a very high
scholarship record. Boston University published no compamtive
figures. I believe the common impression was that I stood at the
class's head. My own belief was that surely the late Dwight
Chapman and quite probably at least one other student had a
better record than mine, but since they were mther less promi-
nent in extra-curricular activities, their scholarship received less
attention.
I doubt that my studies received as much conscious attention
from me, either as to emphasis or as to the time spent upon them,
as did either earning a living or my exm-curricular activities. Never-
theless, I had a genuine interest in taking advantage of the oppor-
tunity to learn things. Aside from languages, I dipped very widely
into the pool of courses. I added so many exm hours that at the
start of my senior year I had to take thought as to the danger of
being compelled to gmduate after only three and a half years,
thereby "losing" my class's senior year and gmduation. I think I
totalled 136 hours at the end, although only 120 were required
for the degree.
At gmduation I was awarded a Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Fellowship, did gmduate work across the river at Harvard for the
academic years 1923-1925, and then went to Spain to finish. Except
for classes, Harvard made little difference in my life. My fmtemity
was then located on Boston University's campus, and I continued
to live there. Normally I walked to the Yard and back again, for
financial reasons and as my only usual exercise. Gmduate students
at Harvard had little social life at best, and natumlly I retained my
Boston University friends.
Harvard was useful to me chiefly for the contact with one of the
great libraries of the world, and for the fact that the higher avemge
level of gmduate study compelled me to buckle down to more
thorou,h and sound work than had normally been necessary be-
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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.
His own country and Europe have by no means limited Dr.

Hussey's travels, as is clear from the following: "In 1938 I
visited all the independent countries and many of the islands
which are in or border upon the Caribbean Sea. This spring,
1947, I took an official trip. which however included 'travel-
for-pleasure' aspects to most of the countries of South America
and once more to a number of those of the Caribbean. I have
now been at least briefly in every country except Paraguay, and
have seen a number of them at least twice."
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CHAPTER VI
"And Gladly Teach"
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.
Teaching is to me an act of devotion even more than it is a

means of livelihood, to such an extent that I can hardly see the
need of discussion. Whether in trying to give undergraduates a
little glimmering of the way that Man's culture has developed,
with its faults to be corrected or its victories to be emulated in the
future, or in training graduate students to be scholars able to carry
on the search for truth after I am gone, I have never seriously
wavered in my belief that I chose the right career. I believe, not
necessarily that the truth shall make men free, but that if the
truth does not, nothing can.
My vacations can hardly be said to exist, except in the sense
that when I have time off from formal work I use it mostly to pur-
sue more studies and to have a little more time for hobbies. Travel,
although emphatically I enjoy it for its own sake, is also almost en-
tirely a matter of going from one place to another primarily to
study. That of course is not true of trips which I make with the
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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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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.
Dr. Hussey's list of publications, like that of many of the

men, is of good length. That it bids fair to grow longer is
clear. For now that his war service with the State Department
is over he plans, as he says, "to take up once more the work
which I have long been doing upon 'The Caribbean as a Center
of International Conflict.' "
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, while still doing my graduate
work at Harvard and preparing my thesis, I chose the above sub-
ject for my next work, and began to read and collect data upon it.
I have been reading and collecting ever since, in libraries and
archives allover the world. I originally planned to cover the period
from 1492 until 1917 in two volumes, which would be based strictly
upon investigation of the original sources. My youthful innocence
and optimism amaze me now. I have continued my insistence upon
basing my work on original sources, but have tempered it by a
willingness to use good secondary works' upon background. I now
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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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parents, I can only be thankful that it was my privilege to have

been born and reared in such a family.
He writes that, after returning from France, he "taught for

one year at Wilbraham Academy."
It was a strenuous schedule, six full hours of classes daily, three

of Latin, three of French. In the spring of 1922, I accepted a
position at the Loomis School in Windsor, Connecticut, where I
remained until I was drafted into the Armed Forces in September,
1942. I taught French entirely until 1931 when I had a year's leave
of absence to study in Berlin. Upon my return I was made head of
the Modem Language Department. Increasing demand for Ger-
man made it necessary for me to relinquish one French course after
another until all of my teaching time was devoted to German. In a
boys' preparatory school, however, teaching is but a small fraction
of one's duties. There were the French and German Clubs, the
Glee Club which I helped train and which I accompanied, Bible
classes, reforestation projects, correspondence to be carried on
with the parents of my advisees, and many other duties.
Summers were given up to tutoring, music and study - with the
exception of the summer of 1926 which I spent in travel through
France and England - until 1932 when, in collaboration with my
brother, I opened a summer camp-school in Rangeley, Maine.
The quiet, rather cloistered existence was rudely interrupted by
the call to duty in the Army.
A brief account of his experiences in the Army is given in
Chapter IX.
EDWIN CoLBY BYAM
A.B., 1920; A.M., Harvard, 1921; Ph.D., Johns Hopkins, 1936.
Dr. Byam, as he himself tells, was the first man appointed

a beneficiary of the Fund. His forebears were "hard-working
farmers." He was born in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, in a
home that was "genuinely Christian" as is clear from the
following:
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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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Byam joined a fraternity, in part at least because of a con-

scious need of such social development as had been denied
him earlier through the "necessity of working during every
spare moment."
The broadening and the social training which resulted from
three years of living in the fraternity house were immeasurably
valuable. Human relationships, I saw, were as important factors
as books, if not more so, in the development of a well rounded
existence and in laying the foundations for happiness. A much
desired change in my outlook was thus one of the early fruits of
the scholarship award.
Tributes to teachers in the College of Liberal Arts were in-

cluded in the previous chapter. However, as Professor Byam's
tribute contains the name of no one in active service (and as
I myself sat as student under five of theml ), I have £allen easy
prey to the temptation to include it here. He says:
The recollection of such men as Professors Geddes, Perrin,
Black, Sharp, Taylor, Coit, Cameron, and Rice inclines me toward
nostalgia and nostalgic reminiscences. Gratitude toward these pm-
fessors for their part in sharpening my sensibilities, creating a
greater degree of human understanding and tolerance, whetting
the appetite for learning, and intensifying the search for wisdom
has led me throughout the many years of my teaching to imitate
their unselfish devotion to the cause of beauty and truth.
His story continues:

Mter graduation from college in June, 1920, I was enabled by
the renewal of the scholarship to continue my studies. During
1920-1921 I earned the Master's degree at Harvard University.
At the sam~ time I did my first college teaching, having been en-
trusted with an intermediate French course at the College of
Secretarial Science of Boston University. In July, 1921, I sailed for
France to work at the Sorbonne and at the Bibliotheque Nationale.
The mere enumeration of the values of this experience in Paris
would require several pages. Let me simply suggest the intellectual
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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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source of much peISonal satisfaction and it amply compensates

for endeavors in their behalf. Other .forms of compensation have
been the award by the French Republic in 1934 of the decomtion
of Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur. It pleases me to believe
that by devoting to this cause time usually given to scholarly re-
search and publication I have perhaps made a contribution, if not
to the world's sum of knowledge, at least to the enrichment of
human lives and to the betterment of international understanding.
While engaged in this task and in teaching at the University of
Delaware I continued work for the Doctorate. In 1926-1927, though
canying a full teaching load, I followed weekly courses at The
Johns Hopkins University. The summer of 1925 I had studied in
Spain; that of 1927 was devoted to Italian at the University of
Chicago. Other vacations were spent in research either in Paris
or at the Widener Libmry at Harvard. Finally, I presented the
thesis to Dr. Henry Carrington Lancaster, of The Johns Hop-
kins University, who accepted it with flatteringly few suggestions
for modifications, and in June, 1936, I was awarded the PhD.
degree.
My subsequent career (tIave1s and studies in Europe, visits to
Quebec, a sabbatical year in Mexico, et cetem) can be of little, if
any, interest at this time. I should like to mention rather im-
modestly a certain honor which fell to my lot after I had failed
during the recent war to gain admission to the Navy and Army
and Red Cross: the Army established in France in :August, 1945, a
University known as the Biarritz American University and designed
for American soldiers awaiting repatriation. The faculty was
chosen by leading civilian specialists from all over the nation (as
well as subsequently from the Army) and I was the only civilian
teacher of French to be selected by the head of the Modem
Language Deparbnent for service during the first term at Biarritz,
a most flattering distinction. To relate our adventures from July,
1945, when our group of about 150 professors, all in officers' uni-
forms, sailed from New York on the Queen Elizabeth, until the
following January, when those of us who had to return for second
semester duties at our home institutions were released, would re-
quire a book (and that book will unquestionably be written and
by a more competent hand). May I merely say that in the opinion
of all th~ professors who had the privilege of teaching those eager
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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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scholanhip as high as in the good old days. At Andover we do not

play when we work. Our 700 boys live atop a lovely green hill
on a campus as beautiful as any college campus I have ever seen.
I teach Latin. Being filled with the absolutely crazy idea that Latin
is a language. and not a vehicle for teaching practical and applied
grammar, I have from time to time endeavored to use Latin as a
language. and to teach my pupils so to use it. I have not ceased to
try my hand at Latin verse. a practice started at the College of
Liberal Arts. I write some in classical meten, some in medieval.
Most of it has been published. I have also pursued the same hobby
in Latin prose, the delightful hobby of trying to say anything (from
cocktails to airplanes) in the Latin language. Perhaps I am all
wrong. but I have the idea that Latin would be a far more live sub-
ject in our schools and colleges if its official purveyon would only
hand it out labelled "For use in 1947." I might add that I con-
ceived this crazy idea (that Latin can be used) from a card I
received in 1921 from dear Alexander H. Rice, which started
''Pergratum mihi donum tuum . . ." If one could be thanked for
a pound of Beacon Hill tobacco in Latin. why the old language
could be used to say anythingl I know that I am going against the
current of modern education; I am aware that I should have taken
up a more modem subject; I have been told countless times that
it is futile to attempt to resuscitate a corpse as dead as Latin, but I
am having lots and lots of fun making a hobby of my own
specialty. I have published two fascicles of an anthology of mod-
em Latin, Latini Hoc1iemi, prose and poetry by modern Latin
authon.
Besides my teaching here at Andover I have for four years been
director and announcer of the Andover Round Table, a weekly
half-hour over WLAW featuring student discussion groups on a
variety of timely topics.
As for hobbies, I suppose I have the usual ones, stamps. some
antique furniture, books, fly fishing. In the latter I must admit
that I am not very successful. However, there is nothing more
restful after a long year of teaching and living in a dormitory with
eighteen boys than to wander up a Vermont brook and to drop a
fly on every pool, no matter if the fish are not rising. Such a trip is
really pedect when I have my young son for company. One of our
fondest ambitions is to own a small summer place near a good
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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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RooER PATTllELL BlUSToL

A.B., 1923; A.M., 1926.
Bristol writes:
I am the product of a rural background. My parents owned a
forty-acre fann in Ascutney, Vennont, on the bank of the Con-
necticut River. Though the bottom land was rich, the farm as a
whole was poorly distributed and far from prosperous.
My father, a Connecticut boy, attended the School of Mechanic
Arts (ancestor of New Hampshire University) when it was located
at Hanover, New Hampshire, as an adjunct of Dartmouth. His
lifelong enthusiasm was for things mechanical - not for agriculture.
His mother, a woman of powerful will, after rearing a family of
six, went West and took up a barren claim in Colorado by herself.
Before her death she had acquired several pieces of property, the
only one of my immediate forebears to have any luck with real
estate. My own mother met my father while he was at college.
Her family had been fanners as far back as records ran.
AU my elementary schooling was gained in a one-room school in
Ascutney. For that reason I was permitted to jump grades with
impunity. I was ready to graduate at ten, but because of my tender
years I was held back to repeat the eighth grade; I am sure that
was wise. Even a year later I was lost in the shufBe in beginning
high school in almost entirely new surroundings in Claremont,
New Hampshire. I never did recover myself socially, but was suc-
cessful bookishly. I was valedictorian of my class shortly before
my sixteenth birthday, and amazed my English teacher by going
through the address and ceremony without an apparent qualm.
The thing that sticks in my memory most about my secondary
schooling is my discovery of a passion for Latin, especially Julius
Caesar. I soon found myself reading ahead of the class, finished
the year's work before midyear, obtained the remaining books from
my teacher, and translated the entire work; incidentally, I found
the part never read in school to be the most interesting.
Through the good offices of a friend of a friend I learned of
Boston University and of the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Edu-
cational Fund. Without the hope of obtaining financial aid from
the latter I should not have come to Boston, and without the aid I
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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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Academy at West Point, he taught for four years. This latter

fact rightly gives him a place in this chapter, but he is now
Colonel E. W. Carr and hence some of his story, which ap-
parently was written in Japan, may well be reserved for a later
chapter.
After writing that he entered Boston University at the age
of fifteen, he continues:
With the assistance of the Fund, I attended the College of

Liberal Arts for four years, graduating as A.B. in 1923. It seems
to me as I look back upon those years, after the lapse of a quarter
of a century. that the greatest contribution of the College was
the sympathetic instruction of a fine faculty of scholars.
The guidance and advice of the Committee on the Fund was
most helpful and the financial aid is too important to be lightly
dismissed. In 1923. upon graduation from Boston University, I
was granted aid which enabled me to attend the University of
Califomia at Berkeley. where I received the degree of Master of
Arts in mathematics. The trip out by train was made by the mid-
continent route - Baltimore, Washington. St. Louis. Kansas City,
Denver. a side-trip through the mountains of Colorado to Mesa
Verde National Park, Salt Lake. Berkeley. This was a most en-
lightening year. and an enjoyable one. For some time I debated
staying in California, but the pull of home ties brought me back
East in 1924.
CLARK WESLEY CELL
A.B., 1923; A.M., Harvard, 1926.
Near the beginning of the year 1946 an old, old and popular
periodical published an article about a certain Junior High
School. That article was condensed for the busy reader in
another popular magazine, not so old. And so the Skokie
Junior High School of Winnetka, Illinois, long known to
educators for its progressive program, was introduced to the
American public in general.
A few pages back a Fund man, justly proud of the old, con-
servative, well known school where he teaches, told us, follow-
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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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life, only to conclude, not that there were no other interests,

but rather that his part in developing the Skokie School idea
was distinctly the subject in terms of which his life was to be
judged. His written report, sent to me later, definitely sup-
ported this conclusion. It gives the life of Clark Cell only as
he is a part of the life of Skokie School.
The subject of this chapter is teachers, and here we have a
marked career in teaching. With plenty of ability to "spread
a sounding name abroad," the subject of this sketch has volun-
tarily sunk himself out of sight in order the better to prepare
his pupils for life. No other Fund man marches ahead of him
in this. Yet in the account I have of this teacher's career, the
school and its pupils 100m so large that to quote from it to any
great extent is to wander too far afield. This section is not
an essay on Skokie School. Here, then, are the few shiny
Clark Cell needles I have been able to find in the Skokie
haystack, given in his own words:
I have been especially active in working out plans which c0-

ordinate our reading and study in the classroom, our school as-
semblies, our movies, and the activities of the students.
In 1939 I was elected chairman of our social studies group. This
group usually includes about half of the twenty-four teaching mem-
bers of our school faculty, and a number of others work with the
group. One of the first things which was undertaken when I took
office was the closer integration of our visual educational program
with the use of other instructional materials. In developing tech-
niques for this sort of teaching we first sought clues from the
students.
Four years ago I set out on a special program to work with
parents. Evenings have been set aside for conferences, making it
possible for fathers to participate. Last year in a class of twenty-
eight, I met twenty-eight mothers and all but two fathers.
A noticeable characteristic of these paragraphs, taken here

and there from Mr. Cell's paper, is that though each one
begins with the man we are soon shifted to his pupils or their
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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.
One of the economic problems of modem society is to secure

an attitude of social responsibility-trusteeship on the part of those
who own and control our economic institutions. The more inter-
dependent we become, the more acute this problem becomes.
One day there was a meeting of the shareholders of the Livestock
Corporation of the School. They had some profits to dispose of.
"It's our company. Why shouldn't we have the money?" says
one member. "But the School gives us a place to operate and
makes it possible for us to carry on our business. We ought to pay
some of this money to the School."
Here you see is a situation where the teacher can begin to de-
velop constructive attitudes. Through the discussion which fol-
lowed there was progress because it dealt with a real situation where
a decision must be made.
Our faculty believes that competence is best shown not by out-
doing others - sheer excellence of performance - but by con-
tributing to the success and welfare of the people one lives and
worb with. Our greatest recognition at graduation time is given
to the students who have contributed most in this way. We give
no grades.
In a letter accompanying his paper Mr. Cell writes:
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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Thus one may conclude that were it not "difficult" Skokie

School would not be Skokie School. Finally and again, this is
a book of men. Institutions and movements, however good
and important, are of but secondary consideration here.
DwIGHT INGERSOLL CHAPMAN

A.B., 1923; AM., Harvard, 1924; Ph.D., Harvard, 1932
Dwight Chapman's father and mother were classmates at
the College of Liberal Arts. At the time of their graduation
there was a call by the Federal Government for teachers for
the Philippine Islands, and Walter Chapman was among the
volunteers. Later, Miss Dodge also went to the Philippines,
and there the two were married. Within a couple of years she
was back home in America for an important event, which
occurred on May 12, 1903. Less than a year after, with the
subject of this sketch in her arms, she went back to the Philip-
pines where the family remained for a year and a half longer
before coming home for good.
Mothers are proverbially enthusiastic proponents of their
children. However, I am able to check so many of the state-
ments here given that I do not hesitate to include the few I
can't. Mrs. Walter Chapman says of her son:
Dwight loved everything in nature: stars, trees, birds, animals.
He grew up with all sorts of pets around him and his great am-
bition was to own a farm some day. He was a most dependable boy,
whatever he promised to do, he did; whatever he did, he did well.
He was absolutely trustworthy. He was fond of reading and usu-
ally had a book by the bed to read if he awoke before others
were up.
I always felt he lost a little social life in his high school days as
he was about two years younger than his schoolmates, due to the
practice then of skipping grades (which he did). But when he
reached college this seemed to adjust itself as he held many offices.
Dwight was the happiest sort of boy. I have always thought
you could say of him, "He loved life." Everything seemed to in-
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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.
Though his ambition to write the Romain Rolland biog-

raphy was never to be realized, Dwight was able during his
short busy life to publish four French texts in collaboration
with others.
Later in this chapter the tragic life story of John Alexander
Preti will be told. He and Dwight Chapman and a third man
were close. friends in college and thereafter for many years -
'til Death intervened. The third member is Professor Joseph
Brown, now of the University of Connecticut, and to this only
living member of the group of three we are indebted for in-
cidents in the life Dwight, or "Chap," "Alex," and "Joe"
shared together. Of an incident of undergraduate days, he
writes:
We were closely associated in French dramatics and I believe

that we must have established an all-time record in our presentation
of Ie Voyage de M. Perrichon. Teachers brought their pupils
from a great distance - even from way down on the Cape. At the
afternoon performance, Jacob Sleeper Hall was packed both up
and downstairs and many had to be content with standing room;
and again at the evening performance we had a full house. Dwight
played the lead role of Perrichon and was a huge success. A week
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or ten days later we gave a repeat performance in one of the large

city high schools. The setting of the play was Switzerland and
Dwight was wearing heavy Alpine boots. The footlights were
portable ones just resting on the stage. He slipped and accidentally
kicked the footlights partially off the stage. By pushing them the
rest of the way he turned the slip into a hilarious bit of clowning
that brought down the house.
After graduation from Boston University the three of us spent a
year at Harvard where we got our A.M.'s. This was a year of vel}'
serious study and there is perhaps less to relate, but the same sterling
character traits manifested themselves and the same loyalty and
friendship. Chap lived at home in Somerville but Alex: lived in
Cambridge close to the college and we studied together much of
the time. He would regularly "walk" me home - way down to
Porter Station where I took the last train to Weston. We refreshed
our astronomy on the way, recalling what we had studied on our
Esplanade walks the year before. Then Alex would take a brisk
walk back to his room.
After our year at Harvard we went to France in 1925. Here we
separated because I had a French Government scholarship to the
Universite de Lyon and Alex and Chap went to Grenoble, but we
kept in constant touch with one another and we spent the Christ-
mas and Easter holidays together mountain-climbing and taking
trips. I stayed at their pension in Grenoble and we had a grand
time. It was the days of "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More, No More"
and "Yes, We Have No Bananas" and they had translated them
into French and everybody at the pension joined in the singing
and had a riotous time. Before coming home, Alex went to Italy
where he visited the ancestral country. Chap went to Spain where
the food, cooked in olive oil, didn't agree with him and he was
quite sick - a poor start for his ocean trip.
There is one more thing I should like to tell you before closing
- a late memory of Chap, during his happy married life after he
had bought his home in Belmont. I had no car and the trip to
school was such a roundabout route by trolley or train that it
would have taken me hours to cover what was a half hour's trip
by car. Dwight and his wife insisted that I use. their "Chevy"
until I found the car I wanted to buy and for two weeks I used
the car while they used the bus and trolley carl
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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.
The friendly informal tone of Chapman's letters from Gre-

noble to the Fund Committee was characteristic of the man.
Onee, half apologetically, he wrote a mild complaint about our
slowness in fixing a stipend - not his, but John Preti's. In-
deed in one of his letters written while arrangements were still
incomplete for their going, he says: "If necessary, I should
be willing to cut my estimates to enable Mr. Preti to go."
Through overwork Chapman was forty pounds underweight at
this time, but the physician who examined him gave judgment
as follows:
It is my opinion that he is not only able, but nothing would be
apt to benefit him more than this proposed trip abroad. I have
advised him, however, not to attempt anything in the way of study
that will require any great application.
Dwight followed instructions and the outcome of the year in

Franee approved the judgment of both the committee and the
physician.
His letters from Grenoble tell much of the interesting life
he and Preti led there. In the one of November 11, 1924, he
writes:
The university here is the most handsome we have ever seen
and is, I think, even more pleasantly situated than the Sorbonne.
The faculty and examinations are considered the most difficult of
the provincial universities. If you ever have a student who in his
ignmance wants to attend the University of Poitiers, steer him
clear. If he insists, refuse him money. I don't know much about
faculty there, but I smelled and saw the street it was on and the
whole town around it. We decamped the first thing in the morn-
ing. The University of Toulouse is not quite so badly off, but it
is aD a side street, with an aromatic horse stable across the narrow
way. We are delighted to be here at Grenoble.
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1~ A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
We stayed a week in Paris; visited many of its "points of in-

terest"; our only visit to the Monbnartre, however, was a car ride
through it while on the way to the Bastille. We also made a short
trip out to Versailles. We actually found passable meals at the rate
of 3 fro 75. Our average daily rate at Paris was about 36 francs a day.
including tips. Tips is our middle name, now, and they say it is
worse in Spain and Italyl
We visited Orleans, Tours, Poitiers, Angouleme, Bergerac, Mon-
tauban, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Narbonne, Nemes, Tarascon, Mar-
seille, and took the mountain trip from Marseille to Grenoble
direct. The whole distance we covered in third class. The language
spoken by two-thirds of the people we met might just as wen have
been Turkish (perhaps it was) for all we could understand. Here.
however, we get along very well- unless we start an intricate story;
or they endeavor to "show speed."
I will let Mr. Preti give you information as to his work at school.
So far, in accordance with your wishes, I have done no studying,
except of manners. And no great brain fatigue results from drawing
a conclusion, when, on a walk, nine out of ten Frenchmen head
directly for you and either you budge or there is a collision. No true
Frenchman ever sidesteps to avoid hitting you. With him it is a
point of pride. A foreigner may be easily and quickly spotted by this
simple method. Nor, when after fifteen minutes of dog serenade
by a Belgian police dog quartet I make a mental note ''Too many
dogs in Francc," does my brain feel results of .labor. So far, such
is the only studying I have done.
Yesterday I saw a doctor, who was recommended to me by my
landlady. I enclose his certificate. Perhaps you feel that I went
too soon, but I have gained in weight and feel very well. Today
Mr. Preti and I took an eight-mile walk and I feel no ill effects,
even of fatigue. I'll admit that I did eat a little extra dinner,
though. My daily average is well around seven to eight miles; it
has reached as high as fourteen and a half. So you see I am getting
on. However, I await instructions from you before beginning to
study, as my promise to you holds until February, I believe.
The title of our book - everybody writes one, you know - will
be "Fleaing through France"; or possibly "French Fleas I Have
Met." We got them in our Paris hotel, and it took us three weeks
to get rid of them, spite of baths and laundries galore.
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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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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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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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language fluently and discriminately both in speech and in writing.

a man of deep piety, - and what is rarely yoked with piety - a
man of great intellectual honesty and an eager inquiring mind.
He knew his Bible thoroughly; otherwise, his background was
very limited. He had a nervous breakdown when I was fourteen.
For the rest of his life he was subject to recurrent spells of deep
depression. Yet he had naturally a sunny disposition, was a great
joker, and had a lively sense of humor. A man of deep human sym-
pathies, he was always sought by those in trouble or grief.
Mother was a competent executive and an exceptional manager.
My father's skill at budgeting, plus my mother's extraordinary
ability to utilize everything in the way of food, clothing, furniture,
et cetera, resulted in my never being aware that we always had a
very sman income. I always thought of ourselves as well off com-
pared with many that I knew. Also, I had the feeling of noblesse
oblige, because both sides of my family were always leaders in the
circles in which I moved.
There have been tragic elements in Easton's life some of

which he is now attempting to evaluate. This however need
not obscure the fact that he has spent many years as a success-
ful teacher. Before looking at that record let us see what he
says of his present situation.
I have an opportunity vouchsafed to few at the age of forty-four:

I can begin my life over again. It is essential that I should, be-
cause my life has never been a real satisfaction to myself despite
the many individual and separate satisfactions in it. I have inner
resources now which I never had before - or else I am able to
integrate and utilize what was already there. My material needs
and demands are very few. In fact, I find great possessions a bur-
den, and welcome a return to simplicity. So I am free to .start over.
And when I start over again, I am not going to fall into something
as I did back in 1924, but will choose my course. Only one predic-
tion can be safely made: It won't be in a big cityl
As for teaching he has already hinted that he "fell" into it,
a fact which he now states explicitly. "And so," he says, uI
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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,
On the surface, this looks like a successful career. Every change

represents an advance in salary and in responsibility. I was always
well liked by my pupils. I enjoyed teaching, except its routine
aspects. It is always reported that I stimulated intellectual curios-
ity on the part of my pupils and vivified the subject matter.
I was a College Board reader for two years (English). I served
on a national committee for the Progressive Education Association.
My ideas about education grew and developed. But I never really
liked school work. Too much of it didn't make sense to my mind.
As an executive, I had good relations with teachers and with
parents. But I had to learn to be an administrator and a strict
disciplinarian - particularly of the faculty. It came hard. I disliked
the financial and business details of school administration and
these, of course, took up more and more of my time.
I was active in civic work, especially in Cincinnati. I was for
three years chairman of the Adult Education Council, a board
of forty-five drawn from the universities, the public school system,
the businesses, labor unions, and social agencies, of Cincinnati.
We were a coordinating agency and employed a paid executive
secretary. I was on the boards of various civic organizations, active
in community affairs, in demand as a speaker on education and
other subjects. I am not sorry that this is over. Some day, perhaps,
111 do it again.
ROLAND DENNIS HUSSEY

S.B., 1923; A.M., Harvard, 1928; Ph.D., Harvard, 1930
His career as teacher has already claimed attention early in

this chapter.
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JOHN ELLSWOllm MEnU,I.

A.B., 1923; M.S., Case School, 1927; AM., Princeton, 1929;
Ph.D., Princeton, 1931
This man of many earned degrees writes:

I was born in the same big square farmhouse in which my
father was born; the piano I drummed on in the "sitting-room"
my grandmother had bought at twenty years of age with the money
she had earned teaching the village school the previous years.
His early schooling was in Dorchester, Massachusetts, fol-

lowed after the fifth grade by the schools of Parsonsfield,
Maine. In the latter town was that ''big square farmhouse"
mentioned earlier. Of his schooling there he writes,
There wasn't anybody but me for sixth grade, so I was put into
seventh. And how I had to scramble to catch upl I didn't know
a noun from a verb, and those other kids were diagmmming sen-
tencesl
At Parsonsfield Seminary I followed the college course since I
expected to teach. I am sure our teachers there were not high-
paid, but I am sure also that several of them must have had real
love both for knowledge and for teaching. I was graduated more
certain that I was going to teach, too.
I worked for a year between high school and college, first in my
brother's automobile repair shop and then, when he went into the
Army, in the Dorchester Post Office. I saved up some money, not
very much, but as September, 1919, came nearer I realized that it
was likely to be then or never for me as far as college was con-
cerned. My folks agreed with me on that, and I became a fresh-
man at Boston University.
He was not the first member of the Merrill family to be
connected with that institution, for he continues:
My father was, during most of his life, a carpenter. Indeed, I
remember his saying often as he left home in the morning, "I'll be
at '688' today, or '525', or 'Beacon Street'''; in his capacity of repair-
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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."
Anyone interested in identifying the "giants" will find them

all in this chapter. The first three have already appeared and
"AI" and "Newell" are soon to come. Continuing, Dr. Merrill
writes:
When I entered Boston University, I was thinking rather vaguely

of teaching Latin. Livy cured me of that. It seemed logical then
to major in Greek. I minored in math - it just seemed natural
to do so. Two courses I avoided - physics and astronomy. I
didn't like the looks of the physics lab and as for astronomy . . .
Dwight tried hard to get me to take it with him, but I just couldn't
see enrolling for a course that would require some evening time.
So I now spend my life teaching undergraduate astronomy, com-
plete with required evening laboratoryl Some of my colleagues at
Hunter feel that our girls must know just what they are going to do
by the middle of their sophomore year or even earlier; I can't and
don't agree.
So things went along through my sophomore, junior, and senior
years: science, language, math, Phi Beta day, graduation.
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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and it is with some account of an important item plus a few

ideas on science teaching that his story closes. He writes,
For a number of years I have been engaged in computing a d~

finitive set of tables for use in determination of orbits of eclipsing
binaries. The project has grown to proportions far beyond my in-
tentions in 1933 when I started. These past two years the strain
of carrying both research and teaching in proper and necessary
quantity and quality has clearly been too great, on me and on my
family, so I am taking a year off from Hunter to clear up the bulk
of the work remaining on the tables, mainly exhaustive writ~up
of new methods and of illustrative examples. I shall be in Prince-
ton during the week and at home week ends but I shall actually
see much more of my family than I have been able to recently be-
cause of commuting and demands on my time in New York. So
my first plan for the future is to get the "Princeton tables and
monographs" into print.
Then I want to tum again to teaching astronomy. Of course
I shall carry a little research along with it, but I want to teachl
I believe that we in the sciences have a special and an increas-
ing obligation in college education, to provide for the many non-
scienc~majors substantial and interest-worthy courses in basic
science. We must do a more thorough and more rewarding job
of it than we have done. What I hope to do at Hunter or else-
where, is to design and install working exhibits coupling closely
with the introductory astronomy courses. There I have already, I
think, been fairly successful with slide and spoken word in building
in at least some of my students more awareness of the external
world and more understanding of the methods by which we con-
tinue to extend our knowledge of it.
Of the work at Princeton, Dr. Merrill writes in a recent letter:
"We have decided to make the Research Associateship of Prince-
ton University Observatory a permanent formal position."
STEPHEN BALFOUR MFOAFO
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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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:
On the recommendation of two members of the faculty of the

University of Grenoble, I was made "lecteur d'Anglais" (instruc-
tor in English) at the Externat Notre-Dame, a high-grade private
school which grants the Bachelor's degree. I teach one class once
a week. As I must know the French word or French idiom
for every English word or idiom that is spoken or read in the
class, I consider this an excellent method for acquiring that
fluency in speaking French which is one of the objects in my
coming to France. This teaching also gives me invaluable ex-
perience. Finally I am paid fifteen francs for the hour I teach-
about eighty cents - which is considered a high rate, in France.
This weekly sum is helping to make possible my trips.
When he and Chapman returned to America after their

year of study and travel, Preti began what promised to be a
useful career of teaching only to have his life's work cut short
after a little over two years by a serious nervous disorder. Let
him tell the story as contained in a letter to me as chainnan
of the Fund Committee which he dictated to his sister five
years later, on February 15, 1933.
The nervous breakdown has taken on this peculiar form: my

hands and feet shake almost constantly. This constant shaking
renders me as helpless as an infant. I am very lucky to have a
mother to care for me. I can't even read a book, my shaking hands
refusing to hold the book steady and turn over the pages when it
is necessary to do so and, of course, I wasn't able to read your letter
when it came Saturday morning. Of course, too, I can't write
letters and so I am having this one written by my sister Anita
while I dictate.
I managed to teach two full years before getting sick, one year
at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, and one
year at Dartmouth College in Hanover. The year I spent at the
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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.
W A1TSTILL HAsTINGS SHARP

A.B., 1923; LL.B., Harvard, 1926; A.M., Harvard, 1931
Because this dictionary chapter would be incomplete and
lacking an important item if it were left out, there appears
here the name of the Reverend Waitstill Sharp. He has already
appeared in the Backgrounds chapter and he is to appear again
in later ones where his work as a general officer of his church,
as a pastor, and as a relief worker across the sea is to be given
space.
NEWELL SNOW BOOTH
AB., 1924; S.T.B., 1927; S.T.M., 1930;
Ph.D., Kennedy School, 1936
For Bishop Newell S. Booth we might repeat word for word
what we have said above of Waitstill Sharp by substituting
for "relief worker" a word which includes that and more, viz.,
"missionary."
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EDMUND CLAlUC FlTZGEIlALD

S.B., 1924; AM., Princeton, 1925
The major part of Edmund Fitzgerald's life story follows, as
he tells it, from early childhood to the beginning of World
War II.
My family moved to Needham, Massachusetts, when I was two
years old and my remaining youth was spent there in typical small-
town surroundings. Pleasures and pastimes were simple since
money was scarce - at times along the Huckleberry Finn vein. I can
well remember the large raft a friend and I made from railroad
ties and old lUJIlber for voyages of exploration on the Charles
River which ran close by our home. I also "hunted" with air-
rifles, worked occasionally on farms for the huge fee of ten cents
an hour, played the usual games of small-town boys and succeeded
in having a generally normal boyhood. Our mechanical abilities
were put to work assembling our own bicycles from parts secured
here and there. We usually had lots of repairing to do as a result.
I attended elementary and high school at Needham, being
graduated in June, 1920. I played first-string football for the last
three years and was considered by Boston sports writers to be an
outstanding prospect among Greater Boston athletes for college
football.
I led my class in scholastic standing and therefore automatically
became valedictorian at graduation exercises. On a background of
high school academic performance I was awarded partial scholar-
ships at Tufts and Dartmouth. I decided, however, on a career of
chemistry and physics with whose lengthy laboratory periods foot-
ball practice requirements are incompatible. Consequently, I gave
up the idea of college sports and chose Boston University College
of Liberal Arts as providing the courses and being within commut-
ing range for economy. I was influenced in the choice by a neigb-
bor, Joseph Sullivan, already a Scholar of the Fund, and by the
high school teacher of chemistry and pbysics, then a recent gradu-
ate of the College of Liberal Arts.
I went to college "on a shoestring" of finances, but at the end
of the first semester of the freshman year was selected as a student
assistant in the physics department, an appointment which con-
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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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sign my masterpiece. Unfortunately the building has since burned

down and so all those memorabilia are lost to posterityI
It was during this Princeton period that I became cured of pre-
vious aspirations toward becoming a teacher of chemistry at the
high school level. The local high school teacher of chemistry,
physics and mathematics became ill and I was asked to serve as
substitute during his absence. It was a hectic week with an unruly
body of students who, with few exceptions, had no interest in the
work or subject and were intent only on making trouble for the
instructor.
Through association with a Princeton faculty member who was
acting as chemical consultant for industrial research organiza-
tions, I was finally influenced into accepting a position with the
E. I. duPont de Nemours & Company in their main chemical re-
search laboratory at Wilmington, Delaware. I joined that staff
in August, 1925. This company had expanded from a pre-war
explosives concern to a new policy of diversified interests and
research in many chemical fields. The element of research appealed
to me and offered a challenge to participate in work of this nature.
In 1926 I was transferred to the Research Laboratory at Phila-
delphia, Pennsylvania. The year 1927 brought my selection to
undertake a temporary special technical assignment for the com-
pany in France. I made my headquarters at Paris from July, 1927,
to June, 1928. Here again my linguistic hobby came into play,
since I had often to be with people who spoke no English. The
secretary I had assigned to me proved to be a young Swiss girl who
had at one time served as secretary to Evangeline Booth in London.
Shortly after my arrival in France I had dropped a postcard to
Professor Newell. I soon was commissioned to do a chore for him,
in the interest of his course in the History of Chemistry, which
nearly landed me in the "Bastille." Professor Newell asked me to
copy in exact detail, placement, et cetera, the inscriptions on the
four faces of the pedestal of the statue of Lavoisier, the eminent
French chemist. This is located behind the Church of the Made-
leine in Paris. I was busy getting everything to exact scale and
compass direction when I was brought to a halt by the gendarmerie
who mistook my strictly scientific interest for some form of es-
pionage against the French Republic. Here my best and fastest
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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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Versailles, Carnavalet, Rodin, Malmaison and British museums

among others . . . The time I had to act as guide for a taxi driver
in Paris when I took his cab for a trip from one comer of the city
to another. After he got started it was obvious he didn't know his
Paris. I soon found out he had emigrated from Russia only the
day beforeI
In 1935 I was selected to go to California as chief chemist of a
new duPont undertaking and later become production superin-
tendent in charge of all activjties - manufacturing, technical and
general business. During the six years there, I made my home in
Palo Alto. This locale of Stanford University afforded many oppor-
tunities for cultural gatherings and activities. I also managed to
squeeze in an evening course in cost accounting to round out my
experience. While in the West, I acquired the typical western
disregard of distance and being a confirmed tmveler visited many
widely separated points of historic and scenic interest in Califor-
nia, Oregon, Nevada, the Sierras, even in Mexico on week ends
and vacations.
LUCIAN CURTIS FoYE

S.B., 1924; Cb.B., 1926; M.D., 1927
The story of this versatile Fund man might be placed here
or in anyone of several chapters to come. It will be given
later.
HERBERT W AlUlEN W ALEEll

S.B., 1924; Ph.D., Cornell, 1927
He tells his story as follows:
Whenever I have spoken of "cord" fish or referred to a peculiar
growth on the skin as a "wat" I have been marked as a New
Englander. After twenty-five years of isolation from living among
Bostonians I still naturally drop the "-Is" and add them after
short vowels. I would be reluctant to give up the characteristic
because of pride in my New England ancestry; though I know
little about it, for the family, when I became a conscious part of
it, was small and family gatherings occurred only at funerals.
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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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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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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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interruption, except from October, 1934, to June, 1935, when I was

incapacitated by infantile paralysis.
In the summer of 1940 I exchanged posts with Professor Con-
stantine Panunzio, a Boston University graduate, and taught at the
University of California at Los Angeles. In the summer of 1945 I
exchanged with Professor Paul Walter, Jr., of the University of
New Mexico. I have recently been invited to come to Ginling
College at Nanking, China, as acting head of the deparbnent of
sociology there for 1947-1948, but have been obliged by 6nancial
limitations to refuse. In the summer of 1947, someone who had
planned to teach at the University of California apparently disap-
pointed them. I received a wire during Boston University's inter-
session, at which I was teaching, asking me if I would come and
give two courses at their summer session. I accepted, in part be-
cause my daughter was out on the Paci6c coast and this would give
me an opportunity to visit with her.
My program at Harvard was designed to give me access to the
special advantages that Harvard seenied to offer. Reading I could
select and cany on with little guidance. I wanted laboratory facili-
ties and research experience, and those I got at the Peabody Mu-
seum, at the Psychopathic Hospital, at Concord Reformatory. My
program was well integrated about my major interest, criminology,
but it was not calculated to keep me under the eye of those teach-
ing formal- courses in sociology, nor to assure me of a Ph.D.
degree. All chance of the latter disappeared with a nearly complete
change of departmental personnel.
At the Harvard Law School I had the privilege (and it was a
privilege) of studying with both Dean Roscoe Pound and with
Professor Francis Bowes Sayre, son-in-law of President Wilson
and a man who has himself most creditably 6lled many high
offices. One of the little things that has given me most pleasure
in recent years was the opportunity to lecture in Langdell Hall one
morning, from behind the same broad enclosed desk from which I
was instructed by Pound and Sayre; the occasion being a program
arranged for the regional staff of the Federal Probation Service by
the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
Of course, my interest in criminology brought me into close con-
tact with Professor Sheldon Glueck and his wife, whose research
studies in criminology are among the best of all time. In the 6rst
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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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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 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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title A Handbook of Sociology, being published in London by

Kegan, Paul. This summer (1947) Houghton MifBin is publishing
for me Marriage and the Family.
I have had two sabbatical leaves to date. In 1939-1940 MIS.
Nimkoff and I spent a year in Mexico, and in 1916-1947 we
journeyed to Guatemala. Mrs. Nimkoff speaks Spanish fluently,
since she spent a portion of her childhood in Mexico.
As to plans for the future, I have just received a gmnt from the
Carnegie Corporation for a study of the impact of changing tech-
nology on the family. This is for a period of three yean, but I
hope to complete the study in perhaps half the time. One reason
is my desire to visit the Scandinavian countries, especially Sweden,
in the summer of 1948. As a student of the family, I would like
to eratnine at first-hand the remarkable progmm of population
and family services inaugurated by Sweden.
I feel I must close by making articulate what is doubtless obvious,
namely, my deep sense of gratitude to the Professor Augustus Howe
Buck Educational Fund for the support it gave me at the critical
point in my educational preparation. It is not easy to contemplate
what might have happened without such support.
EDWARD BoYER TEDFORD

A.B., 1928; A.M., Harvard, 1931
Edward Tedford is descended from that ancient unpopular
group of people who remained loyal to the Old Country during
the Revolution, and fled to the Maritime Provinces. We can
but wonder whether a tendency to self-deprecation is a vestigial
inheritance from those same persecuted Tories. In any event,
he tells us, "Their descendants gradually returned to the
'States: When I was a child, no family decision, I believe,
domestic, cultural, or political, was arrived at until it had been
fully recognized what Queen Victoria's attitude would have
been on the matter." After a gracious tnbute to his parents,
he continues:
I was always aware of, and strongly moved by beauty; I still am.
I was always thirsty for knowledge and a pursuer of truth; I still
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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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groups: officer candidates (seventy-five at a time) in a long, dimly-

lighted, uncomfortable tarpaper shack, non-commissioned officers,
officers, WACS, civilian govemment employees, and various com-
binations of these groups in Virginia, Ohio, and Utah. My year
and a half in the last-mentioned place was perhaps the most in-
teresting, for I had never been West before and came after a while
to get the same feeling from the mountains that I had always
associated with the ocean. Also it was an illuminating experience
to live, for that time, among the Mormons and to have the errone-
ous beliefs of hearsay give way to the knowledge of actuality. Since
my release from the service, after a period of blissful inactivity, I
am tutoring again and expect to be doing that for the immediate
future.
I am compelled to think of Emerson's lines:
"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes
And marching endless in a single file
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will:
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I in my pleached garden watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I too late
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn."
JOHN IRWIN WRIGHT

A.B.. 1926; A.M., Harvard, 1927
One of the three who died after fonnal education was over
was John Wright. His elementary schooling was in his birth-
place, Rochester, New Hampshire. He was a student in my
classes during his undergraduate work at the College of Liberal
Arts. I remember him well and have at hand various letters
he wrote while studying abroad for two years as a Fellow of
the Fund.
Wright was never able to complete successfully the research
project in history assigned him by Harvard Graduate School,
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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:
I have been in London for over a week now, and I am beginning

to be at home. Mer landing at Liverpool, I sailed across the Irish
Sea that very night and spent two happily idle weeks seeing Ireland
and picking up the lost threads of ancestors from my Scotch-Irish
relations. I spent a large part of my time in the northwest-central
section, Tyrone, a border-country where Protestant meets Catholic
and Scotch-Irish meets the pure Irish on the worst of terms. Most
everyone lives in little, thatched-roofed, white-washed farmhouses
and tries to make a living out of the green hay, the yellow oats -
they call it com here -, the black peat, and the wandering farm-
stock. In short, I was in what might be called one of the relatively
primitive parts of Ireland. The hills and fields and moors were
beautiful, but the reverse of the picture - the people seem to be
unhappy. At least, they are unhappy from our American point of
view.
I returned to England a week ago last Tuesday and since then
I have been very busy. Getting a place to stay - "digs," as they
call it here -learning not to get lost in the maze of London streets,
seeing the beautiful churches, and most of all trying to make a
flying start on my research - these things have taken every minute
of my time for over a week.
I am really coming to appreciate my good fortune in being able
to come here. Apart from my work, meeting these good people,
the English, studying the art and architecture of times way past at
first hand, going to church in monuments where tradition hangs
from every window, arch, and column - it's a real inspiration.
In his first letter from Paris he writes:
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. After some difficulty I have found a pension where French is

the principal language. Americans will come to Paris and French-
men will speak English.
I began work at the Biblioth~ue Nationale as soon as I arrived
- over a month ago now. So far I have given all my time there to
the study of medieval French history in general and to reading
printed worles which have to do with the origins of feudal institu-
tions. The rest of my time has been devoted to talking with French
people, seeing the monuments and museums of Paris, and trying
to learn the language. I am having no trouble with reading; the
hard part is to carry on a sensible conversation in French.
In spite of the difficulties surrounding his graduate work, he

was able to write some time after his return from Europe:
I am happy not simply because of the joys of living, but because
I still enjoy studying and writing history. I have continued teaching
mathematics at the Massachusetts Nautical Schodl for lack of a
more remunerative and more suitable position in history. I have
enjoyed being there and feel that I have succeeded. .
That is my 1936 record. It seems meagre and unsatisfactory
alongside my 1926 prospectus, but that prospectus was planned
in 1926. My present thoughts are concentrated on job-hunting,
but even if I must be money-minded, I still find a few hours every
day to go back six centuries or so and think in terms of kings and
vassals.
Mr. Wright died October 17, 1940.
ANGELO PHILIP BERTOCCI

A.B., 1927; A.M., Harvard, 1928; Ph.D., Columbia, 1947
The two brothers from Italy are both teachers. The one
named here has been Professor of French and Spanish at Bates
College; but in September, 1948, he became Professor of
Comparative Literature at Boston University. However, be-
cause of the amount of space given him earlier, he is now
passed with this brief notice.
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".ANI) GLADLY TEACH" 197
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.
GEORGE ZAm.uuEFF DIMITROFF

S.B., 1927; A.M., Harvard, 1930; Ph.D., Harvard, 1937;
A.M. (Honoris causa), Dartmouth, 1947
We now return to the saga of Dr. George Dimitroff, natural-
ized American citizen of Balkan birth and Professor of Astron-
omy at Dartmouth College. Nowhere else does the editor feel
so strongly the unsatisfactory character of a method that breaks
up into several pieces the life story of one man. However,
recalling his experiences as a chef we are not surprised to learn
that during his freshman year at Boston University young
Dimitroff took a waiter's job in a little "hole in the wall" tea
room.
According to the advertisement, the tea room was "a bit of New
York with New England cooking." This was the strangest place
I had ever seen. It was connected with an art gallery, and the tea
room appeared so odd, at least to me, that I would have turned
right around. But while I was consulting the slip of paper bearing
the address a kindly old lady appeared from behind some screens
or statuary and assured me that I was in the right place. There were
half a dozen Boston University boys working there and we had to
slip in and out of uniform to return to class and back to work.
These are small details that hardly merit mention except for the
fact that it was a continuous chain of events that constantly re-
minded me that in this country people were good and they were
good to one another. The people working here were as odd and
interesting as the clientele. Jews and gentiles, black and white,
Italians, Bulgarians, Norwegians, Swiss and Irish, Europeans and
Asiatics - we worked in harmony. It was another case of the
practical application of the golden rule which made labor and
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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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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
dollars or so for over-enthusiasm so that we will not have to

hesitate."
My first job at the Observatory was to reorganize procedures,
and as a result we increased the number of photographs taken until
we were taking three times as many plates per month as were ever
produced before. Yet this only increased the demand for more
observations, for now problems which were expected to be solved
fifteen or twenty years hence were almost within reach.
In an attempt to speed up some of the photographic surveys, it
was suggested that we have a new telescope, perhaps a Schmidt
type. How large a telescope did we need - twenty-four inches?
That was three times as large as any thus far attempted, but we
could try and we did.
Now I can tell the story of this quarter-of-a-million-dollar ad-
venture (this is the latest quotation by a telescope manufacturer
for a duplicate). [The importance of this record has led to its
being given in detail, even though many readers may find it wise
to hurry over it. R.E.B.]
We were considering the galactic survey which was carried on by
the famous sixteen-inch Medcalf refractor. This telescope was
. made by an amateur but he was now dead and we had no funds
for hiring a professional optician. Even if we did have the money,
it was estimated we could not duplicate the sixteen-inch in less
than ten years.
I had discovered a spare worm and worm-wheel, which are the
heart of the driving mechanism. (This worm and worm-wheel
had been in storage some thirty years, having been ordered as a
possible replacement for one of the twin mounts on the sixteen-
inch Medcalf and the Bruce telescope in South Africa.) If this
worm and wheel were a little larger, we could build a twenty-four-
inch Schmidt. The ratio of telescope aperture to the diameter
of driving wheel was too small for a conventional telescope tube
unless we could design a tube light enough. It seemed that the
expensive worm and wheel would have to remain in storage.
The problem of a light tube intrigued me, for it was a challenge
to one's ingenuity, especially since in this case the problem was
further aggravated by the fact that the Schmidt tube is especially
sensitive to flexure. The proposed telescope had a permisSIble
tolerance of flexure such that the tube, which is fourteen feet
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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
The building of the two Sclunidts and the expansion of the

Oak Ridge station of the Harvard Observatory (an expansion of
50 per cent in buildings and telescopes during the five-year
period of my administration) were visible changes, but there were
fundamental changes that were more important than spectacular.
The photographic, photometric and spectroscopic work was im-
proved and established on a firm basis. I was fortunate, for my
predecessor (Professor Gerrish), upon retiring, completed fifty-
four years of service for the Observatory, and had in a sense rounded
out his career by devoting the last five years to finishing all projects
then in progress and beginning nothing new which could not be
finished before his retirement. As a result, many new develop-
ments had for years been on the shelf, waiting for the new super-
intendent.
It was during this same period that we began the Harvard books
on astronomy of which the Telescope and Accessories, Dimitroff-
Baker, is a part.
GoRDON WINSLOW SMITH

A.B., 1929; A.M., Harvard, 1930
Continuing the story of Professor Gordon Smith of Colby
College from the point where it was left in an earlier chapter,
we read:
During my teens I began to take piano lessons. Mother played
the violin, and Dad the comet. I was soon able to play not too
difficult trios with them. Although I never achieved great pr0-
ficiency on the piano, I still enjoy playing for my own amusement.
Ustening to music is one of my greatest pleasures.
Also at this time I was a member of the Cape Players, a group
of amateurs who staged and produced plays for several years. We
gave five or six performances of each play in the church and Grange
haIls of surrounding towns. The interest which I thus developed
in the theater has continued ever since. When I was in college
I went to as many plays as possible, and every week found me
occupying one of the twenty-five-cent seats at the Copley Theater.
After graduation from high school I registered at the College of
Uberal Arts. My reasons for choosing Boston University are rather
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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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career. I came to know and love France as a second patrie, gained

considerable insight into the character of the French people, ac-
quired a certain mastery of the methods of French study and
scholarship, broadened my knowledge and appreciation of French
literature, acquired facility in the use of the language, and perhaps
what is most important, developed greater tolerance, and broadened
the somewhat narrow, provincial outlook that characterizes the
New Englander.
I shall never forget the thrill of seeing France for the first time,
of landing at Le Havre, and of passing those first few days in Paris,
la viDe lumiere, trying to see all the sights as quickly as possible.
The first three months of that year were spent studying at the
Universite de Nancy. I think that I worked harder during those
three months than at any other time during my student days. The
academic work was heavy and exacting, and there were the nec-
essary adjustments to be made in adapting myself to new surround-
ings and a different mode of living. I have great admiration for
my instructors, who did their best to give assistance and always
insisted on a high standard of performance. I lived with a French
family who did everything in their power to assist me and make my
stay with them pleasant. With them I took many bicycle rides
through Lorraine. With the whole Delaware Group I took un-
forgettable trips to Verdun, Stra5bourg, the French Alps, and
Switzerland.
In November of that year the Group returned to Paris, where
I took courses at the Sorbonne and the Ecole Libre de Sciences
Politiques. Again I wish to pay tribute to the brilliant scholarship
of the men under whom I studied. MM. Strowski I came to know
rather well, for I was privileged for a while to give him lessons
in English conversation. A member of the Institut, and drama
critic of one of the Paris newspapers, he took me to a number of
theatrical performances. Of inestimable value were the visits to
museums, historical sites and literary shrines, and attendance at
concerts, opera, plays, and the ballet. The family with whom I
lived were eager to teach a young American about French life and
civilization, and to do their bit in fostering friendly relations be-
tween their country and ours.
From Paris the Group made excursions to Chartres,. Versailles,
Saint-Germain, and spent a two-week holiday in the Midi, visiting
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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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gmlll. I am at present a member of the Curriculum Committee,

chairman of the Library Committee, and College MaIshaI.
The most widely publicized incident of my teaching career oc-
curred during the mid-year examination period a few years ago.
Because of a bad blizzard transportation betWeen our old campus
and the dormitories then in use on the new site was impossible,
and the students were unable to appear for their examinations. Talc-
ing the examinations, I went with them on snowshoes to where
the students were. and the examinations were taken as scheduled.
Clippings about this incident were received from as far away as
Nebraska and Virginia.
ALBERT LEE KNox

A.B .• 1930; A.M.• Columbia. 1940
This quiet effective teacher introduces his brief story with
the sentence: "To me my life is very interesting. but I doubt
if there is anything in it that even a professional biographer
could dramatize." Mindful of the connotations of the "even."
we continue to quote:
I first heard of the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational
Fund in the middle of my second year at college, at what I thought
was the end of my college life, for I had gone home with no plan
for returning for the second semester. I had no money on which
to return. I don't know now how I managed to stay a year and a
half before the Fund came to my rescue. Being one of seven
children, all I could count on from my folks was a place to sleep. if
I commuted, and my meals.
Aided by the Fund, I completed my college course and did some
part-time graduate work at Harvard the following year, filling in
the rest of my time assisting in the physics laboratory at the Col-
lege of Liberal Arts. I suppose I was and would be classed as being
rather quiet and serious, and I think my fellow classmates were
very much surprised that I graduated from Boston University a
married man. We returned from a short honeymoon in time for
me to receive my Bachelor of Arts degree.
That was in 1931 when things were pretty tough. I got my first
job in 1932, and I had to convince the chairman of the board of
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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.
Mr. Knox taught in various schools during the succeeding

years. While at one of them, a private school in New York,
he was able to earn the A.M. degree in the teaching of mathe-
matics at Columbia University. Of later experiences including
his somewhat hectic anny life he tells us:
When I took my Army Intelligence Tests I scored 157 out of
a possible 163 and the classification officer told me that rated me
as very close to a genius. The score was not surprising to me for
most of the questions were of the type I had been trying to teach
for eleven years. In the training camp my position on a gun squad
was a surprise: it was the same as assigned to a young fellow who
could not read the letters he received from home.
After being returned to my original draft classification I was soon
reclassified and drafted. This time I reported to a different medical
center and, based on some gland trouble I had had in my neck
twelve years before, my classification was 4F. I then came to
Montpelier, Vermont, and have been teaching in the High School
here since then. My wife and I find that life here is as satisfying
as the word Vermont somehow seems to imply, and it would take
quite a lot to tempt us to leave.
I first decided I wanted to teach when I realized that one of my
high school science teachers knew all that the book said, but did not
seem to see or at least did not explain any relation between the
facts in the book and the everyday occurrences in life. I wanted to
explain those facts so that students would have some understanding
of "what makes the wheels go round." In my teaching I have been
highly complimented on relating my material to everyday living.
Encouraged by the example of friends of ours, we set out one
summer for a short trip with a tent and camping outfit, travelling
through the National and State Parks in the East. We liked it so
well that one summer we lived for ten weeks in our tent. Since
then we have graduated from the tent to a cottage on a small
New Hampshire lake for our vacations. We bought a lot with a
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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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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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sacrifice for my family to allow me to embark upon an educational

career which was destined to last for some seven years. Those were
years of great struggle but of promise as well.
I was always happy in my selection of Boston University and
found there the friendly Christian atmosphere that I had antici-
pated. When I was a sophomore my instructor in French en-
couraged me to take advantage of the opportunity to spend my
junior year in France under the auspices of the University of Dela-
ware Foreign Study Group. The prospect of foreign travel and
residence as well as study intrigued me greatly and I approached
the committee with the proposal. The stipend which they voted
me, together with a scholarship that I received from the Institute
of International Education, enabled me to embark in June of 1928
upon one of the most fruitful and interesting years of my life.
The summer at the University of Nancy, an excursion to Switzer-
land, a year at the University of Paris and other French schools,
a side trip to visit my relatives in Sweden - all of these came to
me during that auspicious year. I still look back upon that year
as the most significant one in my entire school career.
My year abroad came at the peak of the boom period of the
twenties when the country was filled with optimism. It was the
time when the world signed the Kellogg Peace Pact in Paris. I still
recall the skepticism with which the French viewed the signing
of this document. The able teachers under whom we studied in
France carried us beyond the material achievements with which
we were so preoccupied in those days and introduced us to the
abiding values in art and literature which had survived in spite of
wars and depressions and disasters. I think I returned a better
student and a better citizen as the result of my experience.
In June of 1930 I completed my work at Boston University and
received my Bachelor's degree with honor and distinction in Ro-
mance languages and literatures. Those of us who graduated in
that year graduated into the beginning of the Great Depression.
Many of us were confused as to which way to cast our lot and I
am sure that not a few were unable to find employment. Through
the kindness of the late Professor Lyman C. Newell, at that time
treasurer of the Fund, I obtained a position in the National Shaw-
mut Bank of Boston. I remained there for a year as a student in
preparation for a junior executive position. I studied in some five
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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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tinues as one of the outstanding community activities in the north·

west side of Chicago. This year we will have reached an attendance
in excess of one hundred thousand. The average attendance each
year has been something under ten thousand. During these years
we have brought to the campus outstanding personalities in polio
tics, art, music, science, and literature. Carl Sandburg, Robert M.
Hutchins, Robert P. Tristram Coffin, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, and
Norman Thomas are among the many outstanding personalities
that we have brought to our campus.
In 1939 I became Registrar of the institution and in 1941 sue·
ceeded to the position of Dean of the Junior College and Academy
- a position which had been held for many years by a great and
good friend of mine, A. Samuel Wallgren. It was his wish that I
should succeed him and when, upon his death, I was elected to his
position, I accepted it with a great sense of responsibility for he
had established a standard for the office that it would be difficult,
indeed, to equal.
His list of appointments and honors as given in the Fund rec-

ords is too long to be given here. They are in various fields,
mainly educational and religious. Since 1941 Mr. Moberg
has been Dean of the Junior College and Academy of North
Park College in Chicago.
HOWARD ALVIN SMITH
S.B., 1931; A.M., 1932
Here in brief outline is the story of another of the Fund
men, Howard Smith, who is serving the community as a
teacher and citizen. He gives "highest priority" to the fine
family of which he is head.
He was born in Abington, Massachusetts, "of excellent
Christian parents," and there in his birthplace he spent his
boyhood. There he "attended the local public schools and
graduated from high school on the honor roll, being awarded
both the Woman's Club Scholarship and the Washington
Franklin Medal for Excellence in American History." After a
year in Boston University, the death of his father made it nec-
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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:
After teaching a second year in Southington I secured a posi-

tion teaching at Milton High School where I am still employed.
I am now head of the chemistry department and director of
visual education. I have always been interested in more efficient
teaching methods and for four years I was secretary-treasurer of
the New England Section, Department of Visual Instruction of
the National Education Association. I fully realize the limitations
of such methods, but for purely factual materiaI, they can't be beat.
I am active in scout work, being on the troop committee of om
school troop and one of the district scout officers.
Since my graduation the only articles published have been con-
cerned with the use of visual aids in teaching. I have written a
complete set of experiments for high school chemistry classes but
have made them solely to fit conditions that we have here at Milton.
These are constantly being revised and extended. During the war
I taught an A.S.T.P. course in chemistry at the College of Libetal
Arts. I have been active in the New England Association of
Chemistry Teachers, serving as chairman of several committees at
various times.
In addition to my teaching duties I am also Milk Inspector
for the Town of Milton. In this capacity I do all of my own lab-
oratory work running the standard chemical and biological analyses.
At present, besides two gardens - one in Middleboro where I
am summers and a new one here in Milton - my oldest boy and
I have an apiary of eight hives. We raise all of om own queens
and make our own increases. If the frost holds off we will produce
a minimum of six hundred pounds of honey this year.
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214 . A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
PETER ANTHONY BERTocCI

AB., 1931; AM., Harvard, 1932;
Ph.D., Boston University, 1935
The statement given early in this chapter under the name
of his brother, Angelo, suffices here.
ALDEN PAUER CLEAVES

AB., 1931; AM., 1932; Ph.D., Duke, 1939
Dr. Cleaves has described in the last preceding chapter his
experiences in teaching and final tum to research.
NELS FREDElUCB: SOLOMON FERRE

AB., 1931; B.D., Andover-Newton, 1934;
AM., Harvard, 1936; Ph.D., Harvard, 1938
A part of the life story of Dr. Nels Frederick Solomon Ferre
was included in one of the earlier chapters and more of
it is to be given later. Hence the brevity of this statement
about one who should unquestionably be included among
those who "gladly teach." As an ordained minister he held
charges in his young manhood before becoming a teacher, and
anyone who knows him can hardly doubt that had he con-
tinued to be a pastor his work in that field would have been
noteworthy.
Again and again he has written expressing his indebtedness
to the Fund, and that his words were no formal statement is
clear from the following which he wrote while on his way to
Europe in 1934. "The Fund has enabled me to get where I
am. Under no ordinary circumstances could I be persuaded
to receive any more from it. I have received so much that a
life-time of service can never pay it back." Fortunately other
fellowship agencies had already taken over, so that he lost no
time in his graduate work. A year later I wrote him: "We
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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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the Fund, I was able to focus more of my energies on my course

of study because I was not under the necessity of earning my way.
Even as an undergraduate, I considered that, in view of the fact
I intended to take graduate work and to teach, studying was my
profession and in putting in extra effort on my college work I was
merely helping to earn my way and preparing to earn my living.
The Fund made it possible for me to shop around for graduate
schools and it was perfectly natural for me to select the University
of Chicago, a place my father had attended and admired. I had
a youthful prejudice against colleges in the East, because of the
high-hat attitude I found, as a young mid-Westerner. Nothing good
existed west of Boston. I had lived under the shadow of Ohio
State University, whose very physical size awed me as a child, and
I knew there were big colleges in the West.
I can remember Dr. Robert Moody at the College of Liberal
Arts telling us how he came near packing his trunk and giving up
his graduate study at Yale in disgust after the first few months. And
I must admit that the "gang" - it was a large group that has main-
tained considerable organic unity since - that entered the history
department at Chicago University in the fall of 1929 shared the
same point of view. One man dropped out within a few weeks.
The rest of us kept our noses to the grindstone, only to raise them
long enough now and then to wonder how we could take any more.
I was sure I was going to flunk out and could not see how any
living man could read all the books recommended and write all the
research papers demanded. I was somewhat awed by the beards
and gray hairs of some of my fellow students. Somehow I got
through the first term and even had both of my language examina-
tions out of the way by that time.
My general interest focused on the sweep of European history
since the fall of Rome and I soon found my chief interest in the
intellectual background of the French Revolution.
My thesis topic, The Cult of Voltaire to 1791, opened a tre-
mendous field of inquiry, one that could involve a lifetime of re-
search if one followed all the ramifications in meticulous detail. It
necessitated investigations in the libraries and collections of Paris,
and so, on the expiration of the Fund assistance, which had made
three years of graduate work at the University of Chicago possible,
and had seen me through my Master's degree and my preliminary
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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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218 A ClD.ONICLE OF ACBIEVEMEN'I'
sternation, although, as time would prove, it encomaged right wing

and fascist groups in France and increased the internal instability.
The dread German revanche attack seemed inevitable. The French
people, as I observed them, had had their fill of war. I stayed at a
pension run by a woman whose mother (she lived with us) bad
survived the siege of Paris in 1870 and had known the time when
rats and cats sold at a premium. She had seen the Prussian troops
march through Paris. She had later lost a son and, indirectly.
throUldt illness contracted in war service, a husband during the
Fint World War. She had been in Paris when the Big Berthas
began firing from seventy-five-mile range. Her daughter had quite
clearly remained unmarried because her generation of men had
been sacrificed on the altar of Man. And now it would happen all
over againl I can remember attending a youth conference in Lyon,
and there I could detect among some of the French young people
a deep wish that France could get out of power politics and settle
down to a peaceful existence like Sweden. At a moment of grave
internal crisis, France faced growing international danger, both
possibly products of the same force, economic instability of the
world at large. .
A young German girl, daughter of a German Jewish banker of
Karlsruhe, Germany. lived in our pension and told how her friends
had fint voted Communist and then Nazi, out of desperation. They
were protesting against the world that seemed to hold out no
future for them. At Grenoble, during the summer of 1933, while
staying at another pension, I met a Jewish girl recently come from
Germany, her law course broken off and her future destroyed. My
diary records some vivid and horrifying scenes of violence witnessed
by this victim of Nazi oppression.
If 1933 was a critical year for France internally, and for Europe
as a whole, because of Hitler's rise to power, it was one of apparent
triumph and celebration for Mussolini's Italy. It was the tenth
anniversary of his march on Rome. Around Easter, 1933. I took
some of my limited resources, which I was spreading as thinly·as
possible in order to permit as long a stay in France as possible, and
arranged a two weeks' trip to Rome with a Harvard PhD. who was
spending a year of travel in Europe and was not enjoying the
travel. Mussolini was offering a 60 per cent reduction in fare
,f travellen would have their tickets stamped at the exposition iQ
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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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outside F10rence in disorderly manner, as I saw military and party

uniforms in abundance everywhere and as I recognized the unmili-
tary geniality of the people at large, I could but feel that all
Mussolini's shouting and toughness was designed to inject a little
militarism into a people lacking any innate inclination for the
exploits of war.
The high point of our bip, however, was not rubbing elbows
with Mussolini, but was our several days' stop in F10rence where
the Italian Renaissance, about which I had read so ·much in books,
came to life. We had already bad a foretaste of this experience in
Siena, at the Vatican and Borghese Galleries in Rome, in Pisa;
but none could match F10rence in the abundance of artistic master-
pieces.
We left sunny Italy as the beauties of spring were unfolding. in
marked contrast to the less advanced season we had left in France,
and I could understand at least one reason why Italians had not
adopted Gothic architecture with avidity for their cathedrals. With
all that sunshine and with all that beautiful marble, what need was
there for more window space? The brilliance of the Cathedral
at Pisa, a Romanesque structure, stood in marked contrast to the
awe-inspiring somberness of the Gothic Notre Dame of Paris.
I left Italy wishing that I might someday return to spend more
time in places already visited and to explore other historic spots.
Once back in Paris, time fled all too rapidly. With research at the
Bibliotheque Nationale and Archives Nationales limited to days -
and daylight - my evenings were devoted very frequently to a
course of study at the theatre and the opera. Except for some
opera I had seen as a graduate student in Chicago, I learned most
about opera in Paris.
My life in Paris clearly paved the way for my future career;
clearly in the perspective of time. When the summer of 1933
arrived, the whole of Colgate seemed to invade Europe. Mr.
Charles Choquette, a French professor at Colgate, arrived in Paris
to travel as part of his Ph.D. requirement at Cornell University,
and "Charlie" and I decided to join forces in a month's tour of
France that summer. We went east via Rheims and Verdun and
were able to see concrete traces of the devastation World War I
bad wrought.
from the Verdun area, we went on to Metz and then Sbassburg
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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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19li. I returned to the United States in September, 1933, coming

via Hamilton, New York, where I stopped to pay a visit to my
many friends on the Colgate University campus.
The job I was to start at Colgate in September, 1934, was not
the first I had ever held. In high school there were the usual kids'
chores, lawns, leaves, ash barrels and furnaces. One of my fondest
memories is the half-summer I spent caddying at the Profile House
Golf Club in Franconia Notch, New Hampshire. It was a heavenly
experience living three miles from the nearest town in the middle
of the mountains, an experience interrupted by the burning of the
Profile House and all adjoining buildings which went down to
ashes the same day that Harding died. The rest of that summer
two other caddies and I spent as dishwashers in the Forest Hills
Hotel in Franconia. Antioch College brought the work experience
at the Chevrolet Factory in Flint, Michigan, and on the Cleveland
Press. After I entered Boston University I earned money in Newton
Center taking care of furnaces. My senior year I had five of them
that took me on a two-mile circuit every morning and evening
throughout the winter. That year I also lived at a home in Newton
Highlands to help with odd jobs around the house. I was treated
more as a son and did little more than care for furnaces in ex-
change for my room. One summer, at the end of my junior year
in college, I had charge of the boys' work in a fresh air camp
for the street urchins of Brooklyn. The camp was located on Long
Island, called Sunshine Acres, and run as a project of the Baptist
Young Peoples' Union of Brooklyn. It was quite an experience·
taking care of some fifty to seventy-five tough kids, ages four to
fifteen, with a new batch coming in every two weeks.
Ever since that summer I have found it difficult to sympathize
with the kind of religion that involves regular attendance at church
Sundays, repeating over and over again trite generalities about
doctrines and values, instead of getting out and doing something
about them. I have often felt that a congregation would get far
more religious value out of doing some practical 200d work than
in spending an hour in the pew getting emotionalfy aroused to do
nothing. Had I to live my life over again, I would have returned
to that camp the following summer and any other I had available.
The summer of 1929 I sold fifteen hundred dollars' worth of
books in fifty-five days. I learned that you had to see ten people a
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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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more about history as a whole. I knew a tremendous number of

facts at that time, much of which I have forgotten. But I am
sure that I know more about the process of history now than then.
And I think one of the primary reasons for this is that I know more
about the world about me than I did then. No history takes on
meaning except through the eyes of the present. That history is
important that has significance for the present. Without knowl-
edge of the present, history becomes antiquarianism. Teaching in
a small liberal arts college for thirteen years, I have had ample
opportunity to teach a wide variety of subjects, and thereby to
broaden out my understanding of the march of history. During
the war, when our college became an adjunct of the navy and
marine corps, I had to learn how to teach aerial navigation in a
naval pre-8ight school and then joined forces with many other
staff members in and out of the history deparbnent, in teaching
American history.
One of the obvious advantages of teaching in a small liberal arts
college is the opportunity of being a relatively big fish in a small
pond. At any rate, no matter what your rank, your word counts
in all deparbnental decisions. When your deparbnentaI colleagues
are congenial, and the morale of the deparbnent is high, as has
always been the case at Colgate, the pleasure of teaching is en-
hanced immeasurably. I am just completing my thirteenth year
of teaching here and have been advanced at regular intervals of
about three years each, from instructor to full professor, to which
rank I was raised in June, 1947.
But teaching at Colgate with much additional work there
on committees has Dot taken all of Raymond Rockwood's
energy. Of his work in community planning, eventuating
not only in the Hamilton Community Forums and other ac-
tivities but also in the spread of these things far beyond
Hamilton, he writes:
I have had the good fortune to be in the center of this challeng-
ing movement from its inception. I have been on the executive
committee until this year, have been (and am) treasurer for two
years and have been on the organizing committees for most of
the conferences and institutes, often participating as a chairman
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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.
How he has been able to accomplish so much in one life,

not yet at its peak, is hard to understand. A part of the story
omitted here is given in an article by Dr. Rockwood in the
Journal of Educational Sociology for December, 1946. The
note about the author given at the end of the article states the
following:
Raymond o. Rockwood served as chairman of the first organiz-

ing committee which brought the Hamilton Community Forum
into being and was its functional president until last May. He has
been associated with the New York State Citizens' Council as a
member of the executive committee and has been treasurer and
program director of two Annual Citizens' Conferences.
It is with regret that we now leave the story of these com-

munity and state interests - regret coupled with thanks that
he has taken time from his many duties to type a hundred
pages from which material for this volume might be selected.
ERNEST BIRGn BENSON

A.B., 1933; A.M., 1934; Ed.M., Harvard, 1936
To preserve continuity we have placed in Chapter V Ernest
Benson's account of his teaching and his administrative duties
at Culver Military Academy.
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226 A CHRONICLE OF AClDEVEMENT
MumITB FREEMAN ELLER

A.B., 1933; S.T.B., 1936; Ph.D., 1946
Though he has recently accepted a position as a college pro-
fessor, so large a part of Dr. Meredith Eller's life has been
spent in the pastorate that his story is reserved for a later
chapter.
STANLEY CLIFPOBD FOO'l'E, Ja.

The story of his short life has already been told.
BEaNAlU) CuFroN GRAVES

A.B., 1933; S.T.B., 1935; Ph.D., Harvard, 1947
The story of Dr. Bernard Graves seems to belong in a later
chapter rather than here.
WILLIA.M HAMILTON FaACEELTON

S.B., 1932; M.D., Harvard, 1936
To avoid breaking in two the interesting story of this mid-
western physician and surgeon, it is reserved entire for a more
suitable place later.
EDWIN WILLIA.M WILFEllT

S.B., 1934; M.S., Temple, 1936
Mr. Wilfert is one of the few Fund men who have had
little or no teaching experience as is clear from reading in an
earlier chapter the story of his research work.
ELMOllE DON LUNDGllEN

S.B., 1935; A.M., Harvard, 1936
The story of this teacher in the WeIlesley, Massachusetts,
High School has been told in Chapter V.
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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
RALPH NATHANAEL JOHANSON

S.B., 1936; M.S., Chicago, 1937; Ph.D., Chicago, 1939
The editing of the large amount of material in this volume
supplied by the beneficiaries of the Fund has been guided by
the belief that these men would subscn'be to the following
statement made by Dr. Johanson at the beginning of his story:
I have faith in your judgment, and if you should decide that
there is practically nothing in my story which would add to the
Book, then I would accept that decision with grace and equanimity.
Dr. Johanson then writes that his mother was "the guiding
spirit" in their home. Born in Finland of Swedish ancestry,
"she lived away from home, as a young girl, for weeks at a time,
doing housework and farming."
When at home, she worked hard on her mother's farm, cutting
bay, planting, reaping, weaving cloth, knitting, sewing, and doing
many other necessary tasks. She bad to milk the cows, churn the
butter, and then sell and deliver her dairy products. When she
was ten or eleven years old, she was sent out alone to take care
of a dozen cows in a distant pasture - an all-day chore. One day
when my mother was about twelve years old, she was dmwing
water from a deep well, and the board on which she was standing
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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.
In a· final tribute to the "guiding spirit," be writes:
My mother is a wonderful woman in many ways. By her splendid

example she taught me many valuable lessons which served to
mould my character. First of all, she was as honest as the day is
long. She was always interested in the children's school work.
Although she didn't understand our lessons, she spurred us on.
She always had warm praise for our achievements and somehow
she seemed to be an integral part of our accomplishments. When
I was in college and had to study long hours, she would stay
up late with me, busying herself with household tasks. Her pres-
ence gave me courage to work harder and do better. I discussed
mathematics, history, physics and a host of other subjects with her
and she was always a careful listener and excellent adviser. She
was as much one of my "profs" as any of the teachers whom I had
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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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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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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."
It seems best to omit most of Dr. Johanson's account of the

peculiar treatment accorded him by an old established New
England (but not Massachusetts) college. This is done not
to save space, but to save face - the face of the college in-
volved. The incident ends as follows:
I was subsequently refused the scholarship aid which I had

expected because it was felt that I had inadequate additional funds
to get me through my first year. I appealed to a professor of
mathematics there, the son of my fonner Sunday School teacher.
My record was good, my interest was sincere, and I felt that I could
do it, if given the chance. But my appeal fell on deaf ears, and
my dreams of going to college gave way to a rude awakening-
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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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replied, "Don't tell him what it costl That dentistry is beautiful

work and is easily worth over one thousand dollarsl"
As to my college and graduate school days, I must confess that
most of my time was spent on study. I continued to play with
dance orchestras until I finished college, but as my stipends from
the Fund increased I did less and less of the orchestm work and
put more time to my studies. I had very little time or money for
social activities or college life.
I decided to go to the University of Chicago for my graduate
work. This was a stimulating and wholesome experience and I had
the opportunity of studying there under many famous mathema-
ticians, including Bliss, Dickson, Lane and Albert. I wrote both my
Master's and Doctor's theses under Professor Lane, whom I regard
as the best teacher of those with whom I have studied.
After receiving my PhD. in 1939 I started teaching in the fall
at Bradley Polytechnic Institute in Peoria, Illinois. The three years
that followed were very pleasant but rather unexciting and iD
January of 1943 we moved on to Hamilton College in New York.
There I was engaged in teaching "P.M.'s" - premeteorologicaI stu-
dents - in an army air forces tmining program. Our job was to
teach, in one year, mathematics hom the beginnings of al2ebra
through the advanced calculus to a highly selected group of stu-
dents, most of whom were from high school. I had the privilege
of working with a large group of mathematicians and physicists and
benefited immensely from my contact with them.
In the fall of 1943 I received a letter asking if I were interested
in a position at the College of Liberal Arts of Boston University.
I wrote back that I was interested and, to make a long story short,
I came to Boston University in February, 1944, and have been there
ever since.
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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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:
In 1932, after completing a postgraduate year at Lowell High

School, I was determined to go to coIlege somehow, despite the
unfavorable financial picture at home. A speaker at one of our
hiP school assemblies had told us that if we wanted to go to
colIege bad enough, ways could be found. Well, I wanted to go
bad enough, so during the summer I sold Real Silk Hosiery
throU2hout New Hampshire. SeIling silk hosiery in 1932 was
top-salesmanship and, although I topped my crew of students (I
was the lone non-college member), what was earned went largely
for expenses. However, I learned much and had many interesting
experiences. One such experience occurred in Lisbon, New Hamp-
shire, where, after a long day of canvassing, I was forced to spend
an evening in jail because I had somehow missed the boys who had
assured me that they would drive over from our hotel in near-by
Littleton to pick me up. Because there was no room available in
Lisbon at that late hour, the town constable suggested the jail cell;
the adventure intrigued me, so I readily accepted. However, it was
with fuIl recognition and appreciation of my status as a free citizen
that I slept through the night and got up in the morning to find an
open cell door for me to pass through.
Through a staff member of the Lowell Church of All Nations,
I became interested in Boston University. A conference with
President Marsh was arranged which I remember especially because
of my faux pas. Eager to get scholarship aid, I mentioned my
basketball playing ability. Dr. Marsh put me promptly in my
place by stating flatly that if I got a scholarship at Boston Univer-
sity it would be as a result of my mental ability and nothing elsel
Anyhow, on the basis of my high school record and my need, I
did receive a $150 scholarship which, added to my small savings,
made possible my matriculation as a freshman at Boston Univer-
sity College of Liberal Arts in September, 1932. Between and
after classes I worked as a "kitchen drudge" at a restaurant and
in the evenings and week ends as a janitor at a local church.
My father's death in December, 1932, only a few months after
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236 A CHllONlCLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
my commencing of college, was an emotional and financial

blow to our little family. It was then revealed that Dad's savings
had been reduced to insignificance by the depression and that he
had succeeded in keeping us from realizing the seriousness of it
all. Mother assumed the role of breadwinner, selling dry goods
from door to door, to keep my younger brother in high school and
to keep me free to concentrate on earning my way through college.
What time my brother and I could manage away from studies 01
other work we devoted to taking care of the property, now mark-
edly reduced in value and income and almost a complete liability.
Although I had applied previously for a Professor Augustus
Howe Buck scholarship, my grades were not high enough. In order
to insure a straight "A" average, I needed more time to study, which
was almost impossible to secure, because it was necessary for me to
work most of the time in order to earn funds to stay in school.
When, in July, 1934, I came to see Mr. Taylor, then Registrar, to
inform him that I was accepting a job as teller in a bank because
of my inability financially to undertake another year, I learned, to
my pleasant surprise, that I had been appointed beneficiary of the
Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund. Mr. Taylor
explained that my selection in preference to another candidate
with equally high grades had been based on the fact that my scho-
lastic record showed "A's" in five different fields while my nearest
competitor's had the bulk of his uA's" in one field. This appoint-
ment meant that all I had to do was to discharge my past debts,
which I was able to do by the end of the summer.
My junior year was a wonderful one; with no financial worries,
due to my being on the Fund, I had time to devote to extra-cur-
ricular activities at Boston University and at home. It was during
this year that, thanks to fast commuting service between Lowell
and Boston, I was able to take over the reins of the Lowell High
School Basketball Team as student coach and lead them to a
successful season.
My junior and senior years found me participating extensively
in extra-curricular activities: member of varsity basketball team
(started in my sophomore year), captain of fraternity and class ath-
letic teams, president of my fIaternity. service in various class offices
and on several committees, and a member of Debating, Dramatic,
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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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depression years. I actually wanted to shout words of encowage-

ment to all young men who wanted a college education but were
dismayed because of "lack of funds": "If I can do it, so can you."
I would have liked to apply for graduate study at Oxford Univer-
sity under the Fund, but aware of the necessity for me to assume
the role of chief breadwinner at home I tried to get a job teach-
ing. I was to learn like many another '36 graduate that teachers
were "a dime a dozen."
Although unable to secure a regular teaching job, I did get a
job teaching evening classes and setting up adult education pro-
grams as part of Lowell's Adult Education Program sponsored by
the Works Progress Adminisb:ation and supervised by the Massa-
chusetts State Department. This made it possible for me to study
for my Master's degree - tuition for which was paid for by the
Fund - and yet to carry the burden of support at home. My
adult educational experience - especially the teaching of naturali-
zation classes and the conducting of community forums - has
proved valuable and in some measure accounts for my interest and
belief in Adult Education today as an important and vital part
of an educational program.
My first full-fledged teaching job was as head of the En21ish
department and coach of basketball at Tewksbury High School
from September, 1937, to January, 1910. As head of the English
department and realizing the importance of motion pictures in
the average American's life, I thought that my job was not to dis-
credit movies but to help the youngsters become more selective.
For example, when Paul Muni's Emile Zola came to town
plans were made for all English classes to attend. Also realizing
that Shakespearean plays should be seen to be appreciated, the
senior class saw Macbeth on a Boston stage before studying the
play. The atmosphere in the Tewksbury classroom was friendly;
the relationship between the teacher and the student was similar
to that which I learned to appreciate in the College of Liberal
Arts.
Ever since my graduation from Boston University I had wanted
to teach at Newton High School because of its reputation for high
teaching standards. I accepted an appointment as teacher-coach
there in September, 1941. I taught English and coached basket-
ball and dramatics until June, 1943. During the summer of 1942 I
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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.
In December, 1943, Maria enlisted in the Marines. On his

return from the service he became Director of Industrial Re-
1atiODS and Personnel Manager for a corporation in his home
city. He has always kept his interest in athletics, particularly
basketball, in which he has been successful as a coach of
winning teams. And he believes that this has been a valuable
adjunct in his work for the good of his fellow men.
I<ENNEm MEYER SETION

A.B., 1936; A.M., Columbia, 1938; Ph.D., Columbia, 1941
Dr. Kenneth Setton was forced to enter college, if he were
to enter at all, without resources, since he lost his parents early
in life. Of his college education and later history he writes as
follows:
My first appointment as a Scholar under the Fund came in the
fall of 1932 when I was eighteen years of age. I remained on the
Fund as an undergraduate unbl 1936 when I received my A.B.
degree, and thereafter studied as a Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Fellow at the University of Chicago, Columbia, and Harvard; and,
with the aid .of two University Fellowships from Columbia, re-
ceived from the latter institution my AM. (1938) and PhD.
(19+1). My first teaching appointment came in February of 1940
when I joined the staff of Boston University College of Liberal
Arts, from which I resigned in May of 1943 to accept an appoint-
ment as Associate Professor of History in the University of Mani-
toba, Winnipeg, Canada. In September of 1946 I was appointed
a full professor and made head of the department of history and
Chairman of the Board of University Examiners in History in the
Province of Manitoba. Such is my present position.
Neither as student nor teacher have I remoVed my nose from
the snndstone long enough to allow interesting and exciting ad-
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ventures to happen to me. This, increasingly, I regret. Of the

past, with reference to my student years, I remember most vividly,
perhaps, the crushing load of anxiety under which so many of us,
especially as graduate students, worked during the dismal and
slow-moving decade of the 1930's. One wondered where, once
removed from the cloisters of Academe, he was to find his place.
if any, in the world that lay outside. I recall with much gratitude
the extent to which, owing to the Fund, some of the worries of
my fellow students were not to the fullest extent my own; but I
wondered, too, and of course with apprehension, what the world
looked like on the other side of the ivy-c1ad wall. - I still wonder
about it. The chief result of the close apposition of my nose and
the grindstone, lamented above, has been the publication from
time to time of some historical studies.
WARREN DOUGLAS McPHEE

S.B., 1937; Ph.D., Northwestern, 1940
Another of the men to seek disguise under the guise of the
third person is Warren McPhee. Thus writing, he tells us:
His ancestors on his mother's side were Scotch from the Hebrides
who migrated to Cape Breton in the early nineteenth century.
On his father's side his forebears were Scotch from the lower
islands, mixed with traces of German and Irish. He was brought
up in Newton, where he was a member of the Methodist Church.
He attended Newton High School. graduating in 1932. While he
was a fairly apt student, he was plagued through most of his school
days by an exubexance which frequently led to disciplinary action.
His interests in things technical were great, but not auspicious.
Similarly his endeavors in athletics were energetic, but not dis-
tinguished. In hockey he showed some prowess, winning letters
in junior high and high school.
Gxaduating in 1932 was a matter of poor timing. The family
budget, curtailed due to the depression. could offer no assistance
for college. The year 1932-1933 was spent doing odd jobs and
taking some non-credit work at nights at high school. Through the
late Professor Otto E. Plath, he was introduced to the Fund Com-
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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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ARTHUR JULIUS WATZINGER

S.B., 1937; Ph.D., Harvard, 1942
Dr. Watzinger tells his story as follows:
I was born July 10, 1908, in Roxbury, Massachusetts, of a Swiss
mother, Anna Halter, and an Austrian father, Julius Watzinger.
both of whom had immigrated to this country only a year before
my auspicious entry into this world. My parents were, relatively
speaking, uneducated, neither having completed more than four
or five years of schooling, and had left the old country to try their
fortune in the great land of promise.
My father came from a small mountain village in Austria. My
mother had been born in Switzerland in a small mill town, where
her father had been a mill superintendent and a most severe father
to a large family. As I grew older and displayed a certain amount
of musical and inventive talent, my mother often told me that I
must have inherited these traits from her own great-grandfather
who had been an inventor of some note and a considerable musi-
cian. He designed and manufactured a mechanical clock installed
for many years in the steeple of the local church. This clock won
fame because of mechanical contrivances which brought forth
dancers and costumed figures at certain hours, and which auto-
matically played musical airs.
My father learned the butcher's trade as a boy, but joined the
Austrian army while still quite young. His greatest pride was to
relate to me how he attained the coveted post of staff-bugler
assigned especially to Emperor Franz Josef. How proud he looked
on his snow-white horse with his curling moustache waving in the
breezesl I still have in my possession pictures of him in his day of
glory. Upon completion of his period of military service he made
his home in Switzerland. It was here that he met my mother.
She relived her life in me, taught me lessons of love, devotion,
thoroughness and thrift at all times. I was to have every benefit
that had been denied to her. I shall be eternally grateful to the
good Lord for giving me such a fine devoted mother.
My father and I were never comrades, probably because he was
already in his forties when I was born. He had to work extremely
hard for small pay as a butcher in a smoking establishment in Bos-
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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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served as an ideal in my impressionable years. It was he who

taught me to play tennis, and to appreciate long walks in nature.
Our relationship was more than merely that of a piano teacher
and his pupil. I was considered his best pupil and always had the
position of honor in his annual recitals, the last perfonner.
My elementary school work was average or a little better, but
my deportment was not always of the best; in fact, upon several
occasions my teachers found it necessary to send home special
reports to my parents. Things like this worried me considerably,
and at least on one occasion I dropped said note into a handy trash
barrel. It was while I was in the fifth and sixth grades that World
War I was going on. I remember what a complex I had about my
foreign-sounding name. Youngsters, cruel as they are, used to
mock my name on the streets, and I would gladly have sacrificed
an ann to exchange "Watzinger" for "Jones" or "Romanelli:'
Anyone with a Gennan-sounding name, or whose parents sounded
like Gennans, suffered no end of tonnent at the hands of unsym-
pathetic children. They used to taunt me with the names "Kaiser,"
"Hun," et cetera. These were reaIIy difficult times for me - times
which I shall never forget. Meanwhile I kept up my daily piano
practicing diligently, went on excursions to coal yards to buy hun-
dred-pound lots during the fuel shortage, and searched everywhere
to locate a pound of sugar to help my mother.
Our school music supervisor took a fancy to me because of my
ability to sit on his knee and sing any note on the piano even before
he touched that note. I must have had perfect pitch at that time
and was quite a novelty to the other monotones in the Glendale
School. He encouraged me at every opportunity to continue my
musical education. Another great influence in my life was the
Glendale Methodist Church where I attended Sunday School and
where I met the music director and choinnaster. He was well
known in Everett as a piano teacher, but whenever he needed
someone to playa piano solo, he always chose me - a compliment
which I could not easily overlook or misunderstand. I also played
for every session of Sunday School, and carved a finn niche for
myself at that institution. I never missed attendance and am still
the proud possessor of several Bibles and books won during these
years as awards for perfect attendance. Even though my mother
and father were not cburch-going people, my mother always in-
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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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There was a combination general store and Post Office in Glen-

dale Square, Everett. I worked here for the best part of five years
and gained what I consider invaluable experience. Here I had the
opportunity to meet all kinds of people and it was not long before
I lost whatever shyness and reserve I might still have had.
In 1926 I was graduated from the Everett High School and,
after a short consideration as to whether I should go to college or
not, I decided to follow my logical profession - that of music. In
the first place I had no money with which to go to college, and in
the second place my grades were not high enough to get me into
any institution of higher learning. Moreover, I had such a head
start in music that I would have been foolish not to follow a
musical career. It was just at this time that theatre organs were
being installed in all theatres throughout the country and big
money was being earned at this kind of work, so I decided to study
the organ intensively so as to get a position as soon as possible. I
decided there was no sense to my studying organ along classical
lines when the big money was in theatre work, so I found a theatre
organist with a big name and went to work. The organist of
Loew's State Theatre became my teacher at $5 a lesson, quite an
enormous price for those days. I bought a little house-organ (har-
monium) for the purposes of practice and did much of my prac-
ticing at home on this instrument and on the piano. Finding that
a real pipe organ with pedal board to practice on was difficult to
find and expensive, I practiced everywhere, at the First Church in
Boston, at various theatres, and at the New England Conservatory
practice organs where I sneaked in whenever no one was around to
stop me. After only six months of such intensive work (approxi-
mately seven hours of practice a day) my teacher considered me
ready for my first position and helped me get the job as solo-
organist and film accompanist at the then new Strand Theatre in
South Boston. I tried out with several other applicants and was
selected for the position which paid $81 a week. Here I was,
barely out of short trousers at the age of eighteen, making such a
phenomenal sum. I remember the blaze of glory with which the
theatre was opened, and the new $50,000 Wurlitzer organ was
advertised with Watzinger at the console. I was featured from the
start in spotlight solos and had to play running accompaniments to
the silent films of those days - a very specialized kind of music-
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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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248 A CBllONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
During the seven years of my professional musical activity. I had

many times regretted my lack of a college education. I had found
myself dissatis6ed with the kind of people I had to associate with
in musical circles and theatrical life, because I considered them
too one-sided and biased. I felt always that I had lost a great oppor-
tunity to improve myself culturally and educationally. But I was
already twenty-four years old and my parents needed financial as-
sistance. How could I manage? I thought it hopeless. for I had
saved but little money during all this time of high wages. I resumed
my friendship with an old school chum, Carl Benton. Carl was
the same age as I and had also failed to go to college, largely be-
cause of ill health. Now at the age of twenty-five he was taking
the great step and had decided to go through college. His decision
inspired me and during our long walks throughout Everett and
Malden I came to the same decision. Do or diel I remember the
dismay with which my mother greeted this new impulse, but in
spite of her thoughts she encouraged me and promised to help
wherever she could.
My first set-back came when I applied at various institutions for
entrance. I had done so poorly in high school that no college would
accept me. A long talk with the principal of the Everett High
School encouraged me, because he told me I need not be ashamed
to come to Everett High School for a postgraduate course. He told
me to pocket my pride and attend high school to gain my credits
as if I were one of the youngsters. Fortunately I was not yet bald,
so I decided to follow his advice, for I had no money to attend a
preparatory school. The year 1931-1932 was spent taking a full
seven courses which I needed to make up for credit. Needless to
say, I wasted no tillie or energy. This was my big chance and I
was not going to pass it up. I studied hard and steadily. I made
friends with the other pupils and felt quite at home, even though
they looked at me strangely when I averaged a grade of 98 in all
seven courses I was taking. How strange it felt to see my name
posted on the board on the Honor Roll each quarter. The teachers
were all with me and gave me every assistance. At graduation that
year I played the piano for the graduation exercises. I had col-
lected sufficient credits to enter Boston University College of
Liberal Arts in the fall. What I wanted to become I had no idea,
but I was ready to start, at any rate.
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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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trek by bicycle across France, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Austria,

Gennany, Belgium, and finally England.
How grateful I now am that I was permitted to see Europe and
especially Germany before the recent war ravaged its beauties.
Even though Hitler was already in power at this time (1936), I
was still able to experience the flavor of old Gennany and to ap-
preciate what Germany has meant to the world through the cen-
turies in the fields of art, literature, and culture in general. For a
man in my chosen field this experience is unobtainable in any other
way. Thanks to the Fund I had this great privilege before it was
too late.
In the fall of 1937, as a Fellow of the Fund, and proudly wearing
my Phi Beta Kappa key, I descended upon the Harvard Graduate
School prepared to do further honors for Boston University. I
found the going difficult but managed, under the tutelage of the
excellent German department at Harvard, to keep up my grades.
At the completion of my first year I was awarded the degree of
MA. and given an appointment to teach two sections of elemen-
tary German as a teaching fellow at Harvard for the coming year.
I spent the summer brushing up on Latin for my Ph.D. require-
ment. What a task this was after fourteen years without Latin
training. You will recall that my previous training had been at
Everett High School where I just managed to scrape through my
two-year course. I had practically five years of Latin to accomplish
in one summer. With the assistance of a tutor I tackled it with a
vengeance and was determined to pass, so I spent all summer learn-
ing declensions, conjugations, and irregular verb forms, and reading
Cicero and Pliny. When the appointed day came I fortunately
passed my examination.
My next great hurdle was to pass the requirements in linguistics
for my special field. This much-to-be-feared examination was like-
wise passed in the following year. I was now ready to choose a
subject for my dissertation. I finally decided upon "Folklore Ele-
ments in Swiss Drama of 1500-1550," because of my interest in the
Reformation Period, and set to work collecting mountains of ma-
terial. Meanwhile I felt I was becoming quite an accomplished
teacher and continued to hold my teaching fellowship, thus lighten-
ing the burden on the Fund. I also kept up my church organ work.
My Doctor's dissertation was finally accepted upon completion late
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"AND GLADLY TEACH" . 251
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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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.
GEORGE TALCO'IT WELSCH, JR.

AB., 1938; B.D., Episcopal Theological School,
Cambridge, 1942
The Reverend George Welsch is Rector of Christ Church,
Intermont Parish, Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Those who know
that interesting region and its inhabitants will welcome the
more extended statement about his work in a later chapter.
JOHN CuTI.ER ROBINSON

S.B., 1939; Ph.D., Illinois, 1943
The last sentence in that part of John Robinson's life story
given in Chapter V tells that for a short time he did some
teaching. What he has done since may well be told here in
his own words.
While at minois, I was elected to Phi Lambda Upsilon, honomy
chemical society, Sigma Xi, honorary scientific society, and to
Phi Kappa Phi, an all-university national honor society. I am a
member of the American Chemical Society.
My employment record includes a summer as a chemist for the
General Laboratories of the United States Rubber Company in
Passaic, New Jersey, and, from the summer of 1943 to date, as a
research chemist for the Experiment Station, Hercules Powder
Company, Wilmington, Delaware. I came as a research chemist
and am still just that. I've had no opportunity to publish in the
scientific journals and as a matter of fact I don't even have a
patent. But I'm using my mining to about its limit in research
and my bosses seem happy.
After eight hours of industry, one is usually willing to forget
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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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always a service to humanity is open to question. If some day I

lead the way to a better varnish, or even to a salable varnish, I have
to assume that humanity will benefit along with the stockholders.
Scientists now seem to be becoming more aware of their responsi-
bilities in directing the products of science into more humanitarian
channels; I'm too young to be anything but a statistic in this
movement. In the meantime, I'll go along hollering that I'm under-
paid compared to some of the other professions usually considered
altruistic in nature, but I'll keep turning out research in the hope
it will do somebody good.
ELMER WILLIAM SALENIUS

A.B., 1939; A.M., Harvard, 1941
College, Graduate School, and War have filled most of Mr.
Salenius' time since 1935. However, he has made such good
use of it that we now find him becoming established as a
college teacher of English - a language to which he was not
born. Having already followed in a previous chapter the ac-
count of his ancestry and his early life, we again quote briefly
from his life story, leaving much of the remainder, however,
for a still later chapter. He writes:
Then came college. Dad was still a weaver in the Maynard
woolen mill and the depression had eaten up his small savings. But
my high school mathematics teacher, a graduate of Boston Univer-
sity, arranged an interview for me with Mr. Ralph Taylor, who
encouraged me to apply for a Buck scholarship. When on the
basis of my freshman year's grades I was named a Beneficiary
of the Fund I felt I had won a victory. Buck Scholars always
seemed to me a chosen lot. I could see myself following in the
footsteps of Professors Mason and Morris and some day teach-
ing at Boston University. The distinction of being a Buck Scholar
impressed me much more than the financial assistance - though of
course that was invaluable to me.
College was to me mainly a matter of studying and commuting.
I was too quiet and reserved, too much concerned, probably, with
getting my work done well, to be outstanding socially, although I
did belong to several college clubs and held office in them.
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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.
MERLE RIClWlD BoYD

S.B.,194O
Merle Boyd's parents died while he was still very young,
and he was cared for by others - particularly an uncle and
aunt who later adopted him. His favorite toys were always
mechanical and his favorite youthful occupation constructing
toy aeroplanes. Like many another Fund man he received a
double promotion in the grades. Of that in particular and then
of later school experiences he writes as follows:
I received a double promotion in the fourth to fifth grade, a
mid-year transition. There I received my first scholastic fright,
having landed right in the middle of fractions. My self-confidence
was severely shaken, but things soon straightened out. In the
sixth grade, during a protracted encounter with King Arthur, I
somehow got involved with the construction of a very complicated
medieval castle complete with moat, battlements, and all the salient
architectural features. In order to complete the realism, the paper
from which it was made had to be tinted gray to resemble masonry.
This was accomplished by some evil-smelling substance known to
the teacher which proved to be the crowning touch, for it made
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the object noticeable if not notable. Notwithstanding the odor, I

found the thing some years later still preserved in the principal's
office.
An average, and at times somewhat scared pupil to start (espe-
cially in mathematics), I was valedictorian of the graduating class
in the ninth grade. No one was more surprised than I when the
principal told me. Just recently I came across a copy of the speech
I gave and I recall it involved the ignition on the speakers' plat-
. form of some mildly explosive powdets to illustrate my points. It
certainly kept the audience awake.
Sometime between the sixth and seventh grades, I believe, I be-
came interested in electricity. It all began in an incident which
occurred while on a trip to Canobie Lake Park with a group of
boys in a church organization. Near the camp site I found a coil of
wire which I took home with me. Very shortly the electrical age
in communications was ushered in throughout the length and
breadth of my back yard. In rapid succession the garage and
cellar became wired. As I look back on it, I acquired more under-
standing than I gave myself credit for at the time. I could under-
stand most of the stuff I read on electricity fairly well.
In high school I performed scholastically about the same as in
junior high. It took the first year to get my roots down. There-
after I came to life and graduated among the top three in a class
of five or six hundred. In school my most important extra-cur-
ricular activity was as editor of the school magazine. My high. school
days occurred during the depression. At that time the family was
blessed with an old car that toward the end of its life required
frequent attention. It got to the point finally where we would have
to do an overhaul job every week end to insure its functioning
through the following week. Since one cannot delve intimately
into a mechanism repeatedly without becoming very familiar with
its working, and since familiarity with the working of a mechanism
is equivalent to knowledge of its operation, I never bad to learn to
drive. It was one of the easiest things I've ever done.
Throughout high school I had hopes - really, intentions - of
going through college, although how it was to be managed was a
question. Near the end of the senior year, the principal told me
about the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund. It
was one of the high days of my life when I teeeived word that I
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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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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
more was a farm next home, half a

down and I worked there winters at first,
finally hand, pitching hay, cows, plowing, feeding
the livestock. One summer I managed farm myself and felt
that I had reached a milestone in my career. .
The depression of the thirties came when I was in high school.
Carpentry was not a good trade then and farming had only the ad-
vantage that one need not starve. It threw me off my stride, though,
because there seemed little point to an education which would end
at that Football was my I did not
practice games were the team in
senior to my surprise, linesman and
not much about the fine the game.
those years exposed the shorn
to the angry blasts. I was luckier than most, I suppose. For four
years there were only a few weeks when I had no job nor prospect of
a job. Apple knocking, lumbering, assistant in a biology laboratory,
switch-board operator, hospital operating room orderly, work of
various kinds on the assembly line of a bottling plant, filling-station
operator, and fill-in jobs of carpentering and fanning, kept the
wolf from - barely.
One high school teachers, had shown her
plete ty by flunking me and using me
her English, kept up in me. I had
studying with her evenings the winter of
which was her way of repaying a favor I done in writing a
little skit to be used in one of her high school assemblies. I had
been out of work for about a month that spring and had just started
a job as filling-station worker when she called me by 'phone one
evening to inquire whether I could scrape together $240 during the
summer to tuition, and then went on to explain that
Boston could offer of $100,
her In one long chance, but
another nothing to lose. high school
were University work off a few
ditions examinations. I had the tuition
when started, but eked it out and 1937 by seDing
my blood, of which I have always had an ample supply.
Studying came harder than the money. I had done no serious
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studying for so long that it was physical work to poncentrate OD

books again and it was my good fortune that I had to work evenings
and week ends in the filling-station. Winter trade was not heavy
and the station was a place where I could be alone to work. Those
first two years seemed very hard, as though I should never be able
to find the open sesame which had been mine in hi2h school.
I knew I had not had to work as hard in school, even though the
standards there were very high. The friendships made at that time,
however, more than compensated for the nerve-wrung weariness
of winter evenings at the filling-station.
I had had a vague notion, when I entered college, that I might
become a teacher, but the nearer the prospect came, the less it
appealed to me. Abstractly it seemed a good enough reason for
going to college, but none of my studies was based upon it, since
I followed anything which interested me, as a review of the courses
which I took during those four years amply demonstrated. I don't
recall the moment which found me deciding to try for the Foreign
Service of the United States. It was made some time in my junior
year, after I had been awarded the Buck scholarship. I know that
I felt that I should set a goal which seemed impossible of achieve-
ment, just as the scholarship had seemed impossible to me as a
freshman. Professor Ault, who had given me encouragement on
occasion, directed my attention to the F1etcher School of Law
and Diplomacy. Finally it seemed to require some of the abilities
and knowledge which I had been acquiring.
The F1etcher School brought me into contact with studies at
the graduate level in the most intensive way. It does not seem
possible that we could have had time for so much fun and still
finish the amounts of reading handed out each week. The fifty
students admitted each year are among the finest in personality and
scholarship graduated from colleges throughout the world and I
felt the stimulation that contact with them must bring. In spite
of this, however, I do not believe that anyone of them, nor of our
teachers, was prepared for the definiteness of war. We had been
so engrossed in the theory that actual practice found us unable to
orient ourselves. Several of us had already passed the Foreign
Service examinations and we knew that we would be called soon.
I know that I felt that the choice was out of my hands, that I
should serve where I was ordered to serve. Other friends volun·
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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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hurdle in the Andes which in Bolivia average more than 18,000

feet, with at least two peaks higher than 23,000. Most imports
are brought in through the Pacific coast ports of Mollendo in
Peru, and Arica and Antofogasta in Chile, and brought by rail to
Cochabamba, where they are put into trucks and taken either to
Santa Cruz or Todos Santos. It was to the latter town that busi-
ness took me on this expedition.
Fortunately, I was able to make the trip in a jeep. The road
at this time of year is washed away in many places, and badly rutted
in long stretches through the jungle section, so that only with a
vehicle as sturdy and capable of clinging to hillsides could the trip
have been made with any degree of pleasure.
We started about four one morning from Cochabamba and
were well into the mountains at sunrise. The first part of the road
is good, gravel-surfaced mountain road and mounts upward so
gradually that only when one could see out into the valleys could
any idea be had of our actual elevation. The road must certainly
be one of the highest in the world, because we estimated our eleva-
tion at about 18,000 feet at the highest point. Still on every side
slopes went on up several thousand feet, rocky and barren, and the
wind drove down off them with the familiar edge of a Tremont
Street breeze.
As we wound in and out among the peaks we could occasionally
see valleys opening out below us but clouds prevented us from
estimating their depths. We were not prepared therefore when,
as we came from the shadow of one tremendous peak, the entire
jungle plain suddenly seemed stretched at our feet like a map.
The sun was just rising over the eastern edge and its light struck
along the rivers, picking them out in silver streaks against the
massive green. The mountains seemed to drop in one sheer preci-
pice to the Oat plain at their feet.
The road now started down through various levels of climate,
so that in two hours we had crossed every zone from subpolar to
tropic. Vegetation gradually pressed in along the roadsides, until
we were driving through a tunnel of thick, interlaced trees, giant
ferns, and trailing vines. At one point a mountain stream jumps
the road, which tunnels under the faU, open on the outside so
that the water forms a curtain preventing one from seeing the five-
hundred-foot drop. At another place the road is cut into a sandy
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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.
ARTHUR KENNETH SWANSON

S.B.,1940
The life story written for this volume by Lieutenant Colonel
Kenneth Swanson, after telling of the coming of his ancestors
from Europe to America in the nineteenth century, continues
as follows:
At the end of the first world war I entered the Swanson house-
hold as the younger of two boys. The strongest in8uence in mold-
ing the first quarter century of my life came from my brother who
is about six years my senior. As far back as my memory wiD take
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264 A CHRONICLE OF ACBJEVEMENT
me, I can recall feeling that I had to do at least as well as he did.

and with a little extra effort I might be able to surpass his record.
Fortunately, my brother was one whose performance made the
fulfillment of the above relatively difficult. Thus in gmmmar school
I had to win two prizes for early mastery of arithmetic. In high
school, it was class president for two yean. Again this competition
led not only to Winning the service cup for participation in ema-
curricular activities as he had done, but to amassing what amounted
to the highest total accumulated by any student up to that time.
Still again as I entered college his influence must be recognized.
In spite of a relatively successful athletic career in high school, I
was convinced by my brother that a Phi Beta Kappa key [which he
earned. R.E.B.] would wear much longer than a college sweater.
At college it was difficult to explain to my colleagues that I
thoroughly enjoyed taking mathematics courses for, in addition to
the aversion towards the subject held by many, they were quick
to point out that there was homework every day and, wont of all,
one had to stay awake in class. I don't think I will ever fotget the
verbal jolting that brought my mind back from a walk on the Es-
planade with my fiancee to a class in modem algebra. June, 1940
found me with an S.B. degree and fired with ambition to "get a
job."
He got the job, with an insurance company, but soon found
himself in the Service. Of his experiences there we learn later.
KENNETH RANDoLPH WHITING

A.B., 1940; A.M., California, 1941
Although his graduate work, interrupted by war service,
is as yet incomplete, Kenneth Whiting has already begun his
career as a college teacher - as was noted in Chapter V.
In this chapter we have met in brief or extended form parts

of the life stories of fifty-seven men hom among those who
first became beneficiaries of the Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Educational Fund.
With but few exceptions these men are now in the midst
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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
T HE FORMAL EDUCATION of many of the men who entered

college after 1936 is still incomplete, since for them study
was interrupted by the War. Even granting that the line
drawn is somewhat arbitrary, it is still true that those in the
group now to be considered who have actually entered their
life work are so near its beginning that judgment of their
careers must be suspended. However, if one dares predict the
future of these younger men by comparing the various aspects
of their lives to date with the earlier lives of the older men
considered above, the conclusion follows that these young
men will take as definite places in building a better world as
have those who, during the earlier years of the Fund, gained
an education through its help. So wait. And if a second vol-
ume of this story is written after another thirty years, it may
then be found that some of the names that follow "lead all
the rest."
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.
THEODORE CHIPMAN DAY

A.B., 1942; S.T.B., 1945
Also reserved for a later chapter is the story of this young
pastor.
266
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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.
The tIansition from high school to college was not as difficult

as I had imagined it would be. My appoinbnent as a beneficiary
of the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund was the
greatest honor I had been accorded up to that time, and it certainly
gave me a great deal of confidence in myself and a strong determina-
tion to produce a scholastic record which would be worthy of the
honor bestowed upon me. Without financial aid I might not have
been able to pursue a college education. My status as a beneficiary
of the Fund seemed to provide an important incentive to scholastic
accomplishments. It was perhaps the most potent force behind
my achievements in attaining membership in P~ Beta Kappa,
graduation with Honor, and a degree with Distinction in the
Field of HistoI}'.
In view of the importance of science in the current so-called
"atomic age," perhaps I should not have confined myself to only
the required courses in this field. However, I have never regretted
my emphasis of the Humanities represented by literature, govern-
ment, histoI}', and the languages. Is not the world today too much
concemed with materialistic pursuits and attitudes? Many of the
present-day ills of humanity could probably be removed by greater
devotion to spiritual and humanitarian ideals by the peoples of
all countries.
Since my year of graduation was 1942, the war overshadowed all
other considerations in making my decision on postgraduate work.
Although I had formerly been determined to teach, the war tumed
me toward govemment administIation. The Harvard Graduate
School of Business AdministIation seemed to offer the best train-
ing in this field. From the beginning of my study there I was im-
pressed with eveI}' phase of the instruction. The case method
was different from any educational process I had been exposed to
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268 A CHllONIcLE OF ACBlEVEMENT
before, but I am convinced that it had a very profound influence on

my ability to think when confronted with a problem.
A peIforated eardrum prevented my joining the armed forces.
Consequently, upon graduation from Harvard in 1943, I accepted
a position in a defense industry in order to make my contribution
to the war effort. The next year and a half I spent with United
Aircraft: Corporation in Stratford, Connecticut, where I did man-
agement planning in a plant employing 15,000 persons and pro-
ducing naval aircraft. The work was very interesting and carried
me into all phases of activity within the company.
When it appeared that the war was coming to an end, I left
United Aircraft: and joined a publishing organization. Here, I set
up a production planning department and became manager of this
function. In 1946, however, I felt that my opportunities with this
company were limited.
Mr. Mehos then turned to investment research and is still
with a company in that field.
CRUI ES FllANCIS MolUlELL, JR.

A.B., 1942; M.D., Harvard, 1945
Dr. Morrell is one of the two Fund men I called on in Cali-
fornia in the late spring of '47. It was a call to be remembered.
The Doctor I had met in Boston, but Mrs. Morrell and the
twelve-day-old daughter I met for the first time that day. In
spite of his busy life as a medical officer in the Navy and in
spite of his additional family cares, his brief and interesting
life story reached me in the fall of '47. It is reserved for a
later chapter.
PHILIP PATlUCX POIlUEll

S.B., 1942; A.M., Harvard, 1947
Philip Poirier writes in the letter accompanying his life
story:
I enjoyed doing it. It called forth a wealth of recollections. It
helped me to see quite clearly that my war service perhaps offered
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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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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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gram at the University. I was chosen Catholic representative to

an inter-faith committee; my main job was to obtain priests to
address assemblies in different departments of the University. I got
tremendous satisfaction from this work and have always considered
aCU'vltv of vital importance prone to religious
gauge the influence teachings of men

my life, I recall of wisdom or
them because to some
my philosophy of life. category is the deb:niti()n
an educated man as one who should be able to feel at home in many
different environments and with many types and conditions of
men. I remember, too, the wise counsel that "sometimes the best
way to meet a trying test or problem with the maximum efficiency
is to reach a state of indifference that removes the fear of failure."
to me during grim determination
when men concerned with making
admonition to being a scholar,
Distinction work obtained excellent
mdMd,ual research and study. This
excellent mental tii!:!f'inl,inp
WILLIAM EDWAlU) SELLERS

S.B., 1942; A.M., 1947
Happy the man who can look back upon such a heritage as
William Sellers describes sentences.
tlWllDess men of integrity courage (though of small
sympathy and religious leaders with proltotlnd
eanlest faith - these the happy breed of
nn,.'h,,-,.r! by the wooded quiet valleys of nn,... h"'n>
New England which I still think of as home. To the free, clear
atmosphere of those hills and to the practical assistance and the
example of those men, and not to any power of my own, do I owe
whatever accomplishment or hope of achievement I can claim.
I received my early schooling in a well integrated group of gram-
;)\;U,UUI;), Discipline was word; there
Wlf!lnCrS birchen rule teachers, but aPntlPr
more effective pleasures kept pupils in order and made them un-
dergo the stmin of honest effort.
The more thickly settled parts of my native city are, I regret to
say, not triumphs of enlightened city planning. They are, to say
the least, esthetically un~ttractive. In such areas I spent part of my
childhood, trying conscientiously to become assimilated into the
nmks of the "tough kids," but never quite making the grade. At
age twelve I moved with my parents to an outlying residential area,
a quiet and semi-rural part of the town in which I found many
agreeable companions and much to do in connection with the all-
important process of growing into a social environment. This
process involved the usual pranks of mischievous boys, the run-
of-the-mill games of baseball and "cops and crooks," and trips to
the swimming hole in summer and the skating pond in winter.
Peter-Pan-like, we who partook of this idyllic boyhood state were
in no great haste to grow up. The process was hastened, and at
the same time made pleasant, by the two outstanding community
organizations, the Boy Scouts and the local Congregational Church.
The local scout troop, under tolerant and capable leadership, be-
came a focal point of our activities. We learned something of use-
ful arts, something of the ways of the woods; we made long excur-
sions into the pleasant pastures and woodlands of northern
Massachusetts. I remember particularly the fourteen-mile hike
a few of us took one day (we stretched the fourteen to about
twenty) in fulfillment of a test requirement. As we approached
a village, a pair of local boys approached us and asked about our
origins and destination. When we told them we had walked from
Haverhill, they laughed at us. "You didn't walk all that far just for
the heck of it. You must of hitched a ride." Such is the degen-
erate state of a certain cross-section of our youth. .
Riverside Church, a liber.al and openly tolerant branch of the
Congregational Church of New England, was the center of spiritual
and social life of the entire community, regardless of a few differ-
ences in creed or race. I was a regular attendant, at first rather
through family custom than because of any compelling interest of
my own, but later because of a lively interest in the services and
activities of the church. The devotion and earnestness of the pastor
brought most of us wild young creatures to the church and made
thinking, responsible beings of us. This young minister was the
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guest of my family at dinner on the day of his visit as a candidate-

my parents were then and afterward serving the church in various
official and unofficial capacities - and impressed us from the very
beginning with the unpretentious and sincere quality of his calling.
In the services of the church and the Church School, in the ac-
tivities of Christian Endeavor and other societies, in all depart-
ments of service and fellowship, his was the guiding genius and the
pervading, inspiring in8uence.
Outstanding is the memory of the long walks which this pastor
and my father and I took on Sunday afternoons along the quiet
counlI}' roads that thread the pastures and woods of Whittier's
childhood home. On these walks, we talked of many things - of
the beauty of the part of the world we saw, of the work of the
church, of our friends, of human values and standards, of the possi-
ble destiny of man. It was during these walks that I discovered the
need of a guiding principle, the need for examination and
inquiry, the categorical imperative that demands a sincere attempt
to untangle the knotted skein of human fate. These walks were.
in a sense, the beginning of a long and still unfinished pilgrimage
- the pilgrimage of the seeker, the lifelong quest for basic
truths.
Haverhill High School, a large and democratic institution, was
overcrowded at the time of my attendance; the faculty pedormed
heroic service in the face of a challenge almost too formidable to
be inspiring. The in8uence of one of the teachers of English re-
inforced my early propensity to reading and verbal expression and
led me to formulate plans for college work. These plans were, how-
ever, mere aspirations for some time; I had no real hopes on which
to build. I had entered high school as a commercially-minded stu-
dent, had found the commercial program unendurable, and had
lapsed into the heterogeneous program known as the "genetal
course." As a result, I was deficient in the entrance requirements
of Latin and mathematics specified by most colleges at that time.
Besides, I had no financial resources.
The first difficulty was solved by a new and able principal, who
taught me the essentials of algebra during the summer after my
graduation in 1936 and arranged for me to take a postgraduate
course in which I could continue to study mathematics and lan-
guages. The second obstacle was the more formidable one. I
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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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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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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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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.
At this point Sellers' story is left in midstream, but with a

promise to return to it later.
HAROLD JUDD SPAllLING, JR.

S.B., 1942; M.D., 1944
Dr. Sparling's experience as a physician has, to date, been
in the medical corps. His story finds its natural place in a
later chapter.
ROBERT PAUL FRANZ

A.B., 1943
Mr. Franz, though still in the later part of his formal educa-
tion, has already had considerable experience as a pastor. We
therefore reserve his life story for a later chapter.
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YOU'I"IIFUL PROMISE 279
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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sary 'officer, welfare and recreation officer, ship's censor, ship's

secretary, communications officer, first lieutenant, and officer-
of-the-day during battle. Obviously these varied duties brought
me into relationship with the fifty men in the crew in many differ-
ent capacities and under varying conditions of wartime and battle
stress.
While it is clear that Cain's psychological interest was ever
with him, it must often have been subordinated to duties as a
gunboat executive officer in the year and three-quarters he
spent in the Pacific battle area: He has reported that the work
"consisted largely of giving close-range fire support during
landing operations. In this capacity we played an active role
in the invasions of Leyte, Lingayen Gulf, Iwo Jima, and Oki-
nawa."
His story continues as follows:
This experience on gunboats and later in conjunction with the
execution of the Bikini atomic bomb experiments was quite fruitful
in the development of maturity and stability of personality, but it
was manifestly tangential to my basic pursuit of psychological un-
derstanding. Following my war service, I returned to Boston Uni-
versity, prepared to undertalce the next hurdle in my career. O~
viously, if I wished to help people by integrating physical and
emotional problems, it would be( folly to proceed in ignorance of
the mechanics of bodily activity. This meant that a certain number
of years must be devoted to medical training; and with this in mind
I completed my premedical training, as well as finishing a Master's
degree during the year following my release from naval service.
As the next step I am at present completing my first year at
Harvard Medical School. My course of worle for the future is fairly
well crystallized, although the potential implementations of this
plan are so protean in their nature that no rigid pathway can be
plotted with any assurance of exact realization.
The role of the Fund and the Committee in this development of
an individual is, I think, quite clear. By their initial offering of the
broader horizons of an intellectual university life, they presented
a rather confused young man the opportunity of examining and
choosing between a great variety of worthy careers. Finally, by their
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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.
BRUCE COLLIER FERGUSON

S.B., 1945; M.D., 1946
Early in his life story he writes: "I can recall very few memo-
ries or incidents of early life. My mother tells me that when
1 was at the age when most small boys want to be firemen,
I wanted to be a doctor. 1 can not remember ever having had
any other ambition." How that ambition is being fulfilled he
tells in a later chapter.
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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when 1 was about seven. Because of my Spanish background 1

was a great favorite of the teachers. Although I. never did feel at
ease in the school environment, I did remarbbly well, ~
in art. One day a visitor at my home saw me sketching and recom-
mended me to a friend of his who had an art studio. At the age
of eight or nine I completed seven oil paintings under his direction
and they were exhibited in the school. Unfortunately, the artist
had to move for some reason and my lessons were discontinued.
Later, I took violin lessons at the Quincy Conservatory of Music
and enjoyed them a great deal. The family, however, moved and
my lessons stopped again. Finances must have been pretty low,
for I never recommenced either painting or music lessons.
A year later we moved back to Quincy, where we have remained
ever since. In these early school years I played quite a lot of base-
baD, soccer, football, and basketball, but I was known mainly for
my voracious reading habits. I read everything I could lay my
hands on and often spent hours copying the illustrations in pencil,
ink, or water color. There were always "gangs" being formed
among the boys of the neighborhood and I was also in the thick
of ,"club" building.
At thirteen I had started junior high school. Somehow the size
of the building and the atmosphere of "vastness" awed me or
frightened me so that I was thereafter more subdued, more c0n-
scientious in my studies and less frequently a participant in the
sports I loved so well. My concentration on my studies was almost
pathological, loolcing at the situation from the present vanmge
point. In the summer months I played some baseball, but always
felt a "marked" man among my acquaintances, who were not
scholastically inclined. I had a vague idea of going to college but
since my parents were not well educated (two years of grammar
school in Spain before they went to work) and were ignOllDt of
American ways, I had little opportunity to indulge in educational
discussion at home. One or two teachers in high school talked to
me a little about vocational problems, but vagueness of purpose
remained with me. Finally, Miss Victoria Zeller, a niece of Mrs.
Buck's, and an instructor in German at Quincy High School, sug-
gested that I apply for the Buck scholarship. Although I had never
had her as a teacher, she was vel}' helpful and seemed to take a
personal interest: in the matter.
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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.
FREDERICK GooDWIN Au.EN

A.B., 1947
As an introduction to his story, Frederick Allen writes: "As
Churchill said of Atlee, I am 'a modest little man with a great
deal to be modest about: But you have asked that I abandon
modesty, so I shall do my best to fill your order." Like many
another we have met, his account of early life as given below
might well be labeled "A typical New England boyhood."
In 1922 my parents bought a hundred-acre £ann in Thorndike.
Maine, some twenty miles from Waterville. There, in an old
farmhouse supposedly built in 1812, I was born, July 24, 1923.
I started school at the age of five in a one-room school which in-
cluded all the grades from one through eight. There were three
members of my grade. as I recall. The eighth grade had but one
member, and some grades were vacant. I can remember a Christ-
mas party held at the school in the evening, and how embarrassed
I was when I dropped the contents of my penCil box on the floor
while hurrying to go to the front to receive another gift from the
Santa Claus. I can also barely recall the time when electricity was
brought out to the district, and my father went off with the other
men to cut and install the poles in a cooperative effort, as the
power company did not do this part of the work itself. I can alsO
remember learning to read at home from the nature stories of
Thornton Burgess. The Unity Fair held every year in the next
town was always a source of excitement. The local men drove their
own horses in the sulky races, and I can still recall the fear and
horror I felt when a wheel came off one sulky and the driver was
roughly bounced along the track for several yards before he could
stop the hone. This idyllic country life. as it seems now, came to
an end in the spring of 1929 when we moved to Lynn. The shock
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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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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.
KENNEm GILMORE RYDER

A.B., 1946; A.M., Harvard, 1947
While later reference will be made to the story of Kenneth
G. Ryder, a brief account of his early life and his education
will be given here. His immediate ancestors were New Eng-
landers of various occupations. Included were "several Nan-
tucket whalemen and sea captains."
Again and again in the stories, there is met an upward climb,
a liability turned into an asset. This story is no exception. The
writer teUs us:
My father was always keenly interested in civic affairs and looked
forward to becoming a lawyer. The Panic of 1907 came just as
he was about to enter high school. In the depression days that
followed, my father was forced to leave school and work to support
his family. His dreams of a successful career at the bar were never
to be realized. Perhaps it was his bitter disappointment at the
frustration of his youthful plans that made my father keenly aware
of the importance of education. I only know that from my earliest
days he instilled in me a deep love of learning. He wanted me to
have the education which he had never been able to obtain.
I attended kindergarten and first grade at a small private school.
At the age of six I entered the Brockton public schools. I pur-
sued my studies there for the next eleven years, graduating from
high school in 1941. From the beginning I enjoyed school. I was
rarely absent, did my lessons faithfully, and did well in all subjects
except penmanship, in which I was the despair of both teacher and
parent.
During my freshman year in high school I became intensely
interested in history. I helped to organize the Brockton High
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School History Club and served as an officer in that group during

the next four years. I joined the dramatic club and took part" in
several presentations of that group. Membership in the Hi-Y Club
brought me many close friends. An interest in public speaking
led me to take part in the Community Chest drives during my
junior and senior years. High school speakers were called on to
make appeals for funds before various civic groups throughout the
city. I spoke before the Rotary Club, the Lions Club, the Uni-
versity Club, and other organizations, including churches, firemen,
and factory employees. The speaking experience thus gained
proved valuable. It helped me to become one of the finalists in
the Interstate Oratorical Competition held at Colby College dur-
ing my senior year in high school.
While I was thus engaged in an active school life, my family met
some financial reverses. In the spring of 1940 my father lost his
old job and after a few months' lay-off went into defense work. '
I worked in a grocery store during my senior year in high school,
and thus I had less time to devote to extra-curricular activities.
As gmduation time approached, it became more and more evident
that if I were to get to college, a scholarship would be necessary.
The only alternative would be to work a considerable number of
hours outside of school and let my college work suffer. My luck
was unbelievably good. I received a $200 scholarship from the high
school and was awarded a Professor Augustus Howe Buck scholar-
ship by Boston University. I entered the College of Liberal Arts in
September, 1941. If I were asked to name Boston University's most
outstanding quality, I should say, "Friendliness." It has fine in-
structors, and it is rapidly acquiring splendid physical equipment,
but I cherish it most as a friendly college.
,
Those were hectic days - those days when a note from the
cbaft board frequently cut life in two. Just that seems to have
happened in Ryder's case. Compare the story of his life before
the war, as given briefly above, with that after, stated as follows:
When I returned from the wars in 1946, I resumed my education
at Boston University. This time, however, I was a married man
preparing for a profession and the carefree college days were past.
My wife continued to work in an insurance company to keep up
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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. .
STANLEY ROUTH STEMBRIDGE, JR.

A.B., 1947
Here again is a New England ancestry and boyhood.
~other's family came to New England early in the history
of chusetts Bay, in 1639, and settled in Reading (where I
was born) about two hundred years ago. My father's family ar-
rived only recently in this country, his parents having come from
England in 1886. My grandfather was a Congregational minister
and preached in the middle west before finally settling in New
England. Once in America he lost all interest in returning to Eng-
land, but my grandmother'S heart was always there and she re-
turned many times. From early youth I heard her stories of En21ish
lore, and this may account for my great interest in all things Eng-
lish, especially English history. My father was in the Navy in the
war of 1917-18. He was for many years a successful merchant in
Reading. He has been nearly blind for the past six years but has
successfully mastered the handicap so that he has never missed his
work.
Among my early memories is a hazy recollection of being greeted
by Calvin Coolidge during his heyday, but I guess I was not as im-
pressed as a young Republican (aged four) should be. I was much
more impressed by the druggist who used to dispense raspberry
phosphates when I went downtown with my father each morning.
I was fascinated by railroad trains, and mother spent many hours
talcing me down to watch them. Our back yard was virtually a com-
plete amusement park, with sandbox, swing, seesaw, and a slippery
slide. Needless to say, it was the center of attraction for the neigh-
borhood.
My entire elementary schooling was in Reading, Massachusetts.
One big interest was always dmmatics and despite stage fright
I appeared in plays as early as the fifth gmde. But even then I
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seemed doomed to strictly fatherly roles, a tradition which lasted

right down to the senior play when I appeared as the philosophic
parent. This insured my election as "most dignified." I am still
trying to live it down. I was also interested in school newspapers
and yearbooks, usually the literary side, but the climax of my career
was as business manager, when I got $12 for an ad from the
local banker.
I was fortunate in having excellent teachers. Especially fine was
the English literature teacher; she made her subject so attractive
and got me so interested in it that I planned to major in English
at Boston University until I ran into the Boston University history
department.
After graduation in 1940 it was financially impossible for me to
go to college, so I took a postgraduate course, lroping that perhaps
conditions might be different in 1941. It was then that the Buck
Fund came to the rescue and made the dream of going to college
come true. And all the good things which have happened to me
since follow directly from this opportunity. It is no exaggeration
to say that the Fund changed the course of my life and I shall be
everlastingly grateful, hoping only to prove worthy of the great
chance.
I had been in college but two months when the war began, so
I suppose that we saw very little of normal college life. And this
last year, after three years' absence, we were a little outside of our
old element and never did get to feel part of the class in which we
finally graduated. But for all that, there are many happy memories
of the College of Liberal Arts, both pre- and post-Navy: Professor
Rice teaching the Classical Club how to eat spaghetti at the Amalfi;
attending a Boston Symphony concert as the guest of Professor
Aurelio; the practice of walking a mile up to the old gym, leisurely
dressing and appearing on the floor of the gym at 2:25 for ten min-
utes of light exercise before showering. dressing again, and begin-
ning the rush back for a three o'clock class; the celebrated pro-
nouncement of an educational psychologist that if you hit a baby
the baby will cry; the terrific post-war crowds in the men's lounge
and the limited availability of chairs. Promptly at one o'clock the
janitors would come around and chase us out of all collapsible
chairs, fold them up, and carry them away to unknown places
where, perhaps, though I doubt it, they were in even greater need.
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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.
COBURN VINCENT GRAVES

A.B., 1947
Aside from his war service which is reported in a later chap-
ter, Coburn Graves' story reads as follows:
My early years were spent in Everett, Massachusetts, where I
was born. In 1931 my home was disrupted and that fact, plus the
ensuing depression of the thirties, led to several years of living with
various relatives. It is a striking memory that in my first six years
of school I never completed one grade in a given school. With the
coming of better years my father, sister and myself were reunited
and we reestablished our home in 1936. From that time I have
had uninterrupted attendance at the schools in which I was en-
rolled, with the exception of the war years.
In high sch.ool I was too small for the contact sports although my
interest was high. This led to my answering the call for track can-
didates in the winter of my sophomore year at Brighton High
School. I was a sprinter and won my letter in my sophomore and
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only years participated.

worked nights at moving picture thI"!2t.i·'I"
.chief of the yearbook, Gothic. This precluded
any hni,h ..... track work. Upon graduation was awarded Bright-
helmstone Scholarship by the Brighton High School. There I
formed a most pleasant and helpful association with a graduate of
the College of Liberal Arts who was my homeroom teacher in my
junior year and my English instructor during my last two years at
high school. It was she who first told me of the Buck Fund, thereby
takin out of the realm for me. It she
determined to
work and the
of my attendance College of £,au. . . .,

lasted only September, 1942, 1943, when
called into the Army. I made several pleasant acquaintances even in
that short time, friendships which have grown and are even stronger
now. It is impossible to describe the feeling of first going to col-
lege. Among the classes I enjoyed most were those in &eshman
Latin with Dr. Setton. [A Fund man whose brief story we
met. R.E.B.] Here side of study
pleasure to be an instructor
of humor. striking experience
ege of Liberal of my retum
the Army. It after the first ml(HelrDlS
when made what was for me a very important discovery.
out realizing it I had drifted into a most comfortable feeling. After
the indecisive years in the Army it was most reassuring to have
found the work in which I felt "at home." I found that I was in
my "element" in doing school work. From that time study was
not a means to an end but a thing to be enjoyed of itself. That
discovery for a then, I was a
conventional sophomore years ago.
lDll1neaUlte plans for the to do graduate
I I nlivpy<:i tv of Chicago in medieval history.
to teach at One more ambitIOn
is to go to Europe, this time for a leisurely visit on a hicycle.
The recent years have been the most satisfactory ones for me
and since they have been integrated with the academic life I feel
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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.
ARNOLD CoMPTON HANsoN

A.B., 1948
While interest and importance may have only remote con-
nections with each other, interest makes for happy reading
and we find much of that in Arnold Hanson's life story. To
begin with, while perhaps he misses out through the lack of
half a dozen earlier genemtions, he nevertheless comes nearer
to being a true Bostonian than most of the Fund men, since
both he and his parents have spent most of their lives at The
Hub. However, he writes of his gxandparents that his father's
father "was a Maine sea captain of English stock, and his
mother was from Canada of English-Flemish descent." Of his
own mother, he writes that she was "the daughter of a news-
paper compositor on the staff of the Boston Post and later
with the Boston Globe. She was mised and educated in Dor-
chester and studied dietetics at Simmons College. Her father's
people were from Maine, also of English heritage. Her mother
was a former Beale from Ellsworth, Maine. It was this family
that put the first milroad through Ellsworth and today the
town is overrun with Beales."
Was it with chagrin for the admission or pride in being a
bit unique that this almost-Bostonian writes: "I don't know
the reasons why either bmnch of the family came to the New
World, but I do know that none of them came over on the
MayBower.'~
Of his early life and school he writes:
I remember particularly the many happy summers as a youth
spent on Harbor Island, Brooklin, Maine - the rugged Maine
coast, the spruce and birch, the cold blue ocean, the early morn-
ing fogs, the people and the many little daily happenings that to
me were so wonderful. Grandfather's sloop in the harbor, the
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skiffs, floundering, lobstering, hiking, community haying in the

fall, and the wonders of Maine's natural beauty were all quite a
change hom life in the city.
I started collecting stamps at an early age and became fascinated
with names and pictures of foreign places on the stamps. This is
a hobby that has been continued and has afforded many delightful
hours of seeking the knowledge behind stamps and dreaming of
the various places pictured. I played the usual sports with the
neighborhood gang and always enjoyed their companionship. There
were other things, too. I' used to love to sit by the piano when
mother practiced singing for the church choir. I tried playing
myself once, but my little fingers were totally inadequate to get
the volume, so I borrowed a hammer hom Dad's workbench and
banged away at a great rate, much to my sorrow when the folks
returned and found the ivory keys ruined.
I was always capable of taking care of and entertaining myself
and showed a vivid imagination when things were dull. Mother
claims that I was never at a loss for something to do. I almost set
the house afire once when I dropped a lighted match into a waste-
basket and then tossed a blanket over the flames. It went up in
smoke and so did everything else, but the milkman happened by
about that time and saved the day.
I hated to miss school for fear of not being able to catch up.
I went through an attack of mumps and no one knew it until
the thing was over. Another day I skipped out after lunch and
was cut down on the street by a car that shot out from behind a
horse-drawn cart, but fortunately - other than being pinned be-
tween the front wheel and the curbing - no damage was done and
I was off to school again. I recall that I cried a bit afterward be-
cause I'd lost a splendid peppermint stick in the scuffle.
School was immensely enjoyable up to the third grade in Ja-
maica Plain; then we moved to Milton and it was some time before
I was able to become accustomed to the shift because I'd been so
happy with my Chestnut Hill pals. But, thanks to expert handling
by the teachers at the school in Milton, I gradually came around.
During junior high years I was never more than an average student
and when the shift to high school came I was completely lost.
During the tenth grade I did go out for basketball and baseball
which may have detracted from the marks somewhat. However,
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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.
Of his war experiences we hear later. Of his life after his

return to Boston University he writes:
I entered a bit late in the semester, so took only a couple of

courses to break in. The transition back to school was a bit con-
fusing, credits brought from schooling during the Army being
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294 A CHRONICLE OF AClllEVEMENT
only partially accepted toward a degree. As each case was dif-

ferent, the administration was in a most awkward position in
evaluating credits. My interest bad shifted from English to gov-
ernment and history and the foreign relations of our country.. I
was deeply conscious of what other nations thought of us and
the reasons behind their thought. I detest war and believe it a
futile waste of economic and natural resources as well as lives.
I believe it can be avoided in the future if only countries will
attempt to understand one another. The only way to accomplish
this is through the exchange of students, free press, an international
governing body, and the desire on the part of the leaders and
peoples' representatives to work unswervingly for peace and good
will among nations. The problem of an international governing
body is unfortunately a long-range one, but it is one that must be
forwarded now so that some day, when the world is ready for it, the
groundwork will have been laid. My interest centers primarily in
this hemisphere as I believe we have the seeds of such a program
in the Pan-American Union. This is far from a perfect organiza-
tion and there is dissension and ill-feeling, but with the continua-
tion of the multi-lateral policy, and the good-nei2hbor idea and a
broadening of it, I feel we can set an example that will someday
be the blueprint for One World. Thus, the reason for my con-
centration on the Americas.
In the last semester of my junior year, 1946, I was appointed
one of ten Boston Globe $1,000 World War II Memorial Fellow-
ship winners to travel and study in this hemisphere with the idea
of ex~ange of students for the furtherance of peace. These are
open to all undergraduate students of New England colleges from
now on, and ten will be presented each year. After the first semes-
ter of 1947, the first of my senior year, I began preparation for this
trip to Argentina and in August left the States. The purpose of
my trip was to come to the trouble spot of the hemisphere and
learn as much about the peoples and their ways as possible for a
better understanding and evaluation of them. Primanly, my in-
terest lies in the labor field as it is the working masses of society
who choose their leaders. The education of this class and the
problems that go with it should be the concern of those fearful
of other ideologies. If we sow seeds of a true democracy, no lesser
philosophy will be able to breed in soil of discontent and ignorance
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and prejudice. I shaD return to finish studies, I hope, in May of
1948, then plan to do graduate work.
Thus ended the life story received from Arnold Hanson.

However, interesting though I found it, I felt that more about
the trip to Argentina would make a valuable addition; and at
my suggestion Mr. Hanson sent me the following. The fact
that many of his statements refer to conditions that may have
been definitely altered before the ink of these pages is dry,
might lead some to question the wisdom of including the
letter. In spite of that, it seems worth a place here as an
illustration of three things not untypical of even the younger
Fund men, viz., broad experience, vigorous thought, and re-
porting which is worthy of both.
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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appear(:d weekly in that paper.

These emphasized
nnl;nt"!ll and economic COI[lQluons.
was most profitable experience
knowledge. Without actually having a first-hand account of a
country it is difficult to understand or draw conclusions from the
writings and interpretations of others. In mileage, over 16,000
miles were covered including visits to Trinidad, Port of Spain,
Pointe del Pierre; Brazil, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, Sao Paulo;
Montevideo and areas; Argentina, .HUen(lS
Rosario, smaller towns in
Cordoba, as well the province of DUen()S
cro!ised the equator and fourth
the time of the Defense Conf~:retlce
Truman was
At Rio de Janeiro we were saluted entering the Bay by the
U.S.S. Missouri anchored there with President Truman aboard.
The Brazilian Navy has numerous U. S. destroyers, and the Army
is equipped with our equipment although the German influence
in training is visible in the use of the goose step. The United States
250 naval and personnel in Rio the
Inter-American Cooperation. A t"U!€'\.tt,"r
two-star general in this Committee.
in this time of to assure the dOltIlillatJlon
'ca of United and naval mlS:SlOllS
prevent the any inroads
and the Brazilians in the art of warfare - to maintain peace.
Twelve other Latin-American countries entertain us through mili-
tary missions in varying degrees. Is military diplomacy displacing
the State Department?
I attended the gigantic parade for President Truman and duly
staff consisted of military and naval
widely influenced impressions of the
od movies.
I was entertained nationalist senator, J!,aual~ao
a friend of the nationalists. This AQ"""UU
opposes States economic policy

America but is easily in line through flattery to which they
are most susceptiblel Uruguay is a wonderful little social democracy
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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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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.
KENNETH HAu. ROBERTS

A.B., 1947
Kenneth Roberts writes:
I know little about my ancestors, but the chief impression has
been one of solid, substantial, normal Americans. I can remember
some of the horror I felt when I first had it made clear to me when
I was very young that Grandmother Roberts was killed by a hit-
and-run driver on a dark country road while she was on her way
to spend a night with a sick neighbor, some three miles away.
Grandfather Roberts remains chiefly in my mind as an old man,
the only one whose beard I was ever allowed to pull. This was a
great wonder to me, and to grow one seemed a marvelous accom-
plishment. I know now that he was a hearty, warm-souled, success-
ful farmer who raised a large family and with his wife kept a table
heavy with chicken, pie, mountains of vegetables and lakes of
gravy, for all comers.
Mother's family came from Pennsylvania and Ohio. My grand-
father is a "family doctor," still actively pmcticing at eiglity in
Pittsburgh. He has excelled in diagnosis, I understand. My grand-
mother has very recently died. Grandma Hall was his bookkeeper,
confidante, companion, and mother of his three children. The two
had a marvelous vitality. I can remember a visit to them a few
years ago when I was perpetually exhausted in my attempt to
follow the busy program of museums, zoos, concerts, coal mines,
and family reunions they had armnged to occupy me and were
enthusiastically following themselves at seventy-seven.
I remember gratefully the little girl across the street who was
freckled and wore thick glasses. She had asthma and wheezed
appreciatively at my endless tales. I used to read the Arabian
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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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300 A CHB.OmCL£ OF ACHIEVEMENT
whether or no one cares to be. Especially during the perversity of

adolescence there come vague longings to resist, to rebel with the
full knowledge that rebellion will be gloriously conspicuous. How
I would long to teU the fat lady who cooed when I inadvertently
burst into the living room where mother was entertaining a church
group that I knew she beat her childrenl
Of his elementary school life, Mr. Roberts writes as follows:
My school life was relatively uneventful. I was always a better-
than-average student and was quite genuinely attached to my teach-
ers. I was often selected for what now seems the odious task of
clapping dusty blackboard erasers. It was a mark of special trust.
I remember vividly the moment in the fifth grade when I was
requested to stay after school and asked where I had copied my
composition. It had been a precocious and not very excellent
description of "my week end in Constantinople," complete with
smell of beggars, refuse-laden streets, minarets, and the Bosphorus.
The material had been collected from avid reading of National
Geographics, and the teacher, to her credit, was quickly convinced
when I deluged her with a quick sketch of Peiping.
I had several fine teachers whom I shall never forget. One was
an effusive, good-natured, excitable woman of comfortable girth
and years who had happily devoted her life to the teaching of
junior high school French. We spoke like little natives within
three weeks as we padded about the room telling how we were
"opening the window," "erasing the blackboard," and "sitting
down." There was the glory of the unexpected in that class and
a sense of accomplishment each hour that I have felt in few studies
since. My good grades in college French I frankly owe to that
paragon of language teachers.
Another French teacher at high school was a fiery Alsatian with
a passionate devotion to French literature. She was often in trouble
with the local priests because of the truly adult reading assigned
to the class. I am sure she was right in introducing us to Hugo and
Rostand, Dumas, Villon, Loti, Moliere and Montaigne. Her taste
was catholic but sound and her enthusiasm sent us home eagerly
to translate the monumental assignments. We all learned a devo-
tion to the French in those days of France's fall. I shall never
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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.
FRANCIS WILBUR Cuu.soN

A.B., 1945; S.T.B., 1948
As I consider each new story I am prone to think that here,
in fine, is the one that best typifies the Fund man. The early
chapters in the life story of Francis Carlson bring that thought
to mind again. He writes:
There are great advantages in having come from a highly cultured
and educated family line, but there is also much satisfaction for
me in turning back the pages of the years to view once more in
memory the pictures of humble family life. Perhaps this is due to
the fact that I find it easy to see the distance I have come since I
trod barefoot over the fields of the Connecticut Valley. None of
my known relatives is a college graduate, so I feel like a family
pioneer striking out in a new direction. But I carry within me a
deep respect for those who till the earth and who, in cooperation
with God, bring forth food to meet the world's physical need.
Indelibly written on my nature too is the desire and ability to work
hard, both physically and mentally. As is natural with any little
boy, I rebeIIed often at the endless, hard work, day after day for
weeks on end. We boys considered ourselves fortunate if our labors
yielded a dollar for Fourth of July fireworks. Usually we stayed at
home and developed our own forms of recreation and fun.
All the joyful memories which the country-bred man usually
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cherishes are mine - fishing and swimming in the meadow brook,

building huts down in the woods, riding borses bareback, and en-
joying the scenes of beauty, peace, and quiet. From time to time
these lasting portraits of youthful days flash back into my mind.
One of my favorites shows my brother and me lying on our bacb
in the shade of the large oak tree in our back yard. It is hi2h noon
and dinner is over. Before we retum to the 6elds in the not sun
we are permitted to take a few minutes out to rest. My father lies
to one side, apparently asleep on the cool grass. My brother and I
talk in low tones. As we look up into the restless leaves above 115
and watch the light clouds slowly move through the summer skies,
we dream the dreams of little boys. Our most daring dream was
to hope that someday we would be rich and could own a bicycle.
How wonderful that would bel That was a reckless dream for 115
for we were reared in circumstances which made little things look
great, and great things seem out of our reach.
But our dreams were interrupted in the late twenties by a com-
mon experience of small farmers. We "lost" our farm. So we chil-
dren put on our shoes and moved with the family to the hustle and
bustle of the town. We sadly said good-bye to the babbling brook
and friendly trees, but we took with us the substance which they
had helped put within us - an appreciation of simple, beautiful
things, strong bodies, and an ability to be creative and independent.
The farm life is still in me and as the years go by I love increasingly
the out-of-doors and the rugged work of the 6elds.
I 6nished grammar school in the town to which we had moved.
On graduation day I was convinced that my long educational
career was at an end. During the summer I would seek work and
probably, if luck was good, I could get a bicycle. The tug of my
early environment was strong and I felt a natutal desire to follow
in the footsteps of my parents. But as the summer came and went,
I had secured only temporary employment on a tobacco farm.
When September came and time for the opening of high school
arrived, I was unemployed with no prospect of further work. And
so it was that only due to unfortunate circumstances did I unen-
thusiastically wander into the high school on opening day and
register for a general course.
From that time to this I have been amazed at the number of
times little, seemingly insigni6cant circumstances on the river of
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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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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.
Omitting for the time being several important episodes in

Carlson's life, we pick up his narrative again, as follows:
Early in the fall of 1941 I met a young Air Force lieutenant, a
talented musician who had prior to his induction into the armed
forces been a teacher in the New York school system. Puring our
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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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306 A CHllONlCLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
to earn my expense money, I had much time to think. I wanted

very much to get an A.B. degree and the thought of spending four
years of my life earning an unrecognized degree made me uneasy.
So I decided to investigate the possibility of going to Boston Uni-
versity. I had $200 in the bank which would see me through
one semester there, frovided I also worked after school honrs.
Then at the close 0 the school year I could secure work for
the summer and thus prepare for the coming school year. With
this tentative plan in mind, I entered Boston University College of
LibeIal Arts in January, 19"13.
It felt good to be in a real university. It hardly seemed real to
one who in childhood had never aspired to more than to be the
owner of a bicycle. I felt that now my personal resources would be
taxed to the limit. With determination I set out to do my best.
I finished the first semester at the University successfully. I had
secured work six hours a day, six days a week at the Union Club.
Returning at the end of the school year to my home in Connecti-
cut, I secured summer work at the same office at which I had
worked prior to going to college. Evenings and Saturday afternoons
were spent mowing lawns to earn a little extra. When fall arrived
I had saved a total of $500. Back in college once more in
September, I immediately secured work at the old Victoria Hotel
which yielded me one meal and $2 a day. Academic work went
along smoothly and I enjoyed the stimulation of new ideas and felt
the thrill of intellectual growth. All seemed to be working out as I
planned.
In April of that academic year I received the wonderful news
that I had been awarded a Professor Augustus Howe Buck scholar-
ship. Fellow students had mentioned the Fund to me and I had
looked longingly at its description in the catalogue, but I did not
feel that I was worthy of such a magnificent award. It was not my
own initiative that brought me before the Committee responsible
for the administration of the Fund. To the Committee and those
other faculty members who went out of their way to recommend me
lowe a great debt of gratitude. Wherever I turned it seemed that
hands were ready to give me a lift along the way. Whenever I find
myself discouraged because of the seeming callousness of men and
women, I tum my thoughts to that multitude of thoughtful and
kind men and women who have been so willing to express their
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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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308 A CHllONICLE OF ACBlEVEMENT
A. Perkins is placed here at the end of the list. The Donor,

could he read it, might well say, "That's finel"
I entered Boston University after a rather uneventful career in
Newton High School. Since this was during World War II (I did
not serve in the armed forces), the College of Liberal Arts was con-
siderably smaller than at present. However, rapid growth occurred
in the course of my four years there. Working in the College Li-
brary, this was very evident. Space for books and students finally
became so scarce that it was necessary to open an annex. "Clerk-
ing" on registration days, I found that the process became longer
and more complicated. College activities increased and changed.
Classes became larger; and instructors became more numerous.
I was active in the University Student War Council, the Protes-
tant Council, the Interfaith Council, and, outside the University,
in the New England Student Christian Movement. I was privi-
leged to serve as president of both the Phillips Brooks Club and
the Protestant Council. It is a source of inspiration to me to see
what the Protestant CounCIl is doing today and to compare it with
the bewildered meeting in January of 1945 when the Council was
born. Then there was the Lynnfield meeting of the Interfaith
Council Steering Committee (two representatives of each of the
three major faiths) when we were snowbound and had to stay over-
night. That was indeed a demonstration of interfaith fellowship I
It is interesting to note that it was only with reluctance, and due
to the continual urging of others, that I first attended the Phillips
Brooks Club, and was thus introduced to the activities that gave
me the most pleasure and satisfaction in college.
Due to my parents' strong interest in the church, I was always
a participant in church activities (Episcopal): Church School,
church services, and so on. When I reached the proper age I was
persuaded, with no little difficulty, to join the Young People's
Fellowship in my parish. This was the beginning of the greatest
experience of my life - to date. It was like planting a seed which
continues to grow forever.
I became more and more interested in the Young People's Fel-
lowship and was elected president of my parish group, a district
officer, a diocesan vice-president, and, for one year, president of
the Young People's Fellowship of the Diocese of Massachusetts.
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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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CHAPTER VIII
Pastor and Physician

In the earlier pages of this chapter are stories of the men
who have been ordained to be Christian ministers. and in the
remainder those of the men who have received the M.D. de-
gree. Throughout. the men are to be seen in their profes-
sional character; and it is to be noted that several have reached
so high a place in their profession that they are now teaching
others.
The Donor would surely find much satisfaction in the fact
that so many of the men are leading lives directly aimed at
service to humanity. The following statement copied again
from that document makes further comment along this line
unnecessary.
The Fund is a gift to Boston University to establish the "Pro-
fessor Augustus Howe Buck Educational Fund" to enable young
men of unusual promise and of positive Christian character, but
with insufficient means, to receive a very much more thorough
education than they could otherwise obtain. under the following
conditions.
All appointments are to be absolutely free of denominational
inftuence or political bias. Mental ability. sound.physique. positive
Christian character. and those personal qualities which indicate to
a probable degree much usefulness in life. are to be the basis of
selection. with quality above quantity as the guiding principle.
Candidates for appointment who do not seek a career for financial
gains are to be given preference.
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
310
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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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312 A CHRONICLE OF ACIIIEVEMENT
school in Boston, while working here and there as a carpenter's

helper. In the fall of 1917 I secured a scholarship at the East
Greenwich (Rhode Island) Academy, from which I gmduated in
1919. In September I entered Boston University. In 1920, with
the help of Mr. Ralph W. Taylor, who was then Registrar, I was
given an application for aid from the Professor Augustus Howe
Buck Educational Fund, as I did not have enough money to con-
tinue. A minister friend of mine came with me to the oflice. Mr.
Taylor, having heard my story, said that he wanted to see my
marks. When he came back he said that "With those marks we
would not let you go. Fill in this application."
In 1923, Mr. Pizzuto was elected a member of Phi Beta

Kappa, received the A.B. degree from Boston University, and
was appointed Fellow of the Fund for work at Harvard. How-
ever his plan of study was interrupted by illness and also by
other matters, so that many years passed before he finally re-
ceived the Master's degree. Among the "other matters" came
the fulfillment of many requirements leading to the various
grades of appointment under his church, until in 1927 be
attained full standing. In the spring of 1925, after some weeks
in the hospital, his physician advised a long rest His story
continues:
The second week of May, 1925, I left for Italy, where I traveled
and visited my parents, then still living. When I returned to the
United States during the first week of October, I had already been
appointed instructor in Italian and Italian literature at Drew
Theological Seminary, where I remained for two years. Then I
accepted the pastomte of Saint Paul's Italian Church in East B0s-
ton, where I still am. Since I have been pastor here I have received
almost four hundred persons into the church. Our service on Sun-
day morning now is half in Italian and half in English.
In addition to his work as a pastor, this Fund man has done

no small amount of writing and outside teaching. Neverthe-
less, his main task is the ministry. In December, 1947, the
people of his church celebmted the twentieth anniversary of
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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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the Sharps' honeymoon. And now, without interruption, he

shall tell of his 6rst ventures into the pastorate and of his leav-
ing that 6eld, at least temporarily, for greater service among
suffering peoples in Europe and elsewhere.
In the summer of 1933, I left the American Unitarian Association
for the parish ministry, accepting a caU to the Independent Congre-
gational (Unitarian) Church of Meadville, Pennsylvania. This is
the oldest Unitarian congregation west of the Alleghenies, founded
in 1841- by Harm Jan Huidekoper of the Holland Land Company.
On October 9, 1933, I was ordained, President William P. Tolley
of Allegheny College, now Chancellor of Syracuse University, ex-
tending the welcome to the community. Our warm friendship
endures across the years.
Except for three summers spent in theological studies with Pro-
fessor Reinhold Niebuhr and James Moffatt and others at Union
Theological Seminary in New York City, we dwelt just short of
three years-until March 30, 1936-in this Western Pennsyl-
vania region so surprising to a New Englander. Western Penn-
sylvania is neither the East nor the Middle West but a limbo of
generations hardened in canal boating and mining. Chiefly shock-
ing to a New Englander is the universal parsimony in education
and in all phases of publicly operated social welfare. At times it is
hard to believe that Western Pennsylvania is a part of a northern
state. The Unitarian Church, the Old Stone Methodist Church
under the genial leadership of Dr. Bruce Wright, and Allegheny
College - yanked overnight and with loud protest from the mid-
nineteenth to the twentieth century by the deft idealism of
President Tolley - these united to let the light into the forgotten
northwest comer of the Steel and Oil State. These were three
happy years.
In March, 1936, I accepted a call to the Unitarian Society of
Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, arriving on April Fool's Day in
that privileged suburban town, a striking contrast to my first parish.
Wellesley school and social welfare standards are among the most
lavish and intelligent in the nation; these are thoroughly financed,
watched and battled over by the public-spirited citizens. Book
stores abound. The College presents the best artists to the best
people, summer and winter. The News of the W~ in Review is
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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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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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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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banks. But we carried an invaluable letter of introduction from

Secretary of State Cordell Hull. We gained the confidence of
tough old Consul-General Irving Linnell; he allowed us to hide
our millions of Czechoslovak notes in the inner vault of his own
private safe. This involved some risk for him and for us, for he
once told me as we stood in the main clerical section of the Con-
sulate, "There are three independent leaks from this room to the
Gestapo; they have bought three of our clerks, and we cannot find
the guilty parties." We never would have been able to transmute
our total American resources, $28,000, into $74,000 of relief pur-
chasing power, with not a dollar falling into the hands of the Nazis,
if Consul-General Linnell had not waived the rules which stood
between us and his safe. When we arrived home and made up our
accounts from memory, the auditors discovered a total discrepancy
of thirty-nine cents.
But even $74,000 of relief aid was microscopic as the only expres-
sion of American concern for the refugees. We had to select the
classes whom we would help. The Nazi record since 1933 warned
Europe that this was to be no mere territorial war, like the Kaiser's
in 1914. This was to be a massacre of leadership. Contiguous na-
tions were to be reduced to subservience, or converted to fervent
Nazism, by h'lling off the custodians of their ideals and memories.
These, then, were to be snatched from the burning:
Intellectuals - editors, social workers, professors, clergymen, re-
search specialists, lawyers, physicians whose political records made
it necessary for them to flee.
Students.
Children.
And so it was that Martha Sharp and I set ourselves to these re-
lief and emigration tasks which crowded our every day and night
until I left on August 9 to address a young people's conference in
Arcegno, Switzerland. Martha, warned by the Czech Underground
that her own personal position was becoming dangerous, departed
August 15 for Paris. Returning to Prague in September, 1945, she
was informed by Clerk Melmuka of the Hotel Paris that the Ges-
tapo had arrived to arrest her, just too late. Some Czech student,
caught as he was fleeing to Poland by the border coal mine galleries,
may have confessed under torture the origin of his travel funds.
Or we may have been detected by a Gestapo spy appearing as a
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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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3. Housing. We contributed a large sum to the new c0nstruc-

tion of housing for thirty refugee families in the town of Rakovnik,
the Society of God's Warriors of Rakovnik and the Refugee Sec-
tion of the Ministry of Social We1£are contributing the balance.
These homes, used continuously for refugees since 1910. still stand.
And now that the Monster has quit the lovely land of Bohemia,
they can be marked as memorials of American regard for the hom~
less. We also rebuilt the Salvation Army Children's Summer Home
in Uvaly. now administered by the Ministry of Social Welfare for
the summer health protection of sixty children.
We made frequent trips to London, Paris, Geneva, for the pur-
poses of free communication and to finance our work. While there
we deposited the dollars to be claimed by those emigrants from
the Protektorat who had sold us their Czech paper money in
Prague. On these occasions we carried news and formulas and politi-
cal and military orders between the Czech Government in Exile in
London and the fully operating Underground in Prague.
Significantly we came home with the 2.331 passengers crowded
into the Queen Mary making her last pea~time voyage. In mid-
ocean under full draft, we gathered in the Main Saloon to hear
Prime Minister Chamberlain and the King announce the end of
"peace in our time." The Athenia was sunk behind us, but we
raced on. A lady in the immigration line-up presented a passport
reading "Freistadt Danzig"; the American inspector said: ""Sorry.
lady, that city has ceased to be."
The work begun in Prague, February 23-August 15. 1939. by the
hastily improvised Unitarian-Quaker Commission for Service in
Czechoslovakia, led the American Unitarian Association. in May.
1940, to establish the Unitarian Service Committee, as a standing
agency of the Association. The children of the Unitarian Society of
Wellesley Hills made the first financial gift to an organization
which since has spent between two and three millions at home and
in eight European lands. But these days of 1910 were the times
when the only money in the treasury was the sum of $64 given by
the Sunday School of Wellesley Hills.
. Again Martha Sharp and I were tapped for overseas duty. Fmnce
was collapsing in late May, 1940, and two who had encountered
and eluded the Nazis were needed once more, - also this second
time without more than expenses. We flew June 17 by Pan
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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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North and South America the saving remnant of those thinkers

who had escaped to Vichy France. Martha and I bied again the
division of labor which had worked once before in Prague. She
took child feeding and emigration. I took finance; purchasing of
supplies for her child welfare work in France; reporting to America;
reception of refugees in Lisbon, and their send-off to any haven
which would receive them: Vera Cruz, Louren~o Marques, New
York City. We drove from Lisbon to MarseIlle, starting July 17,
1940. Martha remained in France continuously from the nine-
teenth until her return in December. She first fed eight hundred
children isolated in villages of the region of Pau in the Basses
Pyrenees. Then she settled in August in Marseille to open an
emigration office where to start the escapes of legal or illegal intel-
lectuals from France, through Spain, to Lisbon and beyond, as
well as the flights to North Africa of Czechoslovak soldiers stranded
at the fall of France. Leaving Marseille September 17, I brought
my friend, Lion Feuchtwanger, with me across the "green frontier"
at Cerbere, France, where the tunnel plunges under the ocean spur
of the Pyrenees to emerge at Port Bou, Spain; across the Gestapo
dragnet spread for him in Franco's jungle, to hiding in a Portuguese
hotel until the boat sailed from Lisbon (where later the Gestapo
dared pick up two of our refugees and returned them to death in
Germany); and so to New York. On this farewell expedition, I
also arranged for the smuggling over the "green frontier" of Dr.
Otto Meyerhof, Nobel Prize winner in biochemistry in 1938, who
was hiding in great anxiety in France, awaiting the visa de sortie
which would never come. One of the terms imposed upon de-
feated France required a Nazi approval-stamp on every visa de
sortie requested of the French authorities by persons desiring to
depart the country. The Nazi Visa Review Board at Wiesbaden
would not let Dr. Meyerhof go. Southern France in 1940 was a
concentration camp.
Returning October 6, 1940, after this second leave of absence
from my church at Wellesley Hills, I resumed the pastoral life
until May 7, 1944, when I resigned (knowing right well that no
third leave of absence would be grantedl), proceeded to College
Park, Maryland, for four weeks' training and flew June 28 to Cairo,
via Miami, Belem, Ascension Island, Accra, Maidiguri, Khartoum,
for a year's service in the Displaced Persons Division of the Middle
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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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microscopes had been in use in 1938, the returning Czechs found

but one instrument remaining, and that without lenses. These
and other stores of precious instruments were either secreted by the
Nazi Scientific Instruments Looting Section, or were lost in the
bombings of convoys canying them to the Scientific Instruments
Dump in Dresden; or were wrecked in the final bombings of that
city. Scientific apparatus of value beyond calculation is still missing
from European laboratories; and the hospitals, with their task of
turning back the grasp of death, are the hardest hit. So the argu-
ment is not all on the side of feeding children.
I oversaw the feeding of 37,000 tubercular and anemic children
in 350 summer camps in July and August of 1946 and the safe
storage of the tons of milk, cocoa, eggs and fats for supplying 230
supplementary feeding calories per day for 100,000 children from
January through April, 1947. Then I took a fifteen-hundred-mile
jeep tour from Prague to Bremen and return through the ruins of
Wurzburg, Nuremberg, Frankfort, Kassel, Hannover; then flew
out to London on November 17 with a ton of Picker X-Ray ma-
chines being returned to Cleveland for repairs. On landing in Eng-
land, I offered three pounds sterling to pay for their bonding and
special handling from Croydon to the Cunard docks at Liverpool.
The reply of the British customs officer was indicative of Britain's
plight: "You can't pay for that here, Sir, in sterling. We require
dollar payments in New York on goods bonded through to vessels
sailing for America." Significant also were the shipboard condi-
tions and the food aboard the Franconia, just returned from five
years of troopship duty in the Far East; she looked like the whole
battered Empire. And I was touched by the wistful inquiry of
the sixty-year-old chief of a five-man Imperial Chemical Industries
delegation coming over to study chemical engineering advances in
America and Canada. As we were steaming parallel to Long Island
on the last night out, he came to stand beside me at the rail and
asked, glad for the protecting dark in which to ask it: "Do you
think there is a chance for an old-timer and his wife to come over
1nd stake out a new career here in the States?"
And now in mid-life, anrl with the years of the Word in the
American community to contrast with the years of the Work in
the world community, what do I think of it all?
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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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(That is not just to "butter up" the mathematics department, but

an actual description of my study methodsl) Usually I had enough
energy to get into bed, but one morning my minister host found
me kneeling by the bed. I had gone to sleep saying my prayers!
And then there came the release - along in the second semester
- as the chainnan of the Fund told me that I had been made a
beneficiary and that I was to stop outside work so that I could get
as much as possible from college. For nearly seven years the Fund
meant so much more to me than just the money it made available.
And it set the desire to do for the young people of Africa what had
been done for me.
It is clearly impossible to give in limited space an adequate
picture of Newell Booth's years in Africa, now nearing the
end of the second decade. Brief glimpses from his letters must
suffice. For several years his letters are dated at the Congo In-
stitute, Kanene, Kinda, Katanga, Congo BeIge. The Insti-
tute prepares many native Christian workers.
On March 7, 1931, he wrote:
Just a year ago today we waved good-bye to the Statue of Liberty
with a mixture of feelings. We have been homesick at times, but
we would not leave if we could. At least not until the five years
are up. .
Our boys from the Institute go out to several of the villages
every week end in order to preach. Some of them leave Saturday
morning because the villages are quite far away. Others go Sunday
early in the morning to the villages that are fairly near, and sb11
others go after the morning church service to the villages which
are within five miles or so. Last Sunday afternoon many of them
told of the evident pleasure of the people in hearing the Christian
message, and that many came to hear them. There was one team
however who said that the village to which they went was very
difficult. The people did not want to come and did not want to
listen. Only fifteen or twenty people came out to the meetings.
I told them that I would plan to go with them on the next: Sunday.
So right after preaching and dinner, I picked out some records
and put them in our portable victrola and started. I wrapped up
the victrola in an old raincoat, for it looked very much like rain.
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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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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.
The first sentence of his letter of June 1, 1931, reminds us

that below the equator winter begins in June. He writes:
Here it is the dry season and getting colder. We sleep under

blankets. On the first of May we had graduation. Eight fine young
men received their diplomas and are ready to teach and preach
and help their own people.
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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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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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refused admittance to a hotel because it was after ten and so had

to drive all night. I travelled 4000 miles by car, 750 by train, 285
by boat, in seven weeks. Gas varied from forty-seven to ninety-
three cents a gallon; gas and oil cost four and a half cents a mile.
What a trip! And what a car we had! Only three stops on the
road, of less than ten minutes each. No tire trouble for more than
3400 miles.
On the way home we spent a day at Lubondai and picked out a
very good site for a union normal school. We talked with the .
mission builders there. Now we need only to find the money to
build the houses and establish the work. Dr. John R. Mott, who
was with me on this trip, has said that when something ought
to be done, it can be done. This certainly ought to be done. One
of our greatest needs is better trained teachers and leaders for the
work in the Congo.
Coming home from Lubondai, I had two days at our station of
Kapanga and one at Sandoa. Gold mines have been opened up
on either side of Kapanga. That will mean a good deal to our
work. It will give work to the people and a market for their
produce.
When he got to his own house after the 4000-mile trip,
Dr. Booth tells us:
The first sight to greet me was a big leopard right before my

front door. He was tied to a pole across the shoulders of some of
our students - but the night before he had been very much alive
and had left his tracks just beyond the back door, between that
and the outbuildings to which my wife and children had also gone
that night. But actually he was looking for goats and not for people.
Two more shorter quotations must suffice for Booth's work

as a missionary. In the first, written November 21, 1936, the
"we" serves to suggest the great help a missionary's wife ren-
ders.
We are pastors of a church with more than a thousand full, pre-
paIatory and affiliated members. We are principals of a school
system of 400, directors of sixty-seven Sunday Schools with more
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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
ten nationalities and Africans of at least thirty-five different tribes

working with me. And there is still time if the world is alert to
make of Africa a continent where Christianity can be the whole
way of life for a whole people. But now secularization, nationalism,
communism are all marching faster than Christianization. My
great drive for the future is to speed up the march of Christianity.
As already indicated it has been necessary, in order to re-
serve space for the men themselves and their family back-
grounds, largely to eliminate any account of their own imme-
diate families. Here, however, is a case in which the story
would be incomplete if the letter of that rule were followed.
The administrators of the Fund are in no danger of being ac-
cused of nepotism. However, the names of two brothers ap-
pear on the list of beneficiaries, and also the names of a father
and his son.
When Newell S. Booth, Jr., entered the College it was
soon discovered that his laurels would be as numerous as
those of his father. Scholarship, promise, "positive Christian
character" - the son possessed all of these in good measure.
Need? That hardly called for a moment's consideration, for
the father was supporting a family on the income of a mis-
sionary in Mrica. The appointment was a foregone conclu-
sion and it was made in April of 1944. But, before the son
received a stipend, the father was elected to his present office.
A bishop may be a prince of the church, but his salary can
hardly be called princely. Nevertheless, it is above the line of
"insufficient means." Newell Booth, Jr., is still of "unusual
promise and positive Christian character," but in the judg-
ment of the Committee he no longer meets the other condi-
tion. So after allowing the appointment to stand for a time
"without stipend," it was regretfully terminated. However,
his name remains on the outside list of Fund appointments.
And now, to end the story of the Mrican life of the Bishop,
here are a few quotations from letters written by Dr.
Booth to his family in America before he joined them here,
late in 1947. The first tells of a visit to the ~ve of ~
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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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Lower Sabie Camp

Kruger National Park
Transvaal
July 26, 1947
This has been a day of marvelous experiences. We did start out

early, so we had a chance to watch a beautiful sunrise over the
smooth-topped, grass-covered hills of the Eastern Transvaal. Then
from White River we went into the entrance gate of Kruger Park
at Pretorius Kop. For miles before we reached the Park we drove
through a forestation project of the government agricultural de-
partment. Before that we had traveled past miles and miles of
orchards, oranges, tangarines, apples, pawpaws, mangoes. The fruit
was just ready to pick on the orange and apple trees. We felt like
climbing the fences and helping ourselves!
There is a strange feeling about the Park. Here, there is no dom-
inance by man. He does not kill here. He is not feared here. There
is a sense of peace everywhere. This is the animals' place, everything
says. The cars are just a minor incident in the routine of the ani-
mals as they go through their days. The Park is an ideal place to
see the animals, for the most part. The grass is not high; the under-
brush is not thick except in a few places; the trees are not too nu-
merous. There are hills and valleys and streams. There are also
wide plains or wooded grasslands where you can see for a long way
through the trees. There is variety enough to suit all the different
kinds of animals, from the thirteen hippos we saw lolling in the
pool to the monkeys in their thickets.
There were so many of the Impala antelope that we decided to
keep an accurate count of them. We were sure that no one would
believe us if we gave just an estimate of the numbers we saw.
They are medium-sized antelope, the very picture of grace and
beauty. They are mostly chestnut brown which covers them like
a blanket over the lighter colors beneath. Interesting black and
white patches are on their heads, legs and rumps. And they were
everywhere. As I said, we were traveling just seven hours. We can
hardly credit our own careful count, for we actually saw on the
average more than two a minute. Ten hundred and twenty-nine
was th.e total for the day.
The first large group of animals we saw were zebras and wilde-
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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.
In the interests of space more has been cut from Bishop

Booth's letters than has been given. The above, then, is
simply a specimen of the not uncommon experiences of an
African missionary.
By rights a chapter in the life story of Dr. L. C. Faye

should come next. But to avoid an abrupt transition between
Pastors and Physicians he will be placed between ~em. For
he is both an ordained minister and an M.D.
Another chapter in the life story of Dr. Nels F. S. Ferre,

Abbot Professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton
Theological School. is next in order. His position, as "one of
the ablest of young contemporary theologians and philoso-
phers," was "not attained by sudden flight." In an application
for reappointment to the Fund, Dr. Ferre told the com-
mittee that it was the deep desire of his parents that he should
be a preacher but that he found himself turning more and
more toward teaching and writing. To what extent his hesi-
tation in selecting his life work was due to the way in which
the strict fundamentalism in which he was brought up im-
pinged on the more liberal beliefs of others, he himseH might
have difficulty in determining. Fortunately, unlike many con-
servatives, Ferre's aU-absorbing interest was not in his own
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preconceived ideas, but in the truth. Without that interest

he never would have "reached and kept" the position he holds
today. Before the matter was settleCl, however, he had can-
vassed various possibilities, as is clear from his story (written
in the third person).
Seveml possibilities for a career suggested themselves before the
close of his undergraduate work. His brother George, who had gone
into medicine, was eager for him to join him in this profession.
Two or three of his professors felt strongly that college teaching
was the work he was best suited for. Someone else insisted that
his gifts of intellect and of ready speech fitted him particularly
for a law career. But Nels' heart continued to be where it had
always been, in the ministry. Consequently he entered Andover
Newton Theological School in the fall of 1931, following his grad-
uation as valedictorian, primus inter pares, with Distinction in his-
tory, from Boston University.
With continued support from the Professor Augustus Howe
Buck Educational Fund he was able to devote himself fully to his
studies, as fully, that is, as life in a dormitory permitted. At the
seminary he found nearly every shade of conservatism and libeIal-
ism and came well on his way toward a satisfactory view of the
Christian faith. Perceiving the value of historical criticism did not
dampen the fervor of his devotional life.
During the summer the Congregational Church in Littleton,
Massachusetts, applied to the s~nary for a year's interim student
pastor, and Nels was the one selected for the post. The Ferres spent
an idyllically happy year in the old, thirteen-room parsonage, with
Nels commuting to his classes five days a week and at the same
time serving the parish in every capacity. In the fall, after the
Littleton pastor returned from his year's leave of absence, the
next parish appointment was to a small Baptist church in Lowell.
This was in the darkest days of the depression, and the church re-
Bected the struggles of the textile workers, many unemployed al-
together, some bitterly thankful even for the $18 weekly pay
with which to support their families. The demands placed on
the pastor were unreasonably heavy for a student; consequently, in
the spring of 193"', Nels accepted the call to the Village Church
in Dorchester and became ordained a Congregational minister a
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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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section of the Institute for Social and Religious Studies to be held

in Boston, and is to deliver the Denio Lectures at Bangor Theo-
logical SeminaI}' and the Earl Lectures at the Pacific School of
Religion. In 1949 he will deliver the Cole Lectures at Vanderbilt
University. In the meantime another book will be taking shape.
In May of this year the Ferr~' fifth child, and fourth daughter,
was born. The stoI}' is told that a friend in a bookstore, fingering
Nels' recently published volume on Faith and Reason, learned that
the new baby's name was Faith. He mischievously inquired
whether, if she had been a boy, she would have been named
Reasonl Some of the seminaI}' students have teasingly remarked
that the Ferre household has "little Faith;" but the professor turns
the tables by insisting that Faith is strong and growing.
'The life story of the Reverend Meredith F. Eller, Ph.D.,
which shall be told almost entirely in his own words, is of the
type one would expect from such a quietly effective man. Of
his forebears he writes:
One set of ancestors, on my father's side of the house, came over
with the Hessians during the American Revolution, settled down
in this countxy after the war was over, and married into the families
of those whom they had just been fighting. These Germans came
from the vicinity of Essen, Germany, and settled in North Carolina.
In time their descendants migrated to Indiana. The ancestors OD
my mother's side of the house were of English origin. Thus my
immediate ancestors. on both sides, were Indiana farmeD. My
paternal grandfather literally broke his back clearing pioneer land
for cultivation.
My father. Joseph Wesley Eller, was born on a farm in the
south central part of Indiana. He got the customaI}' grade school
education and actually taught a term in a countxy school on the
basis of that preparation. Then he went back on the farm and 1»
gao to accept the usual fate of farm boys - an agricultural career.
But, eventually, he felt the stirring of another strong ambition-
to become a Methodist minister. So. when twenty-one, he broke
away from the farm and. at his own expense and under his own
strong will power, went to Greencastle, Indiana, to begin the long
period of three years in the Academy and four in DePauw UBi-
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PASTOR AND PHYSICIAN
versity which led to the Bachelor of Arts degree. Instead of going

to Seminary for further preparation, he took the Conference Course
of Study by correspondence, was ordained deacon and elder, and
became a member of the Indiana Conference of the Methodist
Church. He preached at student charges during his college days;
then, upon receiving the A.B. degree in 1908, he went into the
full-time ministry.
Reared in the home of a Methodist minister, I was destined to
have no settled abode. Before I left home for good, my father
served ten Methodist appointments in Indiana, Oklahoma, and
Massachusetts. I attended four grade schools and four high schools,
graduating from Memorial High School in Middleboro, in 1928.
After a year of postgraduate study I entered Boston University
College of Liberal Arts in the fall of 1929.
My father and I were very close. The most popular room of the
house was his study. Books have always fascinated me. Even before
learning to read I liked to look at the pictures in the New Interna-
tional Encyclopedia. I used to go with my father when he went
out on pastoral duties or to meetings out of town. Even when
very young I used to thrill to his sermons; I never missed going to
anything that ~s in the church. In one parish, my mother sang
in the choir and I, a boy of four or five, sat in a little chair by her
side in the choir loft. I have never been able to understand those
who claim they got too much religion in childhood; I loved every
bit I got.
I was the silent, bookish type, never rugged in health, but never
sickly either. I enjoyed outdoor sports, but when there was study-
ing to be done that came first; my folks saw to that. They taught
me how to read before I went to school. Perhaps that was one
reason why I went through the primer, first and second grades,
the first year and the third and fourth grades the second year. My
folks were also determined that their children should learn how
to play the piano. I cannot say that I fully appreciated such train-
ing at first; my father used to sit on the piano bench with me while
I practiced. But after the first few weeks he didn't need to do that
any more. For the next eleven years, with some intervals when no
teacher was available, I studied the piano; it has been one of the
most helpful features of my life.
I joined the church when I was six years of age. That Sunday
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morning still is vivid in my memory as the beginning of my COD-

secration to spiritual service. I was still very young when I de-
cided for full-time Christian service. For a long time I said "No"
to the ministry, fearing that I might be going into it just because
my father was a minister. But by the time I entered the College
of Liberal Arts I was sure that that was to be my life work.
My folks were determined that their children should have a col-
lege education. Accordingly, my senior and postgraduate years at
Middleboro High School were directed toward my entrance into
Boston University. To earn money, I worked during the school
year five hours every day from Monday through Friday and all day
Saturday and nine hours six days a week during the summer vaca-
tions; this was in a local drug store and it lasted twenty-five months.
Besides keeping my studies up to "A" grades, I took part in many
extra-curricular activities: I sang in the High School Glee Club,
the High School Quartette, and the Methodist Church choir; I
taught a class of boys in the Methodist Church School; during my
postgraduate year I was president of the History Club and president
of the Student Body. At the end of my senior year I received the
Washington and Franklin Medal for proficiency in the study of
American history.
At Middleboro High School I learned how to study. Without
ever having had Latin, except at home under my father's direction,
I took the second and third year courses simultaneously, along with
second-year French and mathematics, in the postgraduate year.
In my senior year my interest in history was aroused by the teacher
of the class in American history; that interest continued all through
college, seminary, and graduate study. It is still predominant and
active. Little did that teacher realize what she had started, for I
went on to get an A.B. degree with honor, majoring in history and
getting distinction in history, and S.T.B. cum laude with COD-
centration so much on studies that I did not pay the proper atten-
tion to social amenities; I hoped to equal the record of GordoD
Smith, another graduate of Middleboro High School and 'bene-
ficiary of the Fund.
All this does not mean that I did not enjoy thoroughly my college
course. From the time I went to Freshman Camp in the fall of
1929 until I wore the cap and gown in June, 1933, I was absorbed
in learning all I could from the courses of instruction and from the
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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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As the tributes to the faculty of the College of Libeml Arts

have been cut to the bone, Dr. Eller's sincere tributes to
many members of the faculty of the School of Theology are
omitted. However, as the following is a discriminating judg-
ment rather than a tribute, we may include it. The professor
was the father of one of the Fund men.
The lectures he used were twenty years old, but when he left
them and spoke on John Wesley, or Calvin, or Temperance, he
was great. Whenever he spoke in chapel the room would be filled;
his insights were rich and abiding. My roommate used to fall asleep
over his lectures; finally, he did not come to class at all, saying he
could sleep better in his room; but when the professor spoke ad
lib everyone woke up to listen.
From January of 1943 until June of 1945 I was assistant in the
church history department, reading all the examination papers
and notebooks in the beginning course. In the summer of 1943
it was my high privilege to help look up page references for a new
outline of the first semester of the course. Twice a year, the pro-
fessor entertained at his palatial home near Concord every one of
his students and their wives or sweethearts. I have stayed in his
home and we have entertained him in our home.
Nine months of my period of graduate study were spent at Duke
University Graduate School, concentrating in church history.
To eam my way, I got a stipend from an assistantship and both
Mrs. Eller and I earned our board by working in a restaurant. I was
on leave of absence from the Methodist Churches in Maplerille
and Glendale, Rhode Island; so, upon completion of the year's
work I returned to those two churches. It was interesting and
instructive to spend a year in a different section of the country.
While there I wrote a brief article, "Christian Pacificism," for the
Divinity School periodical. Registration day for the draft came
while we were in Durham. I came within a whisker of refusing
to register, but I did it toward the end of the day, registering as a
"conscientious objector."
A new chapter in my life is just now being written. After mOle
than fourteen years in the pastorate, I have just decided to leave it
and take the position in McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois,
jIS Prof~or of Philosophy and Religion. It is a small Methodist
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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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348 A CBJlONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
nell Memorial Auditorium in Hartford for five minutes to some

three or four hundred delegates from labor unions in a rally held
to stir up sentiment against the Taft-Hartley labor bill. Following
that I spoke to a group of members of the United Textile Workers
in Winsted, Connecticut.
During the past year or two I have participated in many com-
munity, conference, and state activities. In the Connecticut Coun-
cil of Churches I was a member of the Industrial Relations Com-
mittee. In the Greater Hartford Federation of Churches I was on
the Leadership Training Committee, the Vacation Church School
Committee, and the Race Relations Committee. I became vice-
president of the Greater Hartford Chapter of the Methodist Fed-
eration for Social Action. In the New England Southern Con-
ference I was assistant to the statistician for fourteen consecutive
years, Norwich District youth director for more than two years,
chainnan of the Conference Committee on Social Service and the
State of the Church for one year. member of the Commission on
World Peace for two years, teacher and registrar at summer youth
programs for eight years, secretary-treasurer of the Conference
Chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action for two
or three years. All of this activity is no more nor less than what is
expected and received from most of the members of the New
England Southern Conference of the Methodist Church.
Dr. Bernard Graves has, of his own choice. traveled a toil-
some road away from home and back again. Among the re-
wards of such an experience are the broader knowledge with
which one returns and the deeper appreciation of things at
the home from which one fled. "East, West, home's best,"
seems here to apply to church homes.
In the main, let Dr. Graves tell his own story, which begins
as follows with an excuse for its late arrival.
Probably the real reason for the delay is a desire not to look too
steadily at myself. The way you made the request for an auto-
biography, I think you want something rather personal, in the style
of the classical confessions. In my own case the story almost
inevitably becomes an apology. My memories are rather vague
and thin and sparse. Perhaps a large family makes it almost
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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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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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The Reverend George T. Welsch has put himseH so fully

into the spirit of this volume in writing his story that even this
introductory sentence seems superBuous. He writes:
I was born in Chicago, Illinois, October 3, 1916. My earliest

recollection is of my mother's taking my oldest sister and me out in
our little wagon to beat on pie plates with mixing spoons to cele-
brate the Armistice, and of the family doctor's passing by with an
ash barrel tied to the back bumper of his Model T Ford to cele-
brate the same event. He had reason to make more noise than we.
since he had two sons in the Army. When I was eight, my family
moved to Winchester, Massachusetts. My first day at school there
was most difficult. The New England accent sounded like a for-
eign language to my ears.
Fortunately for my later life, at this tender age I was exposed to
that old Yankee virtue of Spartan discipline, which taught that the
very best reason in the world for doing anything was that you
didn't want to, and "if you don't feel like working, work until you
do." This sort of doctrine was taught me on all sides, particularly
at home. My mother's family had been Vermonters for generations
and my father's folks had had the same philosophy bred in them
through their German blood.
My career in the Church began when I was about ten years of
age - for a very mercenary reason, I must confess. Our Episcopal
Church had a choir composed of men and boys, that being back
in the day when the Episcopalians felt very strongly that women
should be seen but not heard in the services. The men, as I recall,
were volunteers, but to keep the boys in order, we had a pay sys-
tem. We were paid, as beginners, the magnificent (or so it seemed
to me then) sum of fifty cents a month for attending rehearsals
Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Friday nights, and for sing-
ing on Sundays and any other days when we were needed. Failure
to appear meant a dock in one's pay. After a couple of years' service
we had our salary advanced to seventy-five cents a month, or, if
we did any solo work, a dollar. Our choirmaster was tops in his
profession. I lived in fear and trembling of him, for he was mighty
strict, but as I grew older and studied piano and organ under him, I
lost my fear but not my respect, and we have been mighty good
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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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354 A CHRONICLE OP ACIIIEVEMENT
smoothed down. During my junior and senior years I worbcl in

the college library. Again I was in wonderment at the new vistas
which were opened up.
By this time I was pretty sure that I wanted to go into the minis-
try, but had not definitely decided. So, a graduate fellowship being
available from the library, I went a year to Graduate School, major·
ing in sociology. Here I learned the invaluable lesson of the scieg.
tific method as applied to dealing with one's study of people.
In the fall of 1939 I made application for entrance into the Eps.
copal Theological School at Cambridge. Great was my pleasure to
hear the Dean say, as I was being interviewed, "Well, Mr. WeIsch,
if you've had your undergraduate training at Boston University,
you've been well grounded."
Seminary had the great advantages of giving me the experience
of living on campus. It had the added deep experience of throwing
together men who were like.minded. Much as I bad enjoyed ass0-
ciations at college, most of my friends were interested in other
professions and we had not had the depth of friendship which
comes when men hold the same aims and ideals. Here we were
all living together, studying together, working together, and, most
importantly, worshipping together. The College of Liberal Arts
had been a good training ground for the high academic standards
of a school which believed that there was absolutely no excuse for
a half·trained clergy. My tuition I had been able to raise by work·
ing summers and after classes. My board I earned by working in
the Refectory. Since the hours were sometimes long, there were
many nights when I did not get to bed at alI. It was also for this
reason that I learned the habit, since I had to be at work early, of
getting up early to do my studying. Hence I got weD broken·in for
a rural charge.
As I look back over my three years in seminary, two things stand
out now as most important. The first one was the close association
between students and faculty and between students and themselves,
working, playing, studying, and worshipping together. The second
was that now for the first time in my experience of education, I
could see all knowledge drawn together and fitted into a whole,
with God as the center. Perhaps college had tried to teach me
this, and I failed to get it. But the departmentalization which I
had known all through school was now a thing of the past.
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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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As part of the work in Big Stone, there is a mission farther off

in the mountains, started originally when there was a lumber com-
pany working through there. The name of that town is Nora, and
there is a woman worker, a deaconess, who came there with the
first wagon-load of machinery. Here one meets primitive conditions.
My first visit there brought me my first of many flat tires. I was
on my way home, had a flat, changed it, and got a flat on the spare.
I was miles from any town or service station and had no patching.
So, I looked around for a place to spend the night. I saw a light
farther along the road, and found a one-room cabin, so common
here. How far was the nearest town? About twelve miles. I could
spend the night there if I'd like to. They had two beds and would
move the children over in one of them and get the hound dog out
and there'd be room for me there. I thanked them graciously and
walked on to the town. [George Welsch of Big Stone Gap and
Newell Booth of Cen~l Africa might well compare experiencesI
R.E.B.]
Then, it was at Nora, too, that a woman brought her seven chil-
dren to hear the new preacher. To keep them occupied, she sat
them near an open window, and she herself sat on the end of the
pew on the aisle. All through the service she chewed solemnly on
her wad of tobacco. When her mouth got too full, she'd lean for-
ward, spit expertly across all seven children out the window, causing
me to lose my place completely as I watched with fascination.
The experience I had on the bus during one of my car's periodic
breakdowns was almost as unusual. Two young girls and a baby,
the driver and I were alone on the last bus from Pennington Gap, a
town also in the Big Stone Gap parish. The girls, apparently, had
traveled far. and were drinking rather heavily from a whiskey bottle
to fortify themselves. Seeing the baby thus neglected, I gave it
some attention and care, and when we reached our destination the
driver asked me if I'd mind seeing that they got into the hotel all
right. Since I was boarding there, I was only too glad to oblige.
So with the baby in my arms, and two women clinging to me, I
entered the hotel and approached the desk where a staggered-look-
ing night clerk looked upon me in horror. I gritted my teeth, and
went on. However, when one of the drunken girls asked for a
room big enough for her, her friend, the baby, and the preacher, my
charity was not proof against that, and I fled, leaving them to their
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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.
The years that elapsed between the graduation of the man

whose story has just been finished and that of the men whose
stories follow saw the major part of what was perhaps the
worst war in history. Any noticeable change in the character
of the stories may be a reflection of changes in conditions met
by the men who wrote them.
First comes the story of a young pastor, the Reverend T. C.
Day, who tells us that he was named for Theodore Roosevelt
and for John Chipman, first minister of the Second Church
in Beverly. He goes on:
My parents were of old New England stock and before that of

English origin. My religious ancestry was Baptist, Congregational,
and Unitarian. My father and my mother were ardent church work-
ers and members of the Second Parish in Beverly. My father dedi-
cated me to the ministry the day I was born, though I never knew
that until after I had expressed the desire, during college days, to
enter the ministry myself. My father died when I was nine. Though
in those days my parents were apparently rather conservative in
religious matters, they saw to it that my library was stocked with
both orthodox and liberal religious works, as well as with the best
of the classical writings of all time.
English and Latin were my favorite school subjects. A graduate
of the Boston University College of Liberal Arts, and one of the
teachers in Beverly, took a special interest in my work in the Eng-
lish department and upon the school magazine and arranged for me
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to meet the registrar of the College of Liberal Arts and to apply

for the Professor Augustus Howe Buck scholarship.
I entered the College on the Fund in 1938 and majored in Eng-
lish. I worked on the Beacon and the C. L. A.-tor, and became
president of the Urania Society, the student astronomers' club. I
made many friendships in the Phillips Brooks Club, which met for
luncheon at Trinity Church. I sold newspapers in North Beverly
at the end of the commuting day and spent late hours reading and
writing. Other jobs during college-seminary years included those of
bell-hop, theatre usher, tutor, and manual labor with the Beverly-
Salem Water Board and with the Park Department of the City of
Beverly.
During college my week ends were spent in church and youth
activities in the parish of the First Church in Wenham (Congre-
gational). There, on a Youth Sunday, I had the opportunity of
preaching my first sermon. At the College of Liberal Arts I had
become most friendly with two fellow students who were preparing
to go to Boston University School of Theology. Working together
with them in religious activities in the College of Liberal Arts and
sharing their passion for a brotherly and warless world, I found my
purposes turning naturally toward the ministry.
Europe was now aftame with war. Within the student body there
were foreboding and indecision, because no man could say what
a day or an hour might bring forth. For some time I had been study-
ing courses that meant at once an entr~ into the whole classical
and spiritual heritage of the race and an introduction to contempo-
rary philosophies of war and peace. The professor took his men
students to the symphonies and to lectures upon the explosive issues
of the hour. He stood for a tradition which has been all but lost in
many of our great universities because of zeal upon the part of the
administrations for "research scholars:' For "Prof:' the students
were not a "necessary evil" or an irritating intrusion upon the sanc-
tity of the scholar's cell. The students were his fellow men and his
very life - even as their students had been the fellow men and the
very life of Socrates of old and of Augustus Howe Buck, George
Herbert Palmer, Borden Parker Bowne and William James of a
latter dayl
Largely through his influence and that of my pastor, I joined the
Fellowship of Reconciliation, the religious pacifist organizations,
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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."
Next comes the story of Robert P. Franz.
My parents were married young. Their family consists of four

boys and four girls. My father had a good job as a foreman in a
shoe-last factory in Malden, Massachusetts. We attended a Naza-
rene Sunday School where I won a prize of $2 in my class for learn-
ing Bible verses. Often I accompanied my older brother on his
magazine route through the city and later earned money by dis-
tributing advertising material house-ta-house. As soon as we were
old enough to wipe the silver we had household chores to do for
which we were paid a few cents each week. In 1928 my father was
out of work because the factory closed down, and that year we
moved from the city to Wilmington, Massachusetts, a town of
about 2500 people.
My life had three distinct centers in that, while I attended school
in Wilmington, my folks took the family to church in an evangeli-
cal church in a neighboring town, and my afternoons after school
and Saturdays were spent in yet a third town where Dad managed
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twnJ'''n1 store. The somewhat disastrous

as I knew my only on the basis
room activity, I was alway& church at this
the boys' group, and young people's
At sixteen I was teaching a class of Sunday School boys, some
whom were only a year younger than I. At twenty I was superin-
tendent of the Sunday SchooL
Upon graduation from high school, I decided on a postgraduate
year. Fortunately for me, we had a new science teacher, a Boston
UniveISity graduate, who permitted experiment dlUIJ,UU
laboratory in exchange for the watching students
after-school experiments was coaching amlletlCS.
learned I had no college he brought
University and to his major pr(ltessor
members of the Professor t\11i~5;tus
Buck Scholars. To him lowe much, His interest in me moved me
to begin majoring in chemistry in college, though later I changed
to the field of philosophy.
One of the things that meant the most to me in going from high
school to college was the new sense of freedom and responsibility.
library, well every possible subject, in
day after day, with delight that to this
sense of exhilaration into a library.
>JUlun,,", my first year at the logy I was mtlem1D-
Immanuel Baptist Ipswich for three mo'ntlls
pastor of the Baptist in Groton for
months. I then left the ministry to take up school teaching, and
this past year I have been teaching chemistry, physics and biology
in the high school at Billerica, Massachusetts. In the summer of
1947 I preached in the Congregational Church in Billerica during
the pastor's vacation, I have been teaching a Sunday School class
of boys thirteen to fifteen This coming year
direct the 'ous education church in the :SUl!lruIV
the young
the future
WCi:1AIIIQ:Ji of our educational
values in the We teach great

many but we give no concern to the values which give meaning
to life. This past year I had a group of seniors meeting voluntarily
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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:
I entered the College of Liberal Arts in 1920. I was to become

part of a large university, yet one in which students still had oppor-
tunities to know and study with the full professors and to feel the
in8uence of their personalities. I was grateful, too, to be able to
become a Scholar and Fellow of the Fund, because without this
aid I would have had to spend many hours more at work to earn
money and many less hours in study. Of course, my primary in-
terest in college, I thought, was to prepare myself for medical
school. This I did successfully, but I discovered that college was
to do more: It opened up avenues of knowledge which I have been
travelling ever since - some scientific, but most of them avenues of
history, language, culture, litemture, art, - roads which I travel
with joy, partly because of a love of knowledge, and partly because
knowledge of great variety helps me to talk the language of more
people; it helped to bring mental and spiritual maturity, while my
body gained physical maturity; it brought me into contact with
men whose in8uence lay not only in their spoken word but in the
lives which they led; they became more than teachers - they be-
came personal friends.
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Continuing, he pays generous tribute individually to these

teachers who were also friends. He then tells us,
In College 1 took part in the "Y" program and sang in the Glee
Club and Chapel Choir. I also joined the Student Volunteer
Group and gave many talks on mission work in the churches of
Boston and suburbs. About the time I finished my freshman year,
I was given a local preacher's license and from then on I frequently
preached here and there in Connecticut and Massachusetts when:
a supply was needed. When I entered college I took a Sunday
School class of boys of about ten years of age. This class I had for
eight years. During that time the attendance grew to over twenty-
five and, as the years went by, I had the privilege of seeing prac-
tically all of them acknowledge Christ and join the church. I have
lost track of some of them, but I know of several who are active
laymen in the churches where they have made their homes. I spent
many hours with these boys beside the lesson hour on Sunday, camp-
ing and tramping and trying to help them to grow up to be clean
and honest.
At the end of my third year at the College of Liberal Arts I
transferred to the School of Medicine, combining the fourth year
of college with the first there. At the end of that year I received
my degree of Bachelor of Science and also, much to my surprise
and joy, was made a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Medical school
days were very busy: classes all day, working as a Y.M.CA. secre-
tary at night until eleven, study after that until two or three in
the morning. At the end of my third year of medical study I
received an honorary degree of Ch.B. because of general proficiency
in all my work and with special proficiency in certain specified sul>
jects. At the end of my fourth year, I received my M.D. and found
that I was the valedictorian in my class, having attained the highest
grades. There was little time for social life in the medical school.
I continued to be active in the Student Volunteer Movement, at
one time attending the national convention in Indianapolis with
6,999 other students. On Sundays I sang in a church choir, taught
a Sunday School class, and, with my wife, had charge of young
people's progmm in a large Baptist Church.
The mission board had informed me that all men missionaries
to be sent to frontier fields should be ordained, regardless of what
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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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364 A CHRONICLE OF ACIDEVEMENT
as resident I became superintendent and served as such for another

three years. At the mission, directing the clinics, and supervising
the medical students and the student nurses from the New England
Deaconess Hospital in their care of the sick in the homes, I had
many opportunities daily to serve. The patients were immigrant
families and their children from many different countries. M~
had no real faith. Superstition and fear of all kinds ruled thar
lives. The evil eye was their constant cause for dread and the cause
of much of their illness. In many instances much social service
work was needed. At this time I became a member of the Executive
Committee of the Family Welfare Society for the North and West
Ends of Boston. I also worked closely with the Visiting Nurse
Association and with the various social agencies in the district in-
cluding the Juvenile Court. The librarian, probation officer from
the juvenile court, head workers of the social centers, representatives
from the Family Welfare Society and a number of interested citi-
zens formed a group which worked for the betterment of the slums.
Partly through our efforts the city finally tore down many of the
worst areas and built play spaces, parks, and other open-air facili-
ties. I had attended a Methodist church during the summer for
many years and so was fairly familiar with the Methodist organiza-
tion. During this period I had opportunity to visit many of the
Methodist churches in New England and present the work of the
Medical Mission. As near as I can recall, our yearly average of
treatments was over 30,000 during the six years we were there.
In 1934 I left the Mission and opened an office in a Boston sub-
urb where I now live. I continued to teach at Boston University
and at Gordon College, where I also became college physician.
As the years have gone by since I left the active mission worle, I
have helped to train a large number of preachers, missionaries and
church workers as well as doctors and social workers. Possibly this
will result in a far greater "advancement of the Kingdom" than
could have been brought about by my going to China.
Through the years religious education has been a hobby of mine.
I took special courses and taught in several schools held in connec-
tion with churches. I also taught a course in, and for three years
was president of, the Boston Baptist Worker's Union, a central
school for Sunday School workers of the Baptist churches of
Greater Boston. I was president of the Boston East Baptist Sun-
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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:
While at Hull Street Medical Mission I became affiliated with

the teaching staff of Boston University Medical School. I also gave
lectures at Boston University School of Religious Education and
Social Work which eventually led to the establishment of an ac-
cepted course of Medical Information in the School of Social
Work. In 1934, at the request of the late Dean Begg of the School
of Medicine, and Dr. Pollock, Superintendent of the Massa-
chusetts Memorial Hospitals, I took charge of the Pediatric Out-
Patient Department of the Hospitals and made it into a large
teaching clinic in which I taught clinical pediatrics to junior stu-
dents at Boston University School of Medicine. Since coming home
from overseas I have resumed teaching at Boston University, Gor-
don College, and Symmes Arlington Hospital. Last year I was
appointed by Civil Service to posts of school physician and physi-
cian to the Board of Health (part time) in my home town. My
private practice, teaching, work as school physician and Board of
Health physician; duties as chairman of the Board of Deacons and
other offices in my church, speaking at service clubs, Parent-Teacher
Associations, church groups, Mothers' Clubs, and similar activities. .
leave me little time for frivolity.
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There follows a list of seven medical societies and institu-

tions which are fortunate in being able to claim some of the
activities of this busy life. Of his hopes for the future, be
writes:
I hope to be able to assist many more young people to go into
religious work at home or abroad and to continue to interest many
people in supporting those actually doing the work. I have always
loved children and hope to continue to work with them.
Save for later brief mention, the story of L. Curtis Foye,
M.D., is closed on this fine note.
The next story is that of Dr. William Hamilton Frackel-
ton of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the third among the
Fund men who has rescued another from drowning. Three
in four score seems a rather high percentage. This rescue oc-
curred when young Frackelton was a life-guard in the Junior
Red Cross. For it he received a certificate from the National
Court of Honor. In other ways also he ties up with men of
the Fund. Of course he met the usual conditions, - the
"unusual promise," "positive Christian character," and "in-
sufficient means," and his introduction to the Fund was
through a brother member, Walter Moberg.
Of his background and early life, he tells us:
I had been told that one of my ancestors was a signer of the
Declaration of Independence. On a mistaken thought that it
might have been Alexander Hamilton I remember doing reference
work in the library in preparation of a talk at the Historical Society
about Alexander Hamilton. A more astute student, even though
he be a casual one, would have known the pitfall which lay ahead
of me. I found indeed that I did have an ancestor who signed the
Declaration of Independence - Oliver Wolcott - not Alexander
Hamilton, for the latter left no direct heirs.
My father's family were English, came from near London, and
were largely men of letters, chemists, and doctors. My grandfather
Frackelton was of the first group, my father of the last. A grand-
mother was a teacher by pleasure and an artist by desire and in later
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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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averages, Congressional Honor certificate for life-saving, and things

of that sort which are duplicated in many boys' lives to greater or
less extent.
Through trips of historical type about Philadelphia, side trips to
Atlantic City and to the Capitol at Washington, the group mem-
bers came to know each other quite well. As representative from
Wisconsin I not only had the chance to meet Walter Moberg,
but through the round robin letter which was maintained for a few
years learned of his appointment as Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Scholar at Boston University. This news came in 1928 while I was
in college at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Through my own
desire and spurred by interest of my family, inquiries went forth
from Milwaukee, and in 1930 the news came that I had been ap-
pointed a Professor Augustus Howe Buck Scholar and would have
the privilege of entering Boston University under the grant that fall.
Boston University and living in New England was a glorious ex-
perience. The interest in the historical aspects of Boston was aided
by a letter of introduction to Lansing Roberts, a former Milwau-
keean and a confirmed Bostonian at that time, a writer for Beacon
Hill and an avid student of Boston history. With Mr. Roberts
several Saturdays were spent walking around the wharf area, Faneuil
market area, and other spots of Boston including "No Man's
Land" down in the old garrison district, and the blacksmith shop
right in the very heart of Old Boston. During the first year it did
not appear irreligious to combine worship attendance and inspec-
tion of various churches, and thus the opportunity to hear the serv-
ices in and see some twenty-odd churches came to me during the
first years in Boston.
Weekday nights and Saturday mornings were study affairs, with
sufficient hours to maintain a decent scholastic record. In the Fall I
drove about the Cape area and up into the mountains with friends,
spent an occasional week end at one of the nearby schools, and had
some athletic trips with the fencing team, all of which fitted into a
very pleasant life.
Thanksgiving time and away from home was at my cousin's in
Cambridge. I remember well the reading of a treasured ancestral
letter written at the time of the early settlers in Massachusetts to
relatives still in England. The description of the first winter in
the newly constructed log house, of the mother confronted by a
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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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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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were used for clinical rounds, discussions, and catching up on rec-

ords.
The group of immediate associates changed from time to time
and somewhat more rapidly in the last of 1945 and in 1946. Many
medical officers returned home after several years of active service.
Because of the type of work I was in, I remained on, as much by
the Surgeon General's decision as my own. Along with thirty-nine
other men in the Medical Corps of the United States Army who
were given the complimentary title of "key-men" and placed in a
"frozen" category (very deep freeze), I continued the reconstruc-
tive work. One would not have wanted it otherwise, though all of
us looked forward to the time when we would be able to com-
plete our work for the patients, see them return home, and fonow
them soon. I was promoted through grades including colonel,
February, 1946, and awarded Legion of Merit for "outstanding
work in development of new procedures and the application of
principles of plastic reconstructive surgery to injured soldiers." I
was discharged October 20, 1946.
We "bought" a house by mail without having seen it, saw it
for the first time when we slept in it on returning to Milwaukee,
and have been busy since doing home handicraft work and redeco-
rating. Immediate adjustments of return to civilian life were many,
including returning to the office building, regaining space, begin-
ning again my teaching work at the medical school, accepting the
position as consultant in plastic surgery for the Veterans Adminis-
bation, a similar position for the County Hospital, and entering
into private practice of plastic and reconstructive surgery again.
For the future, I plan to continue my present treatment of
patients. The work seems largely that of an artisan but with suf-
ficient of the studious side to take it out of the realm of pure handi-
craft. The fascination of the work itself - creating, molding,
repairing instead of taking away, and the more altruistic aspect of
returning the patient to a satisfactory economic and social position
in society - is present.
The importance of Dr. Frackelton's work has been recog-

nized again and again in the public press - notably when a
widely read weekly descnbed one of his "daring" operations
in returning normal functions to a hand shattered by a ~
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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:
My internship began on New Year's Eve; it was a memorable

event. On arriving at the hospital I found myself the only house
officer on duty. As soon as I could change into my white uniform
I was out on my first ambulance call- three persons overcome by
illuminating gas. It was a rough night, but not any more so than
any of the others that followed. During the time I was assigned to
the Highland, I was an intern on all services but the medical. Two
months of intensive ambulance work were included; for the High-
land had the downtown shopping district for its territory on emer-
gency calls. Simultaneously I worked on the surgical specialties,
especially neurosurgery, and covered for another intern on pediat-
rics and obstetrics the nights and week ends that I alternated with
him. On those nights I delivered over thirty babies, including one
who was named Bruce because the very obese mother was unpre-
pared with names since she didn't know she was pregnant. During
those winter months traumatic surgery also kept me busy, and on
some occasions I would pick up a patient with a fractured leg oil
an ambulance call, give him morphine on the way back, take my
own X-ray films, and have the leg in traction within an hour from
the time of the accident. Since we frequently worked all night
the nights we were on, we developed the habit of leaving the hos-
pital on our alternate nights off regardless of circumstances. Some
week ends permitted fragments of sleep totaling about six hours.
Some patients presented trying problems, as for example one with
a ruptured abdominal aneurysm whOdl I kept alive for five days to
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assure the family that everything possible was done. It required

constant hourly attention, tremendous quantities of blood and
plasma, and when examined at autopsy he had the largest internal
hemorrhage any of us had ever seen. The family was grateful, but
I never could quite appreciate the beautiful silk dressing gown
they gave me because of its blood-red color!
In April, 1944, I returned to my own hospital, Strong Memorial,
for the remaining six months of my internship. The first six weelcs
were very depressing, despite the fact that a friend was the attend-
ing physician for my floor. I had the women's medical floor in
Municipal, consisting largely of elderly debilitated women. Where-
as by necessity I had developed the ability to do many things on
my own at the Highland, it was confusing to me to be confronted
with teaching students on the one hand, and being part of a large
organization on the other. These difficulties became resolved in
time.
The months went by quickly and in October I was promoted
to the rank of assistant resident physician which provided me
with a salary of $41.66 per month. Whereas Highland paid the
interns $25 per month in addition to board and room, Strong did
not. All but two of my fellow interns left to do active duty with
the Anny or Navy. As assistant resident I had many new responsi-
bilities. During the war years much of the teaching program fell
on these individuals who were also responsible for the medical care
of the patients under them. We worked all night every fifth night
and week end. Fortunately hard work and long hours seemed to
agree with me - at least I thrived on them for a period. Then in
December I acquired "atypical pneumonia of unknown etiology" -
probably due to a virus - but I kept on working for five days until
I was convinced that my symptoms were not on a psycho-neurotic
basis. I was admitted to the hospital the night before the biggest
snowstonn of the winter, and was truly amazed at the depth of the
snow when I was first able to look out the windows to see it two
weeks later. I spent Christmas at home with my family in our
one-room apartment. With the addition of a play-pen to the only
remaining space in the room, I developed acute claustrophobia. In
January we were fortunate in finding the four-room apartment
where we have lived more spaciously and in greater comfort ever
since. .
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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:
My OrigiDal proposal made to the Professor Augustus Howe Buck

Committee was to prepare for a career as a medical missionary,
or for academic medicine. Circumstances largely of a financial
character made the decision for my studying medicine at Roches-
ter. This has never been regretted, and I am convinced that the
University of Rochester has done much for me. My advisers there
have from the first discouraged me from missionary work. To have
started on a suitable program of training for missionary work would
have withdrawn the support of people in this school, to do it now
would not appeal to me. There are ~o many problems in medicine
crying for a solution, and relatively few who want to wrestle with
them, that I am satisfied that is the way for me. It is therefore
my hope that I shall be able to continue in academic medicine,
conduct clinical investigations, teach students, qualify for my spe-
cialty and fulfill the aspirations of my friends and associates who
have encouraged me to believe my place is in a teaching hospital
close to the lines of clinical investigation. There are many satisfac-
tions from such a career, but they are not financial as in the case of
the practicing physician or surgeon in a large city. Thus ends the
story of what the Committee has done for me, and may the Com-
mittee be as satisfied as I have been grateful!
A definite advance to a more recent period occurs at this

point. Dr. Fmckelton graduated from medical school and,
already well established in his chosen profession, was ready
before war came to repair the physical damages war in-
fticts on men. Dr. Bruce followed but little later. But PearJ
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Harbor found Burton Willard still a student in the classroom,

with years of preparation ahead. However, he and those who
follow him belong here, since the necessary and sufficient test
is whether one has earned the M.D. degree.
Dr. Willard's story is short, too short. It is also much to
the point. Hence we give it practically entire.
Concerning my ancestors, there is nothing particularly remark-
able; one absolutely was a Puritan president of Harvard, one posi-
tively was a Colonial clock maker, one definitely was a surgeon;
the others - they were alleged to be great people. It is rumored
that one or two were conniving traitors or worse.
My early life was in no way unusual. I contracted the usual
childhood diseases, encountered the usual fights and scufHes, sus-
taining the usual percentage of beneficial bruises. My small sister
and I were bosom pals and together we explored the world of
fantasy: we built mansions, became famous figures, staged great
dramas, got movie stars' autographs, had a lot of fun.
I attended Lynn English High School where my father was
principal. I walked around in baggy trousers, failed to comb my
hair, and in general tried to impress my colleagues that my father
just happened to be principal through no fault of my owo.
Since my mother and father were both graduates of Boston
University College of Liberal Arts, it seemed a most logical choice
that I should follow them to this excellent institution. My three
premedical years were very happy and profitable ones. I feel that
my academic training was excellent. Certainly the professors were
very keen and human men. At my fraternity I met wonderful boys.
"On the Marble" at the College there were many spirited dis-
cussions. I have always been deeply appreciative of the Professor
Augustus Howe Buck award which assured me the opportunity to
gain the education for medicine.
At Boston University School of Medicine we worked harei. I
managed to have a fair share of extra-curricular activities. After
graduation, I interned at the Salem Hospital, Salem, Massachusetts,
and then went into the Navy. There, on occasions, I would meet
an old Boston University graduate, and we would have fine times
recalling college days. I did mostly neuro-psychiatric work in the
Service and continued in this field with the Veterans Administra-
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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.
What has been written in introducing Dr. Willard's story

might be repeated, in the main, as a preface to that of Dr.
Charles Morrell, Jr. (Lt. [j.g.] Me, USNR). Like the other
young doctors among the Fund men, his preparation in
medicine took him well into the period of World War II.
Indeed, when he wrote his life story given below he was still
in the service of his country.
His facetious account of his experiences during the early
hours, days, and months of life, in which he brings medical
terminology to his aid, is delightfully fanciful- so fanciful
in fact that regretfully it is excluded from this sober, factual
chronicle. As we proceed, the reader may be led to wonder
whether all the fanciful has been deleted.
Attempting to outline my transpired life bewilders me some-

what, both as to how to say it and for what purpose. Since I last
saw you [in Arlington, California, in June, 1947. R.E.B.] I have
had a change of duty and am now medical officer aboard the u.s.s.
Asbri getting a little sea duty. I have started a couple of letters to
you attempting to portray my life and times but gave them both
up as bad jobs and decided that I didn't have the proper convic-
tion of the need of humanity to learn of my rather banal existence
and abortive successes. However, due to your proddings and my
desire not to displease you any more than my tardiness has already
done, I will try to give you a precis of my twenty-six-year-old metab-
olism.
Ab, those early, carefree years. Nothing to do but eat, sleep,
and play. Little did I realize that it would be many years before I
could again capture those effortless days of doing nothing and being
supported by a beneficent hand. I can remember, as a little, angel-
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378 A CHRONICLE OF ACIIIEVEMENT
faced, precocious tot, thinking to myself, "Gee, what a racket.

Surely this can't last. I'll have to go to school or to work or some-
thing pretty soon." And such was the case. Off to our public edu-
cational institutions they sent me and many things were to happen
before I grew up and joined the Navy and again realized those
effortless days of doing nothing and being supported by a beneficent
hand.
And so I was indoctrinated into the system of crime and punish-
ment - crime if you didn't keep pace with the rest of the class
and punishment in the form of a note from the teacher to take
home or a trip to the principal's office. Thus at an early age I
entered the American way of life of competition and elevated blood
pressure. The images that remain on my brain from those years
consist of a scattering of unrelated memories such as my perturb.
tion at the habit of my fourth grade teacher of chiding the class
because they couldn't do their arithmetic problems as fast as she;
one or two fist-fights undergone as a requisite in the development
of masculine character in all young boys; the yearly arrival of the
Punch and Judy Show in the school auditorium; my blissful enjoy-
ment of the last school day of each year when I would sit like a
Hindu and contemplate the fact that I had a whole summer of free-
dom before me; my role as Columbus in a sixth-grade pageant
where I stood on the bridge of the Santa Maria valiantly waving a
sword and shouting, "Sail on, Sail on, Sail onl" to a bedraggled
crew who retaliated by chanting, "Behind him lay the grey Azores,
beyond - the gates of Hercules." I was later told that John Barry-
more was in the audience that night, and coincidentally it was
about that time that he commenced his downward course as a
thespian.
I had just started the eighth grade when my folks decided to
become more bucolic, so we left the crowded environs of historic
Medford and made the long voyage to Stoneham, where the family
homestead has remained to this day. It was probably the best
thing that could have happened, because in a smaller school I be-
came a person rather than a number, and for the first time actually
enjoyed school. Living in the country was a new experience. I bad
numerous odd jobs: haying, hoeing com, and other farm activities.
I was also removed from a crowded neighborhood and suddenly
found that I was alone much of the time. This gave rise to many
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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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This meant I could devote my whole time to my studies and

henceforth cease beating up little urchin newsboys for enough
small change to make monthly payments on my tuition to the
bursar. This, plus the fact that the Ubrary had a file of all previous
examination questions which allowed one to guess what his own
examination would require, made life very easy for me during my
last year at the College. In fact, so easy that I was able to take a
full-time job at ,a defense plant from 4 P.M. to midnight, six days
a week, and put a little cash away for medical school.
After bidding a fond adieu to Boston University on May 25,
1942, I journeyed out past the Fenway to begin my medical studies
at Harvard Medical School. Arriving late because I had mistaken
the stately Sears-Roebuck Store for the medical school building, I
undertook the esoteric perusal of medical subjects for the three
succeeding years. These were fateful years both for the nation and
for me. The nation was engaged in the world conflict. I was en-
gaged in finally becoming a doctor of medicine. I also became a
husband, marrying a beautiful nurse I had met in my hospital work.
I also became a naval medical officer and on my graduation in
1945 was assigned to the U. S. Naval Hospital in San Diego, Cali-
fornia, for duty as an intern. This meant saying good-bye to Boston.
Good-bye to Bostonl Certainly this fractured a way of life. I had
been born in and had grown up in Boston. I had gone to college
and medical school there. I had started my married life there. All
of this for my entire life of twenty-four years. Good-bye to Copley
Square, the Fenway, the Charles River, the Common, the narrow
streets of Beacon Hill. The Hub, the American Athens, the vortex
of the history of the new world. Good-bye Boston.
For sixteen months I remained at the San Diego Naval Hospital.
Those were the closing months of the war. Our wards were full of
blighted and maimed young men who had been carried back from
a war they had accepted but had not owned. The medical officers'
work was to palliate, as well as he could with his limitations as a
human, the wounds of flesh and mind inflicted by others with their
power as humans. I was inspired by my work and had the feeling
of accomplishment so necessary to gratify a restless being. I was
delighted at the entire adventure of being in a new setting. far
from home, out on my own. Then the war ended; in succeeding
months there was less to do. In the fall of 1946 I was transferred to
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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.
Doctors, even young doctors, are among the busiest of the

busy. Dr. Harold Judd Sparling, Jr., wrote a list of headings
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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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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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fulfilled we are now to learn. His story which follows, is dated

at the Station Hospital, Camp Kilmer, New Jersey.
After I was twelve years old I spent most of my spare time out
of school and on Saturdays working in stores, selling newspapers,
and caring for graves in the local cemetery. Sundays were spent in
quiet Methodist fashion - Sunday School, church, and Epworth
League meetings, taking up most of the day.
I attended Boston Latin School, one of the oldest, proudest, and
finest high schools in America. While there I made many friends
and received excellent training. I could not enjoy many of the
extra·curricular activities because I was too busy earning and saving
money for college. Medical school seemed to recede further into
the future as the time for entry to college came nearer.
There is a saying. "Life begins at forty." For me, life began at
Boston University College of Liberal Arts. In my first semester I
met so many people - fellow students, instructors, professors, and
others who were at once eager to help me reach my goal, that I was
amazed to find so many people so interested in so many other
people. This spirit remained throughout my stay at the College
of Liberal Arts and through my years at the Medical School. There
I had ample opportunity to compare notes with students from
many other colleges and I concluded that no school does more
for the individual student than does the College of Liberal Arts.
There was lots of fun at college too - fraternities, the sororities
and their parties, class dances, and all the everyday laughs.
My religious activities have been limited since starting college.
While there I had a job on Saturdays that started at 6 A.M. and
ended around 2 A.M. on Sundays. If then I were to go to the regular
Sunday morning services, I would be sure to sleep sounder than in
a class in plane trigonometry. Sunday evenings I usually managed
to get to the Epworth League meetings.
During the war years I was in medical school. My later years
there were spent as a member of the Army Specialized Tmining
Progrclm. This was my sole contribution to the war effort at the
time. Actually. my being a trainee in such a program was more of
a contribution to me. I came to active duty in the Army after
completing fifteen months of internship at the Massachusetts
Memorial Hospitals in July, 1947. My tour of duty extends through
July, 1949.
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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.
The last physician on the list is Dr. Clinton Albert Piper,

who was an M.D. at twenty-three. His degree was earned at
Harvard Medical School which he characterizes as "one of the
highest ranking medical institutions in the world."
He was early left to the care of his mother, for his father
died when only twenty-seven. That his care was shared by
others is clear from the opening sentence of his story. He
writes:
My grandmother, who lived in New Hampshire, drove a spirited

chestnut horse and kept parrots and Boston bulldogsI To visit
her as a boy was always far from dull. An old Civil War veteran
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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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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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THE SERVICE 389
"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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As seen in the last previous chapter, the physicians in par-

ticular and to a large extent the pastors pursued their own
vocations in the service, even though under altered circum-
stances, perhaps at the ends of the earth. As for the teachers,
not a few of them taught soldiers in training while others who
possessed special knowledge useful in the emergency were
called upon to use it in the service of the country. For ex-
ample: Professor Roland Hussey was called from his chair in
history at the University of California in Los Angeles to spend
many months in Washington in advisory and administrative
work, a decided contrast to his service in the trenches in
France in World War I. He was the only Fund man to see
service in both conflicts.
A recognized serious indictment of the so-called service is
that the destruction it promotes falls so largely on young men,
and it is fortunate that none of the Fund men was killed.
Several other men hom the older group gave valuable yeaIS
to the service, and their stories shall be told first, even though
our interest here centers mainly in young men.
Colonel E. W. Carr's interest in military service was awak-
ened by courses and drill he took at Boston University and
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1925 he en-
tered West Point. However, let him tell the story.
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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THE SERVICE 391
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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I had reached the rank of technical sergeant when I was dis-

charged in May, 1945. Immediately I was appointed to the United
States Strategic Bombing Survey and within seventy-two hours was
flown to Germany with the assimilated rank of lieutenant colonel.
My work with the Survey took me to the sadly devastated Ruhr
Valley where I spent two months interviewing the natives. The
month of August took me to London where I collaborated in the
preparation of the Survey report.
In September I flew back to Germany where I was appointed
area chief for Greater Hesse of the Public Opinion Survey of the
Information Control Division. The work kept me busy traveling
back and forth throughout the U. S. Zone interviewing, training
personnel, until the program 6nally required me to devote all my
time to administrative duties. It was an interesting but very har-
rowing experience which brought me into intimate touch with
the pitiful suffering of a whole people.
Mr. Sharp is still doing important work in the service of the

country.
For the last story of the older men in service we return

again to the record of Dr. George Z. Dimitroff. In writing of
the progress of the Second World War after this country was
well into it, he says:
Events appeared to have settled into the normal see-saw of 191&

1917. I felt very far from it all and at times the oceans appeared
even more isolating than ever. The beginning followed the pattern
of the First World War and the outcome, though distant, should
differ only in degree of severity, from the chaotic conditions of the
First World War. I found an escape in my work. Certainly this
was the time when pure science was being neglected and I was con-
vinced that the efforts of everyone should be redoubled in carrying
on pure research. Meanwhile, events in Europe created an even
greater demand upon the technically trained men in the Universi-
ties. Specifically, the use of the new secret weapon (later found
to be the magnetic mine) had made our Navy begin extensive
investigation. It called upon scientists and engineers alike for
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THE SERVICE 393
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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Again compare the demagnetization of a ship with that of a

watch. When a watchmaker demagnetizes a watch he places the
watch in a coil of wire through which an alternating current flows
and causes the dipoles (fundamental magnetic particles) in the
metal to oscillate back and forth each time the current revenes the
direction of How in the coil. The coil in the watchmaker's case
consists of a few turns of wire and carries only a fIaction of an
ampere of current. When a ship such as the Missouri or the
Shangri-la takes the place of the watch, it is necessary to make a
coil around the ship that consists of more than 20,000 feet of heavy
cable and carries thousands of amperes of current that shakes the
ship just as the watchmaker's coil shakes the watch.
In connection with this type of work I saw service in all major
Atlantic seaboard naval bases, the Gulf of Mexico, the Carib-
bean, Panama Canal Zone, Central and South America as far as
the Galapagos Islands.
In 1944 this work passed from the developmental to the opera-
tional stage and I was ordered as a naval member of the Combined
Intelligence priority subcommittee to the European theatre of war.
This committee of allied officers was to prepare, prior to the libel&-
tion, the list of targets (universities, private institutions, labom-
tories, factories, men, et cetera) whose work was eventually to be
studied by experts, in order to evaluate the technical developments
in Europe during the war.
After the invasion I was transferred to the "Alsos mission" which
was composed of both military and civilian scientists, whose job
was to track down and locate the German developments in atomic
energy and possible atomic weapons. This proved to be a relatively
simple job and I soon became a member of the Naval Technical
Mission to Europe which was organized to make a broader study of
all technical developments on the continent.
My particular background being optics, I made a study of some
forty major optical "targets," including such places as the Zeiss
works, and the Schott optical glass works in Jena; the Schneider
lens factory, the Leitz works and others. It is perhaps worth men-
tioning that from Zeiss alone I collected over forty tons of optical
equipment (samples) which we moved west only three days before
the Russians took over.
I have never found out nor have I attempted to discover what
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THE SERVICE 395
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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396 A CBltONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
nature of my assignment I had to interrogate and come in contact

with the majority of the scientists and had also a chance to contIast
the Japanese way of life with that of Europe, of Central and South
America, as well as of the United States, and I still rate the
Japanese quite high.
Soon after returning from the Orient I was put on inactive status
and resumed teaching at Dartmouth. It has not been a very easy
decision to return to teaching, especially since both government
and industry offer magnificent opportunity and very generous finan-
cial reward for good men. Even on my last trip to the west coast the
constant question raised was, "What can we do to induce you to
stay with us?" I do not say this because I feel that I am superbly
good (though I have admitted it on occasion without blushing) but
because I am aware now more than I was a few months ago of the
great scarcity of technically trained men. That this is the case can
be seen by mere comparison of salaries offered outside and in
the teaching profession. In many cases these offers are double the
present professional salaries. The answer to why some people can
forego such lucrative offers to return to teaching can be found in
the statement, "I'd gladly pay the university, if I had the means,
for the privilege of doing the things they are paying me to do."
I do not wish to be misunderstood. I shall always endeavor to
obtain at least a satisfactory means of support for my family, but I
want it clearly understood that financial sacrifices which most
teachers undergo are possible to endure because teaching is not a
job, not even a profession - it is, at least to me, a calling which
gives one satisfaction beyond financial considerations.
Many colleges realize this and while unable to meet the compe-
tition financially they have recognized teaching ability and initia-
tive. Within the last two years here I have received not only salary
increases, and become a full professor, but only recently I received
from Dartmouth the degree of Master of Arts (honoris). As one
man put it, you cannot eat a degree, but on the other hand it gives
you the satisfaction (especially for people like myself who are not
Dartmouth men) that such honors, at least at Dartmouth, are not
reserved strictly for politicians, generals, and would·be benefactors
to the institution. As you can see, then, in the future I am still
going to be a teacher.
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THE SERVICE 397
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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every waking hour seven days a week. Communication with native

officials and citizens had become vital to the establishment of a
naval base and everyone turned to the few of us who spoke French
to iron out every difficulty that arose - water, electricity, sewage,
housing, labor - the thousand functions of a community were in
immediate demand. Although the Army was in charge of the mili-
tary government and did the spade work, liaison was most impor-
tant. One of the greatest crises that arose - the complete break-
down of the electric power plant and with it the water supply-
was solved through the offices of the Navy with the dynamos of a
destroyer brought up for the purpose.
I took up my n~ assignment on August 1, 1944, after crossing
to Cherbourg on the first dispatch boat to proceed directly to that
port. My new responsibility as task group commander, directly
under Admiral Wilkes, Commander of U. S. Ports and Bases,
France, was to coordinate all Naval Civil Affairs activities in the
ports and coastal areas occupied by the United States. This came
to mean eventually the entire coast of Normandy and Brittany from
Le Havre to Nantes.
My training and experience in France stood me in good stead
during those months of travel and inspection and contact with
the French of all walks of life. One of our chief tasks was to assist
in the reestablishment of the French fishing industry, the products
of which were so sorely needed in the interior.
This assignment as task group commander was, I believe, the
most satisfying and significant of my naval career. The officers I
associated with were mostly those I had been together with at
Columbia and in London. Not a few of them were college profes-
sors and many were my seniors both in age and rank. I value their
friendship and will always be gmteful to them for their patience
and cooperation in a particularly difficult task.
In the fall of 1944 I returned to London and assisted in organiz-
ing a training school in military government which we set up at
Rosneath Castle in Scotland for some 1500 officers and men. I was
executive officer for this school where we prepared the naval per-
sonnel for the occupation of Gennany. I prize a Letter of Com-
mendation which I received for this work.
After a brief period in London in the spring of 1945 as officer in
charge of the Military Government Liaison Section during its
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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.
Again reminding the reader that what follows is to be taken

as a sample only, we tum to a consideration of the service of
a few of the younger men. The division line between the two
groups is, of course, an arbitrary one. Each report is headed
by the name of the man, sans adornment.
ELMORE D. LUNDGREN
In September, 1943, I received that famous letter from the Presi-

dent telling me I had been chosen. In 1942, I had tried to obtain
a commission but my eyes were too poor for an officer. They
weren't too poor for me to be a gob, though, and I found myself
in the United States Navy. I chose the NavY because I like the
water and ships. So the Navy sent me to Chicagol They intended
to make a radio technician out of me. Just before I was due to be
shipped out of Chicago, the program suddenly expanded and sev-
eral mathematics teachers were needed. Those of us who had
teaching experience were drafted for this work and I found myself
teaching almost the same mathematics in the Navy that I had been
teaching in ciVIlian life. I taught there for over a year. The hours
were long and the schedule terrific. We covered a year's review of
mathematics and electricity in four weeks. Every four weeks a new
group came in. The only personal compensation was that my wife
and I could be together. She came to Chicago and worked at
Douglas Aircraft. Between us, we think we did a little to help win
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A CHRONICLE OF ACHmVEMENT
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.
Men of my particular qualifications were badly needed by the

F.B.I. for Counter-Intelligence and anti-sabotage work throughout
the defense plants of the country, and so on. I entered the rigorous
training eagerly but found the legal aspects of the training quite
unsuited to my nature, all other trainees being lawyers by mining.
After completing the demanding cours.e of study, which included
training in all kinds of firearms, I had a long talk with one of the
assistant directors and decided that I had made a mistake. The
upshot of the whole matter was my honorable resignation and a
return to my chosen life's work. I am still grateful for this oppor-
tunity and am glad that I tried it, otherwise I might always have
regretted having passed it up.
Mter Pearl Harbor I made every effort to obtain a commission
in some branch of war service. Physical requirements proved my
downfall on every occasion. It was my weak eyes which kept me
from starting my army career as an officer. Apparently my eyes
were not too weak to be an ordinary soldier for in June of 1943 I
was inducted by my local draft board as a private in the Army. I
resolved to make the best of a bad situation. I arrived at Fort Dev-
ens prepared to do or die. It was no great fun for me, a Ph.D., to
take the abuse of some lowly corporal with a grammar school educa-
tion and a mental age of twelve. I managed to stand up under
it nevertheless. Fortunately I did very well in my Army Gen-
eral Classification Test, coming out with a score of ISO, and
as a result was slated for the Intelligence Corps. I waited at Devens
for almost three months for assignment. During this time I had
several strange experiences, one of which I must relate. One hot
day I was detailed to the nearby service club to wash windows.
While sweating away at this menial task someone tapped me on
the back. Another rookie stood in front of me and said, "Why,
Dr. Watzinger, what are you doing here?" It happened to be
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THE SERVICE 401
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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camp and served as subjects for interrogation. Every language but

English could be heard at Ritchie.
After graduation and a Christmas furlough I was sent to Louisi-
ana for three months on maneuvers. This was another experience
I should prefer to forget, for even during the war I never suffered
so much from hunger and cold. Between "problems" we were
given passes. I spent many an enjoyable two-day pass or more at
Shreveport or Lake Charles, or at Houston, Texas. In April, 1944,
I returned to Camp Ritchie, was alerted for overseas duty, said
fond farewells on the last furlough, and sailed for England from
New York on the English liner, the Andes.
Before sailing I had been promoted from private to staff sergeant
and was assigned to IPW Team No. 72. Such IPW Teams (Inter-
rogation of Prisoners of War) consisted of two officers and four
men. Upon arrival in England we went to Broadway in the vicinity
of Stratford-on-Avon. Broadway, in the Cotswolds, is a very beau-
tiful and quaint Shakespearean town and we were very happy here
as we received further training. We had frequent opportunities to
go over to Stratford to witness the performance of Shakespeare's
dramas and comedies at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre - a
wonderful privilege for a student of literature.
In June our team was assigned to the XII Corps and sent to
Birmingham where that part of the Third Army was situated at
that time. We stayed with the XII Corps until the war's end.
From Birmingham we were sent to all parts of England by jeep to
give lectures on intelligence matters to army personnel scheduled
soon to be sent over to the continent. We lectured for two months
on such subjects as prisoner treatment, identification, and handling,
interrogation procedure, German documents, geography, et cetera.
This gave me the opportunity to become much better acquainted
with England than I otherwise could have. Meanwhile our troops
had crossed the Channel on D-Day and had invaded France.
On July 25, D-Day plus 50, we too joined the unfortunate ranks
and sailed across the choppy channel from Southampton to Nor-
mandy together with Patton's Third Army. It was an eventful day.
From now on we had the doubtful privilege of meeting and treating
real live prisoners. We had not a moment's rest from now on
traveling as we did with the Third Army on its fast march across
France. As interrogation teams, we traveled much more than ordi-
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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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to visit on our way through Thuringia. Rehm was a common pri-

vate in the German army and suffered every misery of any prisoner
of war. He told us a story that might prove interesting. In the
company of the rest of the cast, after a fine performance of Parzival
at Bayreuth, he was being entertained by Hitler and his henchmen
at an after-the-show party. Hitler commended the cast and ex-
pressed his satisfaction with the splendid singing performances in
Parzival. Then turning to his brain-truster Rosenberg, he said,
"But, Rosenberg, one of these days you will have to rewrite the
text of that opera." Apparently Wagner did not quite come up to
his expectations despite the high religious ideals he portrays in
that magnificent opera of the Holy Grail. The other personality
whom we chanced to meet at that same prison camp was Dr.
Schnackenburg, the long-time conductor of the Bremen Philhar-
monic Orchestra. To meet such a distinguished man amidst such
misery was an ominous experience. We took him out of the mud
and filth of the camp on several evenings at Cham and had long
conversations with him in the comfort of our home, where we
served him hot tea, gave him something decent to eat, and played
some symphonic records for him. In the last evening we saw him,
we played for him Brahms' Third Symphony and gave him a small
package of tea to take home to his wife upon discharge the follow-
ing day. His unbounded gratitude for this little bit of humanity
which we had displayed toward him during these trying days was
seen in a letter which I received from him later, in which he in-
formed me that the American authorities had reinstated him as
conductor of the Philharmonic and that in our honor he had pro-
grammed Brahms' Third Symphony for his very first performance.
Immediately after V-E Day it became our task to discharge the
thousands of prisoners on our hands in various cages. Thorough
screening was necessary because all high Nazis had to be weeded
out. I personally assisted in the discharge of almost 4fO,OOO German
soldiers. Ours was the task of final approval after examining docu-
ments and checking all records.
V-E Day meant something else to me, because it was on this
day that I was awarded a direct field-commission as second lieu-
tenant, after having been recommended some time before for this
honor. I felt very proud, for I had come up the "hard way." My
first assignment as an officer was to go into Czechoslovakia and act
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THE SERVICE 405
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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A CHllONICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
degrees won't do me much good here," - they did nonetheless.

After four weeks of basic tmining I got a job in a special training
unit for illiterate and foreign-born soldiers. I started out as a
clerk, soon was made a teacher, and finally became platoon sergeant
and supervisor of the spelling and writing course (I had complete
responsibility for this part of our program, wrote the textual ma-
terial, planned the lessons, and had charge of the four hundred
trainees and forty teachers). We gave our men three hours a day
of reading, writing, and arithmetic, plus military subjects - drill,
tent-pitching, first aid (this being the medical department). I
wrote to one of my high school teachers that I now was sure that I
had picked the right profession, teaching. The men stayed with us
for eight weeks (twelve in some special cases) and many actually
did learn to read simple texts and to write short letters home. But
many others were not illiterate simply because of lack of schooling;
they were hopeless cases mentally or psychologically. The experi-
ence I got here was great - experience with human nature, with
teaching, with responsibility. I enjoyed the work for a long time,
but at last I had advanced as far as I could in it. Moreover, my
patience was wearing thin with trying to teach Chinese who didn't
know English, and who weren't very bright anyway, the difference
between left and right. I was tiring of such problems day after
day as "There were 1000 soldiers in the battIe. 132 were killed,
365 were wounded. How many returned unharmed?" I was espe-
cially tired of preparing my platoon and barracks for the weekly
Saturday morning inspection, seeing that toothbrushes were all
pointing in the same direction, that buttons were all buttoned, that
butt-cans were all empty, that latrines were all spotless.
So after fifteen months as an enlisted man I went to the Adjutant
General's School at Fort Washington, Maryland, was commissioned
a second lieutenant and immediately flown overseas to England as a
censorship officer in Military Intelligence. My fourteen months'
stay in England was almost perfect. Our station was in a small and
pretty town (Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham), the work,
though monotonous for the most part, was occasionally interesting,
social life with the British was extremely pleasant. On leave I
visited Stratford, Oxford, Cambridge, Chester, London, Torquay,
Bournemouth; and on duty I made a couple of lecture trips to our
invasion forces to stress the need for security.
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THE SERVICE 407
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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Air Force; and shortly thereafter my commanding officer and his

entire staff transferred to Headquarters Ninth Air Force Service
Command. The remainder of my overseas duty was spent as
radio officer of this command. In this position I was responsible,
as a staff officer, for all arrangements for and opemtion of all radio
means employed for communication and (air) navigation pertain-
ing to the command.
In the late summer of 1945 I returned from overseas to attend a
technical school in Florida. The trip from Europe in a twin-
engined plane via Wales, Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador was
very pleasant.
Eventually I was assigned to the technical staff at Watson
Laboratories in New Jersey. For the six months I remained there
I was occupied in the proposed siting of seveml radio installations
and in organizing and teaching courses in radio and radar. On July
31, 1946, I was put on terminal leave as a lieutenant colonel.
["Site" and "sited" are in good usage, so why not "siting"? R.E.B.]
A. KENNETH SWANSON
Patriotic fervor and some pressure from my local draft board

prompted my enlistment in the Army in June, 1941. A quick sur-
vey of special training courses available convinced me that the place
wherein I could make the greatest contribution was as a weather
forecaster. In view of my college training in mathematics and the
critical shortage of meteorologists, I also felt that this training held
the largest opportunities for later advancement.
After nine months of specialized training at Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology, I was recommended for a commission as a
second lieutenant. It was with no little pride that I took the oath
for a commission on February 14, 1942. This marlced the begin-
ning of a most interesting and challenging five-year career in the
Army. Assignments were varied and numerous. I started as an in-
structor in meteorology in Alabama and before six months had
elapsed I was on my way overseas. Assignments in England, North
Africa, Italy, Corsica, and Russia followed in that order during the
next twenty-seven months.
Some of the incidents occurring during my overseas duty may
be of interest. Perhaps the most difficult was that of trying to ex-
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TIlE SERVICE
plain to an old non-English-speaking Arab in North Africa that he

bad not actually purchased a B-17 with the two dozen fresh eggs
given to the bomber crew (even though they had told him as
much) and that he would not be able to move his family into the
plane the following day.
The assignment in the Ukraine was thoroughly enjoyable. From
its inception no one expected the so-called Operation Frantic to
strike devastating blows on the German war effort. It was true that
in the early days there were several targets that could be reached
from the Russian bases which were out of range from both Italy
and England. Yet our primary purpose was trying to get along with
the Russians. And it is my opinion that in our small way (total
strength of 1400 Americans) we were reasonably successful. While
our mechanics, for example, found it much more difficult to show
the Russians how to perform maintenance work on the planes than
to do it themselves, they displayed ingenuity in getting cooperation
of a kind that Dale Carnegie might well include in his next edition
of How To Win Friends and InBuence People.
A few days before Christmas, 1944, I arrived back in the United
States and after a short vacation received orders sending me to Los
Angeles. A short stay made me a California booster even though I
was most skeptical when I arrived.
Two additional assignments, first as staff weather officer of the
Headquarters, Army Air Forces Training Command and later in
Headquarters, Army Air Forces, completed my five years in the
Army. In both assignments it was my responsibility to supervise
the weather training programs of all pilots, bombardiers, navigators,
and weather personnel in the Army Air Forces. Through introduc-
tion of new training aids and revision of course content, I was able
to increase the output of weather observers threefold when critically
needed in 1945.
In early 1946 I had ample points to receive a discharge from the
armed services, and my request for a discharge in the middle of
January was favorably considered.
KENNETH R. WHITING
For contrast, Whiting's story has been placed here be-
tween those of two men who seem to have found much sat-
isfaction in their military experiences.
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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
My three years in Anny Intelligence were the most exciting and

enjoyable of my life to date. The year I spent in Paris was the
equivalent of twenty Cook's tours. If the Fund Committee had
not sent me to the Middlebury Spanish School in the summer of
1942 I would probably never have entered the Counter-Intelligence
Corps. It was my knowledge of Spanish which got me into the
organization directly from civilian life. Membership in Phi Beta
Kappa tipped the scales when, being under the required age limit,
I need.ed a waiver to enter the organization.
Before going overseas I worked as an agent in Boston for nearly a
year. During this period I was a member of the Counter-Intelli-
gence Subversive Squad of the First Corps Area Headquarters. This
group of twelve men investigated and reported on subversive or-
ganizations, persons and literature in and around Boston. My
colleagues included lawyers, teachers, newspapennen and a fonner
police inspector. Two of these men became close friends of mine;
one teaches English at Yale, the other is a professor of history at
Amherst.
Much of the work in Boston was undercover. I attended S0-
cialist, Trotskyite, Christian Front and Coughlinite meetings and
made acquaintances of the leaders of these groups whenever pos-
sible. Usually I worked alone on such assignments. Probably this
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THE SERVICE 411
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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412 A CHllONICLE OF ACIIIEVDIBNT
planned tour of its lesser-known sections. I managed to go quite

regularly to the theatre, to the London Symphony a few times and
to the Soho for dining and dancing with a Belgian girl who was
then broadcasting to France over the British Broadcasting Com-
pany.
At the end of December, 1943, I was transferred to Liverpool to
do port security work. For a time I lived in a hotel but soon
arranged to live with a doctor's family on Rodney Street in the
upper part of the city. There was really no port security work to
do in Liverpool, the English having security measures for American
ships almost entirely in their hands. With my only job being to
maintain liaison with the British, I had a lot of time to become
acquainted with the city, and working in civilian clothes made it
much easier for me to feel at home there. Liverpool is a bleak and
dreary place, but it has a peculiar charm in the very ugliness of its
architecture and its soot-heavy fogs. Incidentally, the Liverpool
Philharmonic seemed to me as good as the London Sympbony
Orchestra and since it played in a hall almost next door to where I
lived I attended concerts frequently.
While in Liverpool I made rather detailed plans to meak into
Ireland in order to visit my grandmother's birthplace. Ireland, be-
ing neutral, claimed the right to intern any American caught out-
side Ulster. I was ready to board the boat to cross the Irisb Sea
when the thought of internment dissuaded me. I have always re-
gretted not taking the risk.
Since there was really no intelligence work in Liverpool, the port
commander decided to send me and another Counter-Intelligence
Corps agent to a British police school in Preston just a few miles
to the north. We were the only two Americans there and were
referred to as "the two Yanks." I didn't find the training very
valuable. For example, we spent a whole week studying the major
crimes committed in the Liverpool area during a twenty-five-year
period. More helpful as training were the mock invasions when
members of the school were sent out individually to capture sup-
posed enemy agents disguised as civilians. Although I captured one
agent, I failed to search him properly. As a result, when I brought
him to headquarters, he pulled a pistol out of a holster strapped to
his right leg, held his captors at gunpoint and, with a grenade,
which he had strapped to his other leg, proceeded to demolish the
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THE SBllViCE
headquarters. I received a very low grade for this part of the

course.
After leaving Preston I spent several months working on port
security surveys in the Bristol Channel area. I lived in Newport
and then in Avonmouth. In the latter city I roomed with a dock
worker and his wife. I felt like a member of the family before I
left, became fairly adept at cribbage under the tutelage of the hus-
band and got a very good explanation of why the British dock
worker didn't want Churchill for Prime Minister once the peace
had come.
I was in a team of twelve Counter-Intelligence Corps agents that
crossed the Channel on D-Day plus 4; destination, Cherbourg.
Each of us was made responsible for certain buildings in the Cher-
bourg arsenal, the mission being to capture documents and impor-
tant German personnel. My specific objective was two naval build-
ings within the arsenal, for which purpose I was to be assisted by
members of the military police. As news came over the radio that
. the arsenal was one of the most heavily booby-tmpped points on
the continent, the prospects seemed less and less attractive. As it
turned out, the pamtroopers who preceded us into the arsenal Ian-
sacked the place for loot; although opening doors and dmwers in
our searches proved a rather hair-mising experience, with one ex-
pecting everything to blow up at the slightest touch, the job was a
picnic in comparison with what it might have been.
From Cherbourg as a base, our team was responsible for a large
area of the Contentin Peninsula. We investigated collabomtoa,
interrogated German soldiers who had gone into hiding when their
units retreated and in geneml interested ouaelves in anything
that involved the security of American troops or American installa-
tions.
Normandy surprised us, since we bad heard reports that the Ger-
mans bad shipped nearly all the cattle and food to Germany and
that the French were starving. All about us were lush green fields
and well fed cattle and hoISe5. In the fannbouses were vast stores
of pure creamery butter; in the stores, the choicest cuts of meat.
The stmwberries, the sweetest I've ever tasted, were at their peak.
In fact, Normandy was the larder of FJ3Ilce; it had never been
hungry. Landing there gave American troops a false impression.
They felt that in falling for stories of French suffering they bad
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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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THE SERVICE oilS
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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-----"""-------~~-. -----
416 A CH1l0NICLE OF ACHIEVEMENT
I still chafe under the restrictions that study sometimes imposes,

there is no work I would prefer to this.
WILLIAM E. SELLERS
The best - and worst - years of our lives. My military situation

during my senior year was a hectic one. The chief problem that
confronted me was that of finishing my undergraduate training be-
fore getting into the armed forces. In this respect, the local draft
board was rather hesitantly and very reluctantly cooperative. I tried
to settle the whole aftair by getting into the Navy's V-7 program,
but was sent away in utter defeat because of a discrepancy of about
a half-inch in height that Mother Nature had neglected to tack
onto me. After that, it was a nip-and-tuck race with time and the
machinations of the gentlemen chosen to represent my friends and
neighbors.
I came out of the race with a month of time to play with or,
rather, to play in. And that is about what I did with it. With three
classmates, all prospective cannon fodder, I went to the White
Mountains for a few days. After that, I spent a brief period toying
with the idea of becoming "essential" to civllian industry, but for-
tunately failed to do so. Then, before the draft board closed in on
me, I followed a course of action laid down by a friend of mine and
enlisted in the Army Weather Service. On re8ection, I find that
this service was actually my true niche; all the individualists in the
army, it seems to me, were weather men of one sort or another.
They actually are a select group; the intelligence level among them
is relatively high and almost all weather men, irrespective of rank,
have had a few years of liberal arts education.
Mitchell Field, where I was sent, is an excellent post; it is r~
£erred to by some as the "country club of the Air Corps." It has
only one drawback: for all but a select few, it is actually a point of
embarkation for parts unknown. My first taste of real army life
came with an assignment to recruit training. With three other
weather trainees, I moved into a huge hangar. Fortunately, the
weather was warm. Aside from an occasional KP assignment, I
found recruit training not too hard to take. There was a certain
amount of confusion in Hangar Nine at the time of our tmining;
a few hundred air cadet candidates were moved in with us, and the
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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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-"--------------
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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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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A CHllONICLE OF ACB1EVEMENT
nerve and long experience: he circled and landed as calmly and as

safely as a gull alighting on a piling. The gasoline fumes had filled
the waist; one man had gone into the bomb bays and come out
soaked with the high-octane fluid.
The end of the Japanese war cut off my anny career. I was dis--
charged on points, having picked up 108 of those convenient credits
in the course of two and a half years of foreign service. As the last
little group of Twelfth Weather Observers broke up in Cambridge
after being discharged from Camp Devens, one of the group
summed up our feelings. "It may have been unpleasant now and
then, and maybe we griped a lot. But all in all, we didn't have it
too bad. Things being what they were, I wouldn't have missed any
of it. It's a thing you wouldn't want to go through allover again,
but I'm not sorry I went through it."
A good deal has been said and written, much of it exaggerated
or false, about the necessity for "rehabilitating" veterans. Yet there
is a grain of truth in the basic idea. The soldier learns to do his
stint and then to withdraw in the interest of self-preservation; the
"eager beaver" is frowned upon'; the man who attempts to ad-
vance at the expense of his fellows is likely to be ostracized. The
wants of the military man are circumscribed, and so are his am-
bitions; they are by the nature of his situation modest and tem-
porary. Security is taken for granted; the basic needs of subsistence
will be provided, one way or another, for the weak as well as the
strong. To the civilian, there is an element of unreality in the
situation of the soldier. The military man sees some of the pre-
occupations of the civilian as unnecessary or foolish ones.
My own return to civilian status was rapid; my return to civilian
attitudes was somewhat slower. I have not desired to lose, I hope
I shall not lose, some of the attitudes engendered by military life.
A certain acceptance of the unavoidable, a controlled reaction to
some inevitable unpleasantnesses, and a degree of the esprit de corps
that enables one to sense group feeling and to participate in group
activity - these, I think, are invaluable acquisitions, not to be lost
willingly. The narrow competitive spirit that springs from a basic
feeling of insecurity among some civilians is, I believe, one of the
most powerful destructive psychic and social forces operating in our
contemporary life.
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THE SEllVICE ~25
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.
However, Allen's expectation of being in anyone spot or

even remaining in the homeland for "the duration" was not
in accord with what happened. Like many another, he was
passed from pillar to post, until finally, after "morale reached
the lowest point," he tells us:
I was transferred to the 86th Infantry Division at Camp Liv-

ingston, Louisiana. I stayed with the division until my discharge.
As I look back on my anny career, this transfer was the most im-
portant thing that happened. It gave me back my self-respect. Be-
fore I was in the infantry I had been knocking around in limited
service and student outfits. As one who had secretly envied the
pale blue braid on the infantrymen's caps, I was more than proud
to wear it myself. It was another shock like the transfer from the
one-room school to the city schools. I don't believe I had time
to take a long breath the whole time the Division stayed in Louisi-
ana. But by the time we left for California in the fall to take
amphibious training, I was beginning to catch up with the other
men who had had more time in the infantry than I. California is
lovely country, as any Californian will tell you, and I enjoyed my
stay there more than at any other station. For about three weeks we
were at Camp Callan, just outside San Diego, but most of the time
we were at Camp San Luis Obispo at the town of the same name,
which is located about halfway between Los Angeles and San
Francisco. We left California in February of 1945 and traveled to
Camp Myles Standish in Massachusetts from which we set sail
for Europe on February 19,1945. After a rqugh crossing in convoy
we landed at Le Havre on March 2, 1945. After about three weeks
of getting our travel cramps ironed out, we went up to the front at
Cologne. By the time we reached the front, all German resistance
had ceased west of the Rhine. When the Rhine crossings had
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~26 A CHRONICLE OF ACBlEVEMENT
been accomplished, our division went into action mopping up in

the Ruhr Pocket. The pocket closed, we drove across Germany to
Niirnberg where a part of the division saw action, and then we
drove south toward Munich, being the first American division to
cross the Danube, and turning to the east before reaching Munich
to reach Austria just before V-E Day.
With the victory in Europe accomplished, the 86th Division was
sent home to the United States to be redeployed to the Pacific.
We arrived in New York in June, 1945, and, after a month's fur-
lough, reformed at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma, to take additional
training in Pacific warfare. But the dropping of the atomic bomb
changed the plans; and as Japan's collapse appeared imminent, or-
ders were rushed through for us to leave the country. This action
seemed a little unfair to some of the boys and their home folks and
quite a stir of publicity was raised by Drew Pearson and others
which didn't do anyone any good. I heard the news that Japan
had accepted the surrender terms while on a troop train passing
through Trinidad, Colorado, at about five o'clock in the evening.
I heard the news of the signing of the surrender in Tokyo Bay
while on a troopship in Eniwetok Anchorage. In September we
finally landed at Batangas on the island of Luzon in the Philip-
pines. For the first few weeks we had a rough time of it, for we had
not been expected nor were we welcomed by the other troops,
because of the unfavorable publicity concerning our leaving the
United States. Finally they found out why we were over there and
the Division was set to work disarming Filipino guerrillas in the
hills, with our Division Headquarters at a very nice spot called
Marikina, about ten miles outside of Manila. I was there for six
months and managed to attend many concerts given by the Manila
Symphony under the direction of Dr. Herbert Zipper, a Viennese
refugee from the Nazis, and at one time named public enemy
number one by the commander of the Japanese garrison in the
Philippines. Life was easier in the islands than it had been even in
the United States. I gave up my role of rifleman and took on a
job in the athletics and recreation office where I had complete
charge of a regimental baseball league, scheduling the games, issu-
ing equipment, and umpiring many of the games. I am now more
tolerant of umpires when I go to games.
At last I was sent back to America for discharge, which I re-
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THE SERVICE 427
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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428 A CHRONICLE OF ACIIJBVBIDMT
tions that usually characterize students near graduation time. Our

days of grace were limited, so we worked eamestly and valued every
opportunity for a good time that presented itse1E.
Early in my sophomore year I enlisted in the Navy's V-I train-
ing program which would guarantee me at least two years of college
before being called to active duty, and also opened the way to a
commissioned rank. Being thus assured of my sophomore year, I
threw myself into a full academic program and also engaged in an
active social life. I continued my academic training with American
history, Far Eastern history, and Spanish, while preparing for war
service with physics, mathematics, and navigation. Outside of class
I became a member of the Student Board, treasurer of the Milk Bar
Committee, treasurer of my fratemity, secretary of the International
Relations Oub, and president of the sophomore class.
My undergraduate days really ended in June, 1943. Although I
attended Harvard for a year under the naval training program,
and completed my degree requirements at Boston University in the
summer of 1946, the over-crowded conditions and frenzied haste
that characterized those sessions tended to tum education into an
impersonal treadmill process in which class spirit and sociability
were eliminated.
My war service record can be briefly recounted. I was commis-
sioned at the Naval Reserve Midshipman's School at Plattsburg,
New York, in June, 1944. I trained for two months at Solomons,
Maryland, and then was assigned to the LCI 803 as communica-
tions officer. I remained aboard the 803 throughout the war. The
ship sailed from New York to the west coast in the fall of 1944.
At Long Beach, California, the ship was converted from a troop-
carrying landing craft to a mortar support-ship. The crew was in-
creased to fifty men plus five officers. The ship saw action in 1945
in the Philippines, Okinawa and China. Our principal engagement
was at Okinawa where we bombarded the beaches in preparation
fat the American invasion, supported the invasion thrust, and then
remained for five months to offer anti-aircraft protection against
Japanese suicide attacks. At the conclusion of the war we helped
support the marines in their landings at Taku, Tientsin, and Tsing-
tao, China. Our ship returned to the United States in the early
months of 1946. I served as communications and navigation offi-
cer during most of 1945 and, towards the end of the year, I assumed
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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
Queens College under the Army Specialized Training Program.

Since these eight months were spent in an engineering program, I
prefer to consider this as war experience rather than academic. Or
am I prejudiced? From there.I went to the Sixty-ninth Infantry
Division at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. While out on training exer-
cises in De Soto National Forest, I was promoted to the grade of
sergeant, leading a mortar squad. I held this rating until I was
discharged. In my overseas travels I was in England, France, Bel-
gium, and Germany. I was wounded in the chest while on night
patrol on the Siegfried Line. I was discharged after about six
months in hospitals in Europe and in the United States.
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
The Main Chance

It may be difficult in some cases to determine how a study
should be closed. It is not so here. The way to end this story
of the early history of the Professor Augustus Howe Buck
Educational Fund is clear: once more to point out what its
Donor hoped to accomplish; once more to review the evidence
for that accomplishment; and finally to evaluate the whole
matter for this day and age.
New Englanders are prone to seek the main chance. The
thing sought may be such that he who secures it by long
struggle discovers that he has cheated himself, spending
"money for that which is not bread and labor for that which
satisfieth not." Not so the Donor of the Fund. Though he
wandered far from the place of his birth, he remained to the
end of his days a canny son of New England. Though he
might have stated it differently, he was deeply interested in
the well-being of humanity, and like Franklin he believed
"there is nothing more important for the public weal than to
form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue." So the Donor
spent his life to the end that by its fruits young men of "un-
usual promise" and "positive Christian character" might be
the better fitted to serve their fellow men. This for him was
the Main Chance - and he took it.
If evidence of the accomplishment of the Donor's purpose
has failed to appear in previous pages then this writing has
been to little purpose, for the life stories of the men of the
Fund are permeated with service to their fellows. If added
evidence is needed it is afforded in full measure by the fol-
lowing testimonies, given by the men with all the solemnity
432
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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.
Next comes the testimony of one who made struggle and

suffering a ladder up which he climbed to a deeper experience
and knowledge of God.
My earliest Christian experience was in a warm, evangelical pas-

tor's home which led nearly all its eight children into full-time
Christian service. At twelve I was converted at a meeting where
my father preached on the meaning and reality of heaven. At four-
teen I began to preach and experienced the warm idealism of
youth. In college I went through the empty and sickening, yes,
crushing, experience of doubting and surrendering my orthodox
faith, starting over from rock bottom. In the seminary I began to
become emotionally and intellectually satisfied by means of the
reading and appropriation of the theology of George A. Gordon.
Subsequently two men profoundly influenced my life: Alfred North
Whitehead in philosophy and Anders Nygren in theology. The
former stressed the broad vistas of truth; the latter, the centrality
of God's redemptive love in Jesus Christ for Christian faith and life.
But only years of suffering and the uncertainty of my future for
me made me rely in a new and surrendered way on God's love.
Through these bitter experiences God became utterly real and
prayer a continuous walking with Him. I have experienced ecstasy,
once beyond any description, but find that trust in God's complete
concern for the world and the willingness to share His concern are
the very meat of continuous Christian experience.
In such experience the eternal and the temporal dimensions join,
and man's understanding and acceptance of his fellow man be-
comes strangely new and necessary. I have never believed more
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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.
I was brought up in church, and have stayed in it ever since.

When I was in high school, I was in a Sunday School class taught
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by a traveling salesman, an active member of the Gideons. He sug-

gested as a pass-word for us, "Second Timothy, two, fifteen." To
refresh one's memory, that passage is, "Study to show thyself ap-
proved unto God, a worbnan that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth." That is one of several Biblical
passages I shall never forget. I have taught Sunday School classes,
been superintendent of the Junior Department of the Sunday
School, have been president of the Epworth League and have sung
in the church choir. In my present church I have held the follow-
ing positions: chairman of the Music Committee, chairman of the
Church Council, moderator of the church, Deacon, member Board
of Religious Education, choir member, Sunday School teacher,
chairman Finance Committee.
Next comes a quotation from the life story of a devout

Catholic, concerning whom one might r~peat what was writ-
ten above about two good Protestants. He has two nephews
who "are well along in their preparation toward becoming
missionary priests."
My ancestry has been Roman Catholic entirely and my parents
were devout members of the church. This same faithfulness to
religious duties and the basic Christian principles of living were
instilled in me and many times served as a prop in times of diffi-
culty. I served for a number of years as an altar boy and as often
is the case with attendants for a while I thought seriously of study-
ing for the priesthood. I finally came to realize that I had no true
calling for so worthy a vocation. I still can follow many of the
services and responses in the Latin version without resorting to
the adjoining English translation in the Missal used by most Catho-
lics while attending those services which are essentially in L.tin.
The Lord's Prayer in Latin is second nature and comes to mind
as easily as the English.
During my years at the College of Liberal Arts I was active in
the Newman Club and served as vice-president, being in charge of
the group. This club was affiliated with the Federation of College
Catholic Clubs and served as a means of bringing the Catholic
students together at regular intervals for Communion services and
meetings addressed by prominent speakers on cultural subjects.
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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.
As one compares the three testimonies given above by

devout churchmen with the two that follow, he may well
recall the words of Faber that "the love of God is broader
than the measure of man's mind." Both men now to be
quoted are living good and useful lives. One apparently finds
thus the satisfaction his life demands, while the other ques-
tions whether it may not be possible by diligent search to
find. . . . But let him tell what.
I am essentially a scientist rather than a reformer. I have my

values, my likes and dislikes, but no burning desire to remake the
world or the people in it. I do not think man is so important as
he often thinks he is.
I am aroused when people seem to act so as to prevent me from
achieving those objectives that I consider good, or when they
seem bent on destroying the things I cherish, but I am too ignorant
to tell others what they ought to want. It flatters me if they find
it pleasing to want what I want.
I enjoy each day as it comes, and the memory of most of those
that are past. With today I do the best I can, occasionally with
temporary regret that I did not do better. That which is soon to be
the present I plan for, but with awareness that it is not yet mine
and that my plans may need to be changed. The distant future I
can best prepare for by doing well with the present.
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I have no sense of dignity, authority, or status that needs to be

upheld, nor consciousness of shame, nor guilt, nor sin. I do recog-
nize many occasions when my physical strength, my intelligence.
my emotional control have been less than adequate for what later
has seemed an effective response.
Essentially my ethical standards are those of Christianity and
derived from its teachings. When I was a beneficiary of the Fund
I was a relatively thoughtless, uncritical, and lazy believer. Now,
my only expectation is that I shall always square my thinking with
the truth as I see it. I expect to adapt myself to what is, rather
than to have the universe change to coincide with my desires. I
do not expect to be understood. The semantic difficulties are great,
my skill is limited, and the hour 1:10 A.M.
My story would not be complete without some statement con-

cerning what is always uppermost in my mind. During the War
the tragic state of human behavior led me to a terrifying depth of
depression. Not a single clergyman to whom I talked showed any
comprehension of the problem which was on my mind. This, to-
gether with the fact that so many philosophers seem to devote
themselves primarily to the discussion of the meaning of words, I
take to be evidence that our religious leaders and philosophers are
not doing their duty. As I see it, the basis of all personal and social
unrest lies in the lack of conviction that there is purpose in the ex-
istence of humanity. I believe that one can endure any mental
or physical anguish so long as he has the conviction that there is a
purpose in his living as an individual or even if he believes only
that there is a purpose in the existence of humanity collectively.
Most persons, I believe, escape the recognition of the need for
such a conviction for anyone of a number of reasons. Some per-
sons live their lives in such a temperate environment that they
rarely, if ever, need religious solace of any kind. Others have such
slightly inquiring minds that the mere activities of everyday life
such as movies, radio, gossip, and so forth, occupy their entire
intellect and leave no room for problems. Others, who have prob-
lems, find them easily satisfied by a habit pattern involving a re-
ligious formalism. The lost souls are those whose burdens are
many, whose intellect is too great to be completely occupied by
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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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now lead to the strife-engendering differences between individuals

and nations, but should foster a feeling of universal feUowship
capable of transcending differences in creed.
I am prepared to have my statements regarded quizzically; since
up to now I have been able to make myself understood only among
what could be called the young intellectuals. It may be desirable
to add that presentation of my views has assisted a number of
such persons to find a firmer footing in life. Probably the greatest
trouble I have in making myself understood lies in trying to get
others to comprehend the distinction between the fundamental
purpose of human existence and a set of acceptable objectives in
life (or a desirable mode of living). Each creed seems to define
objectives in life or a mode of living acceptable to the indoc-
trinated; but none defines, in a manner which I can comprehend,
the purpose in human existence. The great strength of Christ's
teachings, so clearly as I am able to understand them, lies not only
in the fact that they define a practical mode of living which is con-
sistent with the finer instincts of man, but also in the fact that they
seem to give, in greater measure than any other teachings, a hope
that man's existence is not purposeless.
Next come the testimonies of two who have had theologi-

cal training. The first is tinged with the mystical; the second,
beginning with a chapter in social service, ends with a re-
newal of consecration to the service of humanity.
When I received word that I had been accepted by the Board of
Missions of the Methodist Church for missionary service, I went
alone into the beautiful Robinson Chapel of the School of Theol-
ogy. I knelt at the altar and looked at the picture of Christ above
me. And I heard the words which are written there: "As thou hast
sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the
world." (John 17:18.) That was my commissioning. It has re>-
mained such. Time and again I have asked myself, "How did God
send Christ into the world and for what purpose?" The answers
that have come have been the blueprints of my work and always I
have heard the imperative "even so." At times I have tried to be
satisfied with less. I have wanted to tell God where I would work;
to show him how I would carry forward the program; to outline
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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.
While working in a printing office I had been approached by

the minister of the church of which I was a nominal member and
asked to help teach in the Sunday School. Now, while I had gone
to Sunday School during my childhood, my attendance at church
since had been only occasional. Religion had made no serious im-
pression on my mind or my life. It was natural then that I smiled
and joked at the thought of teaching religion. But the minister
was insistent, and so I agreed to try it. That was really the begin-
ning of my serious thinking about religion.
I purchased several books and commentaries on the subject to
help me. I found something stimulating and challenging about
the task of teaching and trying to help those seventh-grade boys.
The next year I had the same boys. The third year of my teaching
the boys had entered high school, and if they had followed the
usual procedure, they would have brought their Sunday School
days to a close then. Foreseeing this, I asked permission to form a
separate club for high school boys and girls for the study of the
Bible and religious problems as well as for the purpose of doing
good. This group, under the name of "The Christian Workshop,"
has survived to this day and helps to care for the special needs of the
high school boy and girl, as well as giving them definite work to do.
One of the most satisfying experiences in religious work came
from a project outside my church. The Negro community in our
town had lost its church through fire and several attempts to re-
build it had failed. Then a very devoted Negro took it upon him-
self to bring to this community each week a worship service in
the home of some member. Gradually the desire to have a church
once more took hold of the people, and with what resources they
could muster from among themselves they began work. When the
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foundation and the rough framework were completed they found

it impossible to go further. It was then that the Negro leader men-
tioned above came to the minister of our church to seek help.
Through this contact I became acquainted with the need and felt a
desire to help in whatever way I could. Through the newspapers,
my Sunday School class, and personal contact I began the job of
raising money. That was not easy for there was a good deal of
opposition to the project on the basis that the Negro community
had previously failed to accomplish anything in rebuilding and
besides there was plenty of room in the white churches of the
town. But despite this discouragement I continued working in
every possible way. On Saturdays and holidays for a period of over
two years I worked on that building, putting in windows, laying
the 800r, putting on the siding. Meanwhile I helped them or-
ganize and conduct worship services and social events. Finally,
during the summer preceding my entry into college, the building
was finished. It was with pride that we turned on the lights for
the first meeting in the new church. It seemed to me that somehow
a little more light had come into that community. Each time I
revisit that church or ride by it, I feel a sense of satisfaction. Today
those people cherish their little place of worship and are con-
stantly improving it. As for me, I'm glad some of my energy and
time are enshrined there, for it is an investment which reaps
lasting benefits to me and to the humble folks who worship there.
All these things worked together during these years to turn my
thoughts and labors more and more to religion. But I still had no
thought of going to college. The decision came rather unexpectedly
when I was summarizing before the church board of education
my work with young people and stressing what they had done for
me in the way of spiritual growth. Carried away in the spirit of
the moment I announced that if God was willing, I planned to go
on to college and to give my life to Christian work.
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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THE MAIN CRANCE +B
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.
Finally, here is the Reverend Waitstill H. Sharp's answer

to his own question given in an earlier chapter, following the
record of his extensive experience in European rehabilitation,
viz., "What do I think of it all?"
I do not know why American fears are so wrapped up with the

atomic bomb as the end of civilization. None of them was dropped
upon Europe, yet that Continent is all but destroyed as a hopeful,
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reasonable democratic zone. The long months overseas convinced

me that if Hiroshima had never happened we have proved, with-
out this atomic scourge, that we have the power now to plunge
civilization into the Long Night, there to grope and moulder for
centuries, if its sparks endured at all. The proof of our deadly
peril from a non-atomic struggle lies with its face to the sky between
the Volga and the Loire and from the Baltic to the Aegean, where
no atomic bombs crashed down.
The passions of inheritance and self-interest run too high for accu-
rate appraisement of our American role in history. We appear to
stand on the side of the angels. Our coins read: "In God We
Trust" whereas the Russians once turned shrines into museums of
atheism, and only recently tolerate the ancient Church. Again,
civil liberties are on the whole in good standing in America, where-
as their status seems subject to change without notice in Russia.
Again, there is a marked contrast between productivity per labor
hour here and in Russia. These and a host of other obvious con-
trasts appear to establish the American position as morally superior,
as wiser, as willed by God to continue for the blessing of the world
- as certainly the victor in whatever type of conflict.
But if, at heart, most of the Americans all of the time, and most
of the Russians all of the time believe that goods and chattels are
the test of a man's worth and a nation's worth, then we are joined
in a conflict with slightly different dialects, but one in essential in-
tent - to achieve power over goods in the same areas at the same
time. Such a conflict will be the Last Civil War and, without
atomic bombs at all, the precipice for all who tend toward such a
clash through years of materialism. And the fact that some of the
contestants dwell in the East, and there despitefully use religion
and civil liberties; whereas the other contestants inhabit the West,
and there render public homage to God and the habeas corpus,
will not lighten the plague which will crush both their houses. We
have come now to the Ultimate Arena, marked with the words:
"Seek ye first goods and power, and all these shall be taken
from you."
Americans and Russians can survey the whole course of the rise and
the ruin of empires, and not believe that warning - yet.
There is the Word, the truth to be proclaimed. There is the
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THE MAIN CHANCE
Work, the duty to be performed. I have done a small share of

the Work since 1939, and I hope in some measure to have justified
the generous assistance granted me by the Fund. Silence was to be
kept during the breathless toil of those years. Then the Word was
too late for speaking. Souls were fleeing before the Whirlwind.
The only word then was the crying of the intelligence of all
Europe: "Sauve qui peutr'
So the Word was too late for speaking. I believed there was only
the Work to be performed, and this the deliverance of the saving
remnant.
Now breaks upon us the time for the Word. Our last clear
chance is come to think and to feel our way together up the
straightened path toward the Peaceable Kingdom.
The story of the Fund to date is now complete insofar as

this volume is concerned. What of the days ahead? How
does the Fund fit into that picture?
Humanity has no finer traits than the urge to climb from
the present to a better future, plus the courage to meet that
urge. Yet today foreshadows, in a way incomprehensible to
the generations gone, not a brighter but a darker tomorrow.
The age through which we have been passing has been domi-
nated by science - an important part of truth. Truth makes
men free - but not such incomplete truth as science gives.
Such a partial view might end in the mass suicide of the en-
tire race, as the immediate past has clearly shown. Scientists
themselves have been among the first to recognize this, and
it may be doubted whether many of them would refuse to
join in that recognition.
Years ago Sir Oliver Lodge said: "We have mastered the
secrets of molecular chemistry, we are on the verge of dis-
covering the secrets of atomic chemistry. When we do, we
shall find enough power in a handful of mud to lift the
sunken German Heet from the Hoor of the North Sea and
transport it to the top of the hills behind Birmingham. . . .
I pray God that this generation may not make that discovery,
Digitized by Google
+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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THE MAIN CHANCE +i7
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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oK8 A CHRONICLE OF ACHIEVEMEN'r
limit the privileges of higher education to men who plan to

use such tIaining for the betterment of society, it would be
even more fatal to condemn such men to less training for life
because of financial limitations.
Trite as all this may seem, it must be reiterated until it
sinks deeply enough into mind and heart to release the springs
of action.
The way up which humanity struggles, like the road that

Pilgrim followed in his Progress, has hills of difficulty and
sloughs of despond. Upward climbs are sometimes marked
by scientific advance. But in the main such stretches are
level, not approaching the mountain top directly, and at times
science in the saddle plunges mankind down through muck
and mire. Only the Way of the Spirit leads consistently up-
ward toward the City of God.
So the Donor of the Professor Augustus Howe Buck Edu-
cational Fund by adding "positive Christian character" to
"unusual promis~" and "insufficient means" marked a path
which other investors in the well-being of humanity may find
it wise to follow.
Digitized by Google
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.
Bertocci, Peter A., EMPIRICAL ARGUMENT FOR GoD IN LATE BRITISH

THOUGHT. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1938.
- - , Articles in the following periodicals: The Crozer Quarterly, Journal of
Higher Education, Journal of Philosophy, Journal of Religion, Journal of
Social Psychology, The Personalist, Philosophical and Phenomenological Re.
sem:h, Philosophical Review, Psychological Review, Religion in Life, Review
of Religion.
Booth, Newell S., EDUCATING A BANTU COMMUNITY. London, Christian

Literature Society, 1939.
-.-, SERVING CHRIST THROUGH THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. London, Christian
Literature Society, 1937.
- - , THE CROSS OvER AFRICA. New York, Friendship Press, 1945.
- - , Chapter in CHRISTIAN WORLD MISSIONS, by William K. Anderson,
Board of Ministerial Training, Methodist Church, 1946.
- - , ed., Christian Action in Africa.
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- - , Articles in the following periodicals: Africa, Africau CIuisti.m AdYOCate,

Christian Advocate, Congo Missiou News, IntematiouaI Review 01 Missiom.
Methoctist Woman, Religion in Life, World Dominiou, World Outlool,
Zions Herald.
Bruce, Robert A., Articles in the following periodicals: American Tounu1 of

the Medical Sciences, Endocrinology, TournaI 01 Infectious Diseues.
Byam, Edwin C., THEODO.. BAaaJi.. : DIlAMATIST OF THE SECOJIID EIIPJU.

Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1938.
- , Articles in the following periodicals: Foreign Study Bulletin (University
of Delaware), Foreign Study Notes (University of Delaware), The Frmch
Review.
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.
Cleaves, Alden P., Articles in the following periodicals: Tournal of Chemical

Physics, Physical Review.
- - , Wartime Reports of a scientific nature, seveJ81 of which an: restricted.
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.
EIler, Meredith Article in the periodical, Christ"ian Horizons.
Ferre, AND THE CBalSTIAN New York, Harper

Bros.,
- - , FAITH New York, Harper Bros., 1946.
- - , PILLAaS OF FAITH. New Yorle, Harper & Bros., 1948.
- - , RET11aN TO CHaISTIANJTY. New Yorle, Harper & Bros., 1943.
- - , SWEDISH CONTalBUTIONS TO MODEllN THEOLOGY. New York, Harper
& Bros., 1939.
- - , Tu CUISTIAN FAITH. New Yorle, Harper & Bros., 1942.
- - , THE CHalSTIAN FELLOWSHIP. New York, Harper & Bros., 1940.
AS ACAPE, T. K Kepler, Abingdon-
CAN BE Exl'EaIENcED, K. Anderson.

--, 1943, 1946, Conference on Science,
Religion.
, following periodical!: The Crozer Quarterly,
Christendom, Christian Century, Christus Victor, Fellowship, Institution
Bulletin (Andover Newton Theological Seminary), .Intercollegia, Inter-
national Review of Missions, Lutheran Church Quarterly, Missionary Herald,
Missionary Review, Motive, New Christianity, Religion in Life, Review and
Expositor, Theology Today, The Pastor, Union Theological Review,
Watchman-EDminer.
Foye, L. and stories in WIl$AUllary periodicals.
HISToay OF SmOKilY HAND. Monograph.

General's OfIice,
OF THE PIlOBLKM. Massachusetts
ad Ear Infirmary, 1936.
- - , REpAJE OF AVULSION WOUNDS OF GENITALIA. Report, Washington,
Surgeon General's Office, 1944.
- - , Articles in the following periodicals: Surgery, Time, Wisconsin State
Medica11oumal.
- - , Articles in the transactions of the following societies: American Society
for El Paso Medical Society, Kalamazoo Med-
ical Southwestern Medical
452 A CHRONICLE 0' ACHlIVEM£N1'
- - , Films: HAND RBCONSTaUCTION, American CoDege of Surgeons, 1916.

PnPOSBFUL SPLINTING FOLLOWING INJUllIBS OF TBB HAND, 1941.
Hanson, Arnold C., Series of reports from South America to The Boston Globe
and the Milton (Mass.) Transcript, 1948.
Henderson, Douglas, Report: "Latin·American Exchange and Import ConbOls

at the End of 1947," for National Reference Service, 1948.
Hussey, Roland D., TBB CAIlACAS COMPANY, 1728·1784. Cambridge, Harvard

University Press, 1934.
- - , ed., HISTORY OF LATIN AMBRICA, Hutton Webster, Second Edition.
Boston, D. C. Heath, 1936.
- - , Articles in the following periodicals and journals: Bulletin of the
California Library Association, Colonial Hispanic America, HandbooJc of
Latin·American Studies, Hispanic American Historical Review, Los Angeles
Times, Pacilic Historical Review, Revista de Historica de America.
- - , Chapter in LATIN AMBIlICA AND TBB ENLIGHTBNMBNT, A. P. Whitaker,
ed., New York, D. Appleton-Century Co., 1942.
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Mariner, Thomas, Articles in the following periodicals: JournaI of Chemical

Physics, Physical Review.
- - , Patent, "F1exible Tube." Assigned to the American Cyauamid Co., 1916.
Mason, J. Philip, Articles in the following periodicals: Journal of the Amer·

ican Chemical Society, Journal of Organic Chemistry.
- - , and Manning, Joseph F., TBB TBCHNOLOCY OF PLASTICS AND RESINS.
New York, D. Van Nostrand Co., 1945.
Merrill, John E., ECLIPSlNG·BulAn TABLBS. Princeton, Princeton University,

1946.
- - , ed., TBB STAIlIlY HEAVBNS. Collier's Popular Science Library, 1937.
- - , Bulletin: TBB PIlINCBTON ECLIPSING·BINUY TABLBS, International
Astronomical Union.
- - , Articles in the following periodicals: American Philosophical Society
Year Boole, American Year Boole, Astronomical Journal.
- - , Articles in Collier's National Atlas, Encyclopedia Brittanica.
- - , Paper to American Astronomical Society, 1916.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 453
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- - , 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. .
Nimleoff, Meyer F., THE CHILD. Chicago, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1934.

- - , To FAlolILY. Boston, Houghton MifBin Co., 1934.
- - , MuRJACE AND THE FAlolILY. Boston, Houghton MifRin Co., 1947.
- - , PARENT,CHILD RELATIONSHIPS. Los Angeles, University of Southern
California Press, 1935.
- - , and OgbUID, W. F., SOCIOLOGY. Boston, Houghton MifRin Co., 1940;
and London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1947.
- - , Articles in the following periodicals: American TOUlDal of Sociology,
American Sociological Review, Family, Mental Hygiene, Sociology and
Social Research, Social Forces.
- - , Reports to White House Conference on Child Health and Protection,
1929·1930; to Social Science Research Council, 1941; to Social Science Re-
search Committee, University of Chicago, 1942.
Pizzuto, Franle L., LA RELJCIONE DI DANTE. 1927.
- - , CATECHISMO CRISTIANO. 1932.
- , Articles in the following periodicals: East Boston Leader, II Rinnova·
mento, La Vita, New Age Magazine, The New Aurora, Zions Herald.
Rockwood, Raymond 0., To CULT OF VOLTAlU TO 1791: A Revolutioruuy
Deity, 1789·May 30, 1791. Chicago, The University of Chicago Libraries,
1937.
- - , Articles in the following periodicals: TournaI 01 EducatiQnal SociolOJr,
Toumal Qf Modem Him>ry.
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Setton, Kenneth M., CATALAN DoMIHATION 01" ATIWIS, 1311-1388. Cam-

bridge. Mediaeval Academy of America, 1948.
- - , CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE EMPEROR IN THE FonTH Cu-
TUllY. New York, Columbia University Press, 1941.
- - , Articles in the following periodicals: ByzantioD, Report 01 tbe CaDadim
Historical Association, Speculum: Journal of the Mediaeval Academy of
America.
Smith, Gordon W., HAl'Q)BOOJ: POR STUDENTS 01" FRENCH, 1940.

- - , MANuAL DE PHONETIQUE BT DE CoNVERSATION, 1945.
Sparling, Harold J., Articles in the following periodicals: AIdJiva of IDler-

national Medicine, Archives of Pathology, Medic:iDe, New Euglmd Toara.l
01 Medicine.
Walku, Herbert W., Articles in the following periodicals: Iodia Rubber

World, TournaI of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Tournal of Phys-
ical Chemistly, TournaI of Physical aDd Conoid Cbemistry, Proceedings of
Rubber Technology Conference.
- - , Inventor or co-inventor of thirty-one U. S. patents.
Digitized by Google
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
Davis, Malcolm W., 317 Gregory, W. P;., 101

Day, Theodore C., 266, 357·359 Groves, Ernest R., 130, 189, 190.
Dickson, Leonard E., 234 191
Dimitroff, George z., 25, 29, 124, Genghis Kahn, 389
197·202, 392·396
Draper, E. Otis, 169·171 Haedo, Eduardo V., 296
Donor, the, 2, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, Hale, Philip, 147
19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 78, Hale, Richard W., Jr., 3
137, 308, 310, 432, 448 Halter, Anna, 242
the Giver, 13, 23 Hamilton, Alexander, 366
Hanford, A. Chester, 429
Easton, Charles L. S., 132, 171.173 Hanson, Arnold C., 291·298, 430·
Eliot, Frederick M., 321 431
Eliot, John, 3 Harding, Warren G., 222
Eller, Joseph W., 342 Harris, Ulysses S., 127
Eller, Meredith F., 226, 342·348 Hartman, Lewis 0., 215
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 136, 194 Harrison, Benjamin, 171
Hartl, Emil M., 237
FaD, George H., 136 Helms, Henry, 237
Ferguson, Bruce C., 281, 383·385 Henderson, Douglas, 257·263
Ferre, George, 340 Herriot, Edouard, 217
Ferre, Nels F. S., 29, 214-215, 339· Hitler, Adolf, 217, 218, 219, 250,
342 404, 411, 439
Feuchtwanger, Lion, 322 Hladik, V6clav, 319
Fitzgerald, Edmund C., 180·184 Hladik, Mrs. V6c1av, 319
Fluman, John, 7 Holcombe, Arthur N., 211
Foote, Stanley C., Jr., 133·134, 226 Holmes, John Haynes, 359
Forbes, Elisha, 111 Huidekoper, Harm J., 314
Faye, L. Curtis, 45, 184, 339, 361·366 Hull, Cordell, 318
FrackeltOD, William H., 209, 226, Hussey, Roland D., 29, 119, 139.145,
366-373, 375 146-149, 173, 175, 390
Franco, Francisco, 281, 322 Hussey, Warren, 143
Franz, Robert P., 278, 359·361 Hutchins, Robert M., 212
Garrigue, Charlotte, 315 James. William, 358

Geddes, James, Jr., 6, 152, 181 Jeanroy, Alfred, 153
Gerrish, Willard P., 202 Joab, 333
Ginsberg, Marie, 321 Johanson, Axel, 229
Glueck, Sheldon, 188, 189 Johanson, Ralph N., 227·234
Glueck, Eleanor, 188 Johnson, Clarence R., 191
Gordon, George A., 434 Jones, Stanley, 359
Graves, Bernard C., 226, 348·351
Craves, Cohum V., 289·291. 429·430 Kanave1, Allan, 370
Digitized by Google
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
Digitized by Google
458 INDEX
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
Digitized by Google
INDEX 459
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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"The unexamined life is not worth living"

BOSTON UNIVERSITY PRESS BOSTON, MASSACBUSETI'S

THE TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVDSrrY

PlUNTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMDIC4

THIS IS A BOOK OF MEN:

Chapter I The Man 1

September 15, 1948

Bayard year as Augustus

from the town of Roxbury permitted some expansion of the

with his work on the telephone and other inventions, and

in morals and religion, all these usual staples of collegiate instruc-

Professor Buck's "playful use of language" (W) led to the

glanced up from his text with that delightfully quizzical smile

The stone bears the following inscription:

Hier ruhen in Gott

GRAVE OF PROFESSOR AND MIlS. Bua::

The Giver and the Gift

words are no more. If so, it may be that the Donor, knowing

was exceedingly helpful in determining enduring policies and

The support which the establishment of this Fund has given to

This strengthening of the scholarship of the College was by no

Donor. A dozen or more of the beneficiaries have at one time

It may be difficult for the candidate and it certainly is for the

All appointments are to be absolutely free of denominational in-

Every phrase in these quoted passages has been given serious

Occasionally, so-called "Recognition Meetings" are held to in-

It is from this address that much of the quoted material in

Introducing the Men

It is difficult to write you anything about my life because I am

Does this quotation bear out the author's self-accusation of

ular candidates was described, and some account of certain men

I NA pleasant section of rural New England (and how could

It is interesting and perhaps important to note that in this

The nationalities represented are English, Finnish, Greek,

The mechanics of living have so fully occupied the time of all

His high school class numbered well over five hundred at

Many of these independent, freedom-loving young men decided in

throughout my school days and in the summer while going to col-

Space limitations forbid much further direct quotation from

Unable to speak the language of this country, Mother could not

The hegiras of the other two families here considered, from

The Swedish family came here on the wave of "American

businessman in Stockholm. The younger sister also traveled widely.

The quotation above was spoken into a dictaphone at odd

The experiences in Boston of the boy of Russian parentage

Gr.munar school days bring back memories of coasting down

I enjoyed school and strove successfully to earn the teacher's ap-

Next in review pass six men each descended from genera-

his or her position as vigorously as possible. Perhaps that is where

This rural isolation carried its real costs - deficiencies in music;

- a pleasant monotony ending with graduation from high school

We meet this boy, grown to manhood, in the chapter on

Perhaps some important factor of my own personality may

The next "boy", whose homemade crib was incomplete

Fortunately for this volume, the third member of this New

is now Boston when it was only an elder swamp" they let it

Because of the sheer interest and worth of the life of this

In America, he found schools less advanced for the same

High school soon became my world, a world of ever-expanding

tising policy that gave us ample income to run pictures and

For a second time we meet this high award to a beneficiary