CHOICES MADE

DAVID T. MCLAUGHLIN in the entryway of the President’s Office at Dartmouth College—1984

Photograph by Nancy Wasserman

CHOICES MADE

A Memoir by David T. McLaughlin

with Howard J. Coffin

HANOVER
NEW HAMPSHIRE
2007

THIS PUBLICATION HAS BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT THROUGH AN INITIATIVE BY AND THE ONGOING ENCOURAGEMENT OF

Frederick B. Whittemore

ALSO CENTRAL TO PROJECTION OF THE BOOK HAVE BEEN

Berl Bernhard, John L. Callahan Jr., and Mona M. Chamberlain

AND OVERALL PREPARATION HAS BEEN COORDINATED BY

Edward Connery Lathem

Copyright © 2007 by Judith Landauer McLaughlin

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Doing the Right Thing

2. The Beginning I

3. Formative Values

4. The Test

5. Service

6. The Beginning II

7. Knowing When to Leave

8. Knowing When to Arrive

9. Transition

10. Hard Choices

11. Pomp and Ceremony

12. Priorities

13. Reality I

14. Reality II

15. Using Authority

16. Providing for the Future

17. Below the Line

18. Life Goes On

Chronology

Index

BY WAY OF PREFACE

AT his death in 2004, David McLaughlin left behind the text here published. In a statement he drafted regarding the nature of his projected volume, he characterized what had been written by him and his collaborator as being “a personal memoir, one focusing centrally upon my relationship during more than half a century to my alma mater, Dartmouth College.” However, it was of course, he emphasized, “not intended as a history of the college during the time discussed.” He then went on to indicate that what had been produced was also, essentially, “about institutional governance within the context of higher education”—declaring:

“It is hoped that this publication may serve to inform boards of trustees about certain criteria that can be employed in choosing presidential successors. It is also intended to illustrate and comment upon various management philosophies and styles within the academic setting. Finally, the book is meant to emphasize the particular importance of the management style of the president and the role of trustees during periods of pronounced external pressures, and how the president’s relationship with the trustees will affect the quality of governance that exists at such times.”

.   .   .

Introduction by Berl Bernhard

DAVID MCLAUGHLIN, as I had occasion to say at the Aspen Institute’s memorial service for him, by any measure embodied the mantra of the ancient Greeks: virtue in excellence; excellence in virtue. His was an indomitable and magnetic presence, engagingly articulate, driven to do well and good—always with a twinkle in his eyes, beneath that row of bushy eyebrows. He was tough and sweet. He had the exuberance of a natural leader.

We served together for a decade as Dartmouth trustees, first, during John Kemeny’s administration, then, during David’s own. The two men, Kemeny and McLaughlin, came to the position of president by very different paths. The former, being himself of the faculty, was by and large welcomed by its members; the latter, not of academe, was from the outset confronted by a substantial degree of faculty skepticism and distrust.

When in 1981 he ascended to the presidency of his beloved alma mater, he set about on a bold and controversial course. He saw the economic distress of the college as an opportunity. Over five years, he grew the endowment to an historic high. He renovated classrooms, raised faculty salaries, maintained the college’s “need blind” admissions policy, reinforced an earlier commitment to ensure that fraternities that had racially discriminatory clauses not remain on campus, and fought entrenched interests, to create the new medical center now regarded as one of the nation’s finest.

His accomplishments were legion, but the moment uneasy. Indeed, this was a period of widespread maximum tension between faculties and administrations—perhaps the legacy of the sixties, of Vietnam and racial struggles; in any event, of near-universal social uproar. Demonstrations against Dartmouth’s investments in apartheid South Africa were frequent and boisterous, the college’s Indian symbol was under attack, and the integration of growing numbers of minorities and women was complex and sensitive.

At the same time, David faced a largely hostile faculty that, up front, did not appreciate being governed by one not their own. That he had previously been chairman of the college’s board of trustees was not helpful; it somehow tended to emphasize and reinforce faculty attitudes that a leader from the world of business could not serve successfully as president of Dartmouth.

Running Dartmouth College, even in less turbulent times, was never easy. David’s predecessors, John Kemeny and John Sloan Dickey, had their own bouts with the faculty, and some of the searing issues that befell David McLaughlin had in fact been generated before his presidency. However, David was not prepared to compromise his ambitious goals by listening endlessly to what he viewed as unreasonable carping.

Criticisms of him, which he candidly addresses in this book, have largely to do with his management style, his impatience with seemingly never-ending debate, and his unstated slogan “Do it now.” But David’s self-evaluation on some of the pages that follow reflects, in my judgment, excessive mea culpa—frequently blaming himself, almost in isolation, when in large measure, during the time involved, there beset both the college and the country as a whole a fundamental and poisonous distrust of any administrative system.

During an address delivered at his fiftieth Dartmouth class reunion, David focused on the tension that had years earlier existed between him and the college’s faculty, saying:

“Whether nationally or locally, it is evident that too often we fail to listen; we fail to consider critically the values of the arguments made by the opposition; we seem to have failed to learn the lesson of how to disagree civilly. The ability to disagree civilly is fundamental not only to the process of liberal learning, but also to the functioning of a democratic society. It is one of the lessons that I had to learn the hard way during my presidency, when dealing with the ROTC issue, divestiture, and even the relocation of the medical center.”

.   .   .

Business acumen, an awakened sensitivity to listening, and a recommitment to change through civil dialogue led David to the presidency of the Aspen Institute at its most dire moment: its land sold; its campus and buildings in shambles; its very mission to develop values-based leadership compromised. During six of his ten years as president, I had the privilege to serve as chairman of the Aspen board and to witness the “Energizer Bunny” doing his thing. The land was reacquired; the quality of seminars was upgraded; and over twenty million dollars was raised to complete the new campus.

In the course of his Aspen tenure, he repeatedly emphasized that “. . . We need to focus more on the younger generation, and we need to accept that the Aspen mission must go beyond our borders.” While he supported vigorously all of our international partners, over the years he and I pushed, sometimes literally, to establish Aspen in India, a country he knew and admired. He found the delay exasperating and was elated when at last, in 2004, Aspen India was born.

Just a week and a half before he died, he was back in Aspen awarding degrees to graduating Crown Fellows, a program that selects each year twenty outstanding community-spirited young leaders and seeks to deepen their understanding of what values-based leadership demands. David considered the success of the Crown program to be the real jewel in the Aspen crown—and one of his most satisfying achievements.

.   .   .

Never was our relationship more exhaustingly close than when, in 2001, he as chairman of the Red Cross asked Senator George Mitchell and me to help him revitalize that institution, then under harsh attack after 9/11. Our assignment: to help him manage the unmanageable and distribute fairly the billion dollars privately donated to the Liberty Disaster Fund. David had to respond to a torrent of national criticism against what appeared to be, in his words, “an arbitrary policy [which had been promulgated without his sanction or that of the Red Cross board] on how to use donated funds. The public lost faith in our ability to be faithful stewards of their generosity.” It took almost a year to straighten out the categories of who should receive what level of financial aid. He listened to the complaints and needs of families. He got it done.

In addition to the fund-distribution controversy, he also had to design an organizational structure to ensure that the fifty-seven thousand volunteers from across the country who came to New York City to provide humanitarian aid were deployed effectively. They needed to be housed, fed, organized, and directed—immediately. This was no small task; think about it. Together we met in Washington, D.C., and New York City with those who had been wounded and with families of the deceased. It was a searing exposure, but David’s capacity to reassure and comfort made it more tolerable for everyone. Unquestionably, his performance helped to regain the trust the Red Cross had so richly earned before the catastrophe put its reputation in jeopardy.

Senator Elizabeth Dole, the Red Cross president who convinced David to join its board of governors, has reflected with regard to the impact of his leadership: “David’s contribution cannot be overstated. He was that leader who cared, that leader who made a difference. I am honored to call him my friend and am grateful that he was willing to assume so many responsibilities which benefit his country and the world.”

.   .   .

David’s good friend Frederick B. Whittemore, who long had firsthand relationship to David’s service on corporate boards, has said of him within the context of that particularly important element of his career:

“In addition to his service to Dartmouth and Aspen and the Red Cross, it is not surprising that over the years David was solicited to be, and keenly participated as, a member of several corporate boards of directors. Also, supplementing his public responsibilities, as many do not know, shortly after the Dartmouth presidency, he became a controlling investor in a small Maryland company that was a significant manufacturer of safety flares for highway and marine uses. Despite the emergence of competitive technology, that company prospered, and the McLaughlin family then gathered more stock and, moreover, eventually acquired a major competitor.

“David became chairman of a new reinsurance company while actively involved with directorships of a number of other corporations. And it is important to understand that what he brought to those relationships was well-regarded ability, coupled with exemplary qualities of trustworthiness and loyalty. He had learned to listen and advise carefully, relating in that manner not only to the corporate boards to which he belonged, but also to many friends and acquaintances whose decisions relied on his counsel.

“Several of his companies went through substantial mergers, where his influence and diplomacy were pivotal—for instance, in the selective reduction of boards, to accommodate a pending merger, as well as by quietly and deftly altering board membership when individuals had lost the confidence or trust of company management.

“Any summation of David’s activities within the business world is reflective of a man of keen intellect who could convince people articulately and also effectively point the way to action that resolved problems. In addition, he raised money that left many institutions in a significantly better place because of his involvement. Throughout his lifetime he accomplished an immense amount and added appreciative friends as he went along. Few can have such impact.”

.   .   .

Unquestionably, Dave McLaughlin drove himself too hard. But his interests were so broad, his capability so large, his trustworthiness so steady, that people sought him out; and he connected—perhaps too often. He had the magnetism of iron and appeared just as strong. That is what we wanted to see—and did see, because of his reliability, warmth, good will, and charm. Perhaps no human body can sustain itself indefinitely when it carries a scholar, an NFL-quality football star, a jet pilot, a corporate executive and director, a Dartmouth president, an Aspen president, a Red Cross chairman. So it gave out, leaving Judy, their four children—Bill, Wendy, Susan, Jay—and thirteen grandchildren to suffer a grievous loss, while remembering a wondrous man who led more than a full life of contribution to his family and, in fact, to us all.

CHOICES MADE

CHAPTER ONE

Doing the Right Thing

THE day that Dartmouth College forever changed the very nature of its being is a day I shall never forget. What happened occurred on a Sunday in November—one of those crisp, clear autumn days that any who have attended college on the Hanover Plain remember well. The north winds had stripped the New Hampshire trees of their fire-bright leaves, and the storied campus had a look that signaled all was ready for winter. On November 21, 1971, the sixteen men who comprised the college’s board of trustees gathered in special session at Hanover to vote on the question of whether Dartmouth should become coeducational. Ever since the eighteenth century, when the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, with a charter from King George III of England, had established his school in the wilderness of northern New England, every student admitted to the college had been of male gender.

Looking back now to 1971, the fact that Dartmouth was confronted with monumental change was certainly in keeping with the times. The war raging in Southeast Asia was causing Americans everywhere to question what their country was all about and what it should become. Something like a second American Revolution was upon the nation, and college campuses were swept up in it all. The environmental movement was coming into full swing, and a peace movement was growing daily. Moreover, a feminist movement, the likes of which the nation had never seen, was organizing. And Dartmouth’s president, John G. Kemeny, less than two years in office as the twelfth man since Wheelock to serve as the college’s chief executive, regarded the adoption of coeducation to be the highest priority of his progressive administration.

Walking into the administration building, Parkhurst Hall, that autumn morn, where on the second floor the session of the board of trustees was about to come to order, one could feel the tension, the sense of anticipation that precedes major decisions. The expectancy was heightened for me by the fact that I, David T. McLaughlin, Dartmouth Class of 1954, was attending only my second meeting as a member of the board and was about to cast the most important vote in the history of the institution. Sentiments embodied in the Dartmouth alma mater were very much in the minds of the trustees that historic morning:

Men of Dartmouth, give a rouse

For the college on the hill!

For the Lone Pine above her,

And the loyal sons who love her. . . .

Also, I might add, the song includes the words:

They have the still North in their hearts,

The hill-winds in their veins,

And the granite of New Hampshire

In their muscles and their brains.

And more than one supporter of the coeducation cause at Dartmouth had publicly stated that any alumni who wished to keep females away from the door of their dear old school must, indeed, have “rocks in their heads.”

I entered the meeting firmly committed to voting for coeducation. After all, the mission of Dartmouth was to educate future leaders, as well as citizens having the capacity to make positive contributions to society—which certainly is not a gender-specific objective. But as the meeting of the board began that November morning, there was an awareness that the issue of whether women should be admitted was still definitely in doubt. The depth of feeling that existed throughout the overall Dartmouth community was appreciated by each and every trustee. At our most recent meeting, in October, coeducation had very nearly been put to a vote, but the trustees had postponed action, deciding they needed more facts and figures concerning the ramifications of admitting women, particularly the effect it would have on the annual budget. (President Kemeny had, I felt, been instrumental in putting off the decision then, perhaps believing that an adequate number of votes for approval was not yet assured.)

That October session at which a delay had been agreed to was my first meeting as a member of the board, and out of courtesy I mainly sat and listened to the discussion. But since then, I had been drawn deeply into the highly controversial debate. Dartmouth graduates, deeply devoted to their college, had in the last month spared no effort to convince the trustees to honor their wishes, pro and con, on the big decision that was about to be made. Lobbying was heavy. Most fellow alumni pleaded that our old school should remain as it always had been. They deeply loved their little college in the North Country; wanted it as it was. No doubt in their minds were such things as the joys of Dartmouth Winter Carnival, the rich voices of the all-male glee club, fall afternoons at Memorial Field watching “the backs go tearing by,” memories of hikes in the White Mountains and winter afternoons on the ski slopes, thoughts of mugs raised before a roaring fire in fraternity houses. They feared change of the Dartmouth they held so dear.

Dartmouth had over the years seemed to many to be the American ideal of a college; those touched by her seemed to love the place. Also, since Dartmouth was at that time the only Ivy League institution that remained all-male, there was added reason for there to be an extraordinary focus on the issue, not only in Hanover, New Hampshire, but across the nation as well, and from individuals both within and outside of the alumni body. Other of the Ivy schools had during the preceding decade or so followed a somewhat different path to coeducation—except for Cornell and Pennsylvania, which were already coeducational. Brown and its sister institution, Pembroke, had merged in 1970. That same year, Harvard and Radcliffe joined, with a formal agreement finalized in 1977. And Princeton, perhaps the Ivy institution most like Dartmouth in terms of its nature and structure, had begun admitting women in 1969.

The issue generated a veritable outpouring of opinion, expressed by letter and by telephone. The mail and phone calls that I received at my Minneapolis office were charged with emotion, especially those from persons opposed to change. I could hear deep concern in the voices of many of the Dartmouth grads as they made their cases: “Dartmouth doesn’t need coeducation.” “Dartmouth is a special place; don’t change it.” “Dartmouth can’t afford to admit women.” “This country ought to have one top-rank college that’s all male.” “If coed, we’ll never again have good athletic teams.”

On the other hand, calls also came—especially from women, as well as some from younger graduates and, occasionally, one from an older alumnus—saying that it was high time Dartmouth caught up with the times; that coeducation would be coming sooner or later, so, why not now? However, the majority of callers with whom I talked felt earnestly and held strongly that, while they had nothing against women, to admit them would destroy the Dartmouth they loved.

I understood and listened sympathetically to all of the concerns expressed to me, but I sincerely felt that Dartmouth’s future success was tied to the adoption now of coeducation. If the college remained an all-male institution, I was convinced that first-rate students would eventually be less inclined to apply for admission. Another key factor was Dartmouth’s isolation, all by itself up there in New Hampshire. If we had been, say, Amherst College, a hundred miles south in Massachusetts and surrounded by women’s colleges and coeducational schools, it might have been different. But Dartmouth students needed to be part of an academic environment that reflected the real world, a world in which men and women are given an equal chance at success. My mind was made up.

The trustees had actually begun this special meeting in Hanover on Saturday, November twentieth, in order to have a final discussion concerned with coeducation and to talk about other college matters, prior to their crucial Sunday-morning session. Representatives of a consulting firm that had been engaged to assess the impact of coeducation were also present then, and they responded to various questions that centered on the financial implications of admitting women. Of special concern was an analysis of the impact of the coeducation decision at Princeton, for the other two previously all-male Ivy institutions had had the benefit of already being affiliated with a sister women’s college.

Then, very soon after we adjourned our session on Saturday afternoon, I received a firm reminder of the depth of feeling that attended the issue at hand. I was walking across the college green, and on reaching its center, where the paths intersect and cross, I encountered the formidable personage of Justin A. Stanley, a member of the Dartmouth Class of 1933. Justin was one of Dartmouth’s best-known alumni, a longtime member of the celebrated Chicago law firm founded by Abraham Lincoln’s son, and an attorney who would ultimately become president of the American Bar Association. Also, he had two decades earlier served briefly as a vice president of the college.

Mr. Stanley, I knew, was close to John Sloan Dickey, who had preceded John Kemeny as the college’s president and who had led Dartmouth for a full quarter-century. John Dickey had never made it a secret that he thought Dartmouth should, at this stage, remain a male college. He believed that Dartmouth’s singular focus in this respect was still an important key to its success as an educational institution. Women, he thought, would be a distraction to the educational process. Justin Stanley let me know that afternoon, in no uncertain terms, that he was of a like mind with his old friend.

Justin took me by the arm, pulled me close to him, and said in a soft but very firm voice, “David, if you vote for coeducation and if Dartmouth goes coed, you have lost a friend, and I will never return again to this campus.” Then, he turned abruptly and walked off into the lengthening shadows—striding at a purposeful pace, never looking back, and certainly carrying with him the sentiments of many of those who, as students, had heretofore trod the paths of that centerpiece. I stood there somewhat stunned, and watched him until he was gone in the chill and gathering twilight.

The trustees assembled that evening for cocktails and dinner at the Hanover Inn. The politicking was intense, as trustees sounded out one another, tried a little last-minute convincing, and attempted all the while to predict the outcome of the next morning’s vote. President Kemeny was there, talking of anything but the vote, for although he, of course, felt as deeply in favor of admitting women to Dartmouth as anyone could, he had never tried to lobby members of the board on behalf of his passionately held cause. We all went to bed that evening in doubt as to just what outcome the next day held. In their rooms at the inn that night, I suspect that sleep did not come easily to many of my fellow trustees. It surely did not, at any rate, to me.

Morning arrived cool and hazy-bright, and right after breakfast I set off on a walk through the campus. My tour included, first, a visit to the football stadium, where as an undergraduate I had worn the green and white for Dartmouth on many a Saturday afternoon. I then progressed up past my fraternity house, past the red-brick dormitory that had been home my freshman year, and finally came back to the inn, located at the corner of Main and Wheelock Streets, fronting the green—the spot from which I had first seen Dartmouth on a late-summer afternoon in 1950.

The trustees convened at nine o’clock, and just before the session came to order, the doors were swung firmly shut. (Dartmouth is a private college, and the meetings of its board have always been quite definitely private ones.) Taking their positions at the head of the table were President Kemeny and the chairman of the board, Charles J. Zimmerman, Class of 1923, an insurance executive of a legendary dedication to Dartmouth. Otherwise, seating around the long mahogany table was by seniority, those with the longest service being closest to the president and chairman. The only exception to this arrangement was Ralph Lazarus, who insisted on taking a seat at the far end of the table, facing the president and board chair. (Ralph felt that, as the CEO of a great department-store chain, he had a right to such an advantageous location—and, well, no one disagreed.)

It was a truly great board. Included in the sober assemblage of relatively senior trustees were the chief executive officers of five major American corporations, a bank chairman, two practicing attorneys (one of whom was a former congressman), a media specialist, and a physician, plus the president of the college and (ex officio) the governor of New Hampshire. Down at the far end of the table, with CEO Lazarus, were the four freshman trustees: David R. Weber, a teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy; two investment bankers, Richard D. Lombard of New York City and David Parkhurst Smith from California; and David T. McLaughlin, the president of the Toro Company, a Minneapolis manufacturing firm. All of the trustees were Dartmouth graduates, save Princeton alumnus John Kemeny. The average age was fifty-seven. All of the men in the room had certainly achieved success in their respective careers, and each understood “dear old Dartmouth” had been a factor in that success.

So, the moment had come. As we got under way, I recall thinking that although some might feel otherwise, I firmly believed that the trustees were the “owners,” so to speak, of the institution. The charter had entrusted to the board of trustees the responsibility of perpetually carrying forward the college, acting to the best of their collective ability to ensure its future. And perhaps that trust never weighed more heavily on any board than it did on those of us assembled that day. While there were several votes on the agenda, only two, coeducation and the question of adopting a year-round college calendar, were the critical ones.

First, the trustees would decide whether to approve transition from a three-term to a four-term schedule—essentially a full-calendar-year operation, a change necessary to accommodate the increased number of students that coeducation would bring to Hanover if, as was intended, we enrolled at the outset a sufficient number of female students to give them a truly significant presence within the student body. John Kemeny’s ingenious solution to provide for a larger student population, without reducing the number of male students or building additional dormitories, was to adopt a four-quarter, year-round calendar (which later became known as the “Dartmouth Plan”). The second vote, the big one, was to determine whether the trustees would approve coeducation.

The meeting began with Chairman Zimmerman focusing on the votes the board was about to take, making certain that all members understood full well the issues before us, and some discussion on these matters ensued. Then, Zimmerman called for a vote on the question of whether the college would move to a year-round calendar. With little discussion, the transition was unanimously approved, although I believe that virtually everyone understood that should coeducation fail, the vote just taken would become moot. Next, we were asked to turn to the second question: Would the board approve the admission of women? The chair called for any further discussion, and a few board members undertook to have a final say on the matter. I recall most vividly the truly impassioned opposition statement of Trustee Thomas B. Curtis, the white-haired and articulate former congressman from his home state of Missouri. Curtis declared that Dartmouth did not need to go coed and that to do so would risk the loss of alumni support; that the college should continue to fulfill proudly its role of being America’s premier all-male college.

Trustee Thomas W. Braden later wrote: “So here we are, . . . sitting around a long polished table in the trustees’ room, trying to decide whether to admit women to Dartmouth, and hold classes the year around, partly so as to make room for the women.

“Now there was no very good reason for not doing this, except the reason that it would change things. But you would have thought to hear us talk that we were about to bulldoze the place. . . .

“We behaved like men asked to adopt a new mother. ‘My gut feeling is it’s wrong,’ somebody remarked. ‘It’s only my brains that make me do this thing.’”

Like the trustee quoted by Braden, I strongly suspected that if the board members had all voted from their hearts that morning, coeducation would have failed by a substantial margin. The key, I thought, was whether members would vote with their hearts or with their minds.

Chairman Zimmerman announced that he would call the roll for the second vote. A “yes” vote would favor admitting women; a “no” vote would be in opposition. The first name called was that of the most senior trustee, Lloyd D. Brace, a Boston banker and a 1925 Dartmouth graduate, with two sons who also had graduated from the college. In a halting manner he responded, “Yes.” F. William Andres, a prominent Boston lawyer and a classmate, as well as probably the closest friend of former-President Dickey, was a very emotional man. When his name was called he sobbed as he managed to say, “Yes.” Three other trustees would subsequently vote in the negative. By the time the voting had progressed to my end of the table, however, the issue was no longer in doubt.

At this point, there was a pause, and nobody spoke. Finally, Zimmerman formally announced the vote result: eleven in favor and three opposed, with the chairman himself and President Kemeny abstaining. A motion was quickly made to declare the vote unanimous. But Tom Curtis was having none of that, and announced emphatically that he was not about to change his vote. To this day, in the archives of Dartmouth College, one of the most important votes ever taken in the institution’s history is recorded as having been a split decision—evidence that men of good will can disagree on an important issue and do so civilly.

Tom Braden, in his account of what occurred, went on to say: “We did do it. I mean we did admit women to Dartmouth. Our brains told us that the college owed a duty to society. . . . Our brains told us it was pointless to continue the college as a unique institution if the only way it could be unique was as a relic. But our hearts cried. We liked mother the way she was.” And John Kemeny later declared, “I am confident that future historians will record that Dartmouth made the great change at the right time, and that it became a better educational institution for having done so.”

At this point the trustees’ meeting had not yet ended, but what followed were essentially “housekeeping” actions, as well as a formal indication of concurrence with the president’s recommendation that a woman educator of distinction be appointed at the senior-officer administrative level to help implement the coeducation transition.

I might interject here that in later years I came to believe that, although I was a supporter of its enactment, the potential and unanticipated ramifications of the board’s initial action of the day, that of establishing a year-round calendar, thus providing the means of our adoption of coeducation, were not fully appreciated or understood by those voting on the matter at the time—ramifications having to do with long-term consequences regarding the quality of the educational program, as well as the cohesiveness of the collegiate experience. Indeed, a faculty committee had raised serious doubts about the “Dartmouth Plan” concept, expressed in a report that had not been distributed to the trustees before our vote. That other institutions have subsequently visited Dartmouth to study the year-round calendar, and that none of them has adopted this innovation, should serve to convey a message.

The historic meeting of November 21, 1971, ended at 12:45 p.m., and most of the trustees departed immediately. (It was as if the air had suddenly been let out of a balloon.) President Kemeny and Chairman Zimmerman then retired to a private room in order to draft the statement they would release to the media that evening. And at 6:30 p.m., the president took to the airwaves, via the college radio station, WDCR, to address the campus and announce the board’s vote. Many students heard the news from a loudspeaker while having their evening meal in Thayer Hall, the college dining facility. The next morning, the trustees’ statement was released as follows:

“The historic purpose of Dartmouth College has been to train leaders for society. It is clear that women now will be playing an increasing role of leadership in our society and that Dartmouth can, and should, contribute to their education, making it possible for them to become, as Dartmouth men have through two centuries, outstanding doctors, lawyers, business leaders, scientists, and leaders in government. In endorsing both coeducation and the Dartmouth Plan for Year-Round Operation we are acting to assure that Dartmouth will continue to serve as a leader in innovation in undergraduate education. . . . Dartmouth has traditionally put its highest priority on the quality of its undergraduate program, and it is our hope that this major new experiment will make Dartmouth even more attractive to young men and women who prize freedom of choice.”

The public at large received the news the next morning through a release issued by the college news service, and Dartmouth’s decision to admit women was widely featured by the American press—often on page one.

When the trustees’ meeting concluded, I walked without delay from the meeting room, down Parkhurst Hall’s marble staircase, and out through the oaken front door. The sun was shining brightly on the college green and on the white-painted bricks of the oldest college buildings on the little knoll beyond. Next morning, the bells in Rollins Chapel rang and rang, heralding the news that history had been made on the Hanover Plain. Whoever was ringing those bells, sounding their peals across the granite hills of New Hampshire, certainly agreed with me that the governing body of the old “college on the hill,” the men who had gathered that cold November morning, feeling the weight of history, had done the right thing. I was proud to have been part of an exercise in institutional governance at its best. The good of the college had been placed above individual preference. And come the next fall, when President Kemeny welcomed a new class, he would change the traditional opening words of his convocation speech from “Men of Dartmouth” to “Men and Women of Dartmouth.” The applause would be loud and sustained.

OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS

Dartmouth’s decision to admit women and the manner by which that was achieved relates directly to the nature of academic governance. In the case of corporations, it is, of course, the shareholders who are the ultimate owners of an enterprise, but there are likely to be many stakeholders of varying degrees of consequence, depending on the nature of their relationship with the company. By electing a board of directors, the shareholders of a company establish the governance of the corporation. With non-profits, the nature of governance tends to be less clear. Academic institutions have many constituencies—or stakeholders—each of whom, at one time or another, believes that he or she “owns” the institution. Public and private institutions are apt to vary in character, but in the latter classification it is the trustees who are the institution’s proprietors—those who are responsible ultimately for guiding the course of the college or university, in accordance with its charter purposes and directives. They are the final decision-makers.

This ultimate authority should be exercised judiciously and collegially. Since non-profit institutions exist based on the trust of their constituencies, it is essential that the decision-making process be transparent and that trustees hold themselves to the highest standard of “doing the right thing” and are able to communicate this effectively to their “stakeholders.” It is interesting to note that while trustees make many decisions in the course of a year, during a trustees term he or she is apt to have occasion to vote on no more than four or five issues that really have the potential to alter significantly the future course of the institution. When such votes do occur, the trustee must make an informed judgment based on the institution’s long-range well-being. Such decisions should be made neither merely in response to pressure applied by various constituencies or factions nor be simply an acceptance of a course of action advocated by a chief executive officer; the president must lead the process while respecting the role of the trustees. Board decisions should always be made by board members on the basis of exercising personal conscience and judgment—within the context of their ongoing responsibility for the institution’s stewardship.

Perhaps the most difficult task for trustees is to understand which decisions are the important ones, with the potential to bring about future change to the institution. In recognizing this, they must be especially careful to evaluate the consequences of their votes—and also be willing to take responsibility for the decisions involved. Sometimes, several issues are joined and the prime focus of consideration tends to be on the more emotional or visible matters, when, in fact, some seemingly secondary issue really carries the greater consequence.

The task of a governing body of an institution is often challenging, as it was for the Dartmouth trustees in the fall of 1971. Unless one has a passion for the institutional cause involved, and an enthusiastic confidence in its management, the position of a trustee can entail a long and troubled—even painful—association.

CHAPTER TWO

The Beginning I

TO provide at this point some information on my own background, I was born and raised in East Grand Rapids, Michigan, a town that in the nineteen-thirties and nineteen-forties had the look of an ideal place to live. Located in a countryside where the Great Plains begin, amid level farm fields and orchards, it is twenty miles outside the throbbing manufacturing hub of Grand Rapids, which was at that time the capital of the American furniture-making industry. East Grand Rapids, as a suburb, was a quiet residential community of middle-class and rather well-to-do folks, far enough from the city so that the rumble of the factories was well out of earshot. Its unpretentious but comfortable newer homes were set along tree-shaded streets, and the McLaughlin family home, on Orchard Street, was in an area that not so many years before had, in fact, been an apple orchard. Our house was somewhat small, but neat and new, although the newness was disguised by the graceful colonial design that was the signature work of my father, who was, when at his best, a very competent architect and the designer of many East Grand Rapids homes.

Wilfred and Arlene McLaughlin were married in 1929 and, in due course, brought into the world three children. The eldest, Robert—or “Bob,” as everybody called him—was bright and studious. The youngest, Ann, was a tall, intelligent, somewhat shy girl. In the middle was David Thomas McLaughlin, born on March 16, 1932—and who, like his siblings, first saw light in a delivery room of Grand Rapids’ Butterworth Hospital.

Looking back now, back from the first years of a new century, on the existence that began that chill March day, it seems somewhat miraculous that the earthshaking events that moved the world in the time of my growing up—the economic depression of the thirties, the totalitarian takeovers of Europe and the Far East, and the resulting World War II—apparently had so little impact on my early years. While we all were, of course, aware that the country and the world were experiencing troubled times and, ultimately, that there was a war, those circumstances had little effect on us personally. I do clearly remember hearing on the radio about the attack on Pearl Harbor, but by and large things in East Grand Rapids remained during that era pretty much unchanged. Life went on about as it had previously, except for gas and food rationing and shortages of some food. (Butter and sugar were hard to get, and we ate a lot of Spam.) However, I do not seem even to recall any of our neighbors going to or coming from the armed forces—certainly not the loss or wounding of any local men.

We children pedaled our bicycles about town and played in the back yards and patches of woods. Everybody seemed to know everybody else, and on venturing out into a new Midwestern morning, the people who were encountered on their picket-fenced lawns, tending their victory gardens, or walking along the village’s neat sidewalks greeted you by your first name and with an inquiry as to how you were doing. It was a fairly insular community.

I have long been thankful that I grew up in a time before television, and, thus, as children we were not motivated to stay indoors. We were out on God’s green or white earth, summer and winter. Oh, we had a radio, and I remember listening to such dramas as “The Shadow,” “I Love a Mystery,” and “Amos ’n’ Andy.” But we preferred to play sports within the neighborhood, including pick-up games of football in backyards or vacant lots. We also shot baskets endlessly at a hoop on our garage, and since our driveway was paved, kids came from all over town to play.

It has always seemed that I loved team sports, and I realized early on that I was rather good at them. But I wasn’t good at dancing. Our mother had taught us table manners, such as which fork to use with which food or course at meals, and she also tried to teach me other graces. To that end, she sent me to Mrs. Travis’s Dancing School, which was all very formal. We were instructed in various aspects of dance etiquette, such things as how to help a young lady on and off with her coat, and we learned the basic steps of the waltz and foxtrot. But it never worked for me. I was far too self-conscious, and I never could dance. Later, I would try to master French, then Spanish, and that never worked either.

We kids were all expected to work around our home, to share family chores, for which we received an allowance. When I grew big enough to run the lawnmowers of the day (push mowers whose only power source was muscle), I set up a little business tending neighbors’ lawns, from which enterprise I could make a couple of dollars a day, sometimes more.

My mother came from a moderately well-to-do Indiana family, the Sunderlins, and her father, Fred Sunderlin, was a successful distributor in South Bend, Indiana, for the Philco Company, then a well-known firm that manufactured radios and appliances. While not very approachable, he was nonetheless quite likeable, and I spent happy times at the Sunderlin summer cottage on Diamond Lake in Cassopolis, Michigan. Grandfather Sunderlin was tall and distinguished-looking, a white-haired gentleman who drove a big Buick and smoked big cigars. My father, who came from a poor family, never seemed comfortable around the Sunderlins.

Mother’s family was church-going, and Mom made sure that we worshipped on Sundays. We attended the Fountain Street Baptist Church, whose pastor was Duncan Littlefield, a handsome man with whitish-blond hair, who always looked large in the pulpit. He was a dramatic speaker, though generally not of the fire-and-brimstone sort. He heightened the considerable drama of some of his sermons by darkening the church and having a spotlight trained on the pulpit as his resonant voice spoke not only of God, but also of issues facing the nation and the world. In so doing, he held my interest, and I came to enjoy going to church. Also, I learned from his example something about drama, about the importance of being able to say something with force and about how to attract and hold people’s attention.

I walked or biked to school every day, eventually to East Grand Rapids High School, which was a wonderful public school, with only about three hundred students, and virtually every graduate went on to college. I did well in and enjoyed my studies, and I became deeply involved in athletics. Coaches were important in my life, particularly John Hoekje, who supervised the basketball and football programs. I grew rapidly, outdistancing my father’s five-feet-ten-inches and passing six feet in height during my high school years. I played basketball and football and ran the half-mile in track. In my senior year, we won state championships in basketball and football, and I was fortunate to captain both teams. Also that year, 1950, I was selected as an end on the All-Michigan football team.

With the help of some good teachers who pushed me into advanced work, I became a straight-A student. I also got involved in school politics and was elected president of the student body my senior year. All the while, I was fortunate to receive help from such special mentors as Coach Hoekje and Reid Waterman, the athletic director. I could go to either of them with any problem. They were my mentors, even father-figures; and I very much needed them, for despite the outward signs of a happy home on a friendly American suburban street, all was not well within the McLaughlin family.

My father, short and thickset, was a very talented man, really a first-class architect. But I think his upbringing in modest circumstances weighed heavily on him, and he tried to impress in ways that didn’t fit. I remember that he once returned home from a business trip with a huge, brand-new Cadillac car—which I, of course, really liked. But we couldn’t afford such a vehicle, as Dad soon came to realize. Fact of the matter is, my dad was an alcoholic, and over the years his drinking became worse. He did not drink all the time, and when he was sober, his professional activity and his business would soar. He was capable of an astonishingly high caliber of work, and the homes he designed were very popular. But when he was “on the bottle,” and as his drinking bouts increased, things deteriorated both in his business and at home. There developed then all kinds of tensions, and although Dad was never physically abusive, my parents argued incessantly.

The full repercussions of this domestic situation came down on me at the beginning of my junior year in high school, when my brother entered the U.S. Naval Academy. My father by then was regularly going off on binges, disappearing for days at a time. He usually went to Grand Rapids, and I, at age sixteen, would be dispatched to look for him. I soon came to know his hangouts, the dozen or so smoky beer joints he frequented near the factories. I would search those depressing, increasingly familiar-to-me places until I found him. When I tried to lead him away, he would argue with me, although never to the point of taking a swing at me. (After all, I was bigger than he was. But I doubt he would ever, in fact, have wanted to hit me.) Ultimately, he would follow me out to the car, and I would drive him home. Then, during my senior year he left home completely, never to return; and it wasn’t long, following my parents’ divorce, before he was remarried. My mother took all of this very hard, and it was quite unsettling to me to discover that she was not strong. Always a heavy smoker, she, too, started drinking. Mother went utterly to pieces—which, try as hard as I might, I just couldn’t understand.

The years of being self-conscious about how my friends and their parents “looked down” on our dysfunctional family, the years of earnestly trying, through my studies and sports and otherwise, to distinguish myself as an individual, the years of having to assume responsibilities other young people my age did not—all of this finally made me determined to get away from my family setting and leave the otherwise comfortable environment of East Grand Rapids behind me, to find new challenges, new horizons. I set my sights on going off to college, and as far from Michigan as possible, although I wasn’t sure there would be enough money for me to do so.

To build a savings account, I landed a summer job, with the help of my grandfather, as a dock man at a warehouse in Grand Rapids. My assignment was the moving of things, using muscle power and a forklift to haul electric ranges, washing machines, and other appliances. I enjoyed the work, mainly because the place was full of good-natured people, most of them Polish, who made what I did fun and caused the time to pass quickly. Somebody always had a story or a joke to tell, and somebody was always playing a prank. All in all, it was for me a different kind of education. Also, although the work was hard, it helped me bulk up for football. At the end of my senior year, I stood over six feet and weighed a hundred and eighty-five pounds, which was pretty big for those days—adequate for college football, surely.

Fortunately, my own achievements and those of the teams on which I had played, along with my scholastic success, attracted the attention of several colleges. These institutions were primarily interested in my football ability, and the University of Michigan came on particularly strong. In hope of recruiting me for Ann Arbor, the university put in charge of my case one of its well-known graduates, and I liked him the first time we met. He was a young lawyer who had grown up in Grand Rapids, where he himself starred in high school football and then had become an All-American player at Michigan. On completion of law school, he had entered politics, and in 1948 the voters in the congressional district that included Grand Rapids elected him as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Thus, Gerald Ford was serving his first term in the Congress when he contacted me about playing football with the University of Michigan Wolverines. He made a persuasive case for his alma mater, although he was careful to say that I must make up my own mind—and I greatly respected him for that. I received several letters from him urging me to think seriously about four years at Ann Arbor (and having then no idea that he would one day become president of the United States, I neglected to save any of them).

As a result of the caring nature of my high school teachers and coaches and the friendship of Gerald Ford, I began to understand the importance of mentors. While important to me during my formative period, in fact, mentors have been a positive and constant presence throughout my life, and are to this day. Consequently, I have come to feel quite strongly that the beneficiaries of such relationships have, in turn, an obligation to mentor others whenever an opportunity arises. I am a great believer in such reciprocity, and I spend a considerable amount of my time today in trying to be of service to others who need a helping hand.

The crowning recruitment effort that was made by Congressman Ford was an invitation for me to join him at a Michigan home football game in Ann Arbor. I was thrilled. He met me on campus, where Michigan was playing its Big Ten rival Minnesota. It was one of the major games of the season, with the Little Brown Jug trophy at stake, awarded each year to the winner of the Michigan-Minnesota encounter. I had at that point never even been to Ann Arbor, but as a guest of Gerald Ford’s, I was accorded special attention and privileges. Following our arrival, we visited the Michigan dressing room, and then we walked through a tunnel, out onto the playing field. Suddenly, we were there in that cavernous stadium, looking up at one hundred thousand people. (A good crowd at East Grand Rapids games had been about five hundred.) On the field were the largest football players I had ever seen. I wondered whether I could ever hope to compete in such company. However, as the game progressed, I realized that I wasn’t all that intimidated. Indeed, I felt fairly confident—probably erroneously—that I could have competed in that league. Yet, deep down inside, the reality of a need to leave Michigan far behind me, along with the problems that then existed at home, made me know that it was important to get on with my life, elsewhere.

After I attended classes that day, Congressman Ford walked me around the campus, and I was offered a full scholarship to Michigan—financial help I certainly needed. However, at the same time, I was also being recruited by some alumni of a small institution way up in the northeast corner of the country—Dartmouth College, a place I had never seen and about which I knew almost nothing. The effort to bring me to Dartmouth was launched by alumnus John W. Dregge, who lived in East Grand Rapids, as well as by several other local Dartmouth graduates. They talked to me about their college and its special qualities, and they showed me brochures, all the while stressing that this was a decision for me to make; there was no pressure.

I liked what I heard from these men. It looked like a real college to me, a beautiful place. In due course, Dartmouth also offered me a full scholarship, provided by the Laurence F. Whittemore family, and I was on the verge of making a commitment. Then, at this point, Princeton University became part of the equation—and, like Dartmouth, its admissions office held out to me the promise of a four-year scholarship. The truth be told, I was looking for some place special. I wanted a very good school academically, yes; and a school that cared about sports. And beyond that, I wanted a college where I could grow intellectually and be recognized for my abilities and achievements, whatever they might be. Moreover, I was seeking a place where I would feel at home. Princeton looked wonderful in appealing pictures of old Nassau Hall and the storied concrete horseshoe of the Palmer Stadium. But the Dartmouth alumni made an extra, very personal effort, and they stayed with it.

A few weeks went by and Congressman Ford called to inquire about my decision. So, as a courtesy, I went to his office in Grand Rapids and told him that I had narrowed my choice to Dartmouth or Princeton. I said I needed to get beyond Michigan. He said he understood, and he wished me well. We have known each other, off and on, ever since, and I count him to this day as another mentor of mine, a wonderful human being.

While I did no comparative analysis, matching individual colleges against the list of criteria I had developed, I did have in mind the type and character of institution I wanted to attend. While today’s students have a wide selection of excellent schools from which to choose, knowing the nature of the school that attracts one—size, location, academic program, and the like—is essential to making a right decision. While my options were limited, I felt fortunate to have had, as it turned out, several excellent schools from which to choose. The availability of financial aid was essential to the outcome in my case—that and the fact that admissions departments were then selecting well-rounded achievers, as compared to choosing a class based only on high SAT scores and excellence in any one endeavor.

With the Whittemore scholarship in hand, I chose Dartmouth over Princeton, without having visited either campus. But it was at about the time I made my decision that I finally had the opportunity to visit an East Coast academic institution. I was the guest of my brother for a long weekend in Annapolis, at the Naval Academy. I flew down on a DC-3, my first time on an airplane, and I loved it. The Annapolis weekend was an education—even if I did have to wear my first tuxedo (which did not fit me) to a dance at the academy. I remember how awkward I felt, but I was excited all weekend at being on a college campus. I called the Dartmouth admissions office on returning home, to say that I would be on my way to Hanover in the fall, and they confirmed that I had a full scholarship, though I would also have to work in the dining hall. Accordingly, in the late summer of 1950, I packed my things in a big steamer trunk and shipped it by Railway Express about eight hundred miles off to Hanover, New Hampshire.

Early in September, I caught a ride partway to college with Jack Wall, who was a Dartmouth junior and the son of some friends of my family. We drove non-stop, passing through Detroit to pick up another Dartmouth student, then looping into southern Canada, across New York state, and into Massachusetts. It was all new to me. Wall and his classmate stopped at Northampton in order to call on some lady friends at Smith College, and I could see that they were not eager to have me tag along. So, I went out on U.S. Route 5 and stuck out my thumb—another first-time experience. I remember traveling northward beside the winding Connecticut River, past small farms and through the white-clapboarded villages of Massachusetts and Vermont. The farther we went the higher the hills became. Then, they were mountains, rising green and steep beyond the Connecticut Valley fields. Everything looked clean and fresh—even wild. Finally, we crossed the river into New Hampshire and pulled up the hill into the village of Hanover, where I was dropped off at the corner by the Hanover Inn.

I recall that moment as if it happened yesterday, that it was a blue-sky, early-autumn-like day, with just the slightest cool breeze blowing. I stood transfixed, gazing at the Dartmouth green and seeing the brochures that I had previously been given come to life in those familiar white buildings, Dartmouth Row, on the knoll across the way. Scores of students were out on the green, and the thought struck me, for the first time, that they all were males. I remember how red-brick Baker Library, with its tall, graceful tower, caught my eye, and my thinking that it resembled pictures I had seen of Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

The campus was all green grass, tall elm trees, and important-looking buildings that appeared to have been there a long time. It was beautiful, in the way I had imagined a college should be. (I certainly was not surprised when, three years later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, on seeing Dartmouth for the first time, “This is what a college ought to look like”) I stood there, a thousand miles from home and, instead of feeling homesick or distant, felt that I really had reached an important destination. I was learning to be a “risk taker”—and never had a greener freshman arrived in Hanover, never. But I also think that never was there a happier one. I thought, instantly, that I had found my proper place.

I asked directions to the admissions office, and with a brave demeanor that somewhat masked true feelings, I ventured off across the campus, with about two hundred dollars in my pocket—my total savings. I was given a dormitory assignment and went in search of my room, finding it in Gile Hall, located on an avenue known as Tuck Drive. There at 410 Gile, I met my two roommates, Dick Danforth and Tom Tyler. (Tom was also a Michigan boy.)

Soon after introducing ourselves to one another, Dick and Tom and I walked back to the downtown area in order to buy some furniture for our room. We ended up in an alley off Main Street and promptly became customers of “Paganucci Enterprise,” where a lad from Maine, a short and compact little sophomore, had set up a business buying furniture from graduating students and selling it to incoming freshmen. Paul Donnelly Paganucci was his name—one of the most natural entrepreneurs God ever put upon this earth—and that day we paid his obscene mark-up prices for a battered table and chairs and an old plaid sofa. Before long I was to learn that the seller of these furnishings, “Pag,” as everyone called him, also had a hand in the football concessions and, seemingly, in about every student business transaction that took place on campus. Later, it would be said of him that he may have been the only student who really could not afford to graduate from Dartmouth. Anyway, I met him that day and a friendship between us soon began that would last half a century.

Most Dartmouth students experience their introduction to the college during the annual freshman trip, a four-day hiking and camping outing, during which freshmen get to know their classmates, amid the fall beauty of the Vermont and New Hampshire hills and mountains. I, however, did not participate, for the simple reason that I could not afford the financial cost involved.

My official welcome to Dartmouth came, as was the case for all of my fellow “pea-green” freshmen, on an early September afternoon in Baker Library The occasion was the matriculation ceremony, formally enrolling members of the incoming class into the Dartmouth family. The ceremony was held in the Tower Room on the library’s upper floor, a room that has ever since been my favorite at Dartmouth. I walked up Baker’s western stairway and entered the lofty, oak-paneled room with beamed ceilings, bookcases covering its walls, and tall windows presenting views of the green. The place was crowded with jabbering, excited freshmen, but commanding it all was the stately presence of President John Sloan Dickey.

Mr. Dickey was a large man. Six feet or more in height and with a sturdy frame, he had a deep and resonant voice, and his overall appearance projected a vigorous personality, great intelligence, friendliness of manner, and an easy air of dignity. When it came my turn, he shook my hand, inquired amiably where I was from, and entered his decidedly distinctive signature on my matriculation certificate. I shall never forget that moment, and I walked out of the Tower Room now officially a Dartmouth undergraduate, and one in total awe of the man who was the institution’s president.

A few days later, during a freshman class meeting in Webster Hall, held just prior to the convocation ceremonies that began the academic year, I again encountered President Dickey. He gave a speech and, at the outset, told us to shake hands with the men on the right and left. “It is likely one of you,” he said, “will not be here four years from now.” The message was delivered.

By this time, I had already reported to Memorial Field, in order to try out for the freshman football team, and been welcomed there by the freshman coach, Alvin “Doggie” Julian, who was also the varsity basketball coach, and who had coached the Boston Celtics in a couple of their formative seasons. I remembered having been intimidated at the University of Michigan, when I walked into its big stadium and saw all those giant athletes. But, in truth, the Dartmouth experience was almost as unsettling. Although the stadium in Hanover seated only about thirteen thousand, one-eighth the Ann Arbor field’s capacity, all of the Dartmouth players I encountered on that day had been all-state this or that. Even though they were not quite so big as the Michigan players I had seen, I was very greatly impressed—and more than a little daunted!

OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS

The college years are tremendously important, for they are the formative period of a young man’s or young woman’s development as a thoughtful adult, as a leader, and as a responsible citizen. But the basic makeup of the person is already set by the time of college, and in that respect the college years can only provide an individual with increased confidence in his or her abilities, by allowing within a controlled environment the exercise of choices and the assumption of risks.

The challenge for admissions officers is to identify applicants who demonstrably have the personal qualities and motivation to lead productive lives and to make positive contributions to society. While exclusive or even primary reliance on quantitative tests or attempts to admit a class comprised entirely of high school valedictorians might ease the pressure on admissions staffs, such approaches would be a disservice to the fulfillment of an institution’s purpose and mission.

CHAPTER THREE

Formative Values

IF anywhere in America there’s a more beautiful college campus than Dartmouth’s, I don’t know where it is. And perhaps the college never looks so lovely as when new winter snow lies deep on the Hanover Plain. Then, sidewalks become long white canyons, gleaming icicles hang from snow-laden roofs, and the Connecticut River becomes a great band of ice, separating forested hillsides of boughs and branches laden with white. With boots crunching on snow across campus on a below-zero winter morning, as the bells of Baker Library strike the hour and one’s ears are freezing, while each breath is a puff of steam, the sight of one’s classroom building—even if entering it involves taking a tough test—becomes most welcome. Any consideration of the college in winter brings to mind words from the song “Dartmouth Undying,” written by Franklin McDuffee, a member of the Class of 1921:

Who can forget her sharp and misty mornings,

The clanging bells, the crunch of feet on snow,

Her sparkling noons, the crowding into Commons,

The long white afternoons, the twilight glow?

Certainly, the highlight of the social year when I attended Dartmouth was the Winter Carnival, an event that in those days attracted national attention. In the middle of the college green, the students, often with the help of a shovel-wielding President Dickey, constructed a gigantic snow sculpture. During one of my undergraduate years, it was an immense, stern-faced Indian brave, with arm upraised in beating a tom-tom; and in 1952, an Olympic year, it was, I remember, an athlete holding aloft the Olympic rings. Those snow statues stood as much as thirty feet in height and were covered with a glazing of ice, so that they gleamed in the daytime and, floodlit, shone brilliantly at night. The fraternities and dormitories created, individually, smaller sculptures—very clever, artful pieces, often with a humorous intent. And people came from many miles away to see this annual display.

Twice while I was in college, a young lady friend of mine, who grew up with me in East Grand Rapids and whom I had dated in high school, came up from Mount Holyoke College, a hundred miles down the Connecticut Valley, in Massachusetts, to be my carnival date. On the mid-February Friday afternoon that began Winter Carnival, the railroad station at White River Junction, five miles south of Hanover, was always mobbed by Dartmouth students, there to meet some of the hundreds of women who would be in Hanover during the carnival. They came from Smith, Vassar, Skidmore, Radcliffe, and Mount Holyoke—from colleges all over the East—crowding the station’s platform with each train arriving from points south. And many young women who headed for Hanover that weekend held in their heart the fond, faint hope of perhaps being chosen carnival queen, a selection that each year produced headlines across the country and made one young lady, for a day or two, something of a national celebrity.

Winter Carnival truly was magical—a whirlwind of parties, athletic events, and concerts, commencing on Friday night with an outdoor ice-skating show (at which, one year while I was an undergraduate, the Olympic champion Dick Button was the star), a show that typically ended with a display of fireworks, over the snowy Hanover Country Club, that lighted thousands of upturned, happy faces. And the glee club always gave a concert in Webster Hall, which would invariably feature certain expected standards, such as “The Dartmouth Touchdown Song,” “The Whiffenpoof Song” (even though that piece did have Yale origins!), “Men of Dartmouth,” and my own favorite, “Dartmouth Undying,” that very moving song that carries the Franklin McDuffee text I have already quoted from in part, and the opening lines of which are:

Dartmouth!—There is no music for our singing,

No words to bear the burden of our praise,

Yet how can we be silent and remember

The splendor and the fullness of her days!

Also at carnival time, the hockey team played a morning game in chilly Davis Rink, the basketball team hosted an Eastern rival at Alumni Gymnasium, and the best collegiate ski teams in the nation visited Hanover to compete in the various skiing events. The climax of the sporting events would ultimately come on Saturday afternoon, when thousands of spectators gathered on the steep slopes of a deep ravine north of the campus, the Vale of Tempe (the “Valley of Time”), for the ski-jumping. Indeed, as one stood there in the cold, with a weekend date and friends all around, it seemed that if time could be made to stand still—at that moment, in that vale—all would be right with the world. Quite predictably, after a Saturday evening of parties and dancing, by Sunday morning everyone was happily exhausted. But a lot of tears were shed when good-byes were said back on the railroad platform at White River Junction.

In spring, Green Key weekend arrived, something of a vernal Winter Carnival, with baseball and lacrosse replacing skiing and hockey. Everyone loved to gather on the new grass along the sparkling Connecticut to watch the college crews stroke past in spirited rowing races. Green Key could rival Winter Carnival for its robust social activity, as well as, really, for reaffirming Dartmouth’s remarkable sense of place.

Tradition is vitally important at Dartmouth. The college is an old school, one of the oldest in the country, founded while Great Britain still ruled America—the last of the colonial colleges. It is isolated, up there in the north of New England; and everything that happens there seems focused and memorable. It is a beautiful place, and at times it could seem to be magical. Here I revert again to the McDuffee lyric:

See! By the light of many thousand sunsets

Dartmouth Undying like a vision starts:

Dartmouth—the gleaming, dreaming walls of Dartmouth,

Miraculously builded in our hearts.

The very specialness of the place has helped to inspire people who have been Dartmouth’s students, or anyone who has been associated with the college in almost any way, to keep alive its history and traditions—history and traditions that it has seemed are too precious to lose, even if some of the Dartmouth experience would over the years perhaps become anachronous. And one question associated with a possible anachronism, which had begun to manifest itself even by my time in college, was that of whether it really was in the best interest of college-age men to attend a school that welcomed women only on certain special weekends, then sent them away. Indeed, as an undergraduate, I myself came to wonder about that. But Dartmouth had always been all-male, ever since a Connecticut clergyman and Yale alumnus, Eleazar Wheelock, got a college up and running in the pine woods on the Hanover Plain.

Wheelock had founded, in his native state, More’s Indian Charity School, the main purpose of which was the education of Native-American boys. Seeking to extend his good works and move northward, he received from Governor Benning Wentworth a charter for the first college to be created within the Royal Province of New Hampshire. The founding document was dated December 13, 1769, and in the late summer of 1770, Wheelock set off up the Connecticut River to establish his fledgling institution within the wilderness town of Hanover. The name Dartmouth College was chosen to honor the British nobleman, the second Earl of Dartmouth, who in England had been prominently supportive of efforts to help finance Wheelock’s educational objectives. The motto selected for the college was the biblical phrase, rendered in Latin, “Vox clamatis in deserto”—a voice crying in the wilderness.

A half-century after its founding, the distinction of the college was forever imprinted on the nation’s consciousness when, in 1818–19, the so-called “Dartmouth College Case” came before the U. S. Supreme Court. The matter was complex, involving an attempt by the state of New Hampshire to exert authority over the private institution. The college, as part of its critical legal struggle to resist such control, enlisted the help of one of its rising young graduates, the brilliant attorney Daniel Webster (Class of 1801), soon to become a celebrated figure as an orator, advocate, and statesman. Webster won the case for his alma mater, and in so doing, secured for all American private institutions important protections against governmental interference. Webster’s hours-long presentation in front of the high court closed with the impassioned declaration that has since been so well remembered and often quoted: “It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet, there are those who love it!”

In the wake of the Dartmouth College Case era, the college grew, slowly but steadily, decade after decade after decade; and by the time I arrived in Hanover, it had long been recognized as one of the finest undergraduate liberal arts institutions in the country. I became one of about eight hundred entering freshmen when, on that late-summer day in Baker Library, I was admitted into the student body by John Sloan Dickey—just the eleventh person to hold the office of president since Eleazar Wheelock, in what has long been known as the “Wheelock Succession.”

While historical heritage and social character are components of an institution’s traditions, so too are athletics; and following my arrival at Dartmouth, I soon learned that the college’s traditions were nowhere more apparent than within its football program, particularly on a bright autumn afternoon when the “Dartmouth Indians” were hosting an Ivy League rival on Memorial Field. If in the early twenty-first century people look upon Ivy League football as being minor league, as compared with such big, powerful conferences as the Big Ten and Pac Ten, it certainly was not always so. Before athletic scholarships were offered by many non-Ivy institutions and television revenues became a major source of income for successful football programs, there was a time when the Ivy League produced some of the best football teams in the country. Certainly, they were among the oldest, for Dartmouth football began at the turn of the last century, way back before the forward pass was invented. The college’s football history included a national championship won in 1925, in a stunning upset victory over Amos Alonzo Stagg’s University of Chicago team. And Dartmouth produced such storied All-Americans as Andrew “Swede” Oberlander, William “Air Mail” Morton, and Bob MacLeod, while coaching legends such as Earl “Red” Blaik and, later, Bob Blackman led Dartmouth teams to successful seasons. Moreover, perhaps the most famous game in all of college football history was played in Hanover: the 1940 “Fifth Down Game,” in which Cornell had scored over Dartmouth, giving it a seven-to-three victory in the closing seconds of the contest—but, as proved to be the case, after a referee had mistakenly awarded the visiting team an extra down. On reviewing the films the following Monday morning, Cornell conceded defeat.

Dartmouth, by the fifties, had an impressive history of famous games, winning teams, and great players, and I was proud to wear the Dartmouth uniform and to be a member of the team. But by 1950, the competitive caliber of Dartmouth football had slipped a bit since the glory days—probably a fortunate occurrence in view of my ambition to make the team. Still, my new teammates were an impressive bunch, big fellows, many of whom had been captains of their high school teams. I had to work hard to make the freshman squad, even as a second-string player. As in high school, I played end, both on offense and defense. And as that 1950–51 season went on, I played more and more. I caught a few passes, took my lumps, and made many lasting friendships. Our team ended the season having won as many games as it lost.

My freshman year was a busy one. Football took a great deal of my time, and when its season ended in late fall, I tried out for the indoor-track team and made it, running the half-mile. I was employed in Thayer Hall, washing dishes and serving food. Also, I worked part-time behind the counter at Lou’s, a popular restaurant on Hanover’s Main Street, owned by Lewis J. Bressett, one of the town’s most prominent and public-spirited citizens, who became another mentor of mine.

The majority of my time, however, was spent on academics, both studying and in the classroom. I really “hit the books,” taking courses in English, geography, mathematics, and French. (“Freshman English” was required, and first-year students had to elect a course in some foreign language, as well as choose one course in each semester from among the offerings of the social sciences departments and one from the sciences.) I did well in everything but French. I hated French—and it hated me—though I managed to pass it. I loved my other courses, as was to be the case throughout my undergraduate and graduate days.

Classes began weekday mornings at eight, and I was always up well before that time, eager to begin the day. Each class consisted of about twenty students, seated theater-style in a small classroom, with a blackboard on the wall. It was old-fashioned teaching, with very little in-class exchange between instructor and pupils. Typically, we sat there listening to the professor lecture, taking copious notes.

At any given time, an institution of higher learning is largely defined by the quality of its faculty, and what makes a truly great faculty member does not vary from one liberal arts institution to another. It relates to intellectual competence and depth of scholarship, but, above all, to a passion for the teaching/learning process. I was advised by President Dickey to concentrate my own academic program on choosing great teachers, regardless of the subject matter that might be involved. Thus, I was taught by Alan R. Foley, the history professor who was as well known for his lectures on Vermont humor as for his knowledge of history. His highly popular course on the American West was always referred to by students as “Cowboys and Indians.” It was once said of Professor Foley: “As a teacher, he breathed life and understanding into the dusty interpretations of history, and he imparted his knowledge to generations of Dartmouth men. He laced his lectures with liberal doses of infectious good humor, making it so much easier for his students to learn because it was fun to learn.”

I was also taught by Professor Wing-tsit Chan, a remarkable Asian scholar, who stimulated my interest in international affairs when he said, “East is still East, and West is still West, but if the twain can’t meet, at least they should know a good deal more about each other.” I studied, as well, under Lewis D. Stilwell, regarded by many as the best military historian teaching on any college campus. (His courses in that field were, for obvious reason, nicknamed “Battle-a-Day.”) Professor Foley once wrote of Stilwell: “There are very few really provocative teachers in the best Socratic tradition, but Lew Stilwell was certainly one. He was Dartmouth’s gadfly, if you will, pricking the bubbles that floated from our sometimes pompous and platitudinous pronouncements, cutting the ground from under the shallowness of our logic, or rationalization, and often, I am persuaded, bringing us closer to the truth.”

Despite being self-conscious, I signed up for a course in public speaking, a prerequisite for attending business school. Professor Almon B. Ives made the class a worthwhile experience, and even succeeded in convincing me to relax, somewhat, in front of a crowd. I recall giving an impromptu discourse to the class concerning how unprepared and how nervous I was for a talk. Before I had finished that supposedly serious presentation, the class was howling with laughter. After that, I was much more at ease at the podium. On a whim, I also took a class in classical music, and came to love listening to the works of great composers, learning how to understand scores and to chart the movements of a symphony.

When not working at Thayer Hall or Lou’s Restaurant or when not playing sports, I studied and studied. The young entrepreneur I have already introduced, Paul Paganucci, occupied a room in my dorm, and years later he reminisced regarding my freshman-year habits—with maybe some exaggeration: “Around the middle of the year, I began to hear about this freshman, way upstairs, whom I probably knew by sight by then, who was getting very good grades and who had been an extremely successful freshman football player, but who worked so very hard. He was the only person, as everyone in the dorm knew, who would come home every night after his classes and athletic practices and so forth . . . and sleep less than anyone in the dorm, and apparently he would recopy all of his class notes as a way of reinforcing what the professor had said during the day and making them more legible.”

Pag was right; I did study hard. I had to. Dartmouth was tough going. East Grand Rapids High was a good school, but at Dartmouth I discovered that many of my classmates had been much better prepared than I—many at some of the country’s leading private preparatory schools; my dorm was filled with Exeter, Andover, Groton, St. Paul’s, and Choate graduates. So, I did work hard, often near to the point of exhaustion. I found that I was a slow reader, at least compared with some of my classmates. Accordingly, I purchased a book on speed-reading, and my reading speed accelerated. But if I was working very hard, on about four hours sleep a night, I was also happy. In all my eighteen-plus years on the earth, I had never felt so fulfilled as in my freshman year at Dartmouth.

OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS

All institutions—corporations, churches, and cultural centers included—have their traditions. Few cherish them more or are defined more by them, as their heritage, than colleges and universities. Tradition is useful, but it can sometimes make it difficult to bring about the changes necessary to keep an institution vital and relevant within a changing society. The effectiveness of boards of trustees or directors or governors is often measured by their ability to recognize when tradition is less important than progress, and vice versa.

While colleges and universities are distinguished by their faculties, facilities, methodologies of teaching, and similar features, they are also often described and characterized by their extracurricular aspects—their social events, athletic successes, and so forth. These different facets of institutional being are not, of course, mutually exclusive of one another and should, indeed, complement one another, especially within a residential college. Where the learning process is continuous, for the purpose of educating men and women to become productive contributors to society and to be ongoing learners throughout their lives, all elements and aspects of campus life must be seen as being, comprehensively, part of education.

Great teaching is an art—part acting, part passion, part dynamism; all essential in conveying knowledge and stimulating intellectual curiosity. The student leaves the classroom of a gifted instructor elevated and enlarged by what he has experienced, more self-assured and eager to extend further the dimensions of his base of knowledge. He or she may not later retain all, or even any, of the factual content of individual lessons or whole courses of instruction, but that person will have developed an intellectual spirit, a means and capacity for intellectual pursuit and understanding, and a desire to be, continuingly, an engaged learner throughout his or her life.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Test

WHILE summers in Michigan were a welcome break and afforded me the opportunity to generate some revenue to help cover my college expenses, I could hardly wait for their end, so that I could return to campus. On arriving back in Hanover for my sophomore year, I was invited to join the Beta Theta Pi fraternity—known as a “jock house,” because most of its members were basketball or football players. Joining a fraternity was, at that time, rather an expected thing. In the 1950s, I would guess that approximately half of the undergraduates were fraternity members, and fraternities were the primary provider of social functions and other activities that created bonds of friendship that often lasted a lifetime. While I accepted the invitation to join Beta Theta Pi, I never lived at the house, and the fraternity was never as central to my Dartmouth years as it was to many of my classmates.

That fall, I made the varsity football team as a second-string end, playing behind senior Charles F. “Doc” Dey. Doc was injured in the third game of the season, and suddenly I was elevated in the lineup at right end. Although we didn’t have a strong running game, Dartmouth was blessed with good quarterbacks, and David R. Thielscher, who was a classmate and played left end, and I were on the receiving end of many accurate spirals. We worked well together and the sports writers labeled us as a “dual pass-catching threat.”

My junior year, in the 1952 season, we managed to beat Rutgers and Columbia. Bill Beagle and Leo McKenna were our quarterbacks, and they threw all the time. Thielscher ended up third among Ivy receivers, and I was fifth. My last year, in the fall of 1953, I was doing well in the pass-reception category. But, as that season progressed, we got trounced by Holy Cross, Army, Navy, and Colgate and went into the Yale Bowl having lost seven straight games. However, that proved to be a fortunate day for me, as I caught two touchdown passes and made what the press called an “acrobatic reception” to set up another score. Dartmouth won, thirty-two to nothing, in a huge upset. We also beat Harvard at Cambridge, twenty-four to fourteen, and I was fortunate to catch two touchdown passes from Beagle, running “button-hook” patterns. At the end of the year, I was credited with thirty-one receptions for five hundred and ninety-two yards, was fourth in the Ivy League scoring race, held the all-time reception record at Dartmouth, and was named to both the All-Ivy League and All-East teams. But in team sports, it is, of course, the talent of the entire squad and how well they play together that determine a successful outcome, and although I was recognized for my accomplishments, others obviously deserved considerably much more credit.

As a result of my strong senior season, the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League came knocking. One winter day, I was invited to lunch at the Hanover Inn (which Dartmouth owns) by Inn Manager James T. McFate. Jim had more connections than an octopus, and attending this particular luncheon with us was a scout from the Eagles. The scout got right to the point and said that his team wanted to draft me to play pro football at Philadelphia. I had, in fact, already played twice in Franklin Field, where the Eagles played, because it was also the University of Pennsylvania’s football stadium. The Eagles were a pretty good team in those days, led by their big All-Pro Chuck Bednarik, and I was tempted by their offer. However, I said that because I was enrolled in a campus Air Force Reserve Officers’ training program, I was committed to the military, and that I also planned to spend another year in Hanover, in order to finish my studies at Tuck, Dartmouth’s school of business administration.

The Eagles scout countered my negative response to his offer by saying they could arrange a one-year deferment from military service for me and that I could attend the University of Pennsylvania’s business school, Wharton, while I was playing. I thought it over, but finally told Jim McFate that I was going to stay in Hanover. “You’re stupid, McLaughlin,” he said. As it was, the Eagles went ahead, anyway, and drafted me in the fifth round, and I was offered a first-year contract for sixty-five hundred dollars—which was a pretty good salary for those days! Then, as a follow-up, I received calls from Bednarik and from the Eagles star end, Pete Pihos. Nevertheless, I stuck by my decision. Sometimes, years later, I’ve looked back and thought perhaps I should have given it a shot.

Athletics had always been an important part of achieving my personal goals. In both high school and college, success on the playing fields led to other student leadership positions. While I enjoyed the sense of accomplishment in football and track, competing against some truly gifted athletes, engaging in both was for me a necessary means to an end. Looking back, I regret that in my early life I didn’t learn to ski and play tennis—two recreational sports that would, in later years, mean much to me. However, given my focus then, such was not an option.

On campus, as my college years went by, John Dickey became an evermore-important part of my life. I was in his office at least once a week on some college matter, and we had many conversations. His field of expertise was international relations, and his subtle influence had a lot to do with my choice, at the end of my freshman year, of that area as my major. International relations was Dartmouth’s most interdisciplinary major at the time—the post-war era, with the Cold War intensifying. However, it should be said that while I definitely felt a strong temptation to seek a career in public service, I really wanted and intended to go into business. Why? The answer: I wanted to make enough money to be independent and not always have to live on the financial edge. It was that simple. And, for whatever reasons, I wanted also to be seen as successful. It was partly ego, partly a need to be recognized and accepted—probably, in some sense, extending from the environment of my childhood years.

My association with President Dickey and my heading into an international relations major all had to do, also, with my becoming involved in student government. If I had arrived on campus as a green freshman, basically just hoping to remain in school for four years and go away with a Dartmouth degree, by the start of my second year, my aspirations had changed. I knew by then that even if I was not the smartest student on campus, with a lot of hard work, I could achieve high grades. One of my professors told me that fall that if I kept applying myself, he believed that I could be elected to Phi Beta Kappa my junior year. That became a goal of mine. And during my sophomore year, I ran for and was elected class president. In addition, the undergraduate council selected me as chair of its judiciary committee, which proved to be a tough and not a very coveted job.

The student judiciary committee recommended outcomes for all disciplinary issues involving undergraduates, up to the level of sanctioning student probation or separation, which was handled by the dean’s office. The committee also recommended penalties regarding misconduct and the violation of regulations by fraternities, and it had the option to impose probation in these instances. While what was entailed was for the committee members an important learning experience in assuming responsibility, it was neither a popular nor coveted assignment. I recall one fraternity being brought before us for the misdeed of having had women and kegs of beer in the house at the same time. We placed the fraternity on probation, and I can still remember the reproachful looks given me around campus by some of the brothers of that house. But I could take comfort or reassurance in such circumstance from knowing that our committee had the firm support of the highest office at the college, for John Dickey always believed that students would do the right thing if given responsibility. That faith on his part was absolute. Today, it would, I believe, be almost unthinkable to accord undergraduate leadership such authority. However, back then, at that time and in that place, it was done, and it resulted in some positive lessons in the exercise of leadership.

President Dickey’s philosophy of putting trust in the students to do the right thing was acutely put to the test during my junior year. I had been elected to another student-government position, president of the undergraduate council, and Mr. Dickey called me to his office and entrusted me with an important matter. He told me of his concern that some of our fraternities operated under national charters containing clauses that restricted membership based on race, religion, and national origin. He asked that I direct the undergraduate council to hold a campus-wide referendum on whether such fraternities should continue to be allowed on campus.

When, in March of 1954, the referendum was held, the politicking was intense and the outcome of the vote very much in doubt. More than twenty-two hundred students voted—nearly every man on campus. To my great relief, when the ballots were counted a majority was found to have voted against the fraternities that had discriminatory clauses in their charters—but just barely. The president’s faith in the student body’s ability to accept high responsibility and render sound judgment was affirmed, and the board of trustees promptly turned the referendum result into college policy. All fraternities with the problem charters were given six years to eliminate their unacceptable restrictive clauses or, failing to achieve that end, to sever their ties to their national organizations. If no corrective action was taken, the fraternity would lose college recognition and be barred from all activities. I remember that as having been a very important moment for Dartmouth—and, I guess, a small, but significant, victory for human rights.

As my junior year came to a close, I was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and I also felt that I was beginning to apply the “liberating arts” to the important issues of both my life and our time.

Looking back now from afar, my senior year all seems something of a blur. Some vivid positive memories do stand out; but, in truth, I had made too many commitments. I continued to be president of the undergraduate council, I ran track and played football. I also had joined, to which I alluded earlier, the campus unit of the Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program, and that added a military class and drill to my schedule. Moreover, I had joined Casque and Gauntlet, a senior honor society, quartered in an imposing brick house located on the corner of Hanover’s Main and Wheelock Streets, where I lived my senior year and was elected to be the head of the delegation—King Arthur, no less!

Beginning with my senior year, I had been accepted into Dartmouth’s so-called “Three-Two Program,” which made it possible for a student to graduate from the college and its Tuck School of Business Administration in five years. Thus, I was taking in 1953–54 most of my classes—with the exception of Great Issues and ROTC—at the graduate school. I managed to keep up with my studies by following a schedule of working late into the night and rising before dawn. I have to confess that I definitely overextended myself that year, and at one point, Dean McDonald said to me I didn’t look well and that he was concerned about my health. He had a right to be. I perspired a great deal and tired easily. Looking back on it now, I think I was undoubtedly operating “at the edge,” though I never quite went over. A tendency toward overextending myself had, in fact, been a problem since high school—and it still is.

While pursuing a liberal arts education, a student should encounter a wide variety of “teachers”—not just faculty members, but also administrators, coaches, alumni, townspeople, and, importantly, fellow students. Learning is all about being an active participant—challenging one’s “teachers” and engaging them in discussion; questioning, as well as listening. Being goal-oriented is as important in college as it is in life. It raises the bar to measure accomplishment, and it thereby helps one realize more fully one’s potential. Individuals should emerge from college with a sense of wonder at both how much others know and how very much they themselves still need to learn. In the course of this, one will surely also learn the meaning of humility.

One fond college memory of mine, among many, is of an evening spent in Baker Library’s Treasure Room with a group of fellow students and the poet Robert Frost, listening to Mr. Frost talk and recite to us some of his poems. Frost had been a Dartmouth student (Class of 1896) for just part of one year, before he went off into the world, eventually to become America’s best-known—and probably its best—poet. John Dickey during his presidency had made certain that Frost never lost touch with Dartmouth. Year after year, he brought him back to lecture and read his poetry. And, out of personal regard and affection, not content that Frost had already in 1931 received a honorary doctoral degree from the college, bestowed upon him in 1955—as never before in the history of the institution—a second doctorate honoris causa. On this particular evening in 1953–54, the old gentleman was delightfully engaging in what he said to us, and he recited “The Death of the Hired Man,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and “Birches,” among other of his poems. For a college senior, it could not, I knew, get any better than learning at the feet of Robert Frost.

But, really, the most vivid memories of my senior year center upon John Dickey’s Great Issues Course. Years later, whenever I asked alumni of the Dickey era about their most memorable undergraduate experience, well over half have identified Great Issues. That course challenged students to confront the important issues of the time—requiring us not only to attend lectures, but also to read newspapers, to discuss major issues outside of the classroom, and to complete a journal expressing our personal views. It truly was liberal learning at its best. One of the keys to the course’s success was the fact that Dartmouth’s president seemed to know everyone of importance, and when he invited some VIP to speak in his “G.I.” course, the response was usually swift and in the affirmative.

As part of the Great Issues Course my senior year, the Socialist Norman Thomas, who in 1953 had already been a presidential candidate six times, spoke in 105 Dartmouth Hall:

“. . . I believe there should be an entirely new political alignment in our country” he said. “This is what I have always believed. There is more ideological difference within the Democratic and Republican parties than there is between the two.” And he said, “[President] Eisenhower gets more votes in Congress from the opposition, if you wish to call it that, than his own party.”

At another Great Issues session that I particularly remember, New York Post columnist Marquis Childs discussed the newspaper business, then turned his attention to one of the burning issues of the day. He talked about the search for Communists in the national government, which was currently under way in Washington, led by Wisconsin’s ultra-conservative Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, whom Childs declared, as the undergraduate paper reported, to be “a threat to freedom.” That same year, Philip Johnson lectured on architecture, and Walt Kelly discussed his award-winning Pogo syndicated newspaper cartoon. But, to me, the most memorable of all that year’s Great Issues talks was delivered by Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first black to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

At the time he came to Hanover to lecture in the course, during the late autumn of 1953, Marshall was serving as director of and special counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. I recall him as a large man, with a deep and rich voice. He began his talk with a reminder that he had recently asked the Supreme Court to overturn the “separate but equal” doctrine that prevented blacks and whites from attending public schools together in then-segregated areas of America. As reported in The Dartmouth, he told his audience that evening in Dartmouth Hall: “Last week I stood in the Supreme Court and argued the case for equality in education. . . . I’m through bothering with the old generation, though. If they want to believe in segregation, let them. It’s the youngsters that are going to shape the world. I’m proud of American youth. Why, I wouldn’t miss a chance to come up here to speak to G.I. for anything. Our hope lies in the youth.” Then he said, “You know, it’s terribly hard to sit and listen to people sincerely argue against your cause when you know down-deep that they want to be as right as you.” And, according to the paper’s account, toward the end of his talk, Marshall referred to his own childhood. “Mama taught me a lot,” he declared, “and I remember how she used to say, ‘Boy, you may be tall, but if you get mean, I can always reach you with a chair.’ Well, there’s lots of tall, mean people around, but the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is a mighty big chair, and I figure I can still reach a lot of them.”

It was on May 17, 1954, during my senior year, that the Supreme Court ruled, in the “Brown vs. the Board of Education” case, that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. In a telephone interview, Marshall told The Dartmouth that he had been crusading for just such a ruling since 1939.

My Winter Carnival date my last two years at Dartmouth was Judith Landauer, a student at Pine Manor College near Boston. We had met on a blind date in New York City—having agreed by phone, like many students at the time, to meet under the clock of the Biltmore Hotel. Judy was bright and spirited and attractive, and we immediately seemed to hit it off. After that, there were for me no dates with other young ladies. And, moreover, soon I discovered that Judy came from a Dartmouth family. It was a natural union.

In the spring of 1954, as my senior year moved to its close, I felt a great sense of relief. Although I knew that I had taken on too much, my grades in all courses remained high. Then, Judy came up to Hanover for Green Key weekend, giving my spirits a further boost. In May, The Dartmouth reminded the seniors that quite a span of time had passed since we members of the Class of 1954 had arrived on campus. Among the changes it listed as having taken place in Hanover were the opening of a new movie theater, the Nugget; the arrival of the first television set on campus; installation of artificial ice in the Davis hockey rink; and dedication of the Wilder Dam, a hydroelectric facility on the Connecticut, just south of Hanover. More importantly, during that four-year period, the United States had gone to war in Korea, policies of racial inclusion in the country were being rewritten, and the impact of the Cold War had a presence in our daily lives.

Finally, in June, my mother arrived for commencement, together with my brother, in his white uniform, fresh from his first tour of duty as an officer in the U.S. Navy. It was an exciting time, yet a sad one, for I was saying farewell to so many classmates. My melancholy was tempered, though, by the knowledge that I would be back in Hanover in the fall for one more year, to complete my studies at Tuck School.

Class Day ceremonies were held in the Bema, a rocky little glen in the pine woods behind the hillock crowned by the College Observatory and Bartlett Tower, where graduation exercises had for generations in the years past taken place. I had a very good day. Dean McDonald awarded me the Scholar Athlete Award, this in the wake of my having received in May the Barrett Cup, the latter being something presented annually to the individual chosen by his peers as being the outstanding member of the graduating class. Graduation itself took place the next day on the lawn of Baker Library, having been moved there from the Bema the previous June, in order to accommodate the more than ten thousand people who had come to witness the college’s conferring of an honorary degree upon President Eisenhower.

John Dickey had the last words—his valedictory to the senior class. “We stand on the threshold of leave-taking,” he said to us. “In a seeming sense, the relationship of teacher and student, as between Dartmouth and you, is at an end. And yet, in a more real sense, the relationship of teacher and student, once truly joined, is never dissolved. . . . The point is, gentlemen, that in the largest sense your teacher has been Dartmouth, not just a score or so of men; and it is Dartmouth you go forth from today, not just college. For the Class of 1954 . . . there will be reunions, and the joy of returning together, as long as there is breath in two of you.” And, I might add, the president spoke some words of personal congratulations, which were quite touching to me, as he handed me my A.B. diploma and shook my hand.

CHAPTER FIVE

Service

NEVER shall I forget the first time that I soloed in a jet airplane, a T-33 jet trainer. I took off and pointed its nose skyward, and all was quiet as I rushed up through the clouds into a vast sky of blue. The world fell away, at close to the speed of sound, as I rose on this invisible column of pure power—up, it seemed, to the very edge of heaven. When I eased off the throttle and leveled out, seven miles above the earth, I had a feeling of total freedom. Everything was so quiet and beautiful, and the sun seemed just barely up above me. I think now that I probably could have made a career of flying and been quite happy. But by the time I became an Air Force pilot, I was married, and a child was on the way. I had responsibilities.

It seemed that I had always wanted to fly. Certainly, I had ever since my first time on an airplane, flying down from Michigan for that 1949 weekend with my brother at the Naval Academy. I knew on entering college that I would face a military obligation after graduation. Accordingly, joining ROTC at Dartmouth made sense, and it was easy for me to decide on the Air Force ROTC program there. The course consisted of both classroom work and afternoon drills (on the athletic fields or sometimes on the college green), for which I received not only academic credits, but also a modest paycheck.

The summer between my junior and senior years, I was required to attend Air Force summer camp, at Rome, New York, where career soldiers really put us through our paces. How they loved to harass “smart ass” future-officer college boys who someday might be giving them orders. They yelled at us almost constantly, made us do a few thousand push-ups, and assigned us to long hours of KP (Kitchen Police) duty—all of which constituted further lessons in humility.

Luckily, for me, the camp’s location was just fifty miles from Red Hook, New York, where the Landauer family owned a farm. By that time, Judy Landauer and I had become engaged, and to be able to slip away to the Landauers’ place for a weekend was a wonderful break from the military routine. During those times, I helped Judy’s father, Bill, with their Black Angus cattle and pitched hay.

William I. Landauer had attended preparatory school in Hanover, at the now-defunct Clark School, and his brother, Jim, was a Dartmouth graduate. Bill was a tall and powerful man, and he once told me that during his Hanover days, when a carnival came to town, the students would always send him into the ring to wrestle “the strongman,” and that he won more than his share of those bouts. He had a good sense of humor and was full of interesting stories. We easily and quickly became good friends.

Judy was raised in Bronxville, near New York City, and the family was fond of the urban life. But when her dad came home from serving with the Marines in the Pacific during World War II, he wanted no more of city living. So, Bill took the Landauers fifty miles up the Hudson to Red Hook, and he began raising cattle there on an old farm of some two hundred acres that he bought.

I also became fond of Judy’s eccentric grandmother, Bella C. Landauer, who lived in an apartment on Park Avenue in New York City and was an avid, as well as highly knowledgeable, collector of books, works of art, and other historically significant items. I can remember, for example, a first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass of which she was very proud, and she possessed a huge and important collection of material associated with early ballooning. Sometimes, when I visited her in the city, she would put on her white gloves, and we would board a bus to visit Manhattan museums. Bella Landauer was a strong, somewhat stocky, very German lady. She was quite particular about the way things should be done, and when she took me to lunch in some fine restaurant, she instructed—rather than asked—that her tea be served in a china pot. She was someone from whom a rather parochial young Midwesterner could learn—and did learn—a great deal.

Upon the conclusion of my military training in the summer of 1954, I was back at Dartmouth, studying at the Tuck School, intent on receiving my M.B.A. degree the next spring. It was a relaxed time, things seeming pretty easy after my hectic senior year of college. During the summer, Dartmouth had dismissed Tuss McLaughry as its football coach, after his long series of losing seasons. Hired in his place was a young coach, Robert L. Blackman, a fireball from the University of Denver. When, that fall, I volunteered to help coach the team’s ends, Bob welcomed my offer and we became good friends.

During the spring break in March of 1955, Judy and I were married in the Episcopal church at Rhinebeck, New York, the town next to Red Hook. Many Dartmouth people attended, friends of mine and of the Landauers, and it really was a Dartmouth wedding. Following the ceremony and a brief honeymoon in Florida, we drove directly to Hanover and moved into our first home, a house on Pinneo Hill, just north of town, that was owned by Judy’s Uncle Jim (Dartmouth 1923), a distinguished New York realtor. From that high hillside home, we happily watched winter become spring along the Connecticut Valley.

The day of my second Dartmouth graduation was a memorable one, as Robert Frost returned to receive his second honorary doctoral degree (which I have previously mentioned) and to deliver the commencement address. His presentation was informal and extemporaneous—a talk, not at all a set speech—the latter part of it interspersed with the saying of four of his poems, including “The Gift Outright,” the one he would recite some five and a half years later at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. The poet began his remarks that commencement morning by recalling that he had left Dartmouth during his freshman year, never to return as a student. “And I ran away,” he said puckishly, “because I was more interested in education than anybody in the College at the time.” He also said: “This is an emotional occasion to me. Mr. Dickey has made it an emotional occasion, very much of an emotion, such as has seldom happened to me in my life. . . .”

Frost, then in his eighty-second year, asked of the students sitting before him on this occasion: “Have you got enlarged a little bit? Have you broadened a little bit in these years, as you might have outside? (I don’t know, maybe more so in college than out.) Have you got where you can take care of yourself in the conflicts of thought—in the stresses of thought; not conflicts, stresses. . . .” Then, at the very close of his remarks, he said, movingly, “And remember for me, will you, the one thing, that you’ve reached the place where you can listen to what anybody says and, you know, just pull it your way with one little, nice pull. That’s what makes life.” The applause was loud and long.

That day, I completed my five student years on the Hanover Plain, by receiving a master’s degree in business administration. But since I had been awarded an Air Force commission the previous year, Judy and I were about to begin not a business, but a military life. I was initially assigned to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, for some tough basic training. Following that, I was ordered to Bartow Air Base in Florida, for primary flight school. There they started us off in Piper Cubs, and then we graduated to the T-6 (the terrible Texan)—and I loved it from the first. The flat Florida orange-grove country proved an ideal place to learn flying, for it was hard to become lost while flying above trees that always ran in the east-west direction, and you would soon intersect the water on either side if you did become lost. You could reorient yourself easily. (There was no global positioning system in those days.)

I did well at Bartow, and was, at my election, selected for training in fighter planes. So, we were off, next, to Big Springs, Texas, where I earned my wings, flying T-33 jet trainers. The first time I went up in a jet, in the back seat, the pilot went into some acrobatics and I nearly “lost my cookies.” But the thrill of it was wild, and I was hooked.

Our first child was born at the Big Springs base hospital, with a dust storm raging outside and the proud father present. We named him William R. McLaughlin, and I have to admit that he wasn’t in the world very long before the thought occurred to me that someday he might attend Dartmouth. Following the birth of Bill, the three McLaughlins were off to Valdosta, Georgia, for my all-weather training in F-89 jet interceptors, which turned out to be a dangerous business.

With the end of fighting in Korea, military budgets had been cut, so parts of our training program were abbreviated or eliminated. Tragically, one result of that was that too many of my fellow pilots perished in crashes, trying to fly on instruments in bad weather over rough terrain after having had too little training for such operation. One rainy day, I myself had a close call, when an alarm went off in the cockpit, telling me that I was flying too low. I pulled up just in time to miss a Georgia hilltop. The following day, standing at attention in front of the squadron, I was given a loud reprimand for failing to fly in a safe manner—which amounted to another lesson in humility.

Upon graduation, I was ordered to join the all-weather interceptor unit at the Strategic Air Command base in Great Falls, Montana, and, despite the chewing-out that I had received at Valdosta, I went there as a full-fledged pilot. Soon after arriving, however, I had another close call on a training mission. Just as I was becoming airborne one morning, my radar man looked back and hollered, “There’s a tire going down the runway.” The control tower confirmed that I had, in fact, lost a main wheel. In preparation for what was obviously going to be an emergency landing, I circled the field several times in order to burn off fuel. When the fuel gauge registered near-empty, I made my approach. As I came in, I heard another pilot, a friend of mine serving as the traffic director that day, reciting The Lord’s Prayer over the intercom. But I landed perfectly on my right main wheel; then, the front wheel; then, I carefully put my tireless left strut down, at a speed of one hundred and twenty knots. When I think back, I am certain that all the pressure of my college years—perhaps taking on too much, but getting it all done pretty well, anyway—had prepared me for such an emergency.

My most memorable flight of all at Great Falls occurred on a day when Judy was confined in the base hospital, expecting to give birth to our second child the next day. On my approach, the tower radioed, “You’re the father of a spanking brand-new baby girl.” So, our first daughter, Wendy Bel McLaughlin, was born one day early.

At this period, I was flying almost every day and loving it, but it was not all practice. We were piloting jet interceptors, built for seeking out and engaging enemy aircraft, as part of the United States’ northern defense shield against attacks from the Soviet Union. It was then the height of the Cold War, and radar along the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line was ever on the watch for Russian reconnaissance planes. During my year and a half at Great Falls, we were scrambled several times, as a result of radar’s having detected an unidentified aircraft approaching the border. Most times, what we found was only some rancher flying a Piper Cub down a canyon, looking for lost cattle. For having failed to file a flight plan, he was officially an unidentified plane flying along the international border. In those instances, we buzzed the pilot and wrote down his serial number, giving him a wash of rough air for good measure. A few times, however, it was the real thing, as Soviet planes came in over the Pacific and entered Canadian air space, on a course that would take them over U.S. territory. These planes usually did a loop along the border, sometimes crossing into the States; then, they would head for the coast and home to Siberia. We, of course, pursued them, though all we usually saw was a blip on the radar screen.

But one early morning, we were scrambled into Montana’s big sky just as it was taking on daylight over the northern plains, and I quickly picked up a fast-moving unidentified blip headed westward, skirting the border. I followed, and this time, across miles and miles of pure morning air, I saw what the blip was reflecting. It was a big four-engine Russian “Bear” jet. I pursued it for several minutes, until command radioed that the plane had moved out over the ocean and that I should return to base. Then, as I banked for home, I saw it as a small gray shape, far away over the Pacific’s silver waters, a speck fast disappearing toward the horizon, headed for his Russian homeland. It was another day in the Cold War.

Ultimately, there came an occasion when our squadron at Great Falls was assembled and told that, since the government had again reduced defense funding, anyone who wished to do so could cut short his enlistment. Lieutenant David McLaughlin was the only one who raised his hand. In the wake of this, my superior officers tried to change my mind, but I stuck to my guns. After all, I was now the breadwinner of a growing family, and it was time to get on with my life. Accordingly, in early 1958, my Air Force career came to an end, and it was time for me to return to earth.

In the years since, I have passed thousands of enjoyable hours as an airline passenger—enjoyable, with the exception of those occasions when I see us coming in to land and suddenly feel the pilot rev up the engines in order to go around for another approach. (There is a critical time, as an old Air Force flyer knows, when the pilot has to make a judgment about possibly not landing, and I admit that even I get a tad nervous in those situations.)

I still recall my pilot days as though they were yesterday—my being strapped into a jet interceptor, roaring down the runway, pointing the silver machine toward the heavens. There is probably no feeling like it, as you climb up and up into the clear blue, miles and miles above the green earth. I loved it.

Serving in the military can, of course, be an education in itself. While wartime combat is a grueling and dangerous undertaking, peacetime service also offers remarkable lessons—in self-discipline, in coping with a demanding new environment, and in dealing with different, often difficult, people. There can also be a great benefit in taking some time to adjust to new phases in one’s life, rather than proceeding directly from high school to college or from college to one’s pursuit of a career. I benefited enormously from my time in the military, and while I rejoice that our nation of late has not been engaged in a war large enough to reactivate the draft, I really regret that my children did not have the benefit of several years—either after or before college—to serve in the military or in some other form of public service. It can be a highly valuable learning experience.

CHAPTER SIX

The Beginning II

AFTER my two years in the Air Force, the time had come for getting on with the business of earning a living in the private sector. Late in my Tuck School studies, before I went off to the service, several companies had written me, inquiring whether I would be interested in being interviewed by them with regard to a possible job opening. I had saved those letters, and before leaving the Air Force, I wrote to several of the companies, including Pfizer, the Lever Corporation, Gulf Oil (from which I had received a scholarship in my second year at Tuck School), and Champion Paper. One result was that I learned that although Champion had in all its history employed only one business school graduate (Andrew C. Sigler, Dartmouth 1953, Tuck ’56), it was now ready to hire another M.B.A., as an assistant to its chief executive officer.

Champion’s CEO was, I discovered, Reuben B. Robertson Jr., then serving at the Pentagon as deputy secretary of defense, but scheduled to return to the company in six months’ time. I told the company that I was intrigued by Champion and by the possibility of working with Mr. Robertson. I also said that I wanted to make an effort, early on, to learn and totally understand any business I joined and that, to this end, I would like to spend some time in the mills. What I suggested was well received. As it turned out, however, owing to Reuben Robertson Jr.’s delay in returning to Champion, I worked primarily instead as an assistant to Karl R. Bendetsen, who ultimately succeeded Robertson as CEO and who had also held important positions at the Pentagon, first, as assistant secretary and, then, undersecretary of the Army.

Champion Paper’s corporate headquarters was located in Hamilton, Ohio, where Judy and I and the kids moved in 1958 and purchased there our first house. But we were just getting settled in when it was necessary for me to leave, on the first of my two-month stints in each of the company’s two distant paper mills. (The third mill was located adjacent to the corporate headquarters, in Hamilton.)

Rotten eggs. That smell almost knocked me off my feet when I arrived at the Champion mill in Canton, North Carolina. However, taking as deep a breath as I could, I marched into the big old metal building that was to be my workplace for the next two months. Papermaking, like sausage-making, is a process that’s best not personally experienced. The matter of turning big logs into flat, white paper is one that involves a lot of chemicals, and the resulting odors—particularly the spoiled-eggs smell of sulfur—can be, when first encountered, quite overpowering. But I soon learned that the people along the Great Smokies, up where they cut much of the Canton mills logs, liked catching that smell on the morning breeze. “That smell’s like roses,” they would say. “If we don’t smell it, the mill’s not running, and we’re not making any money.”

During my two months in that spacious mill, I really grew fond of the mountain people who made paper out of wood chips. I also acquired a taste for one of the staples of the region, homemade whiskey—or “white lightning,” as they called it. (Back then, nobody seemed concerned that many of the workers carried flasks in their hip pockets while on the job, and took a sip from time to time.) And I was greatly pleased to find that within a few weeks after my arrival, the plant’s workers came to accept this young man from management as a friend, not a threat. Moreover, on occasion they took pride in offering me samples of the stuff they made in their mountain stills. Though it varied in quality, from maker to maker, much of it was actually pretty smooth, not at all the throat-burning stuff that I had always heard came down out of those hills in bootleggers’ automobiles, headed for big-city saloons.

I was up every morning before dawn, wearing a hard hat and work clothes, and I reached the mill by five-thirty, in time for the night-shift change. The workers taught me every aspect of the papermaking process—delivery of the big logs; chipping the wood; immersion of the chips in a foul-smelling chemical compound called “slurry.” The end product was a middle-grade uncoated paper used in notebooks, ledgers, and the like. I soon forgot all about the smell. And the managers soon began giving me an earful concerning what was wrong with operations there at the plant. I thus found myself acting as positive liaison between the mill and the CEO back in Hamilton. It worked well, and I loved my two months in Canton, learning the value of listening in that context, and being an honest broker of ideas.

Next, I was off to Pasadena, Texas, and the Champion mill near Houston, along Ship Channel, which connects the city with the Gulf of Mexico. My two months at Pasadena were less pleasant than my time in Canton. South Texas was hot and humid, the mill bordered what was a decidedly dirty waterway, and the factory was both smoky and smelly. I rented a small apartment, where Judy came down and visited me once—on which occasion we both came down with the flu, and I was too ill to drive her to the airport for her flight back to Ohio. It was, all in all, a tough two months, and the plant workers at Pasadena were a rough bunch, veteran laborers committed to their union. While I have always believed that good unions make a business better, these people were suspicious of anybody from management who showed up on the factory floor. Still, with the passage of a little time, they became used to me and my early hours, and they began to instruct me on how the factory operated.

The Pasadena plant was not quite so large as the Canton mill, but it was more complex, since it produced a high grade of coated paper. While I was there, Karl Bendetsen, the new CEO, came down from Hamilton to review the plant’s operation with me, and I liked him immensely. At the end of two months, I left Texas and went back to Hamilton, to spend two months in the Champion mill there. At Hamilton, I had an office next to Karl’s, who quickly became a mentor to me. Perhaps seeing in me the son he never had, he began including Judy and me in his family and social functions.

Early on, I was given another valuable learning opportunity. Champion had asked the soon-to-be-legendary Peter F. Drucker, the father of all management consultants, to take a hard look at the company’s operations and to make recommendations. Bendetsen temporarily made me Drucker’s assistant, and we toured the three mills together, as he made a thorough survey of the firm’s business and production practices. It was fascinating to watch Drucker build his analysis, and he produced a strategic plan for Champion that was revolutionary for the industry.

Contrary to what some believe, it can be decidedly beneficial to have an independent observer provide new perspectives on corporate or institutional operations and strategy. For those who have made a career within an enterprise, such a process can be a threatening event, but dramatic positive change often comes from external stimulus—which is as true within academia as it is in industry.

One of Drucker’s primary recommendations was that the company diversify beyond making paper, which is a capital-intensive business, and integrate forward to the market. Champion responded by affecting a merger with U.S. Plywood, changing its name to Champion/U.S. Plywood and establishing corporate headquarters in New York City. By that time, I had decided I needed to have a try at running an operation, and Karl agreed. Consequently, I was named president of a small Champion subsidiary, Shield-Ware Incorporated. And now the McLaughlins were on the move once again, this time to Rockford, Illinois, northwest of Chicago.

During the Hamilton years, the McLaughlin family grew to three children. Another daughter, Susan, was born, who got off to a difficult start, having come into the world with feet that were turned inward. A doctor prescribed special therapeutic shoes, connected by a bar, which she wore while sleeping, and this courageous child took it well. She grew up to be a fine athlete; and although I could scarcely have dreamed of it in her early years that such would be possible at my historically all-male alma mater, Susan, in due course, graduated from Dartmouth—and as captain of the college’s first women’s hockey team. Our fourth child, a boy, arrived in 1962, while we were living in Rockford. Charles Jay McLaughlin—or just Jay, as we called him—was born with pyloric stenosis, but after a tough go, he came through it just fine. And he, too, would graduate from Dartmouth.

Shield-Ware employed one hundred and fifty people to turn out two forms of caps, aluminum-foil and paper, for glass milk bottles. In those days, milk was distributed in reusable glass bottles, with round paper or foil caps for closures. Our manufacturing equipment was highly customized, allowing for the name of the milk producer or seller to be printed on each cap turned out. The plant was unique, the market for its products was vast, and the company was very successful. Everything was going well until Champion decided to add another product to the Shield-Ware line.

About two years into my presidency, the corporate planners identified a process for manufacturing disposable cups out of plastic-foam-impregnated beads, rather than paper. They decided to license the process and established an operation that was then merged into Shield-Ware. We gave it our best effort. The idea for styrofoam cups was a good one, but we continually encountered technical problems with the manufacturing process. When we started shipping the cups, they started streaming back from the distributors, labeled as faulty merchandise.

I do not know that I have ever endured a more frustrating experience than trying, without an engineering background, to get the flaws out of that particular manufacturing process. In this, my first line-management assignment, I learned the hard way some of the limitations of leadership. Our system never was made to work consistently, and, meanwhile, competition was growing, as more and more companies found a way around the patent under which we had a license. Finally, sobered and discouraged, I went to Karl and said that enough was enough; that we should get out of the business. We did, and negotiated the sale of the styrofoam-cup enterprise to the holder of the patent.

Throughout those early business years, Dartmouth College was always on my mind. John Dickey once said that the spirit of Dartmouth “walks abroad,” and whether in the cockpit of a jet fighter, the boiler room of a paper mill, or behind the desk of a corporate office, always since I had left the Hanover Plain, the lessons of the college had been with me. The place had a lock on me, and while at Champion, I began making what I called “annual pilgrimages.” I would fly to Boston and drive northward from there to Hanover, becoming ever more excited as the New Hampshire hills rose higher. As I proceeded, big Mount Kearsage would come into view, followed by vistas of the long granite ridges of Grantham and Croydon Mountains, until at last I wheeled into Hanover itself and saw the familiar sight of Baker Library’s tower, which I had first encountered back in 1950 as an incoming freshman.

I made an effort to return each fall, my favorite time in the North Country. First, I’d walk around campus, sort of making sure that everything still looked as I thought it should. I always went to Alumni Gymnasium; then, on down to Chase Field, where the football team practiced. I made it a point to renew acquaintance with Coach Blackman, and throughout my perambulation of the rest of the campus, I usually met other familiar faces and exchanged greetings. During one such visit, I had a chance encounter on the campus with John Dickey and was promptly invited to join him on a tour of the new arts center, which was then under final construction, along the south side of the green, beside the Hanover Inn. He also indicated that another person would be joining us. As we walked along toward the center, John excitedly talked about what it would contain: a concert hall, theaters, art galleries, meeting rooms, studios, workshops, and more. When we reached the center’s entrance, the other member of the intended inspection tour, awaiting us there, turned out to be Ernest Martin Hopkins—“Hoppy,” as everyone called him—Dartmouth’s eleventh president, John Dickey’s predecessor in office.

The new arts facility was, in fact, to be named in honor of President Hopkins and be known ever after as the Hopkins Center—or just “The Hop.” The place was at this point, as I say, very near completion, and John was most eager that we see it quite comprehensively. One might have thought Mr. Hopkins would, on such an occasion, have been most enthusiastic about what he was seeing, but he seemed barely interested and, at one point, confided to me that he was not necessarily all that keen about the arts. “But if it’s what John wants,” he whispered, “it’s okay with me.” John gave us a complete tour and seemed particularly pleased to tell us that the architect had incorporated a provision for all the students’ mailboxes to be within the building, so that undergraduates would be exposed to the arts every day while picking up their mail. (The architect, incidentally, was Wallace Harrison, who later incorporated many Hopkins Center features into his Lincoln Center in New York City.)

At the conclusion of our tour, Mr. Hopkins and I were invited to join the Dickeys for an informal dinner that evening at the President’s House. On our arrival, we were welcomed by John and his wife, Chris, and their ever-present yellow Labrador dog, Rusty. We dined in the kitchen, as was the Dickeys’ custom, and I distinctly recall one bit of the conversation. At a point when Mrs. Dickey had left the room, and while I, the college’s future fourteenth president, listened, the college’s eleventh president, Mr. Hopkins, said to the twelfth president: “I have been looking at my assigned plot in the college cemetery, and the students have been dumping trash around and on the site. I have decided that I want to be buried in that new cemetery on the West Lebanon road. John, we have always been good friends. Would you not like to spend eternity with me?” Displaying a somewhat bemused look, but without hesitation, John said he thought that was a fine idea. And so today, a visitor to the Pine Knoll Cemetery, south of the village, will find the Hopkins and Dickey burial plots side by side.

My Dartmouth visits became more frequent in 1968, after President Dickey invited me to become a member of the Tuck School’s board of overseers. That appointment alone brought me to campus twice a year, and during one of my first meetings at Tuck, I was introduced to a board member of the college’s Thayer School of Engineering, David M. Lilly David was a 1939 graduate of Dartmouth, and we got to know each other rather well during subsequent discussions between the Tuck and Thayer boards about ways the two schools could work more closely in the education of their graduate students. David, I learned, was chairman of the board of a company named Toro, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota—a circumstance that was soon to have an unexpected relevance to me.

As the 1960s ended, my years at Champion, too, were fast coming to a close. From heading Champion’s Shield-Ware subsidiary, I had gone on to the presidency of Champion Packaging, located in Chicago, and our family had moved to Winnetka. Now, the company had asked that I take a job at its new corporate headquarters in New York City. That presented a twofold problem for me, because I had no desire to live in New York, and I preferred to run my own operation, rather than be a staff person at a huge corporate complex. (“If you’re not the lead dog, you get snow in your face,” somebody once told me, and I have long thought it to be a valid observation and one conveying good counsel.) Fortunately, at just this time, David Lilly telephoned me from Minneapolis with the news that Toro was seeking a new president. Might I, he inquired, be interested in the position? I immediately said that I might very well be, and a meeting was arranged.

It is often the case that involvement with non-profit enterprises can lead to an expanded horizon of opportunities for personal and professional development, and such was certainly the case here. Toro soon made me an offer, and in 1970 I went to Minneapolis to become president of a growing company, one with a solid balance sheet, a wonderful brand name, and an aggressive board of directors. It looked like the perfect opportunity. So, the McLaughlins moved again, this time to Minnesota. For the next eight years Toro thrived, with snow products leading sales. When I went there, Toro’s annual sales totaled one hundred fifteen million dollars. During my presidency that figure rose to three hundred fifty million, and by the late seventies, Toro controlled seventy percent of the snow-blowing market.

The Toro years were good ones for the McLaughlins. I loved my work, and Judy was happy at home with the four kids. Though we had enjoyed Winnetka and the Chicago area and were sorry to leave our friends there, we came to love the Minneapolis area even more, especially our home in the beautiful suburb of Long Lake. We purchased a spacious, comfortable house, set on ten hilltop acres that overlooked the lake. I mowed the large lawn with a Toro mower, of course, and I tested quite a few of the company’s products there, including a revolutionary new lawn-irrigation system. We renovated a stable on the property, for the horse we bought daughter Susan when she developed an interest in riding. Judy and I joined the Woodhill Country Club, where the family passed many happy hours, and where I played tennis, not having then either the time or the patience to take up golf.

Every corporate leader in Minnesota’s “Twin Cities” of Minneapolis and St. Paul was expected to contribute time to institutions that improved the overall community’s quality of life, and I was no exception. I became chairman of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, which oversaw a world-class children’s theater. (For that service and other civic endeavors, I was highly gratified when I was presented the Harvard Business School Leadership Award.)

Judy loved our life in and around Minneapolis, and my business life was equally fulfilling, including, as it did, having joined a number of corporate boards. As our children grew, they developed very distinct personalities. The oldest, Bill, a serious young man, was a good student and a gifted athlete, although at that time he had little interest in organized sports. Wendy, an independent soul who seemed to take pride in her individuality, as she grew older never lost her motivation. She became a devoted mother and has created a supportive environment for her family. Susan, who, as I have indicated, overcame those slightly crippled feet of hers, to become a star athlete, in addition to being a good student, was ever a caring person—never encountering a pet store where she did not eventually want to take a new “friend” home. The youngest, Jay, in his early years had a way of being unable to avoid trouble. He was a loveable, likeable guy, but had a challenging time growing up. “Where is he tonight?” Judy and I would too often have occasion to ask each other. (One morning, I found him in bed and sound asleep, but I could not locate the car. I finally came upon it, down at the end of our long driveway, with its motor running. I never did figure that one out.) But, predictably, he grew up and, unpredictably, became a religion major at Dartmouth; then, an attorney; and now, he manages our family business. Miracles never cease!

The McLaughlin family went on skiing vacations to the Rocky Mountains, and sometimes in summer we would return there, to hike and fly fish for trout. We enjoyed wonderful times.

Both Bill and I loved to fish, as well as to canoe. On one occasion, Bill, Judy, and I made a five-day expedition to the boundary waters of southern Canada, north of Minnesota, a wilderness containing thousands upon thousands of lakes. Bill mapped our routes and planned and purchased supplies. We were out for a week, paddling from lake to lake, portaging when we had to. Each evening, we cooked fresh walleye in a skillet, over a blazing fire on the shore of some shimmering body of water, no other human being within sight or sound. Loons laughed, coyotes yelped, or sometimes just the great silence of the north prevailed. The stars seemed to be out by the millions as we talked until the long days’ exertions called us to our sleeping bags, to be fresh for resuming our journeys in the fog and biting clean air of a backcountry morning. Those times were precious and unforgettable.

Back in Minneapolis, despite the fact that the business of Toro was thriving, a bit of uncomfortable tension at one point developed between its president and Board Chairman David Lilly. It happened as the result of a phone call I received in 1971 from Charles Zimmerman, chairman of the Dartmouth board of trustees, inviting me to accept election as trustee of the college. The call was totally unexpected, yet I knew immediately that it was something I wanted to do. However, I had to tell Charlie that before I could give him an answer, I would have to talk to David Lilly. I did so the next day, and it turned out that he had some strong reservations.

David told me that to be asked to join the Dartmouth board had long been a hope of his. Should I accept the invitation I had just received, it would, he said, create what could only be a “mutually exclusive” circumstance or situation, eliminating any possibility that he might ever have of becoming a trustee himself. He quite correctly reasoned that Dartmouth was not about to name two Minneapolis men from the same company to its board. I replied, “Given the difference in our age, you cannot be sure that you will ever be elected a trustee, even if I’m not.” He said, “If you are, I won’t be.” Was he telling me, I asked him, that I was not to accept Dartmouth’s offer? To his credit, he said no, that he was not, and thereafter he, indeed, became supportive.

My rather awkward consultation with David Lilly behind me, I telephoned Charlie Zimmerman the next day and told him I would be honored to accept his invitation, which had been extended on behalf of the board. As with all things relating to Dartmouth, it would really have been very difficult for me—perhaps almost impossible—to decline. My relationship with Dartmouth had amounted to a long love affair, and I considered it a huge honor and privilege to be asked to serve on its board. When it comes to Dartmouth, perhaps I do not have much, if any, objectivity. But I must in candor say that my joining its board of trustees began one of the most difficult periods in my professional life—even worse than the styrofoam-cups episode.

I spent nearly ten more years at Toro, and during that interval, my obligations to the company and to Dartmouth came into growing conflict, particularly during 1979 and 1980, when I chaired the college’s board and was increasingly mentioned as a successor to President John G. Kemeny. As it happened, demands from both sources escalated at a time when, within the unpredictability of weather conditions, snow stopped falling on the East and Midwest, with disastrous consequences on Toro’s profitability. Quite understandably, David Lilly and the Toro board would become anxious about the situation and my continued involvement in outside activities.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Knowing When to Leave

ONE bright fall morning in the early seventies, John Dickey and I were casting dry flies for trout from the banks of the Dead Diamond River in remote northern New Hampshire. He had landed a couple of fighting rainbows, and perhaps I had caught one, when some motion in the trees caught my eye and, to my surprise, I saw a small bear above me in the branches. John was about fifty yards downstream when I hollered, “There’s a bear cub up there.” John looked toward me, scanned the far bank of the river, and then yelled, “Get the hell out of here.” He’d seen a full-grown bear, and after we had scrambled upstream, he said, “You never get between a mother and her cub.” John Dickey knew the ways of the out-of-doors well, even as he knew well the ways of the academy. And with reference to the latter sphere, I might mention that I myself later learned that, as a college president, you also never get between the faculty and the trustees on an issue in which the faculty has a vested interest. But that’s another story.

During the early years of our association, John Sloan Dickey seemed to me larger than life, and to many sons of Dartmouth he very much was Dartmouth College. He was the college’s president for a quarter-century, and I should talk about him here, before going on with things pertaining to David McLaughlin. To understand the Dartmouth that I entered as a freshman, which so quickly grew in major importance in my life, it is necessary to know more about the remarkable man who led and shaped the college from 1945 to 1970.

Not only was John Dickey a mentor of mine, he was my great friend. That tall, distinguished-looking, soft-spoken, brilliant gentleman, with bright kindly eyes and a hearty sense of humor, was probably the most influential person in all my life. Before being selected Dartmouth’s president, he had had no experience in academic administration. Following his graduation from Dartmouth (Class of 1929) and the Harvard Law School, he had entered practice with one of Boston’s principal law firms. Then, in the nineteen thirties, he began a period of U.S. State Department service that included assignments of direct relationship to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. He was, indeed, among that remarkable assemblage of gifted men, under Franklin Roosevelt, who ran the United States government during the Second World War.

Although the nature of learning was paramount in John’s interests, in the best traditions of the college he was an outdoorsman and a sports enthusiast. He loved to crouch in a duck blind on Vermont’s Lake Champlain, shotgun in hand and Labrador retriever at his feet, awaiting a fall morning’s first flight of ducks. As often as possible, he traveled to the twenty-seven-thousand woodland acres of the Dartmouth Grant, in northernmost New Hampshire, to cast for native trout. He was a fixture in the press box during Dartmouth football games and on the practice field watching the team prepare for another season or for the next Saturday’s opponent.

He welcomed each Dartmouth student to campus, kept his office door open to their visits, and bade them a personal farewell upon their graduation. He seemed, quite literally, to be everywhere that the life of Dartmouth was taking place. My successor in the Dartmouth presidency, James O. Freedman, once described John Dickey very well. He declared: “John Sloan Dickey embodied Dartmouth’s institutional purpose, its culture, its history, its spirit. He was a model of integrity and contagious confidence, a pillar of reason, an exemplar of civility and generosity of spirit. Whether in a woodsman’s shirt or a three-piece suit, President Dickey was always himself, always the vigorous intellectual. He gave this College his unconditional love, and he was repaid in kind by generations of Dartmouth students and alumni.”

John took great pride in and labored mightily on his speeches, which always included a major address in the autumn at the annual convocation exercises opening a new college year and, then, his valedictory to the graduating class at each June’s commencement ceremony. As those events approached, he would seclude himself at his camp at Swanton, far up in northwest Vermont, to refine and organize his thoughts and to craft his words. As an example of the nature of his oratorical prose, I might here cite just a paragraph from his convocation address in the autumn of 1954, when I was starting my final year at the business school. In it, he deals with a semantic distinction of his own contrivance, in which he took, I am sure, both pride and delight:

“In a free land the never-ending frontier of freedoms forward thrust is each man’s mind. I suggest to you, and I avow for myself, that in our American society it behooves institutions of the liberal learning to take a dynamic view of their mission. Ours is the task to free, as well as to nourish, men’s minds. This is why, as I have sought to understand the nature of Dartmouth’s obligation to human society, I have come increasingly to think of our commitment of purpose as being to the liberating arts, rather than just the liberal arts. It is the active, liberating quality of these arts, I believe, that makes them the best bet for Dartmouth’s purposes.”

I must admit that some members of the Dartmouth community found the president a tad wordy, but I learned that if one paid close attention, the effort was well rewarded. I still vividly recall, too, the manner of his delivery of addresses to the student body: emphatic; carefully enunciated; brisk, if not rapid-fire, in pace; often accompanied by gestures to drive home his points. And I was always moved by the words with which he invariably closed his convocation addresses: “And now, men of Dartmouth, as I have said on this occasion before, as members of the College you have three different, but closely intertwined, roles to play: First, you are citizens of a community and are expected to act as such. Second, you are the stuff of an institution, and what you are it will be. Thirdly, your business here is learning, and that is up to you. We’ll be with you all the way—and good luck.” Similarly, the closing of his commencement texts, directed at the graduating seniors, was also always the same: “And now the word is ‘so long,’ because in the Dartmouth fellowship there is no parting.”

When John Dickey assumed the presidency of the college, less than a month after Japan’s surrender ended World War II, he was just thirty-seven years old. The challenge must have been a daunting one for so young a man, and although he became chief executive of an institution with a long and worthy history, the college’s future was then very much a blank page. However, these circumstances also gave him a singular opportunity to restructure and, even, to redefine Dartmouth—an opportunity to chart its future without having substantially to undo existing structures. Only those who have had to deal with the inertia of established constituencies will appreciate how fortunate the environment of the college was for opportunities of change when John Dickey assumed its presidency.

Over the years, Dartmouth’s teaching corps had aged to the point where, in 1945, four-fifths of its members were of senior classification. In that immediate post-war interval, the new president promptly set about rebuilding the faculty. He brought in highly regarded younger teachers, as well as gave priority to increasing salaries and benefits. (Years later, John confided to me that the faculty rebuilding had, in fact, proved to be something of a double-edged sword. He knew that it was essential to the future of the college, but he had found that new faculty members—particularly in the sciences—could be more committed to their individual fields of expertise than to the institution. Often, he said, newcomers were far more interested in their research than in teaching. Clearly, any diminishment of institutional commitment was a painful thing for him to witness.) He also early on determined to upgrade the student body. While in the beginning years of his incumbency men returning from wartime service had available to them support under provisions of the “G.I. Bill of Rights,” this was, of course, a finite proposition. Accordingly, and to enhance in general the extent of financial aid for students, he began raising money to create a substantial pool of funds for scholarships—for provisions such as the Whittemore scholarship, of which I was a beneficiary.

Two years into his administration, John Dickey founded the Great Issues Course, which for me was, indeed, the hallmark of his presidency. Relying in part on the vast number and variety of friendships and personal contacts that he had made over the years, he enticed scores of prominent national and international figures to visit the campus to talk to and discuss with students the important matters confronting American society and the world. The course went on year after year, with all Dartmouth seniors required to attend its session—so that they possessed on the eve of their graduation from college the benefit of what he styled a “common intellectual experience.” The dignitaries included some I’ve already mentioned, such as Robert Frost and Thurgood Marshall, but also William O. Douglas, Dean Acheson, Archibald McLeish, Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, George F. Kennan, and many, many more. At one point, the course came under fire from the Chicago Tribune and other major conservative American newspapers for being too liberal. But Dickey’s support and leadership never wavered.

If his Great Issues Course represented a new means of utilizing the lecture hall to broaden awarenesses and sharpen evaluative approaches on the part of the students, John Dickey also came to recognize the growing importance and ongoing potential of technology as a factor influencing the lives of young men. He brought to Dartmouth two young mathematics whizzes, both of them experts in the academic application of computing: John G. Kemeny, to chair the mathematics department, and his colleague Thomas E. Kurtz. He encouraged them to move ahead with their ingenious timesharing computer initiative, which involved development of the pioneering computer language called “BASIC” and gave virtually all Dartmouth students the opportunity to obtain hands-on computing experience through a centralized facility. Soon, other campuses were seeking advice from Dartmouth for the creation of similar programs.

Drawing on his firm religious upbringing in Pennsylvania Dutch country, President Dickey also looked to the spiritual needs of the campus and created the Tucker Foundation, named for the last ordained minister to serve as Dartmouth’s president, a major figure in the college’s history, William Jewett Tucker. Among other initiatives, the foundation developed an impressive series of programs in which students helped the disadvantaged and underprivileged in the New England region.

Under Dickey leadership, Dartmouth strengthened its medical education, undertaking what amounted to a “refounding” of the medical school, the nation’s fourth oldest. The college also established doctoral programs within the sciences. But John Dickey never wavered in his belief that Dartmouth, at its core, should be an undergraduate college, not a university. Thus, while serving on and ultimately chairing the Tuck School board of overseers, I found myself at odds with him when he resisted efforts to upgrade the business and engineering schools as independent entities committed to achieving the same degree of excellence as obtained within the undergraduate program. (Tuck School, its origins reaching back to 1900, is the nation’s oldest graduate school of business administration. The Thayer School of Engineering, founded by Sylvanus Thayer—Dartmouth 1807 and known as the “Father of West Point”—dates from 1871.) However, the president was adamant that Dartmouth’s focus should be on the undergraduate and, by extension, that the graduate programs should be subordinated to this purpose. It is one of the few areas in which he and I differed strongly.

His biographer wrote that during the Dickey presidency, “Dedication ceremonies had become almost a way of life for Dartmouth, as its building boom went on.” New facilities included a huge new field house, research buildings for the medical school, the Kiewit Computation Center, a reconstructed basketball court in Alumni Gymnasium, and more. (Interestingly, the buildings rose without the support of capital campaigns to finance them. As the need for each facility was seen, individual alumni were solicited for donations, and they came through—not a bad fund-raising strategy.)

John’s crowning achievement in physical-plant construction was undoubtedly the Hopkins Center. For years, the college had recognized the great need for a new theater-auditorium facility to replace small and inadequate Robinson and Webster Halls. The new center’s architectural design was reflective of the president’s own vision and his determination to have brought forth a decidedly modernistic structure—but one which would, when completed, somehow fit splendidly between the old Hanover Inn and Victorian, turreted Wilson Hall. And, suddenly, Dartmouth had the finest arts center in northern New England.

At the time of his death, in 1991, The New York Times summed up the Dickey presidency thus:

“Under Mr. Dickey . . . the faculty and graduate schools were greatly strengthened, the student body was diversified with more minority students and a Great Issues course was required for all seniors to underscore the responsibility of free citizens in a nuclear age.

“Twenty buildings were added, with a centerpiece of four spacious, interconnected structures designed as a cultural and social crossroads for the rolling 75-acre campus. The endowment increased to $114 million, from $22 million.”

John Dickey had a truly remarkable presidency. In truth, however, I believe that—from his standpoint—he stayed too long. About twenty-three years into his tenure, John told the trustees he was of a mind to step down. But the board pressed him to remain on through to the time of the college’s bicentennial, which was to be celebrated during the 1969–70 academic year. By then, ironically, the great internationalist would be confronted by a vast and thorny international issue—the Vietnam War, the shock waves of which reached colleges all across America, in the form of student protests of various kinds. John Dickey, tired and of another era, did not respond well. He surely could take abundant pride in what, during more than two decades, he had already achieved while (as he himself typically referred to the position) “on the job.” However, the last few years of his incumbency were neither fulfilling nor happy ones for him—or the college.

Until the mid-sixties, Dartmouth had largely been isolated from the student unrest that increasingly disrupted campuses from Berkeley to Harvard, although during that period of time the college did briefly become a center of the civil-rights movement, when students from throughout the nation met in Hanover to coordinate their anti-segregation activities, and several Dartmouth students were subsequently arrested during voter-registration drives in the South. As the Vietnam War intensified, the attention of the growing number of student and faculty activists in Hanover was focused less on civil rights and more on the military establishment. An effort commenced, which was manifested during 1966 and 1967, to convince the board of trustees to ban ROTC from the campus. Despite campus protests and a brief sit-in in the president’s office, John Dickey’s support for ROTC never wavered. He believed the program was an important part of the nation’s defense efforts, and that Dartmouth was committed to fulfilling its government contracts to host its officer-training programs.

Periodically during this interval, there were incidents of student militancy on campus, including a particularly uncivil incident during the May 1967 visit of Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, who had been invited by a student group to speak in Webster Hall. In April of that same year, Columbia University had been shut down for days by a student takeover of its administration buildings. And at that point, President Dickey decided that in the event of a similar occurrence locally, the college would respond promptly and firmly. That academic year ended on the Hanover Plain with a well-attended protest against ROTC and a faculty vote to undertake a committee study of whether a military presence was, in fact, compatible with a Dartmouth education.

Early during the 1968–69 academic year, the last full year of the Dickey presidency, two students were arrested for preventing military recruiters from entering one of the college buildings, McNutt Hall, and in April, the faculty voted to ask that the trustees phase out ROTC programs within three years. In a student referendum, seventy-five percent voted to ask the board to revisit the question of whether the military should be on the campus. And shortly thereafter, another sit-in took place in the administration building, with the participants demanding an end to ROTC by May twelfth. At this same time, the faculty voted to abolish ROTC “as soon as possible,” but no later than June 1973—to which militant students reacted furiously, wanting ROTC out immediately.

Sensing that a major crisis was building, and seeing himself increasingly at odds with both the student body and faculty, President Dickey informed the trustees that, come what might, he intended to see that the rule of law held sway on campus. He also told students that their student status would not exempt them from legal penalties, should they break any laws. Meantime, the president tried to maintain a dialogue with even the most radical of student leaders, as his office door remained open to all. He also supported a joint student/faculty effort to adopt a college policy of “freedom of expression and dissent.”

As I have said, John Dickey had an unshakable faith that students would make the right decisions if given responsibility. However, in the spring of that last full school year of his presidency, that faith received a severe jolt. Contrary to assurances given him by the student leaders with whom he had been meeting to resolve issues through a civil dialogue, on the afternoon of May sixth, about seventy-five students and at least two faculty members entered Parkhurst Hall to protest ROTC. They promptly ordered all college employees to leave the building. President Dickey went voluntarily, although in so doing he briskly told one student, “Get out of my way.”

Having prepared for the eventuality of an unlawful seizure of a Dartmouth facility, the college was ready with a plan for immediate implementation. A court injunction was promptly sought and granted, and not long after sunset that day, a sheriff using a bullhorn told the student occupiers that they had until 10:45 p.m. to vacate Parkhurst. Only a few complied with the eviction order. Past midnight, New Hampshire Governor Walter R. Peterson Jr. arrived in nearby Lebanon to address New Hampshire National Guardsmen who had been assembled there in riot gear, preparatory to a forcible eviction of the students. Peterson, a Dartmouth graduate and trustee, urged the troopers to exercise careful restraint. Then, at 3:00 a.m., buses filled with troopers wheeled up in front of Parkhurst Hall.

The authorities moved quickly, forcing open the oak doors and hustling the students onto the buses, sometimes not too gently. Some in the crowd of about seven hundred and fifty people cheered the guardsmen, others shouted support for the students. One newspaper called it “Dartmouth’s longest night,” and perhaps it was. However, two weeks after the occupation, the executive committee of the board of trustees, to the disappointment and dismay of many alumni, voted to end ROTC at Dartmouth by June of 1973.

One fall day after John Dickey had left the presidency, I visited my old friend at his home, off the Lyme Road, just north of the campus. This was at the time that I had been asked to become a trustee, and I very much wanted the benefit of any counsel he might be disposed to give me on the role and functioning of the board. We conversed for a time, sitting on his deck. As usual, he drank Jack Daniel’s sour-mash whiskey, and I drank scotch. We talked during the course of that evening about many things, including the Parkhurst invasion, which he declared to have been one of the great disappointments of his time in office. He said he had believed that he had reached an accord with the student leaders, to the effect that any protests against ROTC would take place in accordance with the then-in-place academic governance system. And they had agreed, he thought, that in whatever might develop, no laws would be broken. But the students’ resistance to civil authority was, of course, a violation of the law, and because they had acted thus, John said that he felt that he had been betrayed.

At the time of all that turmoil during the spring of 1969, I had thought that I might go to Hanover in order to try to help John engage the issues involved. But I had always believed him to be so very competent, so self-sufficient, that I concluded he, in fact, really did not need anyone’s assistance. However, sitting with him on that evening in 1971, I knew better—and I realized, too, that a college presidency can be a very lonely post indeed. I shall refrain from identifying the student leaders who were involved back in 1969—some of whom went on to assume positions of responsibility in government and industry—but it must be acknowledged that they actually did betray a trust accorded them by the president of their college.

One fact that had become particularly clear to me as the Dickey presidency waned was that the faculty had gained an increasingly powerful role in governing Dartmouth College. Most of the Dickey years had seen the president and his fellow trustees function as the primary institutional authority. Looking back, had the trustees allowed John to retire in 1967, as he had wished to do, his parting would have been under decidedly happier circumstances—and likely would have resulted in a very different choice of the person to be his successor.

The Dartmouth community as a whole had known since the previous September that John Dickey would soon step down, he having at the 1968 convocation said he would depart during the bicentennial year, 1969–70. A month after the students’ Parkhurst Hall takeover, he welcomed at commencement, with honorary degrees bestowed upon both, the Earl and Countess of Dartmouth, thereby inaugurating the college’s two-hundredth-anniversary observance. On that occasion, he ended his address to the senior class with a slight variation of the customary close of his valedictory message: “And now, as I prepare shortly to follow you, I bid you join me in leaving our frustrations behind, to discover that in the Dartmouth fellowship there need be no parting.”

In beginning the new school year in the fall, President Dickey chose “The Transcending Great Issues” as the subject for his convocation talk. He sounded an optimistic note, stating: “. . . Dartmouth’s founding mission to the educationally disadvantaged of this land may come closer to fulfillment than ever before—closer, even, than in the heyday of Eleazar’s hopes for his great design. Americans of every circumstance and color are today represented in the community of the College, as never before.” And he went on to say, near the talk’s conclusion: “From 1946 on, for a score of postwar years—long before ‘relevance’ became a cliché of educational philosophy—Dartmouth pioneered an institution-wide effort to make all her contemporary graduates a little more aware that great issues’ are not irrelevant to liberal learning, but are, rather, the ladder on which humans climb to their liberation. That effort was little enough, compared to the endemic unawareness of those days, but in its way and its time it pioneered an approach to today’s relevance.”

During an interview granted shortly before he left office, John discussed his presidency, and, particularly, change at Dartmouth during his tenure. “My greatest satisfaction,” he said, “is the overall vitality and strength of Dartmouth today, and the preservation of the strengths I inherited—and I inherited a lot of them. . . . Today Dartmouth is not a small college, but a relatively small university complex . . . and a growing graduate program in the Arts and Sciences. We have, I think, been able to grow strong in today’s terms without losing the basic qualities I inherited I am proud to have been associated with the building of the Hopkins Center and the realization of an educational concept which brings the creative arts into the center of the community and has made art, music, theater, and the craft arts part of the daily life of everyone here.”

As the Dickey administration entered its final months, the trustees began the search for a new president. One of the candidates was the young professor who had been persuaded to come to the college from Princeton as part of John Dickey’s rebuilding of the faculty, Professor John Kemeny. And as summer became fall in 1969, he emerged as a key contender for the position.

With the passage of time, John Dickey had not related well to the liberal, brilliant mathematician, and the two had tangled in faculty meetings on a variety of issues. Certainly, he did not envision Professor Kemeny as his successor. But events were moving toward turning that possibility into reality. ROTC and the Vietnam War were not the only burning issues on the Dartmouth campus. And throughout the interval when I was myself coming closer to becoming a trustee, the admission of women to Dartmouth was more and more spoken of as a “when,” not an “if.” Moreover, John Kemeny was now a member of a faculty committee that was studying that very question. Also on that committee and serving as its chair, was the provost and dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, Leonard M. Rieser—whom John Kemeny did not fully trust, despite the fact that the two men had much in common. Both were distinguished scientists, both had worked on the Los Alamos atomic-energy project—and both were, indeed, currently under serious consideration by the trustees to be the college’s next president.

Provost Rieser, who, in addition to chairing an existing faculty committee that was studying the questions of coeducation for Dartmouth, also co-chaired with Trustee Dudley W. Orr a study committee on coeducation that had been set up by the board to consider the same question. John Kemeny, too, was a member of the latter group. As the holiday season neared in 1969, Leonard Rieser had been scheduled to give, on behalf of the committee established by the trustees, a progress report to the Alumni Council at the council’s upcoming annual meeting. At the last moment, however, John Kemeny was turned to and asked to give the report instead. With little time for preparation and knowing that many older alumni were vigorously opposed to admitting women, Kemeny (suspecting Provost Rieser’s motives in not himself undertaking the assignment) told his wife, Jean, that acceptance of this invitation probably effectively served to doom his Dartmouth presidential prospects.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Knowing When to Arrive

JOHN G. Kemeny arrived in the United States in 1940, thirteen years old and unable to speak English. Thirty years later, he became president of Dartmouth College. He was born in Budapest, and with his father and mother escaped from Europe just in time—a grandfather, an aunt, and an uncle who refused to leave died in the Nazi Holocaust. While still barely fluent in English, he entered George Washington High School in the Bronx borough of New York City as a sophomore. Two years later, he graduated first in his class of one thousand. He was admitted to Princeton, where he immediately distinguished himself in mathematics. And when his college education was interrupted for military service during World War II, he was assigned as a mathematician to the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bomb.

After graduation from Princeton, again at the top of his class, he went on to obtain a doctorate in mathematics there. While doing so, he became, at age twenty-two, a research assistant to Albert Einstein at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies. (Asked why Einstein, of all people, needed the help of a mathematician, John explained, “Einstein wasn’t very good at math.”) Proficient in other academic disciplines besides mathematics, he began his teaching career at Princeton with appointments in both the mathematics and philosophy departments. His acceptance in 1953 of Dartmouth’s invitation to join its mathematics department and later to become the departmental chairman, was decidedly a major coup for the college, and he subsequently built the department into one of the country’s best.

I first met John Kemeny while I was serving on the Tuck School board of overseers. It was at a crowded reception, and I remember that he seemed preoccupied and not terribly at ease. In time, I came to realize that he was not at all good at small talk or much inclined to enter into it. He was essentially a very private person. And he never lost his Hungarian accent. I got to know him pretty well over the years, and I liked him, although we were never personally close.

A pale, non-athletic chain-smoker, he was not at all an outdoorsman, and once, when I heard him asked what his idea of roughing it was, he replied, “a motel room with a shower.” Indeed, he was almost an exact opposite of what many men of Dartmouth thought themselves to be. Yet, if he didn’t fit the stereotypical Dartmouth image, John became one of Dartmouth’s finest presidents, and he developed an abiding love of the college—because of the life of ideas there; ideas he could exercise without restraint and could share with very bright students and colleagues.

A gifted teacher who took delight both in his classroom work and in instructing students one-on-one, John quickly became a prominent member of the faculty, enthusiastically, as well as forcefully, involved in campus issues. As I have indicated earlier, over a period of time, he and John Dickey were not infrequently at odds regarding matters of college policy and practice—something never more emphatically so than with respect to their diametrically opposite positions on the issue of coeducation for Dartmouth. However that may be, after President Dickey announced in 1968 his intention to retire and a search group was formed to help the board of trustees to choose a successor, it was readily accepted on campus that Professor Kemeny would surely be among those to come under consideration by the committee.

Despite the fact that the college had had, back-to-back, for well over half a century, eminently successful administrations presided over by non-academicians—that of Mr. Hopkins from 1916 to 1945 and John Dickey’s from 1945 onward—clearly, now there would be, reflective of both national and local attitudes, a change of approach. The search committee, in moving forward, focused primarily on individuals from the academic world. And, ultimately, the choice came down to three men, two of whom were members of the Dartmouth faculty: John Kemeny and Leonard Rieser. Also classified as a finalist was Richard W. Lyman, Stanford University’s provost. In fact, word had it that Lyman was the leading contender. However, he removed himself from further consideration when news of his candidacy was leaked to the media. Some claimed that the leak was intended to embarrass Lyman and force the selection of either Kemeny or Rieser. If true, the strategy was successful. At any rate, the trustees quickly chose John Kemeny.

Too often, presidential succession is determined by a reaction to the personality or management style of the incumbent president, in order to find a successor with other or, even, opposite leadership traits. In those situations, the search becomes a reactive process, rather than a proactive one based on a thoughtful analysis of the future needs, opportunities, and challenges confronting the institution. This was the case when Kemeny succeeded Dickey, when I succeeded Kemeny, and when James O. Freedman succeeded me. A more careful, deliberate search process would match the institution’s future needs, opportunities, and challenges with the abilities of the next president to deal with them. Time and again, however, college and university trustees enter the search process without having defined the strategic requirements and objectives of the institution and the type of leader needed to achieve them. When campus constituencies dominate the search process, rather than having it directed centrally by the trustees, the outcome will reflect this, often with the result that the new president has a mandate from the faculty, instead of the board—or, in fact, has no mandate at all.

John Kemeny’s selection was, as I say, a product of the era in which it occurred. Locally, there was pressure from certain quarters for greater faculty authority in the governance of the institution, and there appeared, in general, to exist on campus a growing climate of liberalism, which caused some faculty to chafe and/or rebel at what seemed to them to be John Dickey’s growing conservatism, manifested in resistance to change during his final years in office. (I must admit that I shared, to some extent, in that concern.) Beyond this, things were markedly different outside Dartmouth, too. Within the country as a whole, women and racial minorities were assuming greater roles in the leadership of all institutions; social and environmental issues were commanding a higher national priority; and society was becoming more liberal in its political agenda.

The decision of the trustees, even though involving someone unlikely to be acceptable to conservative alumni, was the right thing for Dartmouth at the time. However, the board turned to John Kemeny not without reservations, and they elected him president without giving him a totally free hand to govern, stipulating that none of his predecessor’s key administrators could be replaced during his first year in office. Thus, in effect, the new president’s hands were tied at a time when he needed to assemble his own team. And I am aware that in the case of at least one senior officer, this proved to be a thorny problem for John. When I later learned of the prohibition, my reaction was that he certainly must have wanted the presidency very badly to be willing to have agreed to such a provision. Certainly, I myself would never have taken the post with that particular condition imposed upon me.

On the windy, blue-sky day of March 1, 1970, John Dickey’s tenure ended, and John Kemeny became the thirteenth president of two-hundred-year-old Dartmouth. During the inauguration ceremonies in Alumni Gymnasium, the incoming president bestowed praise upon his predecessor, saying that the Dickey quarter-century had brought the college “the greatest progress in the institution’s entire history.” And there were tears in the eyes of John Dickey when both he and Mrs. Dickey were awarded honorary degrees as Kemeny’s first official act. The new president then delivered a wide-ranging address outlining what he called “decisive progress toward a great new era in higher education.” He went on, to the complete surprise of the administrative officers present and the trustees, to promise that the college would, at long last, honor once more its ancient commitment to the education of Native Americans. Dartmouth, he said, would increase significantly the number of Indian students in its next freshman class. John Kemeny had a flair for the dramatic declaration, but in this particular instance, he was announcing, totally without prior consultation with trustees or senior officers, action that administratively would prove to be highly difficult to implement—not at all an exercise of good governance.

Not many days into the Kemeny presidency, two major events well beyond the campus made a big impact in Hanover. First, American planes bombed Cambodia, extending the Vietnam War into a wider part of Southeast Asia. Second, National Guard troops opened fire on an anti-war rally at Kent State University, killing several students. Kemeny reacted quickly, and, I think, very wisely, to address campus concerns about both events. While there were locally no visible campus protests, he ordered a two-day moratorium on classes, which were replaced by a series of campus-wide discussions. Those organized events were well attended, and despite unrest and rumors of impending trouble, no buildings were occupied. The campus quieted as the new president spoke out, emphasizing the need for peaceable and reasoned reaction. He took, thus, an effective leadership role before organized protests could be developed. (This was a lesson I failed to heed, a dozen or more years later, during my own presidency.)

Perhaps the greatest immediate challenge with which President Kemeny confronted his new administrative colleagues was that which I have just cited as arguably having been ill-advised procedurally—making good on his pledge to bring more Native-American students to the campus. In fact, he said in his inaugural address that the Class of 1974, the next incoming class, would have fifteen Native-American students within it—setting an explicit quota with respect to the selection of applicants, something that had been diligently avoided at the college over a period of many years, and still is today. The admissions office was flabbergasted. Clearly, it had in place no mechanism for finding, in the short period of time available, qualified Indian students—a task that would be complicated by the sorry state of most Native-American schools, many of which were poorly funded and understaffed on Indian reservations. It was a daunting undertaking for those involved, but somehow, when the freshman class arrived in the autumn of 1970, it did have fourteen Native Americans within its ranks.

At the graduation of that class, four years later in 1974, the college would award degrees in that one year to almost as many Indians as it had granted during the first two centuries of its existence. However, sadly, in the wake of John Kemeny’s precipitous act, the admissions office was forced, during the early years of implementing his policy, to admit some Native-American students who really lacked proper academic preparation to meet the standards of a Dartmouth education. Many required tutoring and expensive support systems, which provision tended to isolate them, forcing them to live, to eat, and to socialize among themselves. Also, at that period, the college failed to recognize and appropriately respond to the differences and rivalries between the several tribes from which these students had been drawn.

Much of the mentoring accorded the newly matriculated Indian students, as well as much of the agitation for the college to honor more fully its historic commitment to Native-American education, came from a brilliant new member of the faculty, Michael Dorris, a Native American himself and a fine young writer, who became chair of the fledgling Native-American studies program. Moreover, Dorris and his students were not long in their Dartmouth setting before they took note of various Indian symbols around campus, such as the stylized representation of the head of an Indian brave present on certain merchandise in downtown stores—adorning such objects as stationery, t-shirts, banners, and drinking glasses—and even found boldly painted on the floor at the center of the basketball court in Alumni Gymnasium. Further, at home football games, they witnessed lads stained brown, clad in breechcloths and sporting headbands with feathers entwined, leading the cheers, giving war whoops, and holding upraised tomahawks. Quite predictably, they didn’t like what they saw; they felt affronted by it. In that President Kemeny had been on campus as a faculty member at Dartmouth since 1954, he was well aware of the college’s then-existing Indian symbol. Not having made the connection between his initiative to admit Native Americans and the symbol, he was surprised that controversy became one of the consequences of putting that policy in place.

In connection with the troublesome problems that grew out of Dartmouth’s longtime use of the American Indian as its symbol—a use basically intended to acknowledge proudly the college’s historic beginnings—John Kemeny had a rueful story that he used to tell. Soon after the Native-American studies program began, a conference of Native-American leaders was held on campus. Those attending from out of town were, of course, lodged at the college-owned Hanover Inn. John said he, having his own home in Hanover, had actually never stayed at the inn himself. Consequently, he had no awareness of the shoehorns that were present in all bedrooms for use by the hotel’s guests. On the occasion of this conference, however, he soon learned that the handle of those shoehorns featured a hideous face of an Indian, from which, constituting the functional portion of the object, extended a grotesquely elongated tongue. Understandably, the Native-American conferees were outraged; and all efforts at apology failed.

It was that sort of thing, coupled with their own experiences of offense, that led Michael Dorris and other Native Americans to advise the president and the faculty that the Indian symbol, beloved by decades of Dartmouth men, should be abolished. This represented a prospect that sent shock waves rippling through the Dartmouth family. Early on, John Kemeny tried to take a middle ground, saying that the symbol should be retained, as long as it was used in a dignified manner. I thought that made sense, believing that the Indian symbol had never been meant to offend or harm anyone and, indeed, that it was seen by most Dartmouth people as honoring Native Americans. But the Native-American students kept up the pressure. Dorris simply said that the symbol was “an insult” and that its abolition was a non-negotiable issue.

As the controversy escalated, the faculty sided with the Native-American students, and, eventually, the Alumni Council agreed, as well. Then, the question progressed to the trustees, and after considerable discussion, on the recommendation of the president, the board voted to abolish the symbol. Inevitably, many alumni were upset—some quite vigorously—and I think John Kemeny unfairly took much of the blame. In fact, he had done his best to retain the symbol in some form. But the whole matter would flair up again and again in his presidency—and mine—and to a lesser extent it still does to this day. This was one of a series of decisions made back in the early nineteen-seventies, by what surely was a relatively conservative board, to reinforce the fundamental values of the institution—even though doing so meant disregarding what some held dear as “traditions.” In part, these are the types of difficult but courageous actions by which the performance of a board is measured.

John Kemeny’s efforts to introduce more minorities to the undergraduate population did not stop with Native Americans. Soon, he was pushing the admissions office to bring more non-white students, especially blacks, to the campus. Within a few years, Dartmouth took on a much different, far-more-diverse appearance—and some alumni were less than pleased. As was the case with Native Americans, the attempt to admit Afro-Americans in significant numbers and within a relatively short interval of time was, I believe, an unrealistic approach. To identify and recruit academically qualified students and to establish an institutional environment appropriately receptive to minorities takes time, particularly in the case of a college located in the climate of New Hampshire. An unforeseen consequence of Dartmouth’s early forced effort to create more diversity led, in instances of other minority students, as it had with the Native Americans, to a large degree of self-elected segregation—in living, eating, and socializing. The benefits of a rich fabric of diversity were largely unrealized, and this became a challenge for me, as John Kemeny’s successor.

But during the overall early period of the Kemeny presidency, it was coeducation that was the predominant issue on campus, as the president moved aggressively to implement the decision and to alter the college calendar. Immediately after the trustees’ vote on coeducation, I was to learn that, as would be the case in so many other connections, the vote itself did not lay the matter to rest. No sooner was I back in my Minneapolis office from that historic November 1971 meeting of the board, than my phone was ringing with calls from Dartmouth people, mainly my classmates, and most of them complaining about the action that had been taken. All the board members were receiving similar calls, which soon caused Chairman Zimmerman to phone me and inquire, “Will you join me in going around the country to sell this thing to the alumni?” He knew I was strongly in favor of coeducation, and I think he was pretty much against it, although as chairman of the board he had not been obligated to vote, there having been no tie in our balloting on the issue. (A friend, many years later, told me that Charlie had once wryly commented to him, regarding the board’s action on coeducation, “You never vote against something that you’re going to have to defend”) I felt honored by the invitation that he extended, and I immediately agreed to join him. Early on, however, I found it a challenging assignment.

Together, we set off on a ten-city tour, to explain the vote to various alumni clubs. I guess Charlie thought the veteran chairman and a new board member would offer a good balance, and, by and large, I believe it worked well. We found the alumni generally negative, sullen, and resentful—resentful that a Princeton alumnus had brought this “evil” upon the college. But Charlie was a masterful speaker and, as an insurance executive, a professional salesman extraordinaire. He invariably led off our sessions at these after-dinner programs, emphasizing that the number of men at Dartmouth was not going to be diminished. In fact, he said, Dartmouth really wasn’t going to change all that much—an observation with which I was not in agreement. And he always ended with an appeal to our common love of the college, doing so by reciting some lines from the song that Oscar Hammerstein wrote on his deathbed for Mary Martin: “A bell is not a bell until you ring it. A song is not a song until you sing it. And love in our hearts wasn’t put there to stay. Love isn’t love until it’s given away.” What a man! He brought tears on those evenings to many an eye, including mine on more than one occasion.

Charlie Zimmerman was a monumentally hard act to follow, when I rose to give the second half of our “dog-and-pony show.” I would explain the Dartmouth Plan for year-round operation, which made it possible to keep the male enrollment at present levels, while at the same time introducing a substantial number of women students, but without building new dormitories.

And, among the other points that I touched upon, I was sure to try to appeal to the sympathies of the alumni with daughters who might in the future want to attend college and for whom Dartmouth would now be an option. Then, at the close, we answered questions.

The move to year-round operation was, of course, as has been pointed out, one of the important means of our accommodating coeducation at Dartmouth. I voted for it, but I had misgivings from the start—misgivings, however, that I certainly did not share with my fellow alumni back then, during the time of the Zimmerman/McLaughlin presentations “on the road.” Now, all these years later, I continue to think even more strongly that the adoption of the Dartmouth Plan was one of the most unfortunate decisions the college ever made—necessary at the time, but unfortunate. In addition to its having proved to encompass consequences involving academic quality and also to be economically unattractive, it has, in my judgment, been disruptive to the cohesiveness of both the student body and faculty.

Classes now spend much less time together on campus, and it seems to me that bonding cannot occur in the way and to the degree that was the case in prior times, when essentially everybody was together in Hanover for nine months of the year. Under the Dartmouth Plan, many freshmen do not see their friends in other classes for as much as two years. One result is, I believe, that the percentage of alumni making financial contributions to the college has not reached its full potential. The ties that, in the past, so greatly bound Dartmouth students to each other, as well as to their college, have suffered. Perhaps more importantly, that same consequence is, many feel, seen in faculty departments, where collegiality and intellectual synergy are diminished by disconnected schedules. As I have stated earlier, other institutions, including Yale, have visited Dartmouth over the years, in efforts to study and understand our “innovative plan”; but, to my knowledge, not one college or university has decided to adopt it.

While the Dartmouth Plan was a matter of expediency, the fact that twenty-some years later it is still in effect represents, I believe, a failure in governance and leadership. To return to a more conventional three-term calendar could still utilize fully the summer months and offer exciting new educational opportunities for the college. It would require faculty support, major fund-raising to position the residential college to accommodate increased enrollments during the three terms, and other changes. This would not be easy—taking perhaps five or six years to achieve, if projected with a strong commitment by the president and the board—but my sense is that it would have a profound beneficial effect. The fact that I did not take any initiative in this regard during the early part of my own presidency, by engaging the faculty and the trustees in appropriate discussion, is something not to my credit. If the college had not been “behind the curve” in recognizing both the desirability and inevitability of taking action on coeducation, it might have made that decision with an effective date of implementation several years into the future, which would have provided time to build new dormitories and in other ways prepare the campus for the admission of women. With any major strategic change, trustees should not act precipitously, but should take time to prepare their institution for major initiatives. Resistance on the part of one Dartmouth president to any consideration of coeducation, followed by a driving determination on the part of his successor to achieve such a change—this, coupled with the fact that the trustees of that era did not take a lead role early in the process—caused the college to become, I feel, coeducational before it was ready to do so.

In June of 1972, there came a change in the board’s chairmanship, when Charlie Zimmerman stepped down at the end of his three-year term. His successor was Bill Andres. I liked Bill, and he was as loyal and devoted son of Dartmouth as ever existed. But I knew where he stood: Like his close friend and classmate John Dickey, he had little enthusiasm for a Kemeny presidency, and had voted for admitting women only with the greatest reluctance. In fact, Bill had been, I was aware, the principal architect of the condition that the new president could not, within his first year in office, discharge any of the senior administrators he had inherited.

During this period, I proved to be on campus quite regularly, not only for meetings of the board and its standing committees, but also for other supportive purposes—absences that, in turn, with the passage of time led to concerns voiced by David Lilly and by some other Toro directors about absentee CEO leadership in Minneapolis. But we had appointed a new president, John J. “Jack” Cantu, when I took on the role of chairman, and the company was doing quite well—so well, indeed, that I felt comfortable about accepting appointments to several other boards of directors, including those of Chase Manhattan bank and corporation, Dayton Hudson, and Westinghouse. And, domestically, Judy and the children were happy, with Judy finding more and more enjoyment in the gardens she planted and improved around our Long Lake home.

At Dartmouth, things were becoming evermore complex. I now know full well that a college president cannot operate effectively except within the context of a strong partnership with his board. And John Kemeny, existing at this point with trustees mainly from the Dickey years, had a board the members of which were, to varying degrees, skeptical of him, despite their support of his cherished issue, coeducation. Presidents do lead lonely existences, and they do need a support group for counsel and encouragement. Not finding this in his board of trustees, or from within the alumni body, John early on turned increasingly for succor to the faculty from whence he had come. (However, in the later years of his presidency, with different trustees in place and having then confidence in his relationship to the board, I would not infrequently see him throw up his hands in frustration over actions and attitudes of his former faculty colleagues.)

John Kemeny once told me that after winning the important votes on admitting women and on the means of implementing that decision, and after increasing the number of minorities on campus, he really did not have an extended agenda for the college.

Certainly, day-to-day events and the times in which he worked kept presenting him with challenges, but not of the type that he enjoyed or that would fundamentally change the college’s future course. Indeed, in any presidency there are few truly institution-changing initiatives to undertake, and these must be recognized and pursued early in the president’s term.

During the middle and late nineteen-seventies, the nation was facing an energy crisis, complete with long lines of cars at filling stations, waiting and hoping for gasoline, a situation that swiftly escalated into an inflationary spiral. Fuel-oil prices soared, and the Dow Jones industrials fell precipitously below six hundred. Dartmouth was hit harder than most colleges, since the long, cold Hanover winters forced the administration to buy huge amounts of heating oil at the inflated prices that were then in place. In addition, concurrently, the college’s endowment suffered substantially. It was at this juncture that I was appointed, by the chairman of the board, to a special budgets and priorities committee, one having as its charge to address the total financial situation of the institution—which, of course, served to bring me back to Hanover even more frequently.

There was little time to spare, and the special committee set to work diligently. We soon came up with recommendations that, first, the president, then, the board approved. Faculty salaries were frozen and several cuts in expenses were made. In this regard, I should say that although the president was a decidedly stellar academician, he, of course, had never previously managed a large organization. He could blissfully manipulate extraordinarily complex mathematical equations, but was uncomfortable with balance sheets and profit-and-loss statements. Just as, according to John Kemeny, Einstein was not good at mathematics, John himself was not adept at understanding financial projections and reports. Fortunately, he did have the good sense, as well as the political instinct, to delegate this to others—which must have been difficult for him, given his conviction that he had no peer when it came to numbers; but, on the other hand, this action did also keep him “out of the line of fire” on unpopular cutbacks.

There were other concerns. The physical deterioration of fraternity houses, as well as the behavior carried on within them, was becoming of increasing concern on campus—so, too, were the hazing practices attendant to pledging rituals. John Kemeny, quite rightly, became alarmed, and moves were initiated to exert tighter controls on the fraternities. There was even talk of ridding the college of fraternal societies altogether—and Kemeny began to like the sound of that notion. But fraternity members throughout alumni land—some of them already upset by coeducation or the Indian-symbol issue or changing the alma mater, “Men of Dartmouth,” in order to include specific reference to women—were incensed by reports emanating from campus about this new assault on “tradition.” After but a brief skirmish in challenging fraternity continuance, the president withdrew from the Greek battlefield, to concentrate on other matters. He had concluded, probably correctly, that he could not win this particular battle with the alumni.

Years later, Calvin Trillin visited the campus and produced an insightful article for The New Yorker on the Indian-symbol controversy and other matters troubling the Dartmouth family. He wrote, in summary:

“By the early seventies, Dartmouth had undergone so many changes so quickly that to some alumni it seemed transformed into some other institution. Dartmouth had begun to admit women. Dartmouth had abolished R.O.T.C. Dartmouth had recruited a number of black students, some of whom promptly organized themselves into a society that specialized in making demands for change. Dartmouth had accommodated the increased attendance accompanying coeducation by adopting a schedule that encouraged students to be present in the summer rather than in the snow and even to spend some semesters in places like Salamanca or Bucharest instead of in the woods. Most of the changes had been instigated by a president who was not some tweedy son of the college but a Hungarian Jewish refugee who had as a teen-ager escaped Nazi concentration camps only to enroll in, of all places, Princeton. The reaction of a lot of alumni to being told that their Indian-head neckties were suddenly to be considered representations of racism, rather than badges of undying loyalty to their alma mater was simply ‘Now you’ve gone too far.’ . . .”

Those alumni who were feeling more and more disaffected and distant from their old school were increasingly letting their feelings be known. Rightly or wrongly, more and more of the blame began to be placed on the president, and nobody heard the complaints more loudly than the trustees. Within the context of all this contention, one senior trustee, having lost patience with the situation, called an ad hoc meeting, unbeknownst to John Kemeny, of those trustees whom he thought would be sympathetic to his position. It took place in an upstairs room at the Hanover Inn, only a couple hundred yards from the president’s Parkhurst Hall office. A majority of the board was present as he, rather formally, brought the session to order (even though it was not an official meeting of the board), and he immediately announced that he would entertain a motion of “no confidence” and ask the president to resign.

The discussion that followed was, of course, intense. Finally, I said: “I don’t believe we should relieve the president of his responsibilities, after we’ve just supported him on coeducation and year-round operation. With the college in transition, we should not be considering changing leadership at this time.” I added that I understood how many alumni felt, but I said that to relieve the president now would be hurtful to Dartmouth and that I would have no part of it. Without being too immodest, I believe I can validly assert that by this time, my influence within the board had grown, partly through my ever-increasing presence on campus and by my having taken a leadership position on several trustee committees. The other trustees present listened, and a few of them spoke out against the president, but, clearly, there existed no obvious agreement favoring removal. However, our convener, not content to abandon the matter, proposed that all of us consider further the extent of existing alumni discontent, and that we meet again in Boston in the near term.

I remember the creaking of old wooden stairs as, two weeks later, board members made their way in a private club up to a room with a large window that overlooked Boston Common. We were promptly asked if anyone wished to add anything to the Hanover discussion. I replied that I had not changed my mind. A trustee recently elected then said, as I recall it, “I’m new to the board, but I did not come on the board to depose the president.” Briefly, there ensued talk of the deep concerns that were present within the alumni body and of the belief that, as was strongly held in certain quarters, John Kemeny was destroying some of the best and most cherished facets of Dartmouth’s very being. But it was soon apparent that no overt action was favored by the group as a whole, and the meeting was drawn to its close rather quickly.

Looking back, I think today that, had a few of us not strongly opposed it, the thirteenth president’s tenure might well have ended in its sixth year. Such an event would have caused a huge crisis on campus, pitting the faculty, and likely the students, against the board and much of the alumni body. The damage to the college might have been irreparable. But we shall never know, for again the meeting ended without a vote among those present. Had one been taken, I believe the outcome would have been very close, and probably not in the president’s favor.

John continued on as president of Dartmouth, and he soon summarized, in a five-year report, his first years in Parkhurst Hall. In what he wrote, he designated 1971 as “The Year of the Coed Debate” and 1972, “The Year of Implementation” (regarding, of course, coeducation). He named 1974 “The Year of the Budget” (when the college faced inflation and the fuel-oil crises). And he declared that he was not yet ready to attach a name to 1975, but said he hoped that it would not become “The Year We Ran Out of Money.” (Happily, it was not.)

It was the middle year, 1973, that John christened “The Year of the Medical School.” He had made the startling discovery that college presidents at many institutions had made before him: If you have a medical school on campus, you have lots of headaches. (John was fond of quoting a Princeton president who once said that his institution’s secret weapon was that it did not have a medical school.) Despite, however, the frustration caused him by that entity of the college, during the Kemeny presidency, the Dartmouth Medical School made significant progress. (The founder, parenthetically, was a country physician named Nathan Smith, who had once hastened on horseback into the wilds of rural Vermont in order to care for the desperately ill child of a farm family, also named Smith, in Royalton. The boy, Joseph Smith, recovered and went on to found the Mormon religion.)

Dartmouth’s medical school had, during most of the twentieth century, conducted only a two-year program, with its students going off to other schools—perhaps mainly to Harvard—for their last two years of training leading to the M.D. degree. However, changes in the manner of the allocation of federal medical-education funding caused fewer and fewer four-year schools to be willing to accept transfer students for the final two years. As a consequence of this, and because the hospital in Hanover had grown in a manner and to an extent that would now provide a productive relationship to the clinical instruction of the curriculum’s ending years, in 1968, the Dartmouth trustees decided to revert to a four-year program for the school—returning it, in that respect, to its pre-1915 status. Kemeny inherited this decision and implemented the transition during his presidency, completing what has been called a “refounding” of the school.

By the second year of his presidency, John Kemeny was, he said, devoting half of his time to medical school matters. (I later was to learn that this was an omen for his successor.) At any rate, he made considerable progress, including managing to raise the funds necessary to build a badly needed research building adjacent to Hanover’s Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. Also, very importantly, he hammered out an agreement between the area’s four major medical components—the hospital, the Hitchcock Clinic, the Veterans Administration Hospital in nearby White River Junction, Vermont, and the medical school itself—thus bringing into being the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. John left the presidency, however, without having solved a huge and growing health-care problem: the need for a new and much larger hospital. Some future president would have to take on that challenge.

The midpoint of John Kemeny’s presidency had passed when a new student newspaper appeared on campus. It was called The Dartmouth Review, and John quickly came to loathe it, as did many other members of the Dartmouth community. The Dartmouth Review was founded in 1980 by Gregory A. Fossedal, a malcontent member of the Class of 1981 who had been dismissed from his former position as editor of The Dartmouth. While at the “Daily D,” Fossedal had campaigned for the election to the Dartmouth board of trustees of an ultra-conservative alumnus, Dr. John F. Steel, a 1954 graduate living in California. Steel had been elected as a challenge candidate, having failed to win an endorsement, as was customary, from the Alumni Council. He ran on a platform of restoring what he saw as important traditions that had been lost during the Kemeny years. The Review came to regard Dr. Steel as its special representative among the trustees and the champion of its issues, which included the return of the Indian symbol and associated cheers and traditions, as well as a renewed emphasis of Western civilization within the college curriculum. Also, the paper proclaimed an intention to demand the return of Dartmouth’s ROTC program, which had been discontinued, responsive to faculty and other constituency agitation, in 1973.

The appearance of a conservative alternative to The Dartmouth was at first seen by many alumni, including my friend Paul Paganucci, as a positive occurrence that would bring some much-needed political balance to the campus and its journalism. Pag, a devout Catholic, had come to know many of the Review’s founders through Aquinas House, the college Catholic center. It was not long, however, before Pag, as well as many of his fellow early supporters of the Review, began to have second thoughts.

With the help of Professor Jeffrey Hart, a longtime member of the English department and a nationally syndicated conservative columnist, the paper was controversial from its first issue on. The editors and writers associated with it were bright, filled with a youthful ideological arrogance, and held, in general, a blissful disregard for the accuracy of what they published. Moreover, the paper’s staff revealed itself to be made up of individuals who were totally insensitive to the affect of personal attacks, in print, on those with whom they disagreed. But for a time, financial contributions to the paper rolled in from conservatively inclined alumni, and the Review, which was distributed without charge, sold advertisements briskly to some Hanover-area businesses.

In utterly irresponsible ways, the Review quickly made its presence felt. The paper published the names of officers of an organization called the Gay Student Alliance, reportedly based on letters stolen from the GSA files, thus identifying students who, in some cases, had not yet themselves ventured to “come out of the closet” to their families or friends. Later, it attacked affirmative action, in a column titled “Dis Sho’ Ain’t No Jive.” The paper also labeled modern-day Native Americans as “drunken, ignorant, and culturally lost.” And an interview with a former Ku Klux Klan member was illustrated with a photograph of a black man being hanged from a tree.

In such manner, the bad taste went on, as The Dartmouth Review became for John Kemeny—as it would also be for me in succession to him—a major source of campus disruption and trouble. John’s initial loathing of the Review quickly turned to an absolute hatred of it, and I, for my part, certainly came to lose respect for its editorial staff—not on the basis of merely ideological differences, for I believe strongly that the right to articulate divergent opinion is, of course, essential to a free society and a liberal arts education. In voicing one’s views, however, there is also a concurrent responsibility to do so fairly, accurately, and with civility. It was the publication’s flagrant disregard of these attributes that determined my view of it. The Review persists on campus to this day, occasionally producing an edition, but its effort and impact have largely disappeared. What it did, however, during John Kemeny’s presidency, and then during my own, was to give an outsized, strident voice to an angry and insensitive minority within the college community.

In 1977, as Bill Andres moved to the middle of his final year as chairman of the board of trustees, necessarily, the question of a successor arose. A big turnover in its membership had occurred during the time since I joined the board, and I had rather quickly become a senior member. Two primary candidates quickly became the focus of discussion: Ralph Lazarus, who was senior to me and who wanted the position, and myself. Ralph was a good friend, someone I respected enormously, and I would have been quite comfortable under his leadership of the board. However, several fellow trustees had encouraged me to think about the chairmanship. Then, Andres and a senior, particularly highly respected trustee, Richard D. Hill, talked to me about it. (I have always rather suspected that, very likely, John Dickey had told Bill he thought I would make a good chair.)

At this point, I went to John Kemeny and told him what was being discussed. He said he would love to work in partnership with me, and expressed an appreciative awareness that I had been supportive of him and his initiatives over the years. He said, also, that he never felt he really had Bill Andres’ confidence and support. Next, I learned that Bill had talked with each member of the board and told them that he intended to nominate me. I promptly discussed this development with Lazarus, saying that I, for my part, was prepared to support his nomination; that in no way did I want to lose his friendship over such a matter. Ralph replied that, while he felt disappointed personally, he believed that I was, in fact, a preferable candidate, and he assured me our relationship would not change. So, with an ego considerably enlarged by my peers having chosen me, and with a degree of positive anticipation, I took on the task. It would be a far bigger one than I imagined.

CHAPTER NINE

Transition

TO my great surprise, not long after I joined the Dartmouth board, John Dickey asked if I would try to convince John Kemeny that the head football coach should be relieved of his responsibilities. The coach had been an All-Ivy back at Dartmouth, a truly great football player, and as coach, even if his teams had not quite matched the success of the Bob Blackman elevens, he had had a solid winning record. His approach to the game involved a relatively conservative offense, compared with Blackman’s imaginative end-arounds and double-reverses, and his offense was something like “three yards and a cloud of dust.”

But it wasn’t the style of play that was really bothering the president emeritus. That would have been uncharacteristic of him, just as would have been any involvement on his part in college affairs after he left the presidency. The Dickey retirement home was located quite near where the coach lived, and John confided to me that he felt the pressure of the position as head football coach was affecting the coach’s relationship with his family. “I respect this young man enormously,” he said, “but I think you need to help him by getting him to step down.”

I obviously had great respect for John Dickey and his judgment, so I promptly went to President Kemeny’s office, in order to explain to him the situation. John heard me out, then said: “I am sympathetic with regard to the problem, and agree with you and John Dickey, but I am not going to do anything about it. Would you do it?” I responded that it was really not my role, as a trustee, to be directly involved in such matters. However, at the president’s urging, I agreed to do so, but only after advising Athletic Director Seaver Peters what the president wanted me to undertake.

Having followed through in this regard, I invited the coach to dinner and told him straightaway about the concern felt by some of his friends, and I offered the opinion that, in the interest of his family, he really should consider stepping down. I implied that I was speaking for the president, and I assured him that the board would help him find a new job. The following day, I was visiting with the president on another matter when a secretary came into his office to advise us that the athletic director and the coach were waiting in the reception area outside. They were ushered in, and the young coach told us he had decided to resign. It had to have been a tough decision for him, one that had taken a lot of courage to make, and I admired him for it.

In the immediate wake of that occasion, I acted to put together a group of alumni to help identify alternative prospects for our coach. But the effort proved to be unnecessary, for on his own initiative he soon secured appointment as athletic director at a large eastern university, where he remains to this day, a highly successful leader of one of the country’s best collegiate athletic programs. He is quite a man!

John Kemeny did not like confrontation, and was never comfortable in dealing with the athletic arm of the college, the DCAC—the Dartmouth College Athletic Council. Accordingly, he was grateful for trustee intervention in the instance I have cited—an assignment from him that I did not enjoy in the least and one that, unfortunately, took a toll on my personal friendship with Seaver Peters, who had every right to feel resentment over what he clearly regarded as an improper intrusion upon his area of administrative responsibility—which it was. On the other hand, and quite unintentionally, it was among the many factors that served to forge a closer relationship between John Kemeny and me, a relationship that only increased when I was chosen to chair the board, my term beginning at the commencement meeting in 1977.

Effective governance in a collegiate institution is greatly dependent on the existence of a strong working relationship between the president and the chair of its board of trustees, as well as on the confidence the board has in its chair to represent its concerns and interests. The chair needs, however, to recognize that there is only one CEO, and to subordinate himself or herself to the person holding that office, but without giving up the necessary policy-making authority that rests with the chair and the overall body of trustees. If the chair and the president have different agendas, or they are not supportive of each other, the institution suffers from a lack of leadership at the top. Similarly, if the president feels isolated from the board or senses a lack of support from the board, he or she may well seek support from sources within the campus instead, and the effectiveness of governance is quite apt to suffer.

On becoming chairman, at the very outset I began a process of working with John Kemeny to create a more positive relationship between him and the trustees. Now, it must be acknowledged that John Kemeny had a quite substantial ego—something even he himself would not have denied. But I know that during the course of my chairmanship, he never looked on me as being a competitor for either authority or recognition, only as being a partner. I was always forthright and honest with him, and ever sought to make the board more understanding of the president and to express the trustees’ disagreements with the president, when they had them, openly and constructively. At that particular time, the board was in transition. Seven trustees who had been on the board when the coeducation vote was taken were still present, while nine (including the governor, ex officio) had not been members then. The board was, however, about evenly divided between those who supported the president and those who had reservations about his performance.

The prime issues before us related to finances, to the continuing implementation of coeducation and the Dartmouth Plan, and to achieving greater diversity on campus, as well as dealing with a substantial degree of alumni discontent focused on several of these areas of concern—including the ongoing controversy pertaining to abandonment of the Indian symbol. We had a “full plate,” surely, and we were much in need of a board that could handle policy disagreements with civility and come together productively once a decision was made. It was gratifying to me that soon the president became more relaxed with his fellow trustees and began to develop a constructive relationship with many of them. It was a sense of support that he needed, for, especially during the latter years of his presidency, he not infrequently found himself under attack, primarily by The Dartmouth Review, because of the Indian-symbol issue and other changes that he had instituted.

Soon after becoming chairman, I began a practice of talking with each board member every month. “Share your concerns and complaints with me or with the president,” I told them. “But don’t publicly blindside either of us.” I also wanted them to be decidedly up-to-date on college issues and, therefore, well prepared to represent the college to its various constituencies, in a well-informed, straightforward, and positive manner. Early on, communication between trustees and the president and, through the trustee committees, his senior officers began to flow more freely, and this seemed to neutralize the skepticism still felt toward the president by certain members of the board and to give them confidence in responding individually to disgruntled alumni. John and I also developed a regular schedule of having Friday-morning phone conversations, sometimes lasting an hour or two. He would also call at other times to discuss problems, often concerning finances, alumni relations, and the medical school. Quite often, he felt the need to talk with me about issues he had with Provost Leonard Rieser, whom he just didn’t trust, being convinced that Leonard was working against him, behind his back.

As I have said, John Kemeny’s major achievements came early in his presidency. During the latter years, attacks from the disgruntled alumni continued, and the medical school always presented special challenges; but he and the board constantly struggled, also, with financial problems. To help put the college on a firmer financial footing, the trustees approved, in 1977, a one-hundred-and-sixty-million-dollar fund-raising campaign—which was a decidedly ambitious undertaking, given the existing degree of negative alumni sentiment and the then-existing state of the national economy. In addition, on the board’s initiative, in 1979, we removed the initially imposed twenty-five-percent limit on the number of female undergraduates to be enrolled, and instituted an arrangement whereby the male-female student ratio would seek its own level, based solely on merit.

By the end of the decade of the seventies, to the relief of most board members and certainly the administration, the Indian-symbol controversy seemed to be on the wane. And when the trustees gathered late in February of 1979, the highlighted agenda item was a consideration of fraternity problems. After considerable discussion, the meeting produced a vote not to close the fraternities, but to allow more time to bring about some badly needed reforms. This decision had not yet been made public when a capacity crowd, including most of the board and its chairman, gathered the next evening in Thompson Arena for an Ivy League hockey game with Brown.

Dartmouth’s team, surprising all the experts, had that season been rolling along at the top of the league, with a happy result that capacity crowds of about five thousand spectators were packing the bright new ice arena. When we arrived, we found the place to be rocking with band music and cheers of “Go, Green, go! Go, Green, go!” Then, just before the second period began, two students, dressed in a manner that had not been seen at a Dartmouth athletic contest in years, preceded the Dartmouth team onto the ice. They wore loincloths and headbands, and their bodies were painted brown. Twice the lads skated quickly around the rink, as a considerable number of the fans cheered. I was somewhat stunned, immediately sensing that, as a result of this incident, the college was likely to have a public-relations problem and a major campus issue on its hands.

John Kemeny had not attended the game, but a phone call alerted him, and he was furious. An emergency faculty meeting was held the next day, and the president announced that a “serious investigation” would begin immediately. The two student skaters, one a football player, quickly turned themselves in, explaining that their sole desire had been to invigorate the Dartmouth rooters. The only college rule they appeared to have been guilty of violating was the interruption of the sporting event. But President Kemeny, continuing to be livid over what had happened, wanted the offending students suspended immediately. And that was what the college judiciary committee decided upon. I personally regarded the whole thing as something of an ill-conceived, but not maliciously intended, prank, and I counseled John to cool off, arguing for a lesser penalty, partly with a view to avoiding what, quite predictably, would have resulted in alumni backlash. Finally, reluctantly, he agreed, and the penalties were reduced to some restrictions and a probationary period. I thought this was entirely the right outcome, but Lennie Pickard ’80, the president of Native Americans at Dartmouth, promptly said that Kemeny’s change of mind amounted to “the most heinous and racist act any president of Dartmouth College ever committed.” Black and Native-American students agreed, and they spray-painted the giant Winter Carnival snow sculpture at the center of the green.

The Thompson Arena episode was only part of the story of a winter of considerable unrest in 1979. It was during that period that, in response to demands from Native Americans, John Kemeny promised to close the Hovey Grill in the Thayer Hall dining facility. The grill’s walls were decorated with a colorful mural, painted long ago by Dartmouth alumnus Walter Beach Humphrey, illustrating the lyrics of Richard Hovey’s popular song “Eleazar Wheelock” and depicting the college’s founder as cavorting with scantily clad young Indian males and bare-breasted maidens. The Native Americans took offense at the murals. John agreed, and had the mural covered. I questioned the wisdom of this. Again, it seemed to me to be an over-reaction, perhaps one verging on censorship. It was, though, the president’s decision to make.

Some local old-timers within the faculty and administration were reminded in this connection of the problem President Hopkins had experienced, back in the thirties, when, to appease alumni who violently objected to the frescoes done by the radical Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco for adornment of Baker Library’s reserve corridor, Mr. Hopkins had commissioned Humphrey to provide the vividly representational Hovey Grill mural. Mr. Hopkins later wryly declared that he had lost half of his Dartmouth friends because of what Orozco had done and the other half because of what he had intended as the Humphrey antidote thereto. And Mr. Hopkins’ only piece of advice to his presidential successor, John Dickey, had been that he should never have anything to do with murals.

Unfortunately, the hockey-game incident served to revive the Indian-symbol controversy, both on campus and among alumni. John Kemeny was fond of applying mathematical approaches and careful reasoning to the solution of problems that confronted him, often using his office blackboard to help him analyze troublesome matters. But he always said that the Indian-symbol question completely defied logical analysis and solution. In retrospect, and quite regardless of the whole issue of the symbol (which, indeed, should have been, as it was, abolished), I believe the college’s commitment to a real program of Native-American education should probably have been postponed a few years, until the institution could enroll students with qualifications that would have enabled them to integrate more effectively and comfortably into Dartmouth’s academic program and residential system. That would have benefited the students and added greater value to the college. These are considerations that might well have been raised if the trustees had been consulted in advance of President Kemeny’s announcement in his inaugural address.

The introduction of coeducation, coupled with the consequences of the Native-American program, despite the latter’s being an historically appropriate obligation, brought about what was, seemingly, too much change for many alumni to accept all at once. Late in his tenure, in the years that corresponded with my board chairmanship, John Kemeny seemed to me to begin to lose interest in—or at least lose his relish for—the presidency. The controversies of one sort or another, large and small, somehow never ceased, although John found, as I was greatly pleased to know from our conversations, his increased board support reassuring. Then, in 1979, I received a telephone call conveying some news to me that certainly served to relieve John of any ennui in his life, and at the same time greatly increased my own Dartmouth responsibilities.

On March 28, 1979, Reactor Number Two of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, on the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, suffered a serious accident. A sudden loss of coolant in the reactor vessel caused a partial meltdown of the atomic core, resulting in a release of radioactive gasses into the Pennsylvania air. Though the accident was contained without a major catastrophe, not surprisingly, one result was the creation of widespread public fear centering upon existing nuclear power plants all across the country, and President Jimmy Carter announced that he would appoint a commission to look into the whole matter.

It was only about ten days after the Three Mile Island accident that John received a call from the White House, informing him that he was a finalist among candidates being considered to chair the intended Three Mile Island presidential commission. In point of fact, he had had in this connection a powerful ally working on his behalf, behind the scenes, at Washington. This was Berl I. Bernhard, a newly elected member of the Dartmouth board, who was not only an influential Washington lawyer, but also a prominent member of the Democratic National Committee, thus having easy access to Carter. In his ten-year report to the college, John wrote about the commission chairmanship, starting by telling of the phone call he had received from the White House. He said: “I was nearly speechless, but I agreed to think overnight about whether I would accept the appointment if it were offered me. I also expressed the hope that somebody else would be chosen. Less than 48 hours later, Jean and I were standing in the Oval Office to meet President Carter and, before the two of us faced the Washington press corps, to receive his personal briefing on what he expected of the commission. That was the beginning of the most hectic seven months of my entire life.”

John went on to say: “I had not accepted the position lightly. After an all-night discussion with my wife, I called the chairman of the Board of Trustees to present him with the pros and cons of accepting such a position. As I remember, the cons were much weightier than the pros. I particularly warned him that the commission was likely to write an extremely controversial report which could result in a lot of people being very angry at me and some might take their anger out on Dartmouth College. The chairman, David McLaughlin ’54, listened to me most patiently and then said: I believe your arguments are correct. However, I predict that if you should be chosen, when the call comes from the White House telling you that you are the one person in the country selected to undertake this all-important task, you will forget all your arguments and say, “Yes, Mr. President!”’ As usual, David McLaughlin proved to be absolutely right.”

What John did not say in his ten-year report was that he set, as expressed to me as chairman of the Dartmouth board, a firm condition on his accepting the Carter appointment: that under no circumstance would he step out of his college presidency; moreover, he did not wish to have somebody standing in for him as acting president—very particularly that somebody being Provost Rieser. John made me promise that I would come to campus once a month while he was away and that I would chair his staff meetings, this for the express purpose of keeping Leonard Rieser from running things. I agreed to the arrangement—and my time commitment to Dartmouth escalated proportionately.

John spent seven months assembling a commission, organizing a staff, and holding hearings; then, himself writing a report on the commission’s findings. Over the course of the first six months, he was able to divide his time about equally between Washington and Hanover. But during the last month, as the report was being written, he was in Washington constantly. He did a masterful job as chair of the commission, and when finished, he confided that he was absolutely exhausted. But I know he enjoyed the whole thing—and the break it gave him from the presidency.

John and Jean returned to Hanover on a November night and went immediately to Spaulding Auditorium to report to the Dartmouth community. John later wrote: “I found Spaulding Auditorium jammed with people and with closed circuit TV to Alumni Hall, and would later learn that many who were unable to get in listened over the radio. An hour before I had to appear, I told Jean that I had used up all my reserves in the final push on the report and that I simply could not go through with the speech. Somehow I made it to the stage of Spaulding Auditorium where, after David McLaughlin’s introduction, I was unexpectedly greeted with a prolonged standing ovation by the audience—before I had said anything.” Buoyed by the reception, John rose to the occasion and gave a fascinating, detailed report on the work of his commission.

I should add that on that occasion at Spaulding Auditorium in introducing John, I made a slip of the tongue. “John, it is gratifying to be able to address you again as ‘Mr. President,’” I said, “rather than ‘Mr. Chairman,’ and on behalf of a very grateful and admiring Dartmouth community, it is nice to have you home, the thirteenth president of the United States—er, Dartmouth College.” My faux pas brought much laughter, then loud applause. Truly, John had become a national figure.

More and more, because of the nature of my partnership with the president and his need for reassurance, I found the business of being board chairman to be time-consuming, and not just while John was away serving the nation. I was in Hanover several times a month, and while there, I was always up early and out around campus, often talking with members of the college’s buildings-and-grounds crew, the hard-working people who keep Dartmouth’s campus one of the most beautiful and best-maintained anywhere.

I knew that in winter months, many Dartmouth students eagerly awaited the coming of snow and the skiing that it made possible, although, by and large, native northern New Englanders didn’t much like it. “The damned stuff” was a phrase I often heard. Although I wasn’t a skier during my student days, I certainly had become a lover of snow while I was president of Toro. Snow blowers were an important part of our business, particularly our new “Snow Pup,” a small snow thrower that, following its introduction in 1969, had quickly dominated the market. But not long after I took the Dartmouth chairmanship, a snow drought struck the Midwest, and Toro came on a time of crisis.

Through the winter of 1978–79, almost no snow fell at all. We at the company weren’t alarmed, thinking that winter to be a fluke, and being certain that just as grass always grows, snow would ultimately fall. Toro stocked up heavily for 1979–80, because we were sure we couldn’t experience two years in a row without snow. But it scarcely snowed that winter, either, and our inventory began to accumulate. Alarmed, we consulted the Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, which conducted for us an analysis of tree rings, taking test borings at different locations throughout the country, to study the historic weather patterns described therein. The report was encouraging, predicting that the drought could not endure and that by 1980 there should be a pattern of higher moisture. Nevertheless, in 1980–81 there was again but little snow, and by then Toro was really under stress. We even explored whether cloud-seeding would work. At the annual meeting in 1980, I ordered a huge bag of chopped-up white paper to be released from the rafters of the hall. “See,” I said, “it’s going to snow.” I was wrong, however, and things began to feel like my senior year at Dartmouth; I was becoming overly stressed.

Toro stock lost forty percent of its value, and David Lilly felt that many of the company’s problems related to the president’s time spent in Hanover. Toro’s difficulties had, by this stage, become regular items on the evening news and on page one of local papers. Thinking back, I sometimes wonder now whether I should, in fact, have resigned at that stage as chairman of the college’s board, enabling me to devote more time to the company. The fundamental question was, of course: Did I owe more to Toro and its shareholders than I did to Dartmouth? It should have been an easy decision, I suppose, for my prime obligation was clearly to the shareholders. But my heart was in Hanover, and I decided to retain my chairmanship at the college. I still revisit that choice, which framed one of my ongoing dilemmas: whether to pursue pretty exclusively a professional business career or, alternatively, to continue devoting considerable time and effort to serving the non-profit sector. I had, thus far, enjoyed twenty-five years in industry, always believing that the two realms of engagement were not mutually exclusive. My problem, I suppose, was that I did not know the meaning of moderation.

Time was now growing late in John Kemeny’s presidency. John had once confided that he regretted having made public his intended ten-year commitment to the office, because, in view of it, he felt that, should he leave before the ten years were up, it would appear he had been pushed out. The Kemeny ego certainly would not have allowed for any such interpretation, and John stayed on. Really, of course, the time for a president to leave office should be determined more by the completion of his or her agenda than by the setting of any specific period of time for remaining in office or fixing upon a given age for retirement or some other factor. If a president declares explicitly, upon assuming office, that he plans to stay a definite number of years, such constitutes not only an act of presumptuousness, since his or her tenure is really a matter of the board’s decision, but it can also—whether or not desired goals have been achieved prior to that date—result in a period of “lame duck” finality. And if the intended agenda objectives have not been fulfilled by the date initially specified, there will be the necessity of taking more time, anyway. It is unfair to the institution and its constituencies for a president to depart prematurely. And this emphasizes the need for the president and board to have, from the beginning, a realistic vision of what objectives need to be accomplished during the president’s term, so that authority is expended in the right measure and for the right purposes. In this way, the coming of the end of the term is clearly evident, and, at that point, the fulfilled presidency can be celebrated in a positive manner. However, such seldom happens that way.

Unhappily, as the Kemeny presidency proceeded into its final period, his relationships with some of the college’s senior officers deteriorated. (John was not all that good at developing and maintaining close personal associations with colleagues, as he himself would readily acknowledge.) To help him, and with his complete concurrence, I asked two of the trustees John most trusted, Ralph Lazarus and Dick Hill, to form with me an ad hoc committee to discuss privately organizational issues and appointments before they were finalized. Within the context of this arrangement, we were able to offer John some well-considered and, I believe, valuable advice. Among other things, we dissuaded him from terminating Provost Rieser, as he wished to do, and from publicly criticizing certain faculty members with whom he disagreed on various issues. But despite the supportive board that John by then had, his job remained difficult.

Inevitably, as it became more and more clear that the Kemeny presidency was winding down, speculation began within the board, as well as among some alumni, regarding who should become the fourteenth president of Dartmouth. I quickly became aware of talk about Chairman McLaughlin becoming a candidate. Certainly, the speculation was intriguing, even exciting, but with Toro in such a difficult state, I was not so sure that it was at all a good idea. Also, I well knew that for a chairman to become a president was a highly unusual step in any institution that was not in serious trouble, and Dartmouth surely was not in such a state of affairs. On one occasion during this time, three board members, Dick Hill, Ralph Lazarus, and Norman E. “Sandy” McCulloch Jr., approached me about the matter. The message they conveyed was, basically, “You need to become one of the candidates in the pool.” I said that, while flattered, I was not convinced that my candidacy would be in my best interests or Toro’s or the college’s. Ralph then said, “We need to conduct a search that does not automatically exclude you.”

News quickly circulates around a campus the size of Dartmouth’s, and soon the hot topic was the possibility of Board Chairman McLaughlin being in the running for the college presidency. John Kemeny and I were at a meeting in Alumni Hall one evening, waiting to speak at a dinner marking an anniversary of coeducation, when he said to me, “I don’t know how good a president you would be, but I do know you’re the best board chair there ever could have been.” I have long pondered the full meaning of that remark. Certainly, a compliment had been delivered, but what else? John Kemeny was a complex human being.

OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS

The president of a college needs to have a close and effective relationship to a board on which he or she can count. The trustees should constitute an honest and reliable source of public affirmation or private challenge to a presidency. If there exist mutual regard and openness on both sides in the presidential/board relationship, as well as an easy reliance on its confidentiality, differences and criticism will be taken as constructive and praise regarded as genuine.

Every leader has strengths and weaknesses. It is the board’s task to build on the president’s strengths and to support him or her in the areas where he or she is less experienced or effective. It takes a confident president to admit personal weaknesses and to welcome the chair’s or the board’s assistance in those areas, as long as the trustees do not cross the line between operating authority and institutional-policy determination. Such partnerships are precious and can be as fulfilling for the chair and for the board as they are for the president.

On my assuming the Dartmouth chairmanship, and during the period since then, I have devoted a certain amount of time to contemplating how the governance of an educational institution can be improved. In that regard, the composition of the governing board is important in determining the nature and quality of governance. Smaller boards are more effective than larger ones; fifteen to twenty is a reasonable range, but twelve to fifteen is even better. Boards need certain skill sets among their members, and, ideally, all or nearly all members should have governance experience on other boards, so that they understand the role of the board and respect the operating prerogatives of executive management.

I long ago formed a conviction that the number of trustees nominated by a board itself should be no less than seventy-five percent of the board, and that the board and the alumni should work collaboratively on selecting the balance of the nominees, being sure that the qualifications of the nominees would relate positively to the current needs of the board, with respect to specific skills and to spheres of competence. A provision that all nominees be selected through a popular vote discourages highly successful individuals who would serve the institution if invited to do so, but who would not be willing to “run for office.” Having too great a portion of the board chosen by a process that is quite likely to exclude some of the best candidates does not, in my opinion, augur well for achieving optimum effectiveness in governance.

CHAPTER TEN

Hard Choices

ALTHOUGH perhaps quite presumptuously on my part, the notion that I might one day become president of Dartmouth College was, I must admit, something that had been on my mind well before John Kemeny’s presidency moved into its final phase. Sometime around 1970, just after my having joined the board of trustees, I had a talk with Orton H. Hicks, a 1921 graduate who had served the college as vice president with responsibility for the areas of alumni affairs, development, and public relations, and who had been a highly effective fund-raiser for Dartmouth. Ort revealed to me that during the search that brought John to the presidency, my name had been on the list of prospective candidates. That was entirely—startlingly—news to me, and even though Ort, in all probability, had said the same thing to a dozen other alumni, I was flattered. So, the possibility of becoming Dartmouth’s president had, in fact, long been in at least the recesses of my mind. And now John Kemeny had notified the board that he planned to leave office in the spring of 1981.

In Minneapolis, I began receiving telephone calls about the presidency, and when I was in Hanover, individuals started approaching me on campus about my becoming a candidate. As the pressure for me to do so increased, so too did my interest in the idea. Then, during the fall of 1979, I proposed to the trustees that we divide the board in such a way that half of its membership would constitute a search committee, while the other half, including the chairman, would oversee the college’s operations, as a committee on governance. The board concurred, and I next recommended that Trustee Walter Burke head the search committee. I liked and respected Walter very much and knew that he would have the time, the dedication, and the objectivity to do a good and thorough job. He was an independent thinker, his own man. I also knew that Walter was a strong supporter of John Kemeny, and would tolerate no attempts to undo any of his and the board’s recent accomplishments.

The search committee was quickly organized, and it invited several faculty members, alumni, and students to join it as ex-officio members—an advisory committee—to participate in all deliberations, but to have no vote. I stayed completely away from the search committee’s business, and, despite the increasing pressure, I refused to become, officially, a candidate. Weeks had passed, with the search proceeding quietly, when I attended a meeting in Boston of the board’s investment committee. Following that session, fellow trustee Sandy McCulloch, with whom I had developed a rather close friendship, said to me while we were walking together across Boston Common, “David, you simply have got to be a candidate for president.” My response was, “There are many better-qualified people.” However, Sandy was quite emphatic in pressing his point. From this exchange, I could see that the time had come for me to have a talk with John Dickey. I needed the advice of a mentor.

A soft autumn afternoon was on the North Country as I sat again with Dartmouth’s twelfth president on the deck of his home. Slanting sunlight filtered through the trees, and we could hear the bells of Baker Library as he sipped his Jack Daniel’s and I tugged at a scotch. By the time I had reached Hanover, John, who in his retirement from the presidency had appropriately stayed out of campus politics, but nevertheless had kept relatively up to date on college matters, was well aware of a growing movement to convince me to enter the presidential race. Accordingly, he was not at all surprised when, after some reminiscing and small talk, I raised the subject and said that I needed his counsel. I told John I was sorely tempted to become a candidate, but that I felt uncertainty about my qualifications for the position and that, also, Toro’s current problems were weighing heavily upon me.

The president emeritus took his time before responding. Then, he confided to me that during his quarter-century in the president’s office, he had been given many tempting opportunities to leave Dartmouth. He mentioned, as an example, an invitation from a secretary of state to become the United States’ ambassador to Canada. He said that he had also been asked to become president of several universities considerably larger than Dartmouth. (He certainly didn’t say better than Dartmouth.) Some of these possibilities, he admitted, had been attractive. “Yes,” he declared, “I had some very fine offers. But I brought the gal to the dance, and I was going to stay and take her home.” There is, he said, no nobler calling than to be asked to return and accept the presidency of one’s own college. Then, he cut to the quick, “You know, David, you really have no choice but to accept, if it is offered.”

Walter Burke, in seeking a new Dartmouth president, conducted the first truly open presidential search in the college’s history. Early on, he secured the services of a professional search firm, which advertised the position far and wide, the result being that scores and scores of resumes were submitted. When the process was well under way, I had occasion to call a meeting of the full board of trustees in New York City, to deal with some pressing college business. At that gathering, during a recess, a senior trustee quietly inquired of me, if offered the job, would I take it? My reply was that we should simply let the process take its course. Clearly, in my mind, that said that I wasn’t to be considered as out of the running. And I did decide, at that point, that I really needed to have a talk with the Toro board.

From New York, I caught a flight back to Minneapolis, and at a meeting of Toro’s directors, I forthrightly told the members of the board that a distinct possibility now existed that I might be proffered the Dartmouth presidency. Should I be selected, I said, it was the one and only opportunity for which I would voluntarily leave Toro. There were some long faces around the table, but they heard me out, and I assured them that while the matter was pending, I would continue to run the company as if I were staying. I phoned Walter Burke the next day and advised him that if I were offered the presidency, I would accept.

As the Dartmouth search focused on an ever-narrowing list of candidates, the pressures at Toro intensified. Revenues continued falling, and to cut expenses, the board and I agreed that Jack Cantu, the man we had brought on as president when I assumed the chairmanship, and three senior vice presidents should be dismissed. That decision was made only after the board concluded that it was not comfortable having Jack be my successor as the CEO, should I leave Toro. (Jack went down to Florida and took over a Toro distributorship.) To further reduce expenses, we decided to release one hundred and twenty-five salaried workers and to eliminate two hundred other employees by curtailing production in three of our manufacturing plants. We also undertook some badly needed company refinancing, cancelled a planned expansion of the Toro corporate offices, and terminated our lease on a corporate jet. Still, the pressures on me continued to increase, as I attempted through Draconian measures to steer the company through a difficult restructuring, while at the same time chairing the Dartmouth board and closely working with John Kemeny.

Soon the Minneapolis media learned of my Dartmouth possibility, and they hit me hard for even considering deserting the Twin Cities. Toro was a highly visible company there, and it had been my policy to be completely “up front” with the media, in good times and bad. Experience had taught me that too few companies are willing to establish credibility by being consistently open and forthcoming, so I had always attempted to describe the company’s situation honestly and exactly as it was. Upon hearing the news of my possible departure, my Minneapolis friends all advised me against leaving. Ed Spencer, CEO of Honeywell, said, “Don’t get into academia.” Also, Judy, while willing, was making it increasingly clear that she did not want to leave Minneapolis.

It was against this background that Walter Burke telephoned to tell me that in two weeks’ time his committee would interview finalists in New Hampshire, and to say that he intended to complete the search by February 22, 1981. He asked if I would be available for such an interview, and I responded that I would be there. That reply made me a finalist. In retrospect, I probably should have withdrawn then and there, for never was I so conflicted in my life.

Dartmouth College’s Minary Center is one of New England’s loveliest places, an estate given to Dartmouth as a conference center by William S. Paley, founder of the Columbia Broadcast System (CBS), in honor of his trusted lieutenant John S. Minary (Dartmouth Class of 1929). The great shingled house, set among tall pines on the shore of Squam Lake, commands a view north across the lake’s often-choppy waters to the southernmost of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. As I drove north from Boston to the interview that would determine whether I would be invited to become president of Dartmouth, little did I understand the importance the Minary Center would play in my coming years. I admit that I was nervous while heading for Minary, not only about the impending questioning, but also because I could not dismiss Toro’s problems from my mind. Furthermore, I had learned that most of the advisory committee’s faculty members who were meeting with the search committee were not favorably disposed to choosing a businessman president, particularly one who had been a trustee and had chaired the college’s board. I was aware that I was not adequately concentrating, as I should have been, on the grilling that I expected soon lay ahead of me.

I understood that the search committee had whittled the hundreds of candidates down to a very few. I did not learn until some months later that I was actually, at that point, one of just three candidates still under consideration, and that a fellow Dartmouth alumnus, Lisle C. Carter Jr. (Class of 1945), was still in the running. I knew Lisle, a distinguished educator and a lawyer active in the civil-rights movement, who, indeed, would in 1983 become a Dartmouth trustee. I never did learn the identity of the other finalist.

The ground was snow-covered and the weather bleak when I wheeled down the long driveway into the Minary Center property. The interview began in the evening, with the search group assembled in the spacious living room with its beamed ceiling. Committee members were seated in a semicircle, facing the large stone fireplace, before which sat candidate McLaughlin. Out of deference, the trustees allowed the faculty members present to ask most of the questions. My memory of that long and difficult evening is somewhat vague. But I do recall that, as the hours went by, I increasingly doubted that I should have been there at all, for my mind kept turning to Toro and its problems. As a result, I am sure that, in many instances, I did not answer well what was asked me, and there were some decidedly tough questions posed.

At the session’s conclusion, most of those in attendance went for a walk along Minary’s tree-lined driveway. Several trustees sidled up to me with advice. “Relax and be yourself,” I was told by one. Another advised, “You have got to be more assertive.” It was clear that I had not been at my best, and I now think that, subconsciously, I was hoping that I would not be nominated—the first time in my life that I had not tried to do my very best to achieve a personal goal.

When the interview resumed next morning, the questioning became even tougher. If the faculty members were not going to be able to vote on choosing a president, they certainly were going to have their say. They pressed me on how a corporate person, who had long held to a bottom line, could effectively run a not-for-profit organization. I replied that I had witnessed and also participated in a good deal of college administering during the past few years and that I was confident I could handle the job. They seemed far from convinced. I particularly recall one professor’s propounding this theoretical situation: “If there was a student march in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the anniversary of his death, would you join it?” As I recall, my response was that if I thought it the right thing to do, under the existing circumstances, I would participate. Looking back, that was a bad answer. I should have said that, of course, I would have joined the march, to express my commitment to diversity at the college. And I could then have gone on to address my concerns about the polarization of minorities that had occurred on campus in recent years. I do remember thinking to myself, however, “Is this an example of the kind of criteria they are using to select a president?” I did manage, by turning some of their questions a bit, to speak of my experience in fund-raising, professional management, and in collaborative management environments.

When the session, at long last, concluded, I said my farewells and departed almost immediately. On my return drive to Boston, I found my mood to be as gloomy as the winter woods. I knew I had not done a good job. I kept thinking, “This is not going to work.” In retrospect, I learned that if one wanted to assume a position of responsibility in a profession different from the one currently held, but which one felt qualified to take on, he or she should express no hesitation, no reservations and forcefully go for it. I did not do that.

Back in Minneapolis, feeling I had self-destructed, I wondered about calling Walter Burke and asking him to take me out of further consideration. But when Sandy McCulloch phoned from Rhode Island, and I told him what I was thinking, he said I should not do so, that there was no consensus around any other candidate. Next day, I had lunch with David Lilly, and he got right to the point. “David, let’s get things settled,” he said. “I think you should give up this Dartmouth presidency possibility.” He told me that he respected the job I had done for Toro and that he wished I would stay and lead the company through its current crisis. He was right, of course, and his comments were appropriate. I replied that, while I appreciated his supportive words, I was committed to the Dartmouth search until a decision was made. It was a mistake on my part.

A meeting of the full board of trustees was scheduled for the third weekend in February, at Hanover, and as it approached, Walter Burke informed me that the board would also be meeting in Boston that Saturday afternoon, after the adjournment of the session in Hanover, in order to meet the final candidates, and that I should plan to attend. Judy had joined me on a flight to New Hampshire on Thursday, February nineteenth, for the trustees meeting, and throughout the trip, I found myself more concerned about the situation at Toro than about my Dartmouth prospects. Indeed, upon arriving in Hanover, I sought out Walter Burke and told him that if he and the search committee felt that the other two candidates were well qualified to lead Dartmouth, I would be pleased to withdraw. I also told him of my lingering concern that the selection of a nonacademic might be terribly divisive to the college. Walter’s response was that he felt the college’s interests could best be served by my leaving my name on the list and that he felt it was essential for me to do so.

On Friday, the board gathered for its regular meeting in Parkhurst Hall, and John Kemeny and I presided over the discussion of a wide range of items, including the budget, some personnel issues, and the constant challenge of regulating campus parking. We reconvened on Saturday morning and heard reports on construction projects and discussed the conferring of honorary degrees at the June commencement. Midmorning, the business agenda of the meeting was suspended, and I was asked to leave the room. At this point, the board took up the matter of the presidential search, and I was driven to the Lebanon airport, in order to board a flight to Boston.

Later that afternoon of Saturday, February twenty-first, the board reconvened as planned in Boston, under the chairmanship of Ralph Lazarus, to receive a briefing from the trustee search committee, with its advisory committee, so that all of the trustees could meet with the three finalists. When I got to the Ritz-Carleton Hotel in accordance with the time that had been set for my arrival, I found the board assembled in an upstairs room. Upon entering, I immediately sensed that the trustees were facing a dilemma, deriving from the fact that, clearly, the faculty members who had sat with the search committee preferred a person with strong academic credentials. However, as requested, I presented my views on the college’s challenges and potential, after which Walter asked me if I could possibly return the next day. Ralph Lazarus kindly offered his corporate plane and pilot to fly me back to New Hampshire. I was convinced that the board would come to the right decision, regardless of whether it was in my favor. I also felt that I had made a strong presentation, far better than my halting performance at Minary.

The next morning, Sunday, the twenty-second, Judy and I drove back to Boston, entering the Ritz at three that afternoon. There, I met with the personnel committee of the board (including, for the first time, John Kemeny), all looking very somber. Walter Burke opened the meeting, stating that it had been a difficult process. He said that the faculty members who had participated in the deliberations of the committee did not favor my candidacy and felt that the search should be started over again. (At that moment, I believe that if I had been asked for my opinion, I would have said, “By all means, start it again.”) However, Walter continued, declaring that the trustees believed me to be the best candidate and were prepared to invite me to become the next president of the college.

At that point, John Kemeny broke his long silence and his theretofore entirely appropriate complete divorcement from the search. He turned to me and said: “David, before we go any further, can you tell me what happened at Minary? I do not see how it could have had such a negative outcome, knowing you as I do.” I responded: “I have been ambivalent and conflicted in this search. I remain very concerned about the situation at Toro, and it weighs heavily on my mind. I know I wasn’t at my best at Minary, but I had doubts about whether my candidacy should go forward.” Walter Burke at this point said, as I recall, something to the effect that he was confident the faculty concerns about my selection would, in large part, be addressed if I appointed a strong academic officer as a partner. While not at all challenging the need for the existence of a strong colleague with special responsibilities within the academic realm, John Kemeny later took me aside and emphasized that there could be only one chief academic officer at the college, and that was the president.

After a bit more discussion, Ralph Lazarus revealed to me that my selection had been by less-than-unanimous vote of the board—that I had been chosen only by a “substantial majority.” I thought from that moment that my presidency was, indeed, going to be an uphill challenge—not only with the faculty, but possibly with some members of the board, as well. Ralph then outlined the compensation package the board was prepared to offer me, which included a salary of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars—one hundred thousand less than I was being paid by Toro. I took a deep breath, and said, “Yes, I will accept it.” Instantly, the tension broke; everyone applauded and we shook hands. John Kemeny seemed very happy.

This was, I must say, one of those turning points when you decide to go down a path, not knowing the outcome, but following your instincts. It was, of course, a decision that changed the course of my life and that of my family. Before I left the hotel, I used a phone in the lobby to call David Lilly. I told him that, minutes before, I had accepted the Dartmouth presidency. He said, “I guess that does it, then,” and hung up.

In Hanover next day, at a special meeting of the faculty, John Kemeny, with trustees Ralph Lazarus and Dick Hill also present, announced the choice of David McLaughlin as Dartmouth’s fourteenth president. The news, not unexpected, was greeted by polite applause. In the period following my having been chosen, David M. Shribman, just four years out of Dartmouth and beginning a distinguished career in journalism, wrote an article for the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine about the president-elect. In it, quite perceptively, I think, he described the prevailing faculty attitude as follows:

“. . . the faculty remains divided over the choice of McLaughlin, with several faculty members fearful the selection of a businessman is a signal the College may no longer give first priority to academic matters. ‘What are we supposed to think,’ asks one professor, ‘when they go ahead and choose the head of a company to run a college? Where does that leave us?’ ‘I was disappointed,’ says another, ‘not because of what he was but because of what he wasn’t. He wasn’t an academician.’ Overall, however, those faculty members who oppose the McLaughlin selection are more apprehensive than hostile. And, as one professor notes, ‘this may mean the faculty may be left to decide faculty matters.’”

The day Hanover received the news, I held a morning meeting in Minneapolis with the Toro board, for the purpose of submitting my resignation. That afternoon, I flew to Chicago with David Lilly for a brief meeting with our Midwestern distributors. Then, I caught a plane that night for New Hampshire, and the next afternoon, Tuesday, February twenty-fourth, I met the general faculty in Alumni Hall of the Hopkins Center. John Kemeny spoke words of commendation for me, noting how well I had served as board chairman and how I had supported his presidential initiatives. When questions about the search process were entertained from the floor, John began to hedge a bit, on grounds of search-process confidentiality, so I stepped in and said that I was well aware of faculty reservations about a president who was not an academic. Most of the questions involved the role within the search committee that had been played by faculty members and whether their concerns had been heeded. I said that, while I understood the reservations, I had a deep love for the college and I knew that we shared a common goal: to make a better Dartmouth. To that, I added that I had a high regard for the faculty and looked forward to working with them. That seemed to defuse some of the concerns, and the meeting concluded with sustained applause. As I listened, the stark realization came upon me that I was now, after all, come hell or high water, the next president of Dartmouth College.

With John Kemeny having the intention of seeing the college through the upcoming commencement, my need at this juncture was to go back to Minneapolis, put our home on the market, and prepare for the move to Hanover. Also, I needed to wrap things up at Toro. With David Lilly’s approval, I had previously recommended Ken Melrose, a Princeton graduate, to succeed me as CEO. The board agreed, whereupon Lilly, Melrose, and I set off on a hurried trip around the country, to visit thirty Toro distributorships. At one point along the way, Lilly said to some distributors: “It’s a good time for Ken to take over. There’s no place for the company to go but up.”

While in Minneapolis, one day I chanced to meet Bud Mackay, a neighbor of mine and an executive of Northwest Airlines, who had once been a Montana cattleman. “I see,” said Bud, “that you’re going to join them academics in one of those liberal Eastern colleges.” He added that it seemed a pretty ridiculous thing to do, but if I could help change the way they thought back there, it might be worth the effort. It was, I found, a sentiment shared by many alumni.

I perhaps should add here that on the day after I was introduced to the faculty as the college’s next president, twenty inches of snow fell on the Hanover Plain, and that within a year, wintertime snow blanketed the Midwest, putting Toro on a whitened road to recovery. Toro has been a successful company ever since, and Ken Melrose is still its CEO. I am persuaded that he did a better job of restoring Toro to good health than ever I could have.

The power of a fondly held dream can overcome common sense. It is important to address realistically why one makes the decision one does. Hence, while my decision to pursue the presidency of Dartmouth College may have been selfish and egotistical, it also was unavoidable. What drove me had roots in my childhood and in those formative years that were my undergraduate days. My desire to follow John Dickey, at some point, in the Wheelock Succession became, over a period of years, increasingly powerful. Thus driven, it may have been easy to develop a somewhat-inflated opinion of my capabilities and perhaps to underestimate, as well, the challenges involved.

Once I reached the desired goal, I found that reality quickly set in. However, I have been asked on more than one occasion, “Would you make the same decision again?” My response has always been, “Yes, in a minute.” But in hindsight, I am less sure today than I was then that management styles are readily transferable from corporations to academia. Even if possessed of an understanding of a university or college through service on its board of trustees, the limitations on presidential authority as prescribed by internal institutional governance are sufficiently different that there is a high risk of frustration and unhealthy tension with the faculty. When the new president succeeds to the position after being chairman of the board of trustees, the hurdle is even higher.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Pomp and Ceremony

ON the cloudless and mild early-summer day that was Sunday, June 28, 1981, the ancient symbols of authority, treasures of Dartmouth College, were removed from their places of safekeeping in Baker Library to play their parts in the ceremony of inauguration for the college’s new president. Brought to a platform that was erected for the occasion on the library’s front lawn were an armchair formerly owned by Eleazar Wheelock; the parchment charter granted by King George III; the eighteenth-century medallion traditionally worn, suspended from a long chain, by Dartmouth’s presidents on ceremonial occasions; and the silver punch bowl presented in commemoration of the visit of New Hampshire’s royal governor to the college’s first commencement.

In a ceremony witnessed by a thousand people, I entered into the presidency, standing below the tall windows of the library’s Tower Room, where three decades earlier I had been welcomed as an incoming student by John Sloan Dickey. In the course of the afternoon’s ceremony, the historic objects that have just been mentioned would each come into play. I was seated in the founder’s chair; Boston banker Richard D. Hill, my successor as chairman of the board, formally placed in my keeping the college charter; and John Kemeny, in the closing minutes of his presidency, gave over to me both the Governor Wentworth bowl and the oval medallion, the latter engraved as presented in 1785 by John Flude, a London broker, to “the President of Dartmouth College for the time being at Hanover, in the State of New Hampshire.” When the medallion came to me, as John Kemeny removed it from his neck and placed its chain over my head, I suddenly had a sense of the large, ornate medal’s weight—and a sense of its weight related, also, to the importance of the responsibility now bestowed on the fourteenth president of Dartmouth.

When the leadership of a private company is entered upon, glasses are raised and a fine dinner held. Then, the incoming corporate CEO immediately begins to wield the authority that has been conveyed to him or her with the position. The new chief is given a free hand in hiring and firing and, subject to board approval, in changing company strategy. Certainly, the beginning of a term in the corporate world lacks any semblance of the pomp and solemn ceremony that is entailed in installing the CEO of an academic institution. All things being equal, I personally would be readily disposed to trade the ceremony for the authority—but, alas, that is not reality within the groves of academe.

An academic program of installation for a president can be truly impressive, and Dartmouth in 1981 was surely that. To begin the proceedings, the faculty, officers, and trustees of the college, as well as representatives from many Ivy League and New England institutions of higher learning, marched in the inaugural procession, in the colorful regalia symbolizing their scholastic rank, their fields of academic specialization, and the colleges and universities from which their degrees had been granted. John Kemeny and New Hampshire Governor Hugh J. Gallen walked together just ahead of President-elect McLaughlin. And beside me, at my special request, was Dartmouth’s twelfth president, John Dickey, the person I had most admired throughout my life. As we neared the stage, John inquired of me, “David, are you nervous?” I replied that, indeed, I was, just a bit. “Well,” he said, “I am feeling wonderful seeing the college returned to its traditions.”

Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti spoke as the formal ceremony began. “I bring . . . affectionate regards and collegial congratulations from Yale,” he declared, “whence sprang your founder and prime mover, the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock of the Yale Class of 1773. There have been, my friends, many times—many times—especially in the season of the scarlet and yellow leaf and in the season of the ice, when we in New Haven have regretted that our illustrious graduate managed to make his way through the wilderness to Hanover. But whatever contests there may be between us there is beneath it all a common devotion to intellectual and civic ideals that comes from our shared origins and continues to develop in common ways.”

He went on to speak the following words of praise: “This great institution, dedicated to the highest standards of scholarship and teaching and service to the nation with a powerful, deep faculty at its core, students of the highest abilities, and alumni of legendary loyalty is not only one of America’s oldest and best seats of learning, Dartmouth is also a condition of the spirit. It is a living ideal for those who know and love it, and a constant example of fidelity to excellence for all those who care about education and about the future of our country.”

And, finally, that wonderful man, a trusted friend throughout my presidency, concluded by “congratulating your new president and his lady and in wishing him success, happiness, and good fortune in the noble task he here undertakes.”

There were other remarks and considerable ceremony. Then, with the formal acts of installation having concluded, I rose to deliver my inaugural address. I had labored on the speech for days, aware that the words would be closely listened to, even scrutinized. I knew that I was taking up a difficult task, presiding over a college much divided both by the recent challenges of change and by skepticism about the new president. What I said on this occasion had to be good. I began:

“Members of the faculty, our very welcome guests and, in those words first spoken by my predecessor, men and women of Dartmouth. The value of a college is a reflection of its past, is measured in the present and is judged on its potential to influence positively the future. On that basis Dartmouth is indeed a wealthy institution. She is rich in heritage and strong in purpose. That fortunate condition exists due to the commitment and devotion of thousands of men and women both past and present, many of whom are assembled here today on this historical occasion. Dartmouth’s strengths are manifest in the quality of its faculty, alumni, students, and officers and in the dedication of its Trustees to this institution. But in significant measure the vitality of this academic center is the product of inspired and courageous leadership passed down through the Wheelock Succession and embodied in the presence here today of the twelfth and thirteenth presidents of the College, John Sloan Dickey and John George Kemeny. We owe to them our everlasting gratitude for their many years of selfless service to the College’s cause.”

After applause at that point, I continued: “Today’s Dartmouth stands at a challenging crossroads in its pursuit of academic excellence. We share a moment in time with other institutions of higher learning, which face hard choices as to the future course of their endeavors. . . . Never has the case for a rigorous education in the liberal arts been stronger. Never has the historical role of the College been more important.”

I went on to outline my platform for the coming years. The quality of the faculty, both junior and tenured, must, I said, be maintained at its high level and, indeed, strengthened; and key to that endeavor would be an increase in academic support. I then announced that funds had been donated for the creation of a faculty club; I talked about the importance of campus academic centers; I noted that the Nelson Rockefeller Center for Social Sciences would soon open; and I discussed the need to manage better the college’s resources. “We must demonstrate the wisdom to preserve the strengths of our existing curriculum,” I said, “and as we introduce new exciting offerings, we will need the discipline to identify and discard those components that command a lower academic priority.”

I next turned to the matter of campus residential life. “I know of few areas in the Dartmouth fabric,” I said, “which need mending more than the quality of undergraduate life. The terrain between the classroom and the dormitory room needs to be filled with greater opportunities for intellectual growth and for the strengthening of healthy interpersonal relationships among students, and among students, faculty, administrators, and our neighbors in the Upper Valley.”

I reaffirmed John Kemeny’s commitments to equal opportunity and affirmative action and to increasing the diversity of Dartmouth by bringing more minorities to campus. And I said that all students meeting the college’s rigorous admissions standards must continue to gain admittance, regardless of their personal financial means. While stating that the college’s year-round calendar, the Dartmouth Plan, would continue, I stressed the need for modifications. “There is no reasonable alternative but to continue to search for those changes,” I said, “that will contribute to sustaining high scholarly achievement even at the cost of some reduction in the scheduling options now available to undergraduates.”

Then, I brought my address to its close. “I have had the rare privilege in my lifetime,” I averred, “to know Dartmouth as an undergraduate, as a graduate student, as an alumnus, and as a trustee.

“. . . As a student I savored my courses in English, history, and government. I enjoyed music and the sciences. I suffered through French and grew under the stimulation of the Great Issues Course. My experiences on Dartmouth’s athletic fields were character-building and my love of her mountains is unending. I was in truth a ‘swinger of birches.’ I could drink deeply from Dartmouth’s well of knowledge. That opportunity was mine due to the generosity of generations of Dartmouth alumni and friends of the College who preceded me to Hanover.

“. . . Dartmouth with its special sense of place is a precious asset. In one of Goethe’s great lines he wrote, ‘A man doesn’t learn to understand anything unless he loves it.’ Loving Dartmouth is a joyful experience. That experience is ours, but it can only come from understanding—understanding each other and understanding our College. In that direction lies our destiny. It is now time to begin. We have an exciting and rigorous path to travel, so let us resume our journey to the accompaniment of our founder’s motto, Vox Clamantis in Deserto.”

The speech was interrupted four times by applause. And at its conclusion, as had John Kemeny just a little over eleven years before done in surprise tribute to the Dickeys, I presented honorary degrees to both the retiring president and his first lady. The applause was long and loud when the degrees were bestowed upon, first, John and, then, Jean.

I might mention here that John Kemeny really looked upon his presidency as a team effort with his wife, Jean. Their personalities complemented each other effectively, he somewhat shy and a bit retiring, she vivacious and outgoing, full of good humor. While she resided in the presidential home, One Tuck Drive, she wrote a book on being first lady of the college, which she called It’s Different at Dartmouth. I am sure that the spouse of every Dartmouth president would say “amen” to that.

The inaugural ceremony ended with the assembled audience rising and singing the alma mater, the final verse of which begins:

Men of Dartmouth, set a watch

Lest the old traditions fail!

Stand as brother stands by brother!

Dare a deed for the old Mother!

Greet the world, from the hills, with a hail!

My speech, in general, received favorable reviews. The Dartmouth stated that it had been delivered on “a welcome, conciliatory note” and that I had “appealed to each sector within the Dartmouth community to work together toward improving the college’s academic offerings.” And it was added, “McLaughlin carefully courted the faculty in his address.” In the aftermath of the ceremony, The Dartmouth also interviewed several participants in and observers of the ceremony. Hans H. Penner, then dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, said that the new president had “reaffirmed Dartmouth’s commitment to the liberal arts.” The associate dean for social sciences, Donald McNemar, said, “Dave did not hesitate to raise important issues about faculty and students and I think he’s off to a great start.” John Steel, the decidedly independent member of the board of trustees, said he was “overwhelmed and impressed with the beginnings of President McLaughlin.” And a friend told me that John Dickey had said to him, in praise of my inaugural address, that I had “hit a long ball.”

Looking back now, it seems to me to have been a cautious beginning—conditioned by the faculty reaction to my selection, by the need to assimilate the accelerated social changes initiated by my predecessor, and perhaps by my own preoccupation with the personal significance of the moment. There were no dramatic statements about the need to phase out the Dartmouth Plan, to restructure the social system in ways that might include de-emphasizing fraternities, to revisit the program to achieve greater diversity by assuring that the standards of admission were not in any way compromised in the process. Any one of these priorities would have been appropriate, perhaps even welcomed, but, in the first instance, it would not have been appropriate to do so without the board’s prior concurrence, and, secondly, I was decidedly of the opinion that we needed a time of healing and assimilation before we undertook more strategic structural changes. In hindsight, I believe I was wrong.

Between the time of my selection and my inauguration, I enjoyed the luxury of four months of preparatory time. With my Toro duties virtually at an end, I spent much of my time on Dartmouth matters. I traveled to Cleveland, Boston, and New York City to meet with Dartmouth alumni. During those excursions, time and again I was told, “Let’s restore the basic values of the college” and “Make sure the fraternities stay.” I also heard many alumni opine that The Dartmouth Review was the only sane voice on campus, and that the Indian symbol should be restored. In talking with individuals and when given the opportunity to speak to groups, I appealed for a reconciliation within the college family and for a successful completion to the then-in-progress capital campaign.

While in Hanover during this time, I held a series of luncheons with faculty members, in order to learn about their concerns and their hopes for the future. Over and over, I was told that austere budgets of the past five years and the costs of coeducation had created a condition of underinvestment in arts-and-science programs. Faculty salaries were a serious problem, I was advised, and, as a result, the college was losing fine teachers and failing to attract the best and the brightest. In the course of these encounters, I learned a considerable amount that I had not previously known about the workings of Dartmouth, and I promptly shared those observations with the board. Throughout that learning period, my one great resource was John Kemeny. We talked at great length, and he allowed me to sit in on meetings of the committee advisory to the president (CAP). So, I had a highly valuable four months of getting to know Dartmouth better than ever before, which in many ways was extremely beneficial. On the other hand, I realize at this point that probably it all tended to make me somewhat cautious in approaching major new initiatives or in bringing about changes. The core institution had undergone so many changes during the preceding decade, I was reluctant to raise new anxieties.

Judy and I made the move to Hanover right after the inauguration. The Kemenys owned their own home, just outside town, and they quickly vacated the President’s House—that big, Georgian-style, brick structure that actually faces Webster Avenue, at the far end of “fraternity row,” but which has as its address “One Tuck Drive.” We quickly agreed that the place needed some changes. For one thing, to our surprise, showers were entirely lacking as part of its bathroom provisions. Also, the Kemenys had given the house an Oriental décor, which was not Judy’s preference. So, at her suggestion, we switched to a colonial-American motif. Although the Kemenys preferred cats, I had brought my golden retriever, Tuck, to Hanover with us; but where at One Tuck Drive was a large dog to reside? The presidential home had no doghouse—at least no official one—so I asked the college buildings-and-grounds department to construct, at my expense, a house and dog run. As the student newspaper soon learned, the cost turned out to be five thousand dollars, and the price of our doghouse became my first presidential controversy—even though I was personally footing the bill. Then, in the fall, some students inserted marijuana plants in the big ceramic flowerpots at our front door, and reported their presence there to the local police—over which prank we all had a good laugh.

While John Kemeny had never been a morning person, I enjoyed early hours and found them to be my most productive period of the day. I showed up for work on my first day at seven o’clock. It thereby became quite apparent to other, later-arriving employees that from this point onward, things were going to be different in Room 207 of Parkhurst Hall.

I immediately set about putting my office staff in place. Elizabeth R. Dycus, who had supported the search process, and her assistant, Jan L. Kleck, became part of the presidential office, joining Ruth B. LaBombard and Mona M. Chamberlain, who had been trusted aides to President Kemeny. A. Alexander Fanelli, executive assistant to John Kemeny, continued in that role through the transition period, before going into retirement several months later. When the staffing settled out, both Ruth and Mona assumed the full responsibility for running the office.

John Kemeny had insisted, about six months before stepping down, that Leonard Rieser not serve as provost beyond the end of his, John’s, presidency. Trustees Dick Hill, Ralph Lazarus, and I conveyed an awareness of that stipulation to Leonard, and although he did not in the least like what he heard, he agreed. Further, it had been John’s intention that Leonard’s service as an administrative officer of the college should terminate with his own, but this was not to be. Rieser was not Kemeny’s equal at political maneuvering, but he surely was no amateur either, and he soon managed to resurface in an administrative role, as director of Dartmouth’s new John Sloan Dickey Endowment for International Understanding.

To succeed Leonard Rieser as provost, and after a search conducted under general faculty procedures, the board and I selected Agnar Pytte, like Leonard, a member of the physics department. Ag proved to be an inspired choice, ever effective and a splendid man. Another key move in the shaping of my administration was to extend greatly the domain of Paul Paganucci, then serving as vice president for investments—the same Paul Paganucci whom I had encountered in the fall of 1950, the student entrepreneur shrewdly dealing in, among other things, secondhand furniture. In an effort to reduce the bureaucratic structure that had grown under John Kemeny, and to affect considerable savings, we consolidated several administrative areas and made Pag vice president for finance and administration. He proved to be a genius within that broad sphere. He and Hans Penner, the dean of faculty; Ralph N. Manuel, dean of the college; Provost Ag Pytte; Edward Connery Lathem, counselor to the president; and my executive assistant, Mona Chamberlain, were the people on whom I relied most closely to provide frank and honest assessments and advice, in addition to managing effectively their respective areas of responsibility.

Other appointments did not turn out so well as I had hoped, due in part, I am sure, to my misjudgment regarding the unique character of academic administration. For example, when Dartmouth’s longtime key fundraiser, Addison L. Winship, decided to retire soon after the completion of the college’s so-called “Third Century Fund” campaign, to succeed him as vice president for alumni affairs and development, after a formal search, a Dartmouth graduate and successful venture capitalist was chosen. However, in the wake of having had an impressive career in business, the successor to Ad Winship encountered challenges in adjusting within the college to a collegial decision-making process. Such was also true of the highly accomplished person I brought on board from a major New York advertising agency to be the director for communications. Both men proved to have but brief tenure in their Hanover positions.

I soon learned that persons who excel in business are not always effective in the not-for-profit sector. The two worlds have different criteria for measuring accomplishment; they have very different manners or means of operation, and the politics of academia are less civil. Academia is process-oriented, whereas the for-profit environment is outcome-driven. While the discipline of corporate management may not be wholly transferable to academia, there are, however, certain attributes that are applicable—such as ones relating to achieving greater productivity and efficiency from administrative staffs and within the structure of the faculty system.

At any rate, I must say I felt, during that summer of 1981, as if I had hit the ground running. Hans Penner and I commenced meeting twice a week to address a number of faculty issues, salaries being one of the top priorities. Then, in the fall of 1981 (amidst complaints of noise), we broke ground along Tuck Drive for the Rockefeller Center for Social Sciences, to be constructed in honor of Dartmouth graduate Nelson A. Rockefeller, former governor of New York and vice president of the United States. In that connection I should say, too, that when a new college building is named, it has generally, in fact, already been paid for—or at least commitments have been made for its provision. However, in the case of the intended Rockefeller building, I early discovered we actually lacked the necessary funds for its completion. That being so, I approached Nelson’s brothers, particularly Laurance, a Princeton alumnus who had a home in nearby Woodstock, Vermont. Also, I enlisted the help of two friends who were close associates of Nelson Rockefeller’s, George Hinman and Robert R. Douglass (Dartmouth 1953). They were enormously helpful, and we promptly funded the project—my first presidential experience in academic fund-raising.

Also, in my inaugural address I had promised a gathering place to promote collegiality within the faculty, and, by mid-summer, I was able to announce that the old Choate House along North Main Street, in the heart of the campus, would undergo renovation to serve as a faculty club. This was achieved through financial sponsorship provided by two of Dartmouth’s most generous friends, Kenneth F. (Class of 1925) and Harle Montgomery of Northbrook, Illinois. The Montgomerys had already, with a high degree of imaginative initiative, provided the college with the Montgomery Endowment, the program of which brought distinguished individuals into residence to interact with students and faculty. In 1981, during my presidency, the Montgomerys also established a major scholarship fund intended primarily for students from Texas and California.

For a moment, let me briefly revert to focus upon the Kemeny presidency, with reference to the existence of many Dartmouth alumni who were highly critical of someone they regarded as an “outside” president. That situation had necessitated the making of frequent trips into alumni land, and I often joined President Kemeny on his visits to alumni clubs all across the United States. The purpose of these outings was not only to try mollifying and converting disaffected individuals and to provide positive testimony regarding current developments at the college, they also involved encouraging financial support, both with respect to the college’s annual-giving campaign and the securing of special benefactions. After all, it is a prime responsibility of the president to raise money.

I particularly recall an appearance John and I made before the San Francisco alumni club. The luncheon meeting was held at the city aquarium, where a rostrum was placed immediately in front of a huge glass fish tank. John was first to speak, and he had just begun his remarks when several audience members began snickering. John noticed this and paused to glance around the room, somewhat puzzled and annoyed, but he kept on with his presentation. Soon laughter became general, and I could see that the president was rattled by this unexpected and unwelcome reaction to his remarks. What was visible to John’s listeners, but not to him, was that in the tank directly behind John was a huge manatee that was constantly moving its large mouth as John talked. I finally walked to the podium and said, “John, you had better turn around.” It took him a moment to realize what was involved, but he, too, was soon laughing heartily.

In the early months of my presidency, much energy needed to be devoted to the ongoing “Campaign for Dartmouth,” the capital campaign that had the considerable sum (for the time) of one hundred and eighty-five million dollars as its goal, having been raised to that amount in 1980 from its original goal of one hundred and sixty million. In addition to other sources, I turned my special attention to a list of potential donors John had handed me just before he left office, comprised of wealthy alumni who would, he had been told, never give anything so long as he was president, individuals who were, by and large, conservative-minded and opposed to the Kemeny-era changes. Happily, in going to them, I was able to experience considerable success. For example, large gifts came from Emil “Bus” Mosbacher, Dartmouth Class of 1943 (who had skippered a twelve-meter yacht to an America’s Cup victory), and from John W. Berry, Class of 1944. Both had reservations about the changes John Kemeny had initiated, but said that they were now ready to give again—testimony to the deep, fundamental loyalty of Dartmouth alumni. (Prospects who are, in general, disposed to be financially supportive need to have identified to them opportunities and needs associated with their doing so. Those not inclined to give are apt to hide behind any reason to justify their lack of support. Both groups need cultivation, and each represents a unique challenge for a college president.)

In August of 1981, several black alumni came to campus for a meeting with me, concerned that they might not be so carefully listened to during my presidency as they had been during my predecessor’s. We had a productive and frank discussion, and they departed persuaded to adopt a wait-and-see approach. It was for me an important exchange, because I was becoming increasingly uneasy about the racial polarization occurring on campus. Their support soon became both clear and essential, as the Black Alumni Association played a major role in our successful minority-student recruiting efforts.

At the close of my inauguration, standing in my academic robe before the large, applauding throng, with the presidential medal hanging from my neck and the Governor Wentworth bowl and 1769 parchment charter nearby, I certainly displayed abundantly the trappings of leadership, for all to see. The momentous nature of the occasion, coupled with its pomp and pageantry, certainly conveyed a feeling of power. But I was to learn, as summer became fall, that in academia, ceremonial power does not either automatically or readily translate into executive authority. One of my early awakenings to that fact came when I stepped into a faculty dispute that involved one of Dartmouth’s best-known teachers, Professor John A. Rassias, a member of the department of French and Italian studies.

At the time I became president, national media were visiting Hanover in considerable numbers to report on John Rassias and his revolutionary method of teaching languages. John had invented the “Rassias Method,” an intense team-teaching approach to classroom language drill, which employed theatrics to rivet every student’s attention during every second of instruction. Classes involved incessant drills, requiring that student’s be prepared to respond, in the language being taught, at any instant. The Peace Corps adopted John’s method, and the number of its volunteers who have learned foreign languages through it is now in the hundreds of thousands. John was a great showman, and he became a real celebrity. Once, he invited a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor to lunch, and no sooner were they seated in the dining room of the Hanover Inn than John dumped a glass of water over his own head. “First, you must get their attention,” he explained.

John was thriving as a highly effective and popular teacher, and the college, because of him, was becoming widely acclaimed for its language instruction. I thought that John, innovative and exciting, was a quite special asset within the faculty, but I soon learned that in his department were colleagues skeptical of the value of John’s approach, who saw him as merely a showman, with little intellectual depth. Against the background of this realization, it early on came to my attention that Boston University and its controversial, aggressive president, John Silber, were attempting to lure John away from Dartmouth. Silber dispatched to Hanover certain of his lieutenants carrying instructions to make John an offer so attractive that he could not refuse it. Within the package proposed was even a theater in Boston that John could employ as his own. Becoming generally aware of the B.U. overtures, I took John to lunch one day, and he revealed to me details of what was being offered him and talked also about the troubles he was experiencing within his department.

In my opinion, it was important that John Rassias stay at Dartmouth, and I told him so. Next, I went to see the department chair, in order to emphasize what I held to be the importance of John’s remaining at the college. I quickly learned from this encounter that faculty members consider their departments to be their own domains, and I was given to understand that my opinion on such a matter was only that—my opinion—and perhaps carried very little weight. However, in the end John did stay, and today he is chair of his department. But I learned from that experience a telling lesson about the limits of presidential power—power that is restricted to the power of appointment, the power of the budget, and the power of moral persuasion. Beyond that, the cupboard is pretty bare.

Most days in the life of a college president are filled to overflowing, and at the close of the busy day, early begun and late ended, it is easy to feel that the institution has been well served. Only in retrospect comes the realization that, while busy, one likely did very little to make the college a better place five years in the future. Today, an effective president must forego some of the routine matters of administration and concentrate on a disciplined, focused agenda to try to implement the structural and qualitative changes directed by the trustees—even when they involve unpopular decisions. Unless an enterprise assesses accurately the environment of the future and adjusts to lead or respond to the changes necessary to fulfill its mission, it will surely fall behind the curve. This is a hard lesson for new academic presidents to learn or appreciate.

In September of that first year of my presidency, the board of trustees met at the Minary Center for a retreat, and for three days we discussed the future of Dartmouth. The revamping of the administration, which Paul Paganucci and Ralph Manuel had already begun, was discussed. We agreed on the need for more efficiency in the operation of the college. (The board loved the ideas, but as it turned out, not many others on campus did.) There was also concurrence that the then-current situation of Dartmouth’s athletics needed improvement. With coeducation, women’s programs needed more recognition and support, and the athletic program needed to be more integrated into our residential-life initiatives.

Early on, we had taken action, as I have said, to increase faculty salaries, which was certainly welcomed. When, however, I tried to institute a merit system for determining which teachers deserved raises and in what relative amounts, I hit a brick wall. There I had crossed that line between administration and faculty matters, and many in the faculty said I was now doing what they had feared most about a corporate CEO becoming president: trying to bring methods of meritocracy into academe.

Nevertheless, with the leadership of Dean of Faculty Penner, we were successful in implementing a salary-increase-differentiation plan and instituted a system under which students evaluated faculty members. That was a hard sell, and as soon as my presidency ended, much of the system vanished from the Hanover Plain. While the objective was a worthy one, it proved to be, for me, perhaps an unwise expenditure of presidential authority.

In an effort to achieve greater productivity, we also attempted to control the number of courses being offered at the college, which had reached a total of about six hundred. It seemed that every time a new faculty member arrived, he or she added a course. We advised the faculty that each time a class was created, one should be eliminated. Hans Penner managed to convince the faculty to approve the arrangement, over strong objections. But it proved to be another initiative that was doomed to disappear when my presidency ended. As I look back on my early administration, I now realize I was spending some measure of my presidential power on short-term initiatives. Perhaps I did so unwisely, but in truth, given another opportunity, I would have done the very same thing. After all, academic institutions do not have unlimited resources, and their presidents and trustees have an obligation to use existing resources productively in achieving institutional goals and to instill the concept of accountability into the system.

My next area of concentration was on the issue of “FTEs” (full-time equivalences). FTEs represent the number of faculty positions allotted to each academic department of a college or university. At Dartmouth, the faculty budget system controlled the number and assignment of FTEs, and over the years serious imbalance had developed. I learned that despite the fact that the world had become increasingly technological, with more and more students opting for science majors, the humanities departments continued to control a disproportionate number of teaching slots. I went before the faculty, outlined the problem, and asked them to act. They, in effect, said it was their issue and that they did not want or need my involvement. I had come to a “line in the sand” that I did not—could not—cross.

I have often reflected on how difficult my presidential term was for Dean Penner. He was a supportive colleague, but since many of my initiatives, naïve though well-intended, were in the realm of academic governance, Hans had to walk an impossible line. He did a great job, and I increasingly appreciate his contributions. He is a fine teacher, an effective administrator, and a lovely man.

Early on, Paul Paganucci, Hans Penner, and I took a long, hard look at the Dartmouth Plan for year-round operation. The faculty also had their problems with the plan, and they appointed a study committee, chaired by James Wright, a professor of history and destined to become the college’s sixteenth president. The committee determined that the college lacked sufficient resources to fund a return to a three-term system, since many new dormitories and support facilities would be needed. While this might have been overcome with a dedicated capital campaign, faculties are extremely conservative; they dislike change. In this instance, many faculty members had become accustomed to the new teaching schedule and were reluctant to support a revised academic calendar. With Jim’s leadership, we were able to make some modifications in the plan, particularly to reduce the number of attendance-pattern options. Until we acted, it had been possible for a student to earn enough credits to allow him or her to graduate in just three years’ time. Those who did, we were sure, were missing out on too much of the broad-based residential experience Dartmouth offers. While the revisions resulted in less disruption to class continuity, they only addressed the worst aspect of the Dartmouth Plan.

By late 1981, my administration was moving ahead on a number of fronts, and I was learning fast about the limits on a president’s power. I remained full of energy and confident that our agenda was pretty much on track. And, on a personal note, I made at this point one of the best decisions of my life. Back in Minnesota, our home had been on the market only a short time before it sold for a respectable sum. My tax consultant advised that we needed to spend more than the sale price on a new home, if we were to avoid a capital-gains tax. Since in Hanover we occupied a comfortable official residence at One Tuck Drive, Judy and I began to look for a place, not far from the campus, that would serve as a retreat—a place where we could escape for some quiet time. I soon learned about a property on Lake Sunapee, thirty miles southeast of Hanover, that had recently come on the market. The first time we saw the Bowles estate, we had our doubts. The property, situated on twenty lakeside acres, included a grand old, Adirondack-style vacation home that slept, at maximum capacity, twenty people. A product of the Gilded Age, the rambling, high-ceilinged main house was also filled with Adirondack furniture. Built in 1910 by the creator of America’s first fast-food chain, the property included a stable, a garage, and a boathouse. Having left stock and bonus awards on the table when I resigned from Toro, and now with a reduced salary, the property appeared to be beyond our means. But after some negotiations with the estate of the owner, a deal was forged. To this day, it is my New Hampshire home, the place where the McLaughlin family regularly gathers, a place and in a state that I truly love.

OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS

I found that the early period of a college president’s administration is stimulating, replete with a sense of expansive possibilities, but it is a period of very limited duration and one during which unrealistic goals and expectations can be raised. Academic honeymoons seem to last about one academic term—perhaps less if some significant, unanticipated challenge descends on the campus.

Sadly, being universally regarded with affection and esteem, as were storied heads of colleges and universities in the past, is not apt to be an attainable status by a successful modern-day president. (As the saying goes, “If love is your objective, buy a dog.”) It is far better to complete one’s agenda—guiding the institution to achieve the board’s and the president’s vision of its future—and, if necessary, to leave under stress, than it is to accomplish little and to leave with applause. If one can retire with both accomplishment and applause, then all the better. But it must be acknowledged that such did not happen in Hanover, New Hampshire, with Presidents Dickey, Kemeny, or McLaughlin. In the case of my two predecessors, however, the applause and recognition came later—and most deservedly so.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Priorities

NOT long after becoming president of Dartmouth, I set off on one of my walks around the campus and stopped in, unannounced, at several fraternities. The day was lovely, cool, and bright, and the air clear. Thus, the contrast with the atmosphere I encountered on stepping into the buildings bearing Greek letters was all the more powerful. The odor—a mix of stale beer, garbage, and general filth—almost sent me back into the out-of-doors. But I pressed on, and in the large social room of each house, I found scarcely a single piece of furniture unbroken. Downstairs, in the activity rooms, I came on a general mess, sticky and grimy floors, empty bottles everywhere, and more broken furniture. Conditions were no better upstairs in the bedroom areas, where it appeared that most of the toilets were dysfunctional.

I had, of course, known fraternity houses in my own college days. Although back then, the individual rooms upstairs were usually untidy, except when company was expected, and the basement and main-floor rooms were generally neat, except briefly on the morning after a major party, when clean-up operations had not yet been carried out. Obviously, the occasional evenings for socializing that my contemporaries and I had known in the fifties had, by 1981, become nightly occurrences. Perhaps I should say that I was shocked by what I saw, but I really wasn’t, for I had been watching the deterioration of Dartmouth fraternities for many years, and I knew to what depths the majority of them had sunk. I had voiced my concerns to President Kemeny on a number of occasions, but John had no appetite for engaging the students or the alumni on yet another contentious issue.

Dartmouth is surely a special place, and John Dickey often talked about the college in terms of its “sense of place.” It occupies one of the most beautiful locations of any college or university in all the world, surrounded by green, tree-covered hills and set above a silver, winding river. The campus is small; you can walk from one end to the other in fifteen minutes. And it’s quiet, except during periods of increasingly busy rush-hour traffic. At other times, the song of birds, the chatter of students, and the resonance of Baker Library’s bells are the dominant sounds. It is an insular place, in the clean environment of New England’s rural North Country. And it is a distinct place—not like a Harvard or a Yale, where you can’t tell for sure where the campus ends and the city begins. Dartmouth is large enough for extraordinary learning to occur, but small enough to offer a wonderful intimacy.

The fraternities, well before the time I became president, had variously become a problem, causing many persons to form the conviction that their very existence on campus was inconsistent with the college’s most effective pursuit of its liberal arts mission. While valuable leadership development could take place within them and personal bonds were established, the fraternities, in addition to their generally disreputable physical condition, tended also to be isolated entities existing too much apart from the enriching educational opportunities the overall campus offered.

It has long been an underlying belief that a Dartmouth education must be predicated on providing a total learning experience. Certainly, in my undergraduate days, I learned as much from interacting with fellow students and faculty, in social situations and in informal discussion, as well as by participating in athletics and by attending special lectures and cultural events, as I did from the classroom instruction. I particularly recall Sunday afternoons at Casque and Gauntlet, when we held a “cocktail hour.” Typically on those occasions, five or six members of the faculty were present, and one would talk about an issue of his choosing, after which everybody stayed around to discuss what had been focused on by the speaker. It was highly stimulating. But Dartmouth had, it seemed to me, lost many of those informal learning opportunities by the time I became deeply involved with the college as an alumnus.

In my inaugural address I said: “The non-classroom component of residential life should always be consistent with and complement our scholarly pursuit. It is the college’s responsibility to provide facilities for this interaction to occur. . . .” In the time between my selection as president and my inauguration, I discussed with Dean of the College Ralph Manual, as well as with members of the board and some members of the faculty, my worries about the deterioration of student life. Everyone seemed to agree, though nobody, except Dean Manuel and Trustee Robert D. Kilmarx, seemed to share my depth of concern about the fraternities. The alumni assumed that Dartmouth was today, and should continue to be, the same as it had been in their time. So, they tended to resist strongly any structural change in the system.

Let me state that I am proud of what both Deans Manuel and Shanahan and I were able to accomplish regarding residential-life improvements during my presidency. With Ralph’s leadership, we set about making the dormitories places where more social interaction and more learning could take place. We built living areas onto several dorms, places where students could gather, talk, and socialize. Thus, we endeavored to provide students who were not members of a fraternity or a sorority with gathering places. And we offered faculty members living quarters in the dorms, rent-free—a provision in which some faculty eagerly participated and which, in places, worked out well. Moreover, we built four new dormitories for undergraduates, as well as a dorm for the Thayer School of Engineering. These were not only necessary to accommodate more students to live on campus, so that they could benefit from the residential opportunities that existed, but also to house them in comfortable dormitories that promoted interactive learning.

Also in this period, we altered Thayer Hall, the main student dining facility, which had changed little since the time when I worked there as an undergraduate. The big, noisy old place really encouraged two things, eating quickly and getting out fast; in it you could barely hear yourself think. We financed an expensive redesigning of the dining hall, dividing it into smaller spaces, trying to create a coffeehouse atmosphere. As a result, it did become quieter and more of a conversational setting—a place where a person might wish to linger after a meal. Also, we encouraged faculty, partly by offering them free meals, to dine at Thayer and to interact with students.

But the central issue in our residential-life concern was the fraternities. I had, as I have indicated, myself belonged to a fraternity as an undergraduate, a member of Beta Theta Pi. Although I have, I suppose, long been perceived as something of a fraternity creature—having been an athlete and member of a house—in reality, I had as a student very little active relationship to the college’s fraternities. I attended some of their social functions, but I never roomed at Beta and I had little time for partying there. Although spending a lot of time partying with my “brothers” might have been enjoyable, I was clear that that was not going to get me where I needed to go. Indeed, whenever I was at Beta, I always, in truth, felt somewhat like a visitor.

During my student years, local alumni, administrators, and faculty members served as advisors to the individual fraternities, actively keeping an eye on things, to see that the buildings were maintained and that behavior was within reason. In those days, most brothers were concerned about their fraternity’s standing on campus. The academic performance within the houses was compared. While perhaps not wishing to be right at the top—and accused of being “eggheads”—members of the individual houses generally did want it known that they were good students. Athletic competitions took place between the houses, in softball, basketball, and touch football, and the teams strove mightily to win. Also, each year the highly competitive interfraternity play contest was held, as were the fraternity singing competitions called “Hums,” which took place in front of Dartmouth Hall before large audiences. To fraternity life there was orderliness, and I think that, in my time, the Greek system was generally a positive part of college life. Back in the 1950s, John Dickey and the deans of the college—Lloyd K. Neidlinger and, in succession to him, Joseph L. McDonald—kept a close watch over behavior, and any serious infractions would cause a house to be placed on probation.

As I have said, while the fraternities had been a headache for every president from Ernest Martin Hopkins onward, it was during the Kemeny administration that changes in campus and social dynamics increased the pressure on the houses. And in 1979, an English professor, James A. Epperson, circulated a petition among the faculty, calling for abolition of fraternities as “interfering with college life and the health and well-being of students.” The faculty voted seventy-seven to sixteen in favor of the proposal. Nevertheless, late in the Kemeny presidency, in February of 1980—just at the time two fraternity brothers were about to skate onto the ice-hockey rink dressed as Indians—the trustees voted “not to abolish fraternities at this time.”

Here let me acknowledge that the fraternity issue is decidedly a complex one, and let me concede that the products of undergraduate exuberance within the fraternity environment are not, at least in some degree, without redemption. For example, I recall a certain fraternity member, who preceded me at the college, who consumed on one fine day too many beers and drove his car to the baseball field while a game was in progress. As a considerable crowd watched, he circled the outfield at rather high speed and came to a stop at home plate. As it happened, the dean of the college was waiting there to make the call, “You’re out!” and he was suspended from college. However, this individual ultimately became a quite successful entrepreneur, as well as a generous benefactor of his alma mater. And there was another alumnus I knew who was expelled from Dartmouth. After having partaken of too many cocktails, and with a sizeable audience, he had put on skis and launched himself off the ski jump—on a warm and snowless spring day. By some miracle, he was not killed; only barely injured. Despite his lack of a degree, that son of Dartmouth went on to operate a highly successful mining company, and years later became another generous benefactor of the college.

And, in this vein, I should mention, I suppose, Chris Miller. John C. “Chris” Miller Jr. graduated from Dartmouth in 1963 and co-authored a National Lampoon screenplay titled Animal House, which in 1978 became a popular movie starring John Belushi. The presentation depicted the raucous goings-on in a fraternity house on a fictitious college campus. The fact that Miller had attended Dartmouth was not lost on the media, and Animal House became a serious public-relations problem for the college. Chris once wrote: “College is the first time most young people get away from home. It’s a short, four-year window of opportunity, between the oppressiveness of living under the control of your parents and the oppressiveness of adult responsibilities, to raise some serious hell, to get a lifetime’s worth of rude, rebellious and disreputable behavior out of your system. And I would submit that, by and large, this is a normal and healthy process.” He then went on to list, by their college nicknames, several rowdy fraternity brothers who were depicted in the film and noted what in later life became of them: Y. Bear, CEO of his own company; Hydrant, partner in a law firm; Giraffe, doctor; Doberman, minister; Turnip, professor of linguistics.

The challenge for the college was to channel youthful talent, energy, and ambition positively, as well as creatively. However this may be, I know for certain that from the moment I assumed the presidency, fraternities were a constant source of trouble. It seemed that fights were frequent occurrences in the houses. Some house was always on probation. And on one occasion, the Hanover police set up a “sting” operation, sending a young woman, who was under legal drinking age, into several houses with an undercover officer, both posing as students—with the result that eight fraternities were charged with serving beer to a minor. I personally received many calls from parents, and especially the parents of women students, who felt that the houses were an unfortunate and unhealthy feature of the college—such calls far outnumbering those supporting the fraternities.

Despite all of the negative factors that I knew were part of the overall equation, the trustees and I concluded to adopt a strategy of working within the existing system and to affect, thereby, the necessary alternatives and improvements. We let it be known that we considered the Greek system to be then an important part of the college and intended to reform the houses.

From the beginning we faced an uphill fight. A major problem lay in the fact that eighty percent of the fraternity houses were not college-owned. When, from time to time, usually because the local chapter was going broke, a house did come on the market, the college tried to purchase it. But progress was slow. We turned some fraternities into coed houses, and that worked well. Then, in 1983, out of immense frustration, Dean Shanahan and I recommended, and the board adopted, a set of minimum standards for all fraternities. They would comply, we said, with these stipulations or their recognition would be withdrawn.

That vote began an ambitious effort to accelerate improvement. A good deal of college money in the form of loans went into restoring the structures of the houses, replacing broken furniture, and regenerating worn-out lawns with sod from the college sod farm. And we did our best to put some adult supervision into the system; Vice President Paganucci even offered to have college staff take over the bookkeeping of individual houses—which some accepted. I visited many houses myself to discuss our residential-life program and to urge that fraternities responsibly fulfill their historic social role on the campus. Things did during this time improve, to a degree. We saw better and safer living conditions, somewhat less drinking, and a bit more emphasis on the intellectual side of college life. But permanent strides were not made, and every spring a third of the fraternity and sorority membership turned over, so that the learning process had to start all over again.

In hindsight, I am convinced that the wrong approach was taken. Having been in a unique position to restructure the fraternity system, I should have been more decisive early in my presidency, during my “honeymoon” period. Perhaps I could and should have eliminated the fraternities in their current form and redefined them—brought about some positive fundamental restructuring of the campus social system. Neither my predecessor nor my successors had such a golden opportunity, both being non-Dartmouth alumni and academics and, therefore, suspect from the outset, by alumni and students, as men having little, if any, use for the Greek system. But football-playing, fraternity-member David McLaughlin was a different story. Oh, the howling would have been long and loud, and many on the board would undoubtedly have opposed me, but I believe that I could have brought a majority of my fellow trustees along with me. What I should have said, quite emphatically, in that inaugural speech of mine was, “Dartmouth needs to dismantle fraternities as they exist today.” And that surely should have made the headline the next day. Following through, we might have been able to create a new entity; made social clubs out of the houses, controlled and closely supervised, and probably owned, by the college. I think that to have done so would have rendered a great service to Dartmouth, and my failure to say what I should have said, and to act accordingly, may have been the great missed opportunity of my presidency. The other great opportunity for pursuit would have been elimination of the Dartmouth Plan and a return to a more traditional college calendar. Both reforms were needed, but to have done both, together, would have been difficult to achieve. Of the two, the social restructure could have been accomplished more easily.

To achieve a restructuring of the college’s social system would have required the making of such a commitment at the very beginning of my presidency. The legal problems of taking over privately owned organizations would certainly have been immense, time-consuming, and expensive. I think it would have taken a full five years, beginning with the establishment of task forces to redefine alternative social entities. Probably a significant number of the alumni would have opposed this, but the faculty would have been supportive. While the latter fact would not have constituted adequate reason for doing so, such action might have changed, at least in the early years, the whole nature of my presidency by strengthening my relationship with the faculty.

Among other repercussions from any drastic revamping of the fraternity system would, I suspect, have been a revolt within the McLaughlin household, for my son Bill, a member of the Class of 1978, and son Jay, 1985, were devoted fraternity members. Bill belonged to Psi U and Jay to Phi Delta, and both were residents of and active participants in their houses. Also, daughter Susan, a member of the Class of 1981, was a proud member of a Dartmouth honor society, Cobra. The boys’ closest friends were fraternity brothers, both of my sons played fraternity sports, and both believed that fraternal organizations provided some of the best experiences of their undergraduate days. Susan would have concurred. If I had moved strongly against fraternities, all three would have disagreed with me—but I like to believe that they would have respected me for doing what I thought was right.

One memory that will stay with me from my pursuit of an improved residential-life program relates to the dedication ceremony for our new Wheelock Street dormitories. Those handsome brick structures, which blended well with the older college buildings, were built in a cluster, across the street from Alumni Gymnasium. Each was named for a former trustee who had contributed long and dedicated service to Dartmouth. Those thus honored were three former board chairmen, Bill Andres, Charlie Zimmerman, and Lloyd Brace, together with former-Trustee Bill Morton. Andres, Zimmerman, and Morton were present at the dedication. Brace, who had passed away, was represented by his son, Bob (Robert D. Brace, Dartmouth ’52). I presided, and called on the four guests of honor to speak. Andres and Brace spoke briefly; and following them was Charlie Zimmerman, who talked about the sense of appreciation he felt and about his love for the college—even in, as he expressed it, his “springtime of senility.” Then, came Bill Morton’s turn.

As I have already noted, Bill Morton was one of Dartmouth’s premier athletes, an All-American in both football and hockey. After college, he had gone on to a highly successful business career, ultimately becoming CEO of American Express, and he had long been generous in his gifts to the college. He had been throughout his lifetime a big, vigorous, rugged man. But this day he was not so strong anymore, at least in body; he was, in fact, dying of a cancer that had progressed to its final stages. Nevertheless, he had roused himself from bed and traveled to Hanover for the dedication, checking himself into the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital the night before. Looking pale and tired, when his turn came to speak, Bill said: “I have just come from the hospital, and you will be glad to know that I am short of oxygen today and I can only talk for about a minute, possibly two minutes. . . . I would like to say that when Dave called me and asked me      . He didn’t ask me, as a matter of fact. When I said I could think of a dozen other people who had done more for Dartmouth than I, and I didn’t deserve the honor, he said: ‘Bill, for the first time, I am not asking you; I am telling you. You are accepting this recognition.’ And I said, ‘Okay, Coach, you’ve got it.’” The ceremony concluded, and Bill went back to the hospital, where he died two days later. He was one of Dartmouth’s great heroes, and I miss him still.

OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS

The residential liberal arts college provides the optimum learning environment for the education of future leaders, the entire institution being a “classroom”—with all kinds of instructors, many of whom are other students. If any aspect of the total college experience is neglected, the learning process is diminished. Thus, boards of trustees must constantly strive to ensure that sufficient investment is made in maintaining high quality in every element that comprises the “residential college.” That difficult task requires the discipline to balance priorities throughout the institution, addressing the needs of all constituencies.

Any CEO must deal, at times, with worthy competing goals that are mutually exclusive. In academia, usually it is easier, in such cases, to bring the campus constituencies together, rather than to take the more controversial direct approach that would result in alienating one or more of them. There are relatively few opportunities a leader has to take an initiative that has a profound impact on the future of an institution. When such opportunities do occur, the president and trustees must make bold and informed decisions. In making those choices, one must first assess the chances of succeeding by taking routes involving little or no confrontation. Then, if those chances prove to be low, one needs to go on and determine whether the importance of the issue involved makes it worth attempting a more profound and aggressive approach, which may result in the expenditure of a measure of one’s authority.

I once asked John Gardner, founder of Common Cause and one of the wisest men I have known, how to recognize strong leaders and entrepreneurs early in their lives, and just how soon that can be done. John said that leaders can be identified in their early twenties, by observing to whom peergroup members turn for guidance and ideas. This is borne out in my own experience. The ability to identify these “young entrepreneurs,” and then to channel their creative and rebellious energies in positive directions, is precious, but, sadly, is not often found in faculty members and administrators. It is easier to manage an institution with rules that apply to all, rather than to be creative and, where appropriate, to alter the rules and thus encourage risk-taking and nonconformity. The need to encourage young leaders, and to foster in them original thinking, is at the heart of a liberal arts education, but is too often honored in the breach, not in practice.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Reality I

DARTMOUTH College’s record of military service is a proud one, and well over five hundred men of Dartmouth have perished in the nation’s wars. Beneath the stands of Memorial Field, built to honor the three thousand four hundred seven Dartmouth lads who served in World War I, a plaque is inscribed with words from the second verse of Richard Hovey’s “Men of Dartmouth”:

The Mother keeps them in her heart,

And guards their altar-flame;

The still North remembers them,

The hill-winds know their name,

And the granite of New Hampshire

Keeps the record of their fame.

As I noted earlier, the Navy’s V-12 training program virtually took over the college during World War II, those enrolled in that program vastly outnumbering civilian students. Indeed, its presence greatly helped to keep the institution afloat financially during those years. Then, in the nineteen-fifties, the college established Army, Air Force, and Navy ROTC units, the presence of which President Dickey said related to future stability within the College, “while permitting individual students to prepare to serve both the immediate and long-range needs of their country.” About one-fourth of all students attending Dartmouth from 1955 to 1965 experienced ROTC.

On arriving in Hanover as a freshman in 1950, I planned to join an ROTC program, probably that of the Air Force, in order to gain military experience, as well as to obtain some important financial aid. ROTC was an accepted obligation during my college years, and on Armed Forces Day, hundreds of people lined Hanover’s streets to watch the uniformed college lads march by. When assembled for review, Dartmouth’s ROTC ranks nearly filled the green—an impressive sight. But by the mid-sixties, the positive attitude of young adults toward ROTC was on a downward slide throughout the nation. Still, the military draft, increasingly unpopular, continued to funnel college-age men into the armed forces. Newsweek reported in February of 1964: “. . . ROTC has found itself out of step, both educationally and militarily. . . . Ranks have thinned, morale has sagged, and ‘Rot-Cee’ has failed in its prime mission: supplying an adequate number of qualified officers in the Army, Navy and Air Force.” The magazine further stated that, according to the defense department, ROTC programs could no longer be justified on the basis of their return on the investment required. That same spring, the Armed Forces Day march at Dartmouth was picketed by students singing “The Mickey Mouse Song.”

ROTC had, of course, begun a withdrawal from the Hanover Plain when student uprising against the Vietnam War caused the trustees to vote, in 1969, a phase-out process, over the objections of President Dickey. ROTC programs then were being cut all over the country, at the insistence of college faculties. The military’s reaction was predictable: anger and frustration over the fact that its profession was being disparaged by, supposedly, irrational and liberal faculty members, many of whom had never worn a uniform and who owed their freedoms to a nation protected by a military they denounced. A majority of Dartmouth alumni appeared to agree with this viewpoint. Nevertheless, the college’s trustees stood aside and acquiesced in the program’s discontinuance at Dartmouth.

Although ROTC finally had departed the college with the commissioning of naval officers in June of 1973, ending a thirty-one-year tradition of ROTC at Dartmouth, the issue never died on many of the nation’s campuses. In the years after 1969, the ROTC debate continued in Hanover, as the concept of a campus military-education program continued to have a strong constituency, at least among the student body and alumni. Sister Ivy League schools Princeton and Brown, in 1972, began discussions with the defense department about the return of modified ROTC programs.

Surprisingly, in November of 1973, John Kemeny announced that the Dartmouth trustees had voted to initiate a “thorough review of the feasibility” of reinstating ROTC, and that a fact-finding committee would be formed under the direction of James F. Hornig, associate dean for the sciences, to study the matter, with a special focus on a scheme that had been adopted by Princeton. The committee was expected to report on its finding in the fall of 1974. Under the so-called “Princeton Plan,” ROTC courses would be taught, off campus, by military instructors who had no official faculty standing. When the Dartmouth fact-finding committee reported to the board, in January of 1975, that it had rejected the Princeton Plan, and offered a compromise, the board voted almost unanimously to disregard the compromised model and asked that the faculty undertake a further study to determine the feasibility of having a modified Princeton model. The follow-up study did not take long, and, when presented to the faculty, it resulted in a vote of rejection, eighty-three to seven, which I took as being more of an expression of opposition to the trustees’ desire for a return of ROTC than it was an assessment of the merits of the Princeton Plan. Soon thereafter, the trustees reported that the defense department had little interest in reviving ROTC at Dartmouth, given the existing campus atmosphere.

The ROTC issue was always one of great complexity, having less to do with the mechanics of whatever program might be involved than with the reasonableness—philosophically, pro and con—of offering military training within the context of a liberal arts curriculum. The Dartmouth trustees, however, persisted in their conviction that such justification did exist, and they voted in June of 1975, less than unanimously, to negotiate with the Pentagon on reestablishing ROTC at the college. I voted on this issue in the affirmative. Then, in October, the board initiated efforts to begin a program in cooperation with Vermont’s Norwich University, fifty or so miles northwest of Hanover. It was during the first week of 1976 that, in an action calculated to placate both alumni and trustees, President Kemeny issued, jointly with Norwich President Loring Hart, a statement announcing that Army ROTC would return to Dartmouth in the fall of 1976—but that our cadets would travel to the Norwich University campus for their classes and drill sessions.

As John Kemeny predicted to the board, the program with Norwich tottered along for a little more than four years, with but few Dartmouth participants. Finally, in the spring of 1981, just before I became president, Dean Manuel advised the trustees that Norwich was considering canceling the program, due to a lack of Dartmouth-student participation; and subsequent to this, the program quickly assumed a terminal state, when the Army told Norwich that it was, in fact, time for a phase-out.

When my selection as president was announced, I began to hear from alumni who anticipated that I would be sympathetic to our reinstating ROTC. With the country now at peace, it was their conviction that it was important for officers of the military to have a liberal arts education, as part of their leadership training. This was a viewpoint that I very decidedly shared, and I also believed that not all our military leaders should be trained at the service academies—that having an officer component of individuals with backgrounds of strong liberal arts education could be highly beneficial to the military. There were, moreover, other factors driving my support for ROTC. With colleges and universities being obliged, by double-digit inflation, to raise drastically their tuitions, schools such as Dartmouth were forced either somehow to enlarge significantly funding provisions for their scholarship programs or, alternatively, to select at least a portion of their classes based on an ability to pay. Dartmouth and the other Ivies had, for decades, been committed to a “need-blind policy” that guaranteed admission to all qualified students, regardless of their personal situation financially. This, of course, put a tremendous strain on schools with relatively low endowments—Dartmouth’s and Brown’s being smallest among the Ivies.

Also, there entered into consideration the matter of alumni support. Throughout most of the fifties and sixties, Dartmouth had been a leader among all colleges and universities in the percentage of alumni making voluntary financial contributions to their alma maters. The decision to eliminate ROTC had angered many of our graduates whose support had been especially generous, alienating them at a time when their commitment was needed perhaps as never before. Partly as a result of the board’s consistent expressed desire to reestablish ROTC on campus and partly because of alumni support for the program, during the latter part of his presidency, John Kemeny and I had discussed the possible full resumption of ROTC. But John decided it was an issue he simply was not prepared to take on—like John Dickey and coeducation. Other Ivy League institutions, however, had by now reestablished ROTC and, thus, were receiving government support for their enrollees.

My position was somewhat influenced, too, by factors other than my own undergraduate experience and the financial-aid and national-service opportunities ROTC represented. Prior to my coming under formal consideration for the Dartmouth presidency, I had been invited by W. Graham Claytor Jr., then deputy secretary of defense and a former secretary of the Navy, to become a candidate for appointment as secretary of the Air Force. Graham said that he and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown favored an ROTC graduate as a candidate, and he proceeded to offer me the position. I was flattered, and while I had, as a matter of fact, decided that I would leave Toro after ten years as CEO, I was unsure that the bureaucracy of Washington was what I wanted. Judy felt even more strongly negative. So, I turned down the offer.

At any rate, for a variety of what I believed to be very valid reasons, I thus came to the presidency feeling that if the Dartmouth trustees still wished to bring back ROTC, as they had evidenced ever since their vote in 1969 to terminate the program, I would do all I could to achieve that objective. Return of ROTC was not, however, a condition of my election to the presidency; it was not even discussed. At an early stage, however, my deliberations with the board found a majority still to be strongly in favor of reinstating ROTC. Mindful of the need for due process with the faculty, I began to talk to members of the leading faculty committees, but on an entirely informal basis. While the faculty members involved in such exchanges certainly did not endorse the idea, neither did they flatly reject it. Also, through the efforts of several trustees a meeting was arranged for me at the Pentagon with Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman. As a result of that session, in February of 1982 a letter arrived at Parkhurst Hall stating that the Navy would be interested in reestablishing an ROTC unit at Dartmouth. Accordingly, in November, at the instigation of the board and with my encouragement, an ad hoc committee was formed, chaired by veteran faculty member Fred Berthold Jr., a professor of religion and an ordained minister, to study the feasibility of our reinstating Naval ROTC (NROTC)—an action that provoked a flurry of discussion on campus, making it quite clear that many faculty members would not, without a fight, welcome the military back. The pain of the late nineteen-sixties was abundantly fresh in many memories.

Of particular concern was the Navy’s requirement that its instructors be given formal faculty rank equal to those professors in other programs lacking the status of academic majors. All sorts of questions were also raised about how ROTC courses would fit into the curriculum and mix with liberal arts courses. And early there emerged, as a leader of faculty opposition, John W. Lamperti, a mathematics professor who firmly believed that the military had no place in a liberal arts institution. He told The Dartmouth, as reported on November 4, 1982: “Dartmouth is private and independent. It is an advantage of such an institution to keep away from signing up for the military.”

On the same day that the paper published Professor Lamperti’s pronouncement, a Dartmouth editorial stated that students should rally in opposition to ROTC. “The thought of the College sanctioning courses designed to stifle debate over political theory,” the editor declared, “and to indoctrinate students with the idea that America is always right when it fights, should be enough to turn the stomach of anyone dedicated to the liberal arts.” It was a statement that prompted, in turn, a letter carried by the paper five days later from Peter L. Herzig, a Dartmouth ROTC cadet enrolled in the Norwich/Dartmouth collaborative program that was then being phased out of existence. “I have not been taught how to kill,” he wrote, picking up references that had been contained in the editorial, “nor have I been ‘indoctrinated.’ I get out of the ROTC program what I want to get out of it. I am not forcefed. My thoughts have not been ‘stifled,’ and I have been encouraged to work independently. . . . I have yet to be required to assume any responsibility that would infringe on my liberal arts education. In fact, the biggest infringement on my Dartmouth education is driving 108 miles each week to and from Norwich University. . . .”

During the week after it published Peter Herzig’s letter, The Dartmouth brought forth for its readers a parody headlined “Ten Hut! ROTC, begin Operation Hanover!” The text of the accompanying article started off: “For years we had been planning our assault on Hanover and the institution of higher education located therein. We finally saw our best opportunity arise in the spring of ’81 with the inauguration of a more conservative and, therefore, pragmatic president.” It went on to describe a mythic assault and armed takeover of Dartmouth “. . . as the dawn broke on a new era of militarism at the College.” While pure fantasy, the story did voice a prime concern among some ROTC opponents. They strongly believed that I had been selected because of a promise to enact a hidden agenda, one of the items on which was the return of military training to campus. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but by personalizing the issue, it served their purposes.

The following March, after lengthy deliberations, the Berthold committee voted four-to-three in favor of the college giving further consideration to a reinstatement of Naval ROTC. A month later, I confirmed that the trustees were exploring several preliminary NROTC proposals and were studying whether the Navy’s curriculum was compatible with the college’s. Discussion went on through the summer, and in late September, I announced that the trustees were “generally very much favorably disposed to the program, assuming the faculty will also concur in adding the needed courses to the curriculum.” I noted that the board was “sensitive to the faculty’s role in the decision making process.” And I said that the issue would soon go to the faculty committee on organization and policy (COP), then, to a faculty vote, and finally, back to the trustees.

In October 1983, the COP advised me that it had serious concerns about the naval program. The message came despite program modifications I had negotiated with the Navy, in response to faculty objections. It was a setback, but a month later, the Student Assembly polled the college’s four thousand undergraduates and found that sixty-three percent favored NROTC. And in the succeeding month, an Alumni Council poll of graduates found that ninety percent of those responding favored bringing the Navy back to campus. However, despite the strong support expressed by students and alumni, a vocal group of faculty remained strongly opposed.

In the last week of January 1984, the faculty’s executive committee took up the issue. The meeting was intense, and during its course, the report of the COP was delivered in full by Professor Mary C. Kelley, COP chair. “The committee found,” the report stated, “that the more deeply the COP probed . . . how NROTC might influence Dartmouth’s liberal arts program—the more we were convinced that the presence of such a program would subvert rather than enrich liberal arts education here”—this contrary to the findings of the faculties at Princeton and Harvard. The two committees were challenged by Student Assembly President Kevin S. Rosen, who restated the results of the recent student poll. Both the COP and the executive committee, he said, appeared “totally unwilling to hear what students have to say. . . .” Provost Pytte at my request prepared a memorandum, which was presented to the executive committee, to the effect that the COP report underestimated the financial benefits NROTC could bring to the college, and he cited supporting figures. Ag was never one to mince words. His memo also said: NROTC was “good for the country and, indeed, good for the entire world to have U.S. Naval officers who are broadly educated in the Liberal Arts. . . . In these dangerous times, when even a small military incident can trigger a disastrous war, I find that argument overwhelmingly persuasive.”

The Dartmouth predicted a faculty vote on NROTC would take place before month’s end and quoted Professor Berthold’s wish that “the Trustees would respect it if the faculty were strongly against it.” Dean Penner confidently stated, “If the faculty voted it down, that would be the end of it.” And the paper quoted him as adding that “The Trustees have never rejected a faculty vote in the period since 1965.”

A faculty of arts and sciences meeting to discuss the vote on NROTC was set for February 6, 1984. During the interval between the executive committee meeting and that important session, students were heard again on the issue, as the Student Assembly voted thirty-one to one in favor of NROTC. With students, alumni, and trustees in favor, The Dartmouth proclaimed, “The faculty stands alone.” The stage was set.

Before the February-sixth meeting, in an effort to calm the campus, I told the faculty executive committee, “If the faculty reaches a conclusion, based on sound educational reasons, and their vote is negative, then I would strongly feel compelled to go along with their recommendations.” I was compromising my principles to accommodate academic process and the arts and sciences faculty’s concern with the mechanics of the plan. I found it to be an uncomfortable tradeoff. When, on February sixth, the faculty convened, with the president as usual chairing the meeting, debate was brief, but intense. Longtime government professor Laurence I. Radway moved early on to bring about a compromise, offering an amendment that would allow for further discussions with the Navy. That went down one hundred and fourteen to fifty-nine. Then came the final vote on NROTC, and it failed by a more lopsided margin, one hundred and twenty-three to fifty-two. Two remarks in the aftermath were noted by the media. Joy Kenseth, a professor of art, and someone whom I respected, said, “Right now I could make a better case to teach Pharsi . . . than have ROTC at the college. . . .” And Professor Radway opined that the trustees might yet override the faculty’s vote, “It depends on how much balls they’ve got.”

On February twenty-fourth the trustees met, with ROTC at the top of their agenda. Disgusted with the faculty’s action, one trustee asked, “Well, who runs this college?” Another responded: “If we vote for this, and override the faculty, this will shorten the tenure of David’s presidency. Is this issue that important?” While I had mixed feelings, I was committed to letting the process take its course and to respecting the ultimate decision. On my recommendation, but after considerable discussion, the board agreed to honor the faculty vote rejecting the NROTC proposal. But, importantly, it was also decided that a special ad hoc trustee committee from within the board, to be chaired by Robert P. Henderson, would further study the matter. The trustee committee was a balanced one, including board members Ira Michael Heyman and Lisle Carter, both academics. As the issue was increasingly focusing on the president, in a personalized way, Bob Henderson recommended leaving me off the committee, in an effort to move me out of the middle of the debate and the line of fire.

Meeting three days after the trustee committee’s appointment, the faculty executive committee reminded the trustees that any new proposal for the ROTC program not only must have faculty input, but must be presented through regular channels to the faculty of arts and sciences. While the faculty portrayed this as a process issue, in fact it was a fundamental governance issue—just as it had been since the late 1960s. The Henderson committee worked quickly, and after discussions with the faculty, adopted a set of criteria to guide discussions that might take place with any branches of the armed services. Their statement, a clear declaration, said, “. . . the existence of an ROTC program at Dartmouth is consistent with the fundamental purpose and obligation of the College to educate men and women who have a high potential for making a significant positive impact on society.” With this statement in hand, I returned to Washington and met at the Pentagon with Navy Secretary Lehman. In an effort to appease the faculty, I asked the secretary if the Navy would modify its proposed program by agreeing that no course credits be offered and that military instructors have no faculty status. Negotiations continued through the summer, and Secretary Lehman seemed to be in agreement. However, he subsequently telephoned to inform me that his admirals would have nothing to do with such a program, and, thus, the NROTC initiative died.

The trustees being determined to explore all alternatives, I returned to Washington for a meeting with Secretary of the Army John O. Marsh Jr. I outlined for him the plan the Navy had rejected, and while the secretary said that he personally had no problems with it, he needed, of course, to discuss it with his staff. Following our meeting, early in 1985, he informed me that the Army was indeed willing to establish a program at Dartmouth on the college’s terms. Naively, I thought that at last we had something that would meet faculty concerns and would honor the trustees’ commitment, as well.

On January 28, 1985, I went before the faculty to present a proposal for an Army ROTC (AROTC) program that was consistent with all the established criteria. No course credits would be given, and the military instructors would be without faculty status. Also, the program, while conducted at Dartmouth, would be administered at Norwich University, although most instruction would take place in Hanover, this as an effort to obviate the causes for the former Dartmouth/Norwich collaboration’s having failed. The faculty executive committee and the COP both rejected the AROTC plan three weeks later. Then, on March 4, 1985, at four o’clock in the afternoon, the full faculty of arts and sciences, with me presiding, met in Alumni Hall to give consideration to the Army ROTC proposal.

Somewhat hopeful that this time the outcome might be different, I opened the meeting by reporting on the trustee committee’s work and its efforts to respond to faculty concerns, based on the criteria that had been established by the faculty. When I called for discussion, for a time the opinions expressed were rather predictable. Professor Lamperti and other opponents declared they still wanted nothing to do with ROTC. But many older members of the faculty voiced support, and I was particularly impressed by Professor Berthold’s carefully considered and positive statement. Then, Gene M. Lyons, a government professor, who had been part of the ROTC debate since John Dickey’s time, rose to speak. From everything Gene had told me and from all that I understood about his feelings, I was confident he was in favor of the latest plan. But Lyons, after outlining the issue, said he was against reinstating ROTC. I was stunned, barely able to believe what I had just heard. I concluded that his current position was based on factors other than the program’s merits. From that point on, it became clear that ROTC was doomed, and the final vote was one hundred thirteen against and thirty-nine for.

At the meeting’s adjournment, I promised to abide by the trustees’ decision, whatever it might be. I then phoned the board members to inform them of the faculty action. I said that, despite the faculty vote, based on the trustees’ own sentiment as expressed during their session on February twenty-fourth, I believed that a contract with Norwich University should be executed. While I had the authority by prior vote to do this, I asked them to reaffirm their position and to indicate whether they still favored that course of action. We had, I knew, come to a watershed moment in terms of the old question of who runs a college—something that had been placed in doubt by events in the nineteen-sixties, when governance of the institution had substantially shifted from the trustees to the faculty, a circumstance that clearly played a large part in John Kemeny’s emergence as the individual to be proffered the presidency upon John Dickey’s retirement.

The trustees’ position on the AROTC issue was to be indicated by mail, and when the ballots arrived I found that they favored an acceptance of the Army proposal—unanimously. In this instance, however, while the board felt emphatically and unequivocally that ROTC should be reinstated, many recognized, and were concerned by the fact, that the issue at hand also related quite directly to who controls institutional decision-making when the matters involved pertain to social and political factors, rather than to educational-policy ones: Who are the ultimate decision-makers concerning the college’s institutional future; its fundamental existence?

On March twelfth, I released a statement to the Dartmouth community that said the trustees had concluded an Army ROTC extension center should be accommodated on campus. I said, “. . . insofar as such a program enhances the ability of this institution to serve society through its graduates, without compromising the central liberal-arts mission of the College, the existence of ROTC at Dartmouth has positive potential and should be accommodated.” Looking back at that time, and from the standpoint of institutional governance, it was a watershed development and occasion, one well worth the consequences. The faculty’s opposition by then was fixed, and directed at the president, so that my relationship with the faculty was henceforth to become more difficult. But it was an essentially important circumstance that the trustees were prepared, at that juncture, firmly to embrace again their primary role of authority, and not only resolutely to stand by their decision, but also the consequences of that decision as it impacted upon presidential authority and support. Unfortunately, I believe that developments toward the close of my presidency and after I left the office put the trustees’ commitment and willingness to “stay the course” in doubt.

The next faculty meeting took place during the first week in April. I was in the chair, and I had barely called the session to order before a motion was made to establish a committee to investigate the governance of the college. Several faculty members stated that the action should be taken as a direct response to the trustee vote in favor of ROTC, which had ignored, they said, the faculty’s official position. The study should focus on who governs the academic process of the college, the motion stated. The vote in favor of creating the committee was unanimous. Quite predictably, David Sices, a professor of Romance languages and a Dartmouth classmate of mine, was named as its chair. (Sices and I had tangled in the past, over Professor John A. Rassias and his future at Dartmouth.) It was, when all was said and done, a bad day for the fourteenth president of Dartmouth College—but not for the clarification of the governance authority of the institution.

OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS

A college is, of course, made up of many parts—faculties, students, administrators, alumni. Faculties function as intellectual entrepreneurs, and at their best can make the search for knowledge one of the most exciting of life’s adventures. The best teachers keep at the forefront professionally through research, contributing to the advancement of knowledge in their fields, as well as challenging the truths and boundaries of their fields. As individuals, they are interesting and creative colleagues. As a group, faculties tend to be conservative, resisting institutional change, opposing any constraints on their activities or their perceived authority. Their governance capabilities, however, are often limited and involve a tendency to follow the loudest and most strident voices in their midst, even to the point of placing an institution itself at risk—a point at which, usually (and mercifully), senior members intervene to keep the train on its tracks.

Unlike a corporation, which is “bottom-line” driven, to a faculty, process is often more important than the end result. Feeling that the decision-making process may have been abbreviated, they are apt to respond negatively, even at the expense of an initiative they cherish. Such behavior is contrary to a constructive decision-making process and can jeopardize the well-being of the source of their intellectual platform—the institution itself.

The president represents the trustees’ decisions to campus constituencies and seeks to ensure that the decision-making process is respected. There are always issues on which a board and faculty will disagree, and in such instances, the president finds himself or herself in the line of fire, defending and explaining the board’s decisions. If, after making a determination that is known to be controversial, the board waffles or becomes unduly influenced by the lobbying of faculty, alumni, or students, the president can be undercut to the extent that his or her effectiveness is severely compromised or, even, negated. The board of trustees must have the courage to stand by its convictions and stick to its decision, regardless of consequences, knowing that it is the ultimate authority concerning the institution’s future.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Reality II

ALONG California’s Russian River, two miles north of San Francisco, among the towering redwoods, there is a carved sign above an entry gate. The message reads: “WEAVING SPIDERS COME NOT HERE.” The meaning is clear; those passing through that portal are to leave their work and cares behind. However that may be, I have found over the years the Bohemian Grove to be a great incubator of invigorating discussion and creative thought.

The Bohemian Club of San Francisco was founded in 1872 by businessmen and artists seeking a place to enjoy one another’s company. Painters, playwrights, novelists, musicians, venture capitalists, doctors, lawyers, and industrialists all became members of the club, located near the top of Knob Hill. Several years later, twenty-seven hundred acres of forest were purchased, as the location for a series of retreats. The largest of these is the summer retreat that takes place annually for two weeks, including three weekends, with members and guests occupying one hundred and forty rustic camps. I first attended a summer retreat as the guest of club member David Smith, a Dartmouth trustee. Later, I became a Bohemian Club member myself, and I have managed to spend at least a couple of days most summers at the Grove.

At the Bohemian Grove, I am ever the learner. One summer afternoon in the late eighties, while listening to George Shearing play jazz, I was joined at my picnic table by California Governor Jerry Brown, and by his father, the former governor, Pat Brown. A few minutes later, former-Governor Ronald Reagan seated himself with us, and for the next hour, I listened to a fascinating discussion of California politics. At other times, I have conversed with various leaders from many sectors of American endeavor.

One memorable day, I talked with Robert S. McNamara, secretary of defense under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, about various philosophies and theories of leadership and decision-making. McNamara outlined for me his personal theory, one I have since found to be relevant. The theory holds that it is possible to diagram a CEO’s tenure in office in a not-for-profit organization, using a graph with a vertical line, representing authority, that intersects at its base with a horizontal line, representing time in office. The time line is divided into years, reflective of the length of time the CEO and his or her board agrees that the CEO is likely to be in office. Along the authority line are listed the critical priorities the board and CEO decide need to be accomplished during the overall period of tenure. Secretary McNamara said that every time a decision is made on a major issue, the CEO loses some authority, because each decision alienates some members of the organization over which he or she presides, this due to the fact that each constituency involved has its own particular interests and objectives; its own special agenda.

When a college president, let’s say, finally leaves office, he or she will, if successful, have used up all authority and time, while enacting the agenda that the president and the board of trustees or regents have established. Thus, the end of the time and authority lines should be reached at about the same moment, as charted on the graph. To be certain that the president has an adequate opportunity for agenda accomplishment, care must be taken not to dissipate authority by making too many non-scheduled or short-term decisions that will upset important constituencies. Similarly, the president must avoid taking on issues that are not part of the board’s agenda, if by doing so authority would be needlessly lost.

Looking back at my Dartmouth years, Robert McNamara’s theory appears pretty accurate. Although I left below the line, I had accomplished much of what had at the outset been set out for me to do, and generally within the allotted time frame of my tenure. It is important to note that in the corporate world, the phenomenon is just the opposite. The more correct decisions the CEO makes, the more authority he or she attains. The reverse formulation makes it difficult for corporate leaders to relate to academic governance and to that of other non-profits.

During my Dartmouth presidency, by the time I had challenged, at the board’s direction, the faculty’s authority over the ROTC issue, a considerable amount of my own authority had been consumed. Then, along came another tough issue that was to deplete further my store of authority. And before it had played out, I clearly was nearing (almost in free fall) the end of my vertical line, so that my term in office began to look like it might be briefer than planned. Despite the fact that Chairman Dick Hill and I had agreed, confidentially, on the probability of a relatively short tenure for my presidency, due to my corporate background and the nature of the issues we faced, it now seemed that even my lower-end expectation might have been optimistic. The new major issue was what came to be known as “divestiture”—or “the shanties.”

When I assumed the presidency of Dartmouth, Ronald Reagan had just moved into the White House, a wall continued to divide East and West Berlin, and Nelson Mandela was still jailed in South Africa. Mandela’s imprisonment and the oppressive government policies that had brought it about had become a burning issue on many American college campuses, as activists there came to believe that they could pressure the South African government into doing away with its national system of segregation, known as “apartheid.” South Africa’s government, although representing only the country’s white minority, ruled with an iron hand, thereby depriving the native black population of many human and civil rights. Student activists were persuaded that if American institutions would cease investing in companies doing business in South Africa, the resulting economic pressure would force the government there to end apartheid. Thus, students were pressuring their college and university boards of trustees to sell all stock holdings in companies that dealt commercially with South Africa. The trustees of many schools, however, saw the issue as far more complex, knowing that many American businesses believed that through an ongoing relationship to the country and its economy, they could exert a far more powerful and positive influence on its government than would result from their withdrawal. The activists did not buy that reasoning at all, and they insisted that their institutions get rid of—divest themselves of—all South African investments immediately. “Divestiture now!” was the rallying cry.

Into the fray developing around this issue stepped the Reverend Leon Sullivan, projecting a time-phased approach to divestment, which came to be known as the “Sullivan Principles.” Sullivan, the pastor of a large Philadelphia church, had in 1971 become the first black to join the board of a major United States corporation, General Motors, and he developed what was, in essence, a code of conduct for companies doing business in South Africa. If companies took an active role in the advancement of human rights and social justice, paid fair wages to black employees, and invested in housing and education for their black workers, they should, Sullivan believed, be allowed to continue their South African operations. However, companies that failed to meet these criteria should, he said, withdraw. Moreover, he propounded that stocks in those companies that did not accord with the conditions outlined in his Sullivan Principles should not continue to be held in the investment portfolios of academic institutions. Sullivan’s was, I thought, a quite reasonable approach to the issue, and I had, indeed, heard him make an impassioned presentation about his principles, in remarks that he made at a corporate meeting I had attended. But the issue was a difficult one for Dartmouth, because many Fortune 500 companies were doing business in South Africa, and much of the college’s endowment was invested in those corporations.

Although concerns about South Africa had at various times previously been voiced on campus, it was not until April 1983 that divestment became a major topic at Dartmouth, when a visiting professor, newly arrived at the college and with whom I had met earlier, gave a talk in Webster Hall. The speaker was Dennis Brutus, a South African and an award-winning poet, who had clashed with the white regime in his native country. Brutus, a black man with unruly gray hair, soft-spoken and determined, had back home led a movement that caused his country, due to its racist policies, to be banned from major international sports, including the 1964 Olympic games. Because of that and his other activities, Brutus had been shot, beaten, and imprisoned. Now in America on a temporary visa, and with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service trying to have him deported as a subversive, Brutus knew that a return to Johannesburg would mean his certain rearrest. In his Hanover speech, he described the racism and brutality of the South African regime, though mentioning the matter of divestment only casually. What he did say, however, served to rouse the campus, and the issue began to take fire.

Five days after the Dennis Brutus speech, Professor Leo Spitzer, who chaired a committee then actively working with the trustees on the propriety of college investments, resigned his chairmanship, saying the board was moving too slowly toward selling its holdings in companies doing business in South Africa. The issue simmered until November, when Brutus addressed the divestment issue head-on in another well-attended campus talk. He stated that the college should divest itself of its South African holdings immediately.

In May 1984, the faculty of arts and sciences, in response to a proposal put forth by Richard A. Joseph (Dartmouth ’65), a professor of government and Afro-American studies, asked the trustees to appoint an ad hoc committee to study the whole matter. The faculty also asked that the trustees make no additional investments in companies doing business in South Africa. Responding, the board did establish such a committee, and the president issued a statement of assurance that the board was moving toward adopting the Sullivan Principles, with respect to college investments. Discussion continued on campus into early 1985, when the trustees were presented with a petition calling for divestment, signed by hundreds of students and faculty members. The board responded by reaffirming its earlier-announced position, but also voted to make no further investments in banks that lent money to South Africa.

A strong voice on the board at the time was George B. Munroe, who had been a basketball All-American at Dartmouth and, while in law school, had played professionally with the Boston Celtics. George was now CEO of the Phelps Dodge corporation, which did a great deal of business in South Africa. He strongly believed that the United States companies could be far more effective in reforming South African conditions by exerting economic influence and pressure within the country than could be achieved outside of it. But to the students who favored divestment, the matter was simple: If you were invested in South Africa, you supported racist policies.

During the spring term, the ad hoc committee that had been established handed the board a six-page report recommending that the trustees be guided by the Sullivan Principles. Although a solid majority of the trustees opposed divestment, they did favor the college adhering to Sullivan’s approach. And in June, divestment was again being discussed during the board’s meeting, when two students barged in, demanding that they be allowed to make a statement. Their arrival was a complete surprise, since the campus police were present in the building to ensure that board sessions were private and secure from interruption. I still have no idea how the pair got in. But when they entered the room, I jumped up, declared, “This meeting is in recess,” and hurriedly escorted the young men into the outer office, shutting the door behind us. I told them I could not allow such an intrusion and that they had no right to be there, but that if they would put their views in writing, I would see that the trustees received copies. They agreed to leave, and did so, ending an awkward moment. Before adjourning, the trustees (not thanks to the interruption) did act to tighten their previous investment policy and voted to require that all companies doing business in South Africa, in which Dartmouth was invested, be in compliance with the Sullivan Principles within a year’s time.

By this juncture, divestment was a disruptive issue on most American college campuses. In the Ivy League, Columbia University was hit by a three-week-long student sit-in; and when on June 18, 1985, the Ivy presidents gathered for one of their regularly scheduled meetings, which was in this instance held at Columbia’s Averill Harriman estate, in upstate New York, divestment was high on the agenda. As the session began, Columbia President Michael I. Sovern announced that he had invited a special guest, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, to discuss with the group the matter of divestment. Several presidents, myself included, took exception to Sovern’s action, because we could see no good purpose being served by confrontational dialogue. Nevertheless, Jackson joined the meeting, accompanied by three aides carrying pads of paper, who proceeded to take notes throughout the tense discussion. He, of course, spoke forcefully in favor of divestment. And, as his aides wrote, he asked each of the eight Ivy presidents to describe his institution’s stand. I remember that several presidents responded that, in effect, it was none of Jackson’s business. When it came my turn to speak, I told him simply that Dartmouth’s board had adopted the Sullivan Principles. (Incidentally, I might note that Jesse Jackson had himself actively participated in Columbia’s student protests. Obviously, on Morningside Heights, at this point, President Sovern was feeling the pressure. And, indeed, within a week Columbia divested totally.)

Back in Hanover, in July, at my request the Tucker Foundation held three days of forums and debates on South Africa. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Chicago ordered that Professor Brutus be allowed to stay in America, ruling against the immigration and naturalization service. Then, in October, Brutus spoke at a rally on the college green, sponsored by a new campus organization, the Dartmouth Committee for Divestment (DCD). “Students can make a major contribution,” he said. “This is where you must fight your battle. This is where you must push Uncle Tom Sullivan and his phony principles. We don’t want our chains polished, we want our chains removed.” Less than a month later, on November eighteenth, the DCD began to build, smack in the middle of the green, a group of board-and-tin shanties that were meant to symbolize the ramshackle conditions of black South African communities.

I ought here to mention that at the college I had late in 1982 appointed a new dean of the college, my colleague Ralph Manuel having departed in June of that year to become superintendent of a private school, Culver Academy. From Wesleyan University, to succeed Ralph, came Edward J. Shanahan, with a solid record as an academic administrator. While he clearly understood that divestiture was an explosive issue on campuses all across the land, Ed Shanahan could have had no idea, I am sure, of just what he was walking into at Dartmouth, for divestment in Hanover was soon to become a major news story of national scope.

The first time I saw the Dartmouth shanties, early one fall morning, I said to myself, “Oh-oh, this is going to be a problem,” and I promptly called a meeting of my top administrators. Vice President Paganucci said that we ought to get rid of the shanties now, right away. C. Dwight Lahr, faculty dean, urged a cautious approach, pointing out that the matter was of much more consequence than just the presence of a few little, unsightly huts looking out of place on the college green, and he emphasized that a number of faculty members were vested in the issue. Ed Shanahan seemed unsure of just how we should proceed. However, after much discussion, we did reach a consensus that the shanties ought to be removed, and achieving this was entrusted to Dean Shanahan.

Three days after the shanty building began, Shanahan sent the DCD a letter stating that the shanties must be dismantled or “. . . it will be necessary for the College to remove the shanties.” The DCD shot back, “The shanties will remain until you totally divest.” That same day, staffers of The Dartmouth Review made their feelings known by holding a black-tie champagne party on the Baker Library lawn, in full view of the crude little buildings meant to symbolize South African poverty and deprivation. And four days after that, several faculty members joined the DCD and others at a rally on the lawn of Parkhurst Hall—whereupon Dean Shanahan changed course and withdrew his removal order.

At this point, and to support the dean, I stated that the shanties could remain “so long as they serve an educational purpose and do not disrupt the business of the campus.” What was at issue could be justified as involving the protection of rights of free speech and expression, but I am convinced, twenty years after the event, that if we had not wavered and, instead, had acted immediately, the matter of the shanties could have been neutralized and not become the visible rallying point for divestiture that it promptly did. But the shanties remained—and, in hindsight, it was an error in judgment on my part. Sometimes, moving to the middle ground results in putting oneself in a no-win situation.

As snow whitened the Hanover Plain, the president’s telephone brought more and more calls from alumni, and from some trustees, who complained that their college green was being blighted by those ugly shanties—particularly during the approaching holiday season. Also, the media had taken notice of the controversy, and the little shacks were becoming famous nationally through the press. My friend Bart Giamatti, on reading about them, called from New Haven to express sympathy. He noted that while shanties had been built on the Yale campus, due to the size of the place and its urban setting, nobody had paid much attention. But at Dartmouth, he said, they were, of course, a centerpiece—especially for the media.

The holidays passed quietly, with DCD members taking turns occupying the shanties. On more than one occasion, I stopped by at the shanties and had conversations with their chilly occupants. Those with whom I talked were polite and eager to discuss the divestment issue—or anything else, to keep themselves from boredom. By January tenth, the students had returned from their Christmas break, and that day thirty DCD members held a sit-in in my office, to demand total and immediate divestiture. After several hours and at my request, they left quietly. On January thirteenth, the faculty voted unanimously to ask that the trustees divest totally. And, despite the continuing atmosphere of unrest on campus, I decided to depart on a long previously scheduled tour of alumni clubs, to explain the college’s policy on divestiture and the importance of learning to disagree civilly—and, of course, to solicit financial contributions to the college.

On January 20, 1986, the United States for the first time officially honored the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. (who had once spoken at Dartmouth) with a national holiday. Late that night (actually, at three in the morning, on January twenty-first), a dozen students calling themselves “The Committee to Beautify the Green Before Winter Carnival” drove onto the college green in a flatbed truck and attacked three of the shanties with sledgehammers. A fourth hut, in which two students were sleeping, was spared. Campus police arrived within five minutes and found the three shanties nearly destroyed. It was soon learned that ten of the shanty-bashers were staff members of The Dartmouth Review. The campus erupted.

On January twenty-second, at seven-forty-five in the morning, I was in Florida to meet with alumni clubs and was talking on the phone with my assistant, Mona Chamberlain. Mona and I had agreed that the door to the president’s office should be kept locked while I was away, just in case of trouble. She was in my office watering plants when my call came in. As we talked, Mona heard a ruckus in the hallway and was dismayed to realize that she had left the office door ajar. “I’ve got to hang up,” she said to me. “They’re coming in the door.” I immediately grabbed my luggage, hopped in a cab, and headed for the nearest airport.

I was back in Hanover by late that night. The next morning, I inspected the smashed shanties and, then, met with the Hanover police, campus police, and college officials, in order to discuss how to clear the protestors from my office. Next, I went to my office and had a meeting with the twenty or thirty protestors, who were students and faculty members and who had occupied the office since the previous day. I described to them the pertinent legal process of the college that was coming into play, and I emphasized that I was prepared to resort, if necessary, to having police clear the building, although I preferred not to do that. I then departed, but returned in the afternoon, when I was told that the students were prepared to leave and wanted to meet with me. They asked me to join them in singing “We Shall Overcome,” which I did. They thereupon left quietly, thirty hours after their sudden arrival. In the wake of the sit-in, I immediately asked the faculty to suspend classes. They, of course, agreed, and I announced that a day-long forum would be held in Webster Hall, to provide for a campus-wide discussion of divestiture and the destruction of the shanties.

I was among those who presided at the forum on January twenty-fourth, and I found it to be an emotional and truly educational experience. My son Bill came to Hanover for the occasion, in order to give me his support. I particularly recall two students who rose to speak in that packed hall. A freshman, who admitted he was nervous, said: “As a white, Anglo-Saxon male, I never had to speak out. I was content and passive. When I walked across the green and saw the smashed-up shanties and the big sign, ‘Racists did this,’ it wasn’t someone else’s fight anymore.” Another student admitted to having played a role in destroying the shanties, and said: “I was wrong. I’m scared to be here, because I’m afraid this is going to turn into a witch hunt. I never had to address the idea of what happens if you do something like this. Now that we have, let’s keep talking.” A black student responded: “Please, brother, remember the uncomfortable feeling you have right now. This is how I’ve felt all my life.” What transpired that afternoon amounted to a lesson in the value of civil dialogue. I wished that the entire Dartmouth family had been there to experience it.

On January twenty-seventh, the faculty assembled, with several of its members intent on making the president the meeting’s issue. The new dean of the faculty, Dwight Lahr, who had succeeded Hans Penner, advised me just before I called the meeting to order that I should give up the chair. I told him that, while I appreciated his concern, I would do no such thing, at least not at the outset of the session. The next two hours proved to be perhaps the most uncomfortable of my life, as several speakers criticized the leadership of the college, not just on the divestment issue, but concerning my handling of ROTC and other matters. Melvin Spiegel, a biology professor, said that Dartmouth had become “the laughingstock of the nation” and that the president functioned as “the chair of the board” and not as the president of a college. Professor Spiegel then, as was reported in The Dartmouth, “proposed that the faculty take a vote of no confidence in the president. . . .” The motion was promptly and loudly seconded, at which point I decided it was time for me to speak. “The college is not a laughingstock,” I said. “I still feel that I can make a contribution. My record speaks for itself. The day I feel I cannot serve is the day no one will have to ask me to resign.”

Having become the center of debate, I at this stage decided to relinquish the chair. As the discussion continued, Donald E. Pease, a professor of English, spoke in opposition to the no-confidence motion. “If we react in a crisis without sensibility,” he said, “we will remain in a crisis state.” William L. Baldwin, an economics professor, asked, “Who in the hell do we think we are?” He then congratulated the president for remaining present throughout what he called “the three-hour tirade,” and, he said, “God bless his thick skin.” Professor Rogers Elliott opined, “It is a hasty time to be doing these things. He hasn’t so fallen below my standards that I’m willing to say ‘off with his head.’” Several veteran members of the faculty also spoke in my defense. Then, a professor from the history department, Marysa Navarro, took the floor. Marysa was one of the more liberal members of the faculty who, I knew, favored divestment as strongly as anyone, and who also had opposed ROTC’s return. However, in a voice filled with emotion, she stated that a debate about having no confidence in the president was not in the best interests of the college. With that, the meeting quieted and the no-confidence motion was soon withdrawn. I left Alumni Hall exhausted—and, yes, relieved, for I knew that had a vote been taken, the outcome would have been close. Although a showdown had been avoided on that January afternoon, damage had obviously been done. The time line was moving, on the McNamara scale. I was using up much authority—very, very fast, on many, many issues. But they were, in the main, the right issues.

As word of the shanty attack spread, representatives from several major news outlets, including The New York Times, had hastened to Hanover. Once again, Dartmouth became the focus of a national story. Among the several publications that sent reporters scurrying to the campus was Insight magazine, and its February issue portrayed Dartmouth at mid-winter as follows:

“Bathed in a glow of burning flares, the icy giant grinned, oblivious to the bone-snapping chill of the winter night gripping the crowd of students before him. Chipped and carved from the packed snow of the Dartmouth Green, he reigned over this year’s Winter Carnival.

“This year’s traditional celebration of college life in the north woods was inspired by Maurice Sendak’s ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ and indeed this whimsical snowman seemed to have skied straight from the book onto the Green, where he landed somewhat ignominiously, his skis entangled before him.

“Behind the frozen beast, beyond the circle of light, stood the five broken-down wooden hovels that made up Dartmouth’s own shantytown, snow-laden and desolate beneath the black sky. Their spray-painted slogans—‘Apartheid Kills,’ and ‘Go left . . . till you get it right,’—were only a dim blur in the shadows.

“‘Let the rumpus begin,’ said Dartmouth College President David McLaughlin to the crowd, quoting Maurice Sendak as he opened the festivities.

“But in fact the ‘rumpus’ has been going on for quite some time now, bursting onto the national scene in the past month. . . .”

Late in January, the college’s committee on standards considered the cases of the students who had participated in the president’s office sit-in. A hearing was held, and after considerable deliberation, the COS issued official warnings to them all. That was all; no punishment.

The battered remains of the shanties stood through Winter Carnival, prompting more and more alumni complaints. I talked the matter over with Paul Paganucci and other members of the administration, and we decided to call on Hanover town officials for help, since they had raised safety issues. After some private discussions, they agreed to order the huts removed, and on February tenth, at the direction of the Hanover police, buildings-and-grounds workers dismantled all the shanties but one. The sole remaining structure was then transferred to the lawn of Parkhurst Hall, right under my office window. I looked at it for two days, before ordering that it too be taken away. The removal was achieved by a combination of town and campus police—in the process arresting eighteen students who refused to vacate the structure. On February fourteenth, one hundred and four faculty members petitioned the trustees, asking that they act to “establish responsible leadership at the college.” The following month, the COS dropped all charges against the eighteen students who had been arrested for resisting removal of the last shanty.

At about this same time, a very disturbing report reached me from the admissions office, stating that the number of applications to the college from black students had decreased significantly. It seemed that all the diversification efforts of John Dickey, John Kemeny, and my presidency were being undermined by the current controversy. And that controversy, in fact, only escalated when, on March twenty-seventh, the COS punished the twelve students found guilty of smashing the shanties by meting out to them suspensions from the college, in sentences ranging from one to three years. The students, who were represented by a very competent attorney, immediately appealed, each one asking for and receiving a second hearing, with counsel present. The second hearings entailed eight hours of deliberations, and at the conclusion, the committee upheld all of the suspensions. Again, an appeal was registered, the students’ attorney contending that the suspensions constituted a veiled attack on The Dartmouth Review.

More and more media attention was being focused on Dartmouth, and The New York Times filed stories almost daily on developments concerning the shanty-attackers. Former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon, an archconservative sponsor of The Dartmouth Review, rose to the defense of the shanty-bashers and called the college president “a wimp.” Increasingly, well-known conservatives joined the fray, on the side of the Review students. While the rhetoric heated up and the clamor grew, I called on an old friend, former New Hampshire Governor Walter Peterson, to review the suspensions being continually appealed by the students charged with the shanty attacks. After a thorough study of the events involved, Walter, himself now a college president, to my astonishment, recommended that six of the suspensions be lifted. He said that those six should be placed, instead, on academic probation. Having appointed him as arbiter, I reluctantly agreed. But news of the reversal did not sit well with much of the campus, and anti-apartheid slogans were spray-painted on the white walls of Dartmouth Hall. Then, in May and June, still more campus protests took place.

In the wake of all this, and consistent with trustee policy, the board’s investment committee voted to divest from four companies that had refused to sign the Sullivan Principles. Subsequently, Dartmouth joined ninety-four colleges and universities in sending a letter to Congress, urging that strong legislative sanctions be initiated against the South African government. Regardless, the campus remained tense. And at June’s commencement exercises, several pro-divestment students tore up their diplomas. All the while, I was giving more and more thought to the matter of just how effective a president I could continue to be.

In the spring, I had received an invitation from the Chinese government to be present at the opening of a Dartmouth off-campus program at the University of Beijing. International studies being among my special interests, I had long strongly supported the foreign-study program under which Dartmouth undergraduates took a year abroad, believing it to afford them an extraordinary learning experience. I talked with the Asian studies department, as well as with the board of trustees, about the invitation, and all agreed that my attendance was desirable. And, certainly from a personal standpoint, after such an intense year, a break from campus would be beneficial for Judy and me.

Although the summer term was, indeed, always predictably less intense than the other three, when I departed for Beijing, I left a campus still in turmoil over divestiture, the shanty-bashers, and governance, and I had just entered the fifth year of my presidency.

Looking back on that troubled time, I clearly see mistakes made in the handling of divestiture and all its attendant problems. Surely, I allowed that issue to become too directly focused on me. I should have let Dean Shanahan or Dean Lahr deal with more aspects of the situation, after telling them not to compromise on the issue. Moreover, accepting Walter Peterson’s advice on reducing the shanty-bashers’ penalty was also a mistake, for those students deserved suspension. But, I also know that Dartmouth was then made to be the setting of what was more than merely a locally based conflict between a group of students and faculty wanting to free South Africa and another group opposed to divestment. Dartmouth, I am now persuaded, was being used as a national ideological battlefield.

The Dartmouth Review had the support of neo-conservatives nationwide, although some of them, like William J. Bennett, then the nation’s secretary of education, ultimately became disgusted with the shenanigans and withdrew support. Certainly, their maneuverings and strategies were part of a plan developed far beyond the Hanover Plain. To this day, the motives of those people are difficult to comprehend. The Review and its supporters had made it clear they wanted more conservative governance of the college—although my administration was, by a considerable degree, certainly less socially activist in nature, as well as vastly less liberal in character, than that of my predecessor, John Kemeny. My experience of dealing with the Review led me to appreciate quite keenly the value of responsible civil dialogue at the very core of liberal learning. It was my responsibility to nurture and preserve an environment at Dartmouth fostering such educational exchange, and it was this that prompted my effort to find a middle ground on which reasoned debate on the issues could occur.

I feel sure that the Review, in its actions at Dartmouth, did, in fact, a huge disservice to the conservative political movement generally. It seems to me that the Review’s supporters were intent upon making trouble, essentially just for the purpose of seeing their names in the news. The far-right chose Dartmouth as a prominent stage on which to feature its agenda, and when all was said and done, the result was that my presidency, but more importantly Dartmouth College, had been hurt. Had it not been for the Review, I am certain that the divestment issue would have resolved itself constructively, as was done at other institutions. That night when the staffers of a campus newspaper took sledgehammers in hand did not involve an act of freedom of expression. It was an uncivil act, the likes of which cannot be condoned on a college campus or anywhere else in a free society.

Finally, in this connection, not long after I left the presidency, I received a phone call from the man who succeeded me, James O. Freedman. President Freedman said that, while he knew I would not agree, at his urging the trustees had just voted to divest of all the college’s holdings in companies doing business in South Africa. I told him I believed that the action was unfortunate, that the Sullivan Principles had merit, and that having withstood, at some cost, previous divestment pressures, Dartmouth would now be the last institution in the country to divest its equity holdings in South Africa, at a time when this was no longer an institutional issue. I was disappointed that the trustees had, as I felt, lacked the courage to stand by the principled actions taken by their predecessors.

OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS

Events occurring away from campus, rather than trustee decisions, often determine the agenda for a college and its president. While such events can become diversions from the fundamental objectives of the board, they have the potential to dominate an institution’s agenda, unless properly dealt with by the administration.

When confronted by widespread protests against an institutional policy, the trustees must assess the issue’s importance, the principles involved, and the trade-offs that may exist. Once the board defines and adopts a position, the administration must communicate as clearly as possible the decision and the reasons for its adoption. And in the face of any opposition that may arise, the administration must seek to achieve a resolution of conflict, through an engagement of civil discourse. The board’s position on emotionally charged issues must be to support the implementation by the president of its policy, and not to reverse course under pressure, for doing so can undermine the authority of the president. While each board has the right, and at times even the responsibility, to revisit actions taken by its predecessor boards, any reversal of previous policies must be rationally decided, based on changed circumstances and not because of continued opposition or protest by a single constituency or other source.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Using Authority

I have always believed that the early hours are the best part of the day. And every day that I was in Hanover during my presidency, I was up before dawn and out about the campus. When I began my workday, often a thin layer of fog lay over the Hanover Plain. In those early hours, the campus belonged to the president and to the members of the buildings-and-grounds crews, going about their morning chores. I frequently undertook to gauge the campus mood by visiting with the men and women of the maintenance staff. On those walks, I came to know many of these workers well. Indeed, one of the gratifying moments of my presidency occurred when the college installed a badly needed new boiler system. To recognize the unsung heroes of buildings and grounds who were involved in its installation, we held a ceremony, complete with champagne, right in the boiler room itself, attended by the proud B-and-G employees in their hard hats. Together, we raised our glasses; they in celebration of the job’s successful completion, I in tribute to their service to Dartmouth.

Much of the time, I found the job of college president to be a totally fulfilling experience. And during turbulent and trying intervals, I could always renew myself with my early-morning strolls—through sunshine, wind, rain, sleet, or snow. Perhaps, like Harry Truman, I should call them “constitutionals.” Each day, my morning walks concluded at about seven o’clock, upon reaching my office. There, I would go through correspondence and prepare for the day’s schedule. Meetings with Vice President Paganucci and the dean of the college or the provost followed, usually taking place in their offices, to discuss campus issues—and, inevitably, to set up more meetings. I held office hours one day a week, when my door was open to students, faculty, or others who wished to talk with the president. As had been customary during John Kemeny’s presidency, I employed several student interns—one or more seniors each year—and they not only encouraged fellow students to bring concerns to me, but they also kept me informed about campus goings-on. (One of those student interns, Christine Burnley Bucklin ’84, is now a trustee of the college.) I held senior-staff meetings at least every two weeks, and members of the faculty and administration often requested meetings to discuss a variety of issues. My calendar was always full. Evenings, I often met with students, sometimes at their fraternity or sorority houses and sometimes inviting them to the activity room in the basement of the President’s House. About once a month, I went to lunch with senior members of the faculty, frequently at the invitation of Edward M. Bradley, a professor of classics, or English teacher James M. Cox or Professor Charles T. Wood from the history department. The talk was lively and informative, and looking back, I realize I should have held more such meetings with a wider range of faculty. In the fall, I walked to the athletic fields at least twice a week, in order to watch the football squad and other teams practice.

I was away from campus about a third of the time. The changes of the Kemeny years, as well as the fact that we were now allowing fewer and fewer “legacy” admissions, had left many alumni unhappy about the college, and some, indeed, quite disaffected. Accordingly, in coming to the presidency, I had a lot of fence-mending to tend to. So, I traveled a good deal, talking to alumni clubs and making contact with individuals. Happily, by and large, I received a warm reception.

Much of the work of the college president involves fund-raising, of course, and I was by no means exempt from that crucial endeavor. When the goal was reached in the capital campaign that was just concluding when I took office, I directed that our development efforts continue at the pace of a campaign. Staff diligently worked out solicitation strategies, and the president “made the ask” when large donations were sought. A celebration of one of our major fund-raising successes that I remember fondly was when the new Nelson Rockefeller Social Science Center was dedicated in 1983, that splendid facility that still serves Dartmouth so very well now, two decades later. Nelson’s widow, “Happy,” was present that day to hear the keynote speaker, Lady Bird Johnson, who recalled the late vice president as having been “a bright comet against the sky.”

Every major building project was a story unto itself, and that is abundantly the case with respect to the Berry Sports Center. John W. Berry had made a fortune from publication of the Yellow Pages telephone directories, and Ad Winship and I had solicited the initial gift from him in 1984, on the occasion of his fortieth class reunion. At that time, we had suggested to him that this would provide an opportunity to create a lasting manifestation of his love of Dartmouth, and I promised that in my speech at his class dinner that night I would announce his gift. John said, “You’d really do that?” I said yes—and he wrote a check. Another prominent donor to the sports center was Edward H. Leede, Class of 1949, who provided for the new basketball court—involving a sport in which he had excelled as an undergraduate.

I learned, subsequently, that we needed an additional million dollars to complete the sports center and to provide additional space not contemplated in the original design. After consulting with the development office, I decided I would ask John Berry if he would cover the additional cost. When I was ready to go “back to the well” for this purpose, since John and he were friends, I took Paul Paganucci with me on my trip to the Berry home in Dayton, Ohio. Being a nervous flier, Pag only reluctantly agreed to go along. The generosity of Charles A. Collis, Class of ’37, who provided the use of his corporate jet, made things as easy as possible for Pag. Even so, when we got under way, my friend promptly addressed himself to the bar, to help maintain his courage at thirty thousand feet. By the time we reached Dayton, Pag was becoming more expansive and, understanding his condition, I did most of the talking during the meeting. John Berry acknowledged that I was “a pretty good salesman,” and generously agreed to provide the additional million, thereby enabling the groundbreaking to take place in August of 1985. (I should perhaps add that, following the Dayton session, Paul Paganucci took a train home.)

Also during my presidency, we raised money for, built, and opened a new art museum, the need for which had been identified and given trustee approval during John Kemeny’s administration. The cost was five million dollars, and we sought the support of an historically loyal Dartmouth family, the Hoods. I met with Barbara Hood at the family’s summer home on the Massachusetts north shore, at Manchester-by-the-Sea. Barbara’s late husband, Harvey P. Hood, Class of 1918, had been a great friend of both Ernest Martin Hopkins and John Sloan Dickey, and he had served as a trustee during their presidencies. The idea of a Hood building that would be located, as was the plan, adjacent to the Hopkins Center had great appeal for the Hood family.

The site selected for the Hood Museum—the narrow space between Victorian Wilson Hall (originally the college library and also serving as the college museum) and the modernistic, glass-fronted Hopkins Center—presented a considerable architectural challenge. The acclaimed architect Charles Moore was commissioned to provide the design, and he produced drawings for a brick-and-concrete structure, attached to both the Hopkins Center and Wilson Hall, but set well back from the street. Moore had in mind an architectural concept that somewhat replicated New England barns. One morning, as the project was nearing completion, I met at the site with Moore, who confided to me that he planned to place an orange-green-red-and-yellow cornice above the entrance. I told him that the idea was just awful, and to do so would spoil everything he had tried to achieve. To this, he responded, by way of protest, “But how will anyone know it’s my building?” “It’s not your building,” I said, “it’s Dartmouth College’s.” When, ultimately, the museum was completed (with a muted cornice), at the dedication ceremony Moore turned to me, just before taking the podium, and said, “I think you were right about the cornice.”

Thanks to Charles Moore’s brilliance, the Hood building won awards for design, and bridged effectively the variant architectural styles of its neighbors. But it does seem to me to be important, in this connection, to acknowledge and emphasize that major new facilities on a college campus are the possessions of the institution’s trustees, as well as of those who will inhabit them, and that, accordingly, decisions on function and design cannot be completely abrogated to the architects, no matter how famous they may be.

The Dartmouth ski team had suffered from the same snow drought that had caused problems for Toro. Unlike Toro’s predicament, however, for the college there was an answer to the problem. Through the generosity of George Macomber, a Dartmouth parent, snow-making was installed at the Dartmouth Skiway in 1985. And to help another outdoor sport, a former dean of the college, Thaddeus Seymour, led a successful campaign to build a new home for the college rowing teams, a boathouse on the Hanover bank of the Connecticut River, near Ledyard Bridge. Thad was an avid supporter of the Dartmouth crews, and the facility not being a college priority meant that alumni and friends raised the needed funds on their own—not necessarily a good or desirable practice. In October of 1985, a trustees’ dinner took place at the just-completed boathouse a week before its dedication. It was during the cocktail hour that somebody whispered to me, “You’ve got a problem.” The whisperer pointed to the granite dedication plaque above the fireplace and said, “A word is misspelled.” I looked and, sure enough, the name of the college, carved in stone, was wrong. We summoned the stonemasons, and during the ensuing week the stone was pulled from the mantle, turned around, and a new inscription chiseled on what had until then been its backside—in time for the dedication ceremony. All was well; but I know that someday, perhaps ages and ages hence, somebody may have occasion to pull that damned stone out—and they will find boldly incised, “DARTMOTH.”

One of the important building projects carried out during my presidency was a major addition to the Thayer School. Dartmouth’s school of engineering was in something of a crisis when I became president, lacking the critical mass to continue as a world-class graduate school in its field. The question arose as to whether it should, in fact, remain a graduate school or be absorbed into the college of arts and sciences, as an undergraduate engineering program. To continue as a graduate school, Thayer sorely needed to expand. I had, at some point, read that the University of New Hampshire had received federal money for its engineering school. Accordingly, I traveled to Washington for a visit with U.S. Senator Warren B. Rudman, a Republican from New Hampshire, whom I respected greatly. Warren listened to me very sympathetically and said that he would see what might be done. During the next six months, Thayer School Dean Charles E. Hutchinson and I made several trips to the nation’s capital for meetings with the senator and his staff. Finally, Senator Rudman was able to add an eighteen-million-dollar rider to an appropriations bill, and that entire sum went to the Thayer School. The money was, of course, pure “pork,” and I must confess that I never really had believed in legislative pork-barreling until the day in 1985 when Warren called to tell me the bill had passed.

Quite unrelated to this event, the next year we presented Warren Rudman with an honorary degree, at the time that his daughter was receiving her master’s degree from the Tuck School. Tears ran down the senator’s cheeks as his degree was conferred, and he confided to me that he had always wanted a degree from Dartmouth and that he was now proud that two Rudmans had achieved that distinction on the same day.

While raising funds for needed new facilities and programs is an important part of the president’s job, so, too, is increasing the size of the college’s endowment and recommending to the trustees the level of annual utilization of the endowment. During my term in office, through prudent investments and new contributions, the endowment grew to five hundred and twenty-one million dollars, an increase of two hundred percent. While this achievement was highly gratifying, the early nineteen-eighties continued to be a financially challenging time, due to continued high inflation and the need both to restore and keep faculty salaries competitive and to increase the amount of funding available for student financial aid. Due to these factors, we were unable to reduce the five-percent annual rate of endowment utilization, normally something that should have been considered positively in order to avoid being overextended when the investment climate turned downward in future years—an inevitable phenomenon in a cyclical economy.

Always, there seemed to be presidential challenges, and of infinite variety. One day, the basketball coach, Paul L. Cormier, told me he wished to recruit an outstanding high school player who, unfortunately, did not seem to measure up to the college’s admissions standards. But Paul said, “James Blackwell is an extraordinary young man and would be a fine addition to the campus.” I looked into the matter, interviewed Blackwell, and came to the same conclusion. What I discovered was that Jim’s mother, a single parent, had died when he was in high school and that Jim had made basketball his life. He starred on his high school team and became a student leader. Some teachers and administrators in the high school, recognizing his leadership qualities, had arranged for him to go on and attend a prep school for a year to help improve his academic skills.

Coach Cormier brought Jim to Hanover, and I liked what I saw. To be certain of my own judgment in the matter, I asked two members of the faculty to assess the situation, on the basis that if he were to break his leg on his first day here, and thus couldn’t play basketball, would they admit him? Both concluded that Blackwell should be admitted, despite his low SATs. I had a tough time selling the dean of admissions and financial aid, Alfred T. Quirk, and his staff regarding Jim Blackwell as a “special case,” but in the end they reluctantly agreed. So, Jim Blackwell came to Hanover.

What I have just reported proved not to be the end of my relationship to James Blackwell and his acceptance as a Dartmouth student. Before long, I began receiving telephone calls from other Ivy presidents. It turned out that all of the Ivy schools had considered admitting Jim, but had rejected him because of his low test scores. Why, they wanted to know, was Dartmouth, by accepting him, violating league policies? The matter ultimately came up at Brown University, during the course of the last Ivy meeting of my presidency, and the discussion of it led to a special afternoon session. I told my colleagues that Blackwell represented a consideration quite unrelated to athletics. However, I took occasion to note that other Ivy schools had at times bent their admissions standards in order to strengthen sports teams. (Everybody there could recall a discussion that had taken place about dropping Penn from all our schedules, because of recruiting excesses.) At times, I said, criteria other than scholastic performance must be considered, in the best interest of a student. It was a bittersweet note on which to end my formal association with the Ivy presidents, but I never regretted my role in this regard. Blackwell proved to be a decent C student, as well as becoming the basketball team’s best player. Happily, he never did break his leg!

I believe that those who greatly contribute to an institution’s success should be honored, and their names perpetuated in some tangible, visible manner, as a reminder to those who follow that the privilege of attending college is due to others’ contributions. In no case was this more appropriate than for the twelfth president of the college, John Sloan Dickey. In late 1980, primarily at the initiative of Trustees Andres and McCulloch—and ultimately, with John Dickey’s personal involvement—ways to celebrate appropriately John’s presidency were explored. Initially, establishment of an academic program centering upon the Canadian-U.S. relationship was identified. But this scope was soon broadened to include other areas of international concern, and the final decision to formalize such a projection, as a vital element of Dartmouth’s ongoing educational structure, took place in John Dickey’s living room, in a session that I attended. John was greatly pleased by the outcome, and today the John Sloan Dickey Endowment for International Understanding stands as a fitting tribute to the significant contribution John made to the “liberating arts.” In announcing to the Dartmouth community on November 5, 1982, the board of trustees’ vote establishing this endowment, I quoted John Dickey himself when he stressed the necessity “at the undergraduate level to search for an approach that emphasizes the mounting need for greater understanding to undergird the spreading structure of human interdependence that from here on will characterize the international community.”

I should note that John Dickey was exhausted by the time he retired from the presidency, and he required two years to become fully rested. Then, he began to suffer early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. But despite this, he still managed to serve for a half-dozen years as the college’s professor of public affairs, and he published two books: Canada and the American Presence (1975) and a collection of his speeches and honorary-degree citations, entitled The Dartmouth Experience (1977).

Not long after becoming president, I invited the Dickeys to a dinner party at One Tuck Drive, and when John arrived, he remarked, “I haven’t been here in ten years.” During my first months in office, I made it a practice to meet regularly with former-Presidents Dickey and Kemeny. But the Dickey meetings, which I found to be particularly pleasant and reassuring, abruptly ended the February day in 1982 when I received a distressing call from Dr. John H. Turco, director of the college’s medical service. Jack informed me that John Dickey had suffered a stroke at his home and had been rushed to the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. I hurried to the hospital, where I was told that John might not survive. His condition did soon stabilize, though the left side of his body was paralyzed and he was barely able to speak. After several weeks of treatment, the hospital concluded it could do no more for him, so the former president was transferred to a Hanover nursing home. But it was immediately clear that being in that depressing setting was not in his best interests, and there were those of us who feared that if he remained there he would not live long.

The solution we focused on was that John should be moved to Dick’s House, the college infirmary. However, the nature of the infirmary’s use as a medical facility was regulated by the town of Hanover and was classified for the treatment and care of ambulatory patients only. I got in touch with the town manager and explained the situation. His response was that, although he could not change the existing rules, if we wanted President-Emeritus Dickey in Dick’s House, “You won’t hear a word from us.” With that encouragement, I asked the Dickeys’ elder daughter, Sylvia, fondly known as “Sukie,” to stop by the office. Rather to my surprise, when I explained to her what I had in mind, she replied emphatically that she was sure her father would not want the college to assume any responsibility for his care or to make special provision for his well-being. She continued to resist my urging that the proposed arrangement be agreed to, until it was said to her, “Sukie, let’s suppose that while your father was president Mr. Hopkins had been stricken in this way.” “You’ve got me!” she declared, and raised no further objections.

John Dickey was promptly moved to Dick’s House, and from then on I went to see him there at least once a week. His faculties improved almost immediately, although the prospect of a full recovery was nonexistent. He continued to have difficulty communicating, but the keen intellect and his inquisitive interests were still present. Each visit, during the first years of his confinement, I told him about goings-on at the college, and he might respond by saying “good” or “bad.” On better days, he managed phrases or short sentences. The sight of students would light up his face, and he would sometimes speak of them. John steadily deteriorated physically. Chris Dickey came to be with him part of every day, even as her own health began to decline. Some days, as the years wore on, I would just sit with John, not knowing for sure whether he knew I was there. On several fine fall afternoons, Doctor Turco and I placed a Dartmouth baseball cap on John’s head and took him, in a college van, to the football practice field. One afternoon, the team serenaded him with a rendition of the alma mater—and tears rolled down the faces of two presidents.

One might not think that a college president’s job description would include managing a hotel, but, really, no parts of the institution, except the classroom, are exempt from his oversight and concern. Early in my term, my office received many complaints, particularly from alumni, concerning lax management and other problems at the college-owned Hanover Inn. Also, the inn was losing money, and there had even been discussions within its board of overseers about the possibility of their recommending that the establishment be sold. Believing the inn was indeed something of a gatehouse for Hanover, and that we should try to make it more inviting and accommodating, I met with Paul Paganucci to discuss the situation and my concerns. He, I found, was not at all pleased by what he had been seeing in the inn’s financial statements, and he said to me, “I will take this one on.” Pag quickly convinced the manager to resign, and with him went some of the top staff. We then hired young Matthew Marshall III, from Wellesley College, who had been employed earlier by the nearby Woodstock Inn. Now, two decades later, Matt still manages the Hanover Inn, and it remains the property of Dartmouth College. Moreover, the place has financially stayed “in the black” since soon after his appointment.

One of Dartmouth’s distinguished and more colorful graduates was Sherman Adams, a former congressman from and governor of New Hampshire and one-time chief of staff to President Eisenhower. Governor Adams, during his college days, had been a champion long-distance hiker, and he later became professionally involved with land management in the White Mountains. I was delighted to be asked to join him one evening at the Hopkins Center, in the spacious Top of the Hop, for an occasion marking the fact that a new Dartmouth Outing Club hiking trail was being named in his honor. Both Adams and I were invited to speak, although our student hosts allowed me just thirty seconds and accorded Governor Adams but two minutes for whatever remarks he might be disposed to make. In very close to my allotted time, I managed to squeeze in a brief greeting and an introduction of the guest of honor. Then, the grand old man moved to the podium. He finished talking half an hour later, with the students fidgeting. When he sat down, he turned to me and inquired, “How long did I talk?” “Two minutes” I replied. “I think you may make it,” he said, obviously in reference to the fact that I had, at that point, only recently been installed in the presidency of the college.

Maintaining a positive and constructive relationship with the town of Hanover and city of Lebanon were important to Dartmouth, particularly given the impact of the college and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center on the economy of both municipalities and on the whole surrounding area. Several college officers, particularly John D. Skewes, our director of business affairs, and Gordon V. DeWitt, the director of facilities planning, devoted considerable time to the college’s “community relations” endeavors, and I myself made it a point to speak to the Rotary Club and to meet with municipal officials on a frequent basis. There was a need to maintain a relatively constant dialogue on various issues, in order to ensure mutual understanding of what was involved. During my presidency, the college and the town recognized the mutual interests that we shared, and we worked cooperatively to support and respect the objectives and priorities that each entity had. While there were always some residents who objected to the college’s expansion initiatives, a working consensus was always achieved. This positive relationship was particularly helpful when the college and the hospital decided to relocate the hospital’s primary facilities to Lebanon, as well as on other occasions.

I came to the presidency with an interest in maintaining and even enhancing the quality of Dartmouth’s athletic programs, not only at the varsity level, but also within the intramural and recreational programs. Testing oneself on the playing fields and through developing athletic skills that can be enjoyed for a lifetime are important parts of liberal learning. John Kemeny had expressed on a number of occasions frustration that the athletic council (DCAC) appeared to operate independently of the rest of the college, seeming untouchable because of its strong and vocal alumni support. Early in my administration, I began discussions with Athletic Director Seaver “Pete” Peters, a former All-American hockey player and a classmate of mine. My goal was to find ways to integrate the athletic programs more fully into the college’s residential life and to achieve more accountability on the part of the DCAC. These were objectives that Seaver shared. He had served in his position with distinction for twenty years, and he had been extremely successful, although recent years had been his most difficult. The challenges of doubling athletic programs to accommodate women’s sports and of competing at higher levels with the other Ivies whose budgets were not as constrained as his, had been daunting ones. For a variety of reasons, Pete elected to step down in early 1982. His successor was Ted Leland, a former star football player, and athletic director at the College of the Pacific, who arrived in Hanover in June of 1983. Ted shared our philosophy concerning the liberal arts and the role athletics should play in the educational process. Soon after his arrival, he talked to me about his deep concern for the vitality of our football program.

Following Jake Crouthamel’s resignation as coach, Seaver Peters had recruited Joseph M. Yukica, who had been a successful coach at Boston College and earlier had served at Dartmouth as an assistant coach under Bob Blackman. Early on, Joe had benefited from the residual momentum of the Blackman-Crouthamel legacy and had won or tied for three Ivy League championships in his first four coaching years. But that momentum was fast playing out, and it soon became obvious that Joe, one of the nicest people one could meet, was having difficulty recruiting football talent that could meet Dartmouth’s academic standards. The Ivy League poses significant challenges to coaches who have succeeded under non-Ivy systems. (Bob Blackman—who compiled a record at Dartmouth of one hundred and four wins and just thirty-seven losses—told me that, conversely, moving from an Ivy institution to the Big Ten, with its lower academic standards and full athletic scholarships, had been equally challenging.)

Not long after assuming the athletic directorship, Ted Leland decided Joe Yukica should be replaced by someone who could work better with the admissions office in recruiting scholar-athletes without offering financial aid, except as justified under the Ivy League policy. Joe was given his notice, with the result that, as the saying goes, “all hell broke loose.” Joe had one more year remaining in his coaching contract, and he told Ted that he intended to coach through that year. Leland and I said, in effect, “nothing doing”—and the issue was joined. The DCAC and its loyal alumni promptly rose to Joe’s defense, and the case became a cause célèbre, as sportswriters trained their attention on Dartmouth, where the administration was reported to be intent on ousting a likeable football coach who was valiantly fighting for his right to lead his team for one more year. It is the case that football coaches are, of course, let go all the time, often in mid-contract. But ours was stubborn, and with the support of his circle of friends, he would not budge.

Ted and I met with Joe, told him that he was making a mistake, and assured him, moreover, that we would pay him his Dartmouth salary through the final year of his contract. But we said that he had to quit now. No, he adamantly replied, he was staying another year. I said that for him to do so would hurt his career and hurt the college. Not deterred, Joe finally turned to the courts, and a hearing was held at which were paraded to the stand a long line of witnesses praising his coaching abilities and contending that he was being unfairly discharged. The press had a field day when Penn State’s Joe Paterno, perhaps the nation’s best-known college coach, walked into the courtroom, unannounced, and testified on Joe’s behalf. In the end, Joe coached his last year—and Dartmouth’s record was three wins, six losses, and a tie. I attended his farewell dinner and praised Joe for being the fine person he was. He stepped down, but remained in Hanover, entering upon a real-estate career in which he continues to this day.

While all of the turmoil over Yukica was going on, I had talked to Bob Blackman about a successor to Joe, and Bob said the man for the job was Eugene F. “Buddy” Teevens III, who had quarterbacked Bob’s last Dartmouth team to an Ivy League title. Ted Leland closed the deal with Buddy, and Dartmouth’s football fortunes were soon on the rise. (Ironically, Buddy’s brother, Shaun, another football player, was one of those skaters in Indian costume who had so ignited the campus during the Indian-symbol controversy.) A couple of times, I accompanied the football team on bus trips to important games, and the nighttime victorious returns to Hanover, greeted by cheering crowds on the Hanover Inn corner, were unforgettable.

On one of the days when John Kemeny came by my office for what, over time, became our less-and-less-frequent meetings, we had chatted pleasantly, and then he offered this cautionary advice: “I would stay away from the DCAC and the Alumni Magazine,” he said. “But they are a part of the college,” I replied. “You can’t win those battles,” John countered. “They are fiefdoms unto themselves.” He was right, as usual, on both counts.

The Yukica controversy had been unpleasant and troublesome, and in retrospect, we should not have been so firmly resistant to Joe’s coaching that last year. By the time Joe was done, I had another row to deal with, this one concerning the magazine, which John Kemeny had identified as the second area “off limits” to the president.

The Alumni Magazine flare-up happened because several trustees, many alumni, and I were concerned about the publication’s editorial policy. The magazine had since 1967 been edited by a scholarly Dartmouth graduate, Dennis A. Dinan. Nobody questioned Dennis’s journalistic abilities, but the publication had during the years of his editorship assumed a degree and manner of independence that did not always allow for either adequately or fairly portraying the college and its activities. Particularly at issue at this juncture were recent articles on campus alcohol abuse and sexual assault, which I and others strongly felt had presented nothing approaching a measured, accurate reflection, as opposed to their bordering on exposé sensationalism. They were certainly anything but fair and responsible presentations of student life at Dartmouth.

Throughout John Kemeny’s time and into mine, the editor resisted, to our not-infrequent annoyance, coverage of a variety of college events and developments, on the grounds (rather incomprehensible to both of us) that the magazine needed to be carefully kept from being a “house organ.” I met with Dennis and told him that the magazine needed to be more in step with the administration’s and the board’s objectives and more adequately representative of the reality of campus life. He basically replied that he would run the magazine as he saw fit, that I had no right to interfere, and that for me to do so would be inhibiting freedom of the press. Sides were chosen, and, as in the Yukica matter, several major newspapers picked up the matter and ran with it. But in 1983, Dennis resigned. Ultimately, we created an independent editorial board, and a search committee recommended a competent successor, who proved to work well with Parkhurst Hall. The new editor seemed readily able to find a way to keep his independence, while still covering campus issues and occurrences in a constructive and evenhanded fashion.

A very positive event during my presidency was the convening on campus, in May of 1984, of a “Dartmouth Conference.” The Dartmouth Conferences had been founded by John Dickey during the worst of the Cold War, to bring representatives of the Soviet Union and the United States together for a few days of off-the-record, informal discussions. The conference returned to Dartmouth every five years, and its sessions took place behind closed doors, with the participants issuing to the public a single summarizing statement at the conclusion of their talks. Even the president of the college was excluded from the deliberations. I was, however, allowed to host, together with David Rockefeller, the Russian delegation at a small dinner at One Tuck Drive. For the occasion, I brought to the table the stars of my wine cellar, two bottles of that surpassingly wonderful—and decidedly expensive—dessert wine, Chateau d’Yquem. When this fabled wine was poured, I remember seeing David Rockefeller take a sip from his glass, and then his saying, down the table to me, “David, is this what I think it is?” But to my amazement—then, my chagrin—my Russian guests, not at all slowly savoring what had been placed before them, downed both bottles in a matter of twenty minutes. I later learned that they also, while in town, drank the Hanover Inn out of scotch, the first time that had ever happened. One hopes that, with such lubrication, the discussions were rendered more convivial, if not necessarily more productive, than they otherwise would have been.

John Kemeny’s pioneering efforts had put Dartmouth at the forefront of college computing, and I was determined that we should build on his initiatives. While all students had access to a computer at Kiewit Computation Center, our next logical move was to make it possible for students to own laptop computers, with direct access to the Dartmouth system. We negotiated with both IBM and Apple to supply the machines, and finally signed a contract with Apple. In moving forward with this provision, we ran into unexpected opposition from some faculty members who were not, themselves, computer literate and, consequently, were not keen about their students having access to information that they themselves were unable to access with equal facility. Accordingly, we delayed distribution for six months, giving the faculty an opportunity to get “up to speed.” Then came the great day when three tractor-trailer trucks wheeled up in front of Gile Hall, chock-full of Apple computers. Hundreds of students were soon lugging their boxed Macintoshes across campus to their dormitories. Many other colleges and universities soon followed suit, making similar provision for their students.

When one is president of an Ivy League school, there is, as one would expect, a vast number of things that one must do—not all of them enjoyable. But one of my particular pleasures in the midst of always-busy times was hosting, socially and with groups of students, the astonishing number of VIPs who came to the campus under the program of the Montgomery endowment, created by Chicago attorney Kenneth F. Montgomery and his lovely wife, Harle. The Montgomerys had made possible the purchase of a handsome and spacious home overlooking Occom Pond, where visitors, titled Montgomery Fellows, lived while in residence—the residencies of the fellows varying in length from weeks up to a full academic year. The highly creative program that the endowment brought into being has been an immense blessing to the college. During my time in office, fellows included Robert Penn Warren, Carlos Fuentes, Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Barbara W. Tuchman, and Richard D. Lamm. On and on the distinguished Montgomery visitors came, making a great and uniquely enriching educational impact.

The conferring of honorary degrees constitutes, I believe, an important statement of the values of an institution. John Dickey always retired to his camp on Lake Champlain to compose honorary-degree citations, and I went in early spring to the Minary Center for the same purpose. There, where my presidency had really begun, I spent several days each June immersed in reviewing documentation reflective of the personalities and achievements of intended honorees. I found the porch overlooking Squam Lake to be particularly conducive to writing, and there I composed the texts to be read by me at the commencement ceremony in awarding each degree. During the period involved, honorary degrees were awarded to such persons as Paul A. Volker, Andrew Wyeth, Susan Stamberg, Beverly Sills, Harry A. Blackmun, Maria Tallchief, Robert M. Coles, Edward James “Ted” Koppel, and Nthato H. Motlana.

I think of three of the degrees that I conferred, which—each for a quite different reason—hold a special place in my heart, and my quoting here brief extracts from the citations relating to them provides an idea of the kind of statements that were prepared in celebration of the persons who were recipients of Dartmouth’s degrees honoris causa.

—A. Bartlett Giamatti, then president of Yale University:

“It is greatly to Yale’s credit that just before Christmas in 1977 you were invited to take the presidency of that distinguished institution, and it is greatly to your credit that you accepted, even though—as you said at the time—all you ever wanted to be was president of the American League. Those of us who have read your Harper’s articles on Tom Seaver and Muhammed Ali are convinced, of course, that your academic pursuits deprived the public of one of the great sportswriters of the modern era. But one cannot have everything, and Dartmouth—founded by a Yale alumnus—rejoices in the wise guidance you have given your university.”

Of course, Bart did go on to become president of the American League, fulfilling his dream. Sadly, he died too young, while in that office. During the time he and I were presidents of Ivy League schools, we always relied on each other and never hesitated to call, back and forth, in times of need for advice or reassurance.

I would also say the same of another fine friend of mine who was president of Harvard at the time, Derek Bok. (Derek once proclaimed to me that he admired the teaching excellence found at predominantly undergraduate institutions like Dartmouth or Princeton, but that for graduate education, Harvard had no peer.)

—Lewis J. Bressett, Hanover restaurateur and my undergraduate-days employer:

“Innumerable community organizations and this College itself have been made the better by an application of your wisdom and experience—and so have thousands of conversations in the Main Street establishment, Lou’s Restaurant, where you were general host and proprietor for so long. Quietly and effectively, throughout the years, you have helped both the town and the College to see how best to work together for the common good.”

—Justin A. Stanley, lawyer:

“. . . you have devoted your life to the practice and advancement of law . . . and from 1952–1954, at the request of President John Sloan Dickey, you took a leave of absence from your Chicago law firm to assume the responsibilities of Vice President for Development at Dartmouth College. . . . When you came back to help your college . . . you said you believed that any contribution you could make to the successful operation of an independent liberal arts college would be a contribution to society.”

As mentioned earlier, on the eve of the coeducation vote, I had encountered Justin on the green, and he had expressed to me his opposition to that possibility in the strongest of terms. Fortunately, however, over the succeeding years, Justin came to accept that change, and in 1983 not only did he return to receive an honorary degree, but also he delivered his class’s fifty-year address. In thinking about his return to the college, I recall words of the old Dartmouth song:

See! By the light of many thousands sunsets

Dartmouth undying like a vision starts:

Dartmouth—the gleaming, dreaming walls of Dartmouth,

Miraculously builded in our hearts.

OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS

All college presidencies have highs and lows—highs such as meeting with students, having an intellectual exchange with a member of the faculty, or dedicating new programs and facilities; lows usually arising from too-close involvement and identification with campus political issues. It is knowing when to stand and fight, when to let someone else carry the flag, or when to surrender that extends a president’s tenure. On balance, however, to have too much passion and caring for an institution is better than to have too little.

Endowments are intended to preserve the long-term quality of an institution, and prudence would dictate utilization rates slightly lower than the anticipated rate of return on the endowment, which would normally be in line with inflation rates for a given period. At times of severe temporary financial pressure, such as the high inflation experienced in the nineteen-seventies and nineteen-eighties, I believe that in order to avoid cutting the academic “muscle” of the institution, there is a legitimate reason to increase, temporarily, the utilization rate of the endowment. Some might argue against such a course, claiming that there is sufficient “fat” in academic budgets and practices, and that some belt-tightening is a good thing. While that is true to some extent, the problem is that academic institutions are not run like businesses, and many of the programs are difficult to measure in terms of the value they have within the education process. It is said that colleges are made up of many departments, each one not sure of the others’ worth—an attitude that does not, of course, facilitate an effective implementation of institutional belt-tightening.

It is my contention that when endowment returns soar due to conditions in the investment market, trustees should direct lower endowment-utilization spending levels, since abnormal investment returns are not sustainable historically. To do otherwise risks gyrating an institution’s budget through periods of major expansions and periods of contraction—neither of such intervals being acceptable for a high-fixed-cost (faculty-salary-driven) institution.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Providing for the Future

A dinner with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip was to be the highlight of a trip to Great Britain that Judy and I had scheduled for the late fall of 1982. The American ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, John J. Louis Jr., a Dartmouth alumnus (Tuck School Class of 1949), had kindly included the McLaughlins on the guest list for a dinner that, periodically, our ambassador hosts for the queen. We would be leaving in about a week’s time, and certainly the prospect of the royal occasion was very much in my mind when, one morning as I began another workday in my Parkhurst Hall office, I felt a bit “under the weather.” The previous night, I had not seemed to be quite myself and had vaguely wondered whether I might be experiencing a touch of the flu that I knew was then somewhat prevalent on campus. I walked early that morning to a meeting with the senior officers, at the Hanover Inn, and arrived perspiring and feeling poorly. But, after seating myself, I recovered my equilibrium as the business at hand got under way.

When the session adjourned, I walked back to the office, on the way experiencing discomfort in my chest. Mona Chamberlain did not think I looked well, so, at my request, she phoned my doctor and arranged an appointment for that afternoon. Without difficulty, I walked to the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, at the north end of campus. There, my personal physician, Joshua B. Burnett, checked my pulse and blood pressure; then, ordered a cardiogram. I told Josh I suspected I had the flu and that I needed something to make me feel better in a hurry, since I was very shortly to depart for London. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said, in a very serious tone of voice. I was promptly admitted to the hospital and soon learned that I had, indeed, suffered a “mild” heart attack.

Next day, a heart specialist informed me that I had blockage in an artery leading to the heart. My choices were two, he said. One, I could undergo bypass surgery. Two, I could live with the problem, but that I would, in that case, have to maintain a substantially altered lifestyle of definitely diminished activity. Neither prospect appealed to me, and I was considering my options when a young doctor, overhearing the conversation, said, “There is a third way.” I was then told about a pioneering surgical procedure that was being performed at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. The doctor said it was called “angioplasty” (a term I had surely never heard before) and, because it was new, it was not without risks. I said that I would like to explore the prospect.

Upon being driven to Boston, where more tests were performed, I was told by Dr. Peter Block that I had, indeed, suffered a heart attack that had been of some severity. Despite the fact that I had for some years smoked about a pack of cigarettes a day, he said I was a perfect candidate for the new surgical procedure. Doctor Block told me he was one of the first physicians to have performed an angioplasty and that he had, to date, done about two hundred such operations. I indicated that I wanted to undergo the procedure, and, as was customary in those days, I was also prepared for bypass surgery, should the angioplasty fail.

All went well, and shortly after being restricted for several days to One Tuck Drive, I was back at work. Never again would I smoke a cigarette—or miss having one—and thanks to the generosity of an alumnus, Edward M. Scheu Jr. (Dartmouth ’46), a rowing machine was provided for the President’s House, and I began using it daily. Two decades later, I have had no recurrence of heart problems. But this whole experience served to start me thinking that northern New England ought to have a medical facility with a capability to perform the most modern of procedures, so that patients would not need to travel to Boston or anywhere else.

The day of my heart attack, I did what generations of Vermont and New Hampshire residents had long done: I headed for what the locals thereabouts call, simply, “Hanover Hospital.” If, in general, northern New Englanders pay little attention to the goings-on at Dartmouth College, they certainly take an active interest in the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. After all, their lives could—and often do—depend on it.

The Mary Hitchcock, founded in the eighteen-nineties and expanded time and again to meet local and regional needs, was located between the main area of the Dartmouth campus and the college’s Dewey Fields. Just north of these fields is the Hanover Country Club, the college-owned, eighteen-hole golf course. The medical complex, formally known as the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, consists primarily of three entities: the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital itself, a teaching hospital; the Dartmouth Medical School, in which most of the hospital’s staff physicians hold faculty appointments; and the Hitchcock Clinic, a group practice that includes in its membership the majority of the doctors on the hospital staff. The Veterans Administration Hospital, located five miles south, at White River Junction, Vermont, is a fourth component of the center. I had been warned by both John Dickey and John Kemeny that, because the medical school’s existence was tied vitally to the hospital and clinic, a good deal of my time in office would be taken up with complex medical-center matters. Initially, I doubted somewhat that this would be so, but they were prophetically correct.

To step back for a moment, the story of my presidency’s relationship to the medical center should perhaps begin with an event that transpired soon after my inauguration, but which seemed, at the time, totally unrelated to the medical future of northern New England. Southeast of the village of Hanover, and located mainly in Lebanon, was a wooded and hilly piece of land known as the Gile Tract. Jack Nelson, who owned the local Trumbull-Nelson construction company, had some years back quietly and patiently acquired a good deal of that land, two thousand acres to be exact, and in 1981, he approached the college to determine if we would be interested in taking it off his hands. Jack said he had borrowed money to purchase the property, and since interest rates in the early eighties had escalated, he was finding it difficult to carry the debt that he had incurred. I immediately sought the wise counsel of Paul Paganucci, who knew considerably more about the value of the land than I did. We quickly agreed that the opportunity for Dartmouth to purchase these two thousand undeveloped acres was probably the chance of a lifetime—although we didn’t know then just what we would ever do with them. Pag and I insisted that Nelson sell at the price he paid, seven hundred and fifty dollars per acre. He agreed, the trustees thought it a good deal, and the college bought the parcel as fast as the necessary paperwork could be drawn up. Pag remarked, “This was akin to the acquisition of Alaska by the United States.”

At that time, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center was a particularly troubled entity—not that things at DHMC were ever peaceful, for the hospital and the clinic seemed to be perpetually in dispute about something, and the medical school too often got caught up in the political crossfire. Also, the college was regularly at odds with the hospital concerning revenue pass-through from the hospital to the college to fund the medical school. When I became president, the current hot issues concerned the clinic’s plan to build a new ambulatory-care facility, separate from the medical center, about three miles away, on Route 120—the main road between Hanover and Lebanon. At the same time, hospital officials were telling me that they again needed to add to their physical plant, in order to meet the region’s increasing health-care needs. For reasons of proximity, the hospital wanted the clinic to locate its intended unit on the college-owned Dewey Fields, just north of the existing medical complex. Pag and I also felt that the clinic’s plan to build on Route 120 would locate its new facility too far from the rest of the center and, particularly, at too great a distance from the medical school. Accordingly, the college adopted as its policy that the medical center should remain a single entity, on one site. Nevertheless, despite our having taken the position that I have just stated, Pag and I certainly sympathized with the hospital’s desire and need to expand.

Paul Paganucci was a man who loved to walk, particularly around his beloved Hanover and Dartmouth, and Pag and I often went for strolls as a break from daily routine. It seemed to help us recharge our batteries, and always got us talking and thinking. One evening in 1981, after having attended a college function, Pag and I together headed toward our respective homes, walking circuitously by the hospital. While the subject had been broached earlier, Pag paused and asked point-blank, “Do you think we could move all this?” “Move what?” I asked. “Move the whole thing, the whole medical center,” he said. We pursued the subject late that evening at the Paganuccis’ house, focusing in earnest on the possibility of transferring the medical complex totally out of Hanover.

We found the possibility of freeing the area north of the college campus, for future Dartmouth expansion, to be particularly attractive. But where could the medical center be relocated? It was at this point that we zeroed in on the happy fact that the college now owned those two thousand acres, three miles away, along the road to Lebanon. The more we talked, the more it all seemed to make sense; and before the evening ended, we had sold ourselves on the idea. Science has a term for those magic instants when a researcher suddenly strikes on an idea that leads to a breakthrough, calling them “eureka moments.” I have since thought that on that spring evening, as we stood in front of the hospital, Pag and I experienced one of those moments.

Soon thereafter, I sought out John Kemeny and posed the idea to him. He looked at me as if I had lost my mind. He counseled that moving the medical center was impracticable and that “it couldn’t be done,” given the political environment of the medical center. I respected John’s views on this, for among his many accomplishments had been the creation of an appointive body, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Joint Council, whose membership included representatives of all medical-center components—the medical school, hospital, clinic, and Veterans Administration Hospital—and, thus, his judgment on the issues involved was well-informed. (This body later, during my presidency, became the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Board of Overseers, and Pag, Provost Ag Pytte, Medical School Dean Robert W. McCollum, and I, as Dartmouth president, constituted the college’s representatives to that group.) The board was chaired at the time in question by F. Ray Keyser, a savvy lawyer from the hills of Vermont. Ray had served a single term as governor of his state, lost in his bid for a second term to the first Democrat elected Vermont governor since the Civil War, then returned to his law practice.

Enlisting support for the notion of relocating a major medical center would be difficult under any circumstances, and, of course, even more so when such action involved three independent entities, several faculties, and a great number of professional physicians and academics. It is a process that takes time and patience. As Pag and I began to introduce, informally, our concept to the medical and academic community, Governor Keyser’s board was addressing the town of Hanover’s concerns about any medical-facility enlargement on its current site. Consequently, the governor was only too happy to listen, over lunch at the Hanover Inn, to the new idea with which Pag and I confronted him: move the whole medical center out of Hanover. To our delight, Ray thought it made a good deal of sense, and he agreed that we should sit down with the full board of overseers to lay before it the overall concept. When next the board met, Pag and I made a very thorough presentation, which seemed, indeed, to overwhelm some of the members. I could perceive some of John Kemeny’s skepticism in their eyes. Nevertheless, Ray saw to it that agreement was reached to commission a study of the possibility of relocating the entire medical center. In its heart of hearts, however, the clinic continued to long for a new building out on the Lebanon Road, all by itself; and, for its part, the hospital still held to the faint hope of an expanded facility on its present site, at the north end of the Hanover village.

The hospital had taken a first independent step in the latter direction—although it was a wrong one, in the college’s opinion. In 1983, it formally applied to the state of New Hampshire for permission, in the form of a certificate of need, to expand, there on its present site, at an estimated cost of sixty-seven million dollars. This move constituted a prelude to what would be truly crucial action pertaining to the future of the overall center. It was clear that the hospital was going to increase in size, somewhere, and its board members naturally preferred its existing location.

In February of 1983, the clinic portion of the medical center changed its plans to move out of Hanover, and instead decided to put its new building on the Dewey Fields. Since that site was adjacent to the medical school, and because a good deal of the teaching of our medical students would take place in the new building, the college concurred that its fields would be a fine location. But just at the time we agreed to provide that land, Hanover town officials announced that they had several concerns, particularly about the increased traffic that would result from an enlarged medical center at the north end of the village. I soon began to hear talk about expanding the hospital beyond Dewey Fields and even over onto the college’s golf course. (Could the Hanover community exist with merely a nine-hole golf course, where heretofore eighteen holes had been available? My golfing friends certainly did not think so.) Every idea regarding alternatives that came up seemed to encounter stern opposition or criticism. Then, the town firmly stated that it wanted no part of a larger hospital in Hanover.

That spring, the clinic chairman and some key members of the medical school faculty visited my office, in order to ask that I take on direct involvement in the medical center situation. They felt that perhaps the college could help with the dilemma posed by a hospital that needed to expand and a clinic that wanted a new building, both to be located in a town that seemed no longer to want either one of them! I was told that unless it all could be resolved, the future existence of the Dartmouth Medical School, as well as of the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital as a tertiary care facility, could be in jeopardy.

As Dickey and Kemeny had foretold, still another Dartmouth president was becoming more and more involved personally in medical matters. Certainly, I had no intention of being the president who presided over Dartmouth Medical School’s demise. And quite clearly, too, unless the college played the lead role, a solution would not be found. Dartmouth owned the land, controlled the academic teaching appointments, generated research funds, and had, as an institution, a decidedly major vested interest in such projections. Dartmouth could not afford to sit on the sidelines while the clinic and hospital—or the town of Hanover—determined the future of DHMC.

In early 1985, the study, known as the “Pitts Report,” that was undertaken for the medical center’s board of overseers estimated that the cost of relocating the whole center to the Lebanon site would be two hundred and four million dollars. The report also recommended that the college should purchase the existing hospital buildings and provide assistance to the medical center in its fund-raising efforts. The price estimate for the move hit the Upper Valley area like a bombshell, and the hospital and clinic made it immediately clear that they did not like the idea. Still, although both held that the Pitts Report was not the answer, the clinic and hospital remained severely at odds over what, alternatively, should be done. For a time, the college was decidedly unpopular with the physicians at the clinic and the hospital’s administrative officers—an unpopularity that particularly focused on Pag and me. (The two of us, partly in jest, thus agreed that we should probably wear identity bracelets that read, “If I require medical attention, do not transport me to Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital.” We were far from sure that, if sent there, we would ever walk out.)

In the summer of 1985, I instituted a series of meetings that brought the various elements of the medical center together. By autumn, a consensus began to emerge that a move, in toto, to college land in Lebanon was, in fact, the best option.

Convinced that what we had proposed held the very best—and perhaps the only—solution of the college’s and the medical center’s long-term needs, I met with both the hospital and the clinic in the fall of 1985, again trying to sell our plan. I was listened to politely, but no agreement was forthcoming. Yet, quietly, Pag and I won at that time two powerful allies in the persons of hospital President James W. Varnum and John W. Hennessey Jr., a professor (and former dean) at the Tuck School, who was then serving as chair of the hospital’s board. Both assured us, in private, of their agreement that a total move was the best long-term solution, and both promised that they would help build support for what we were urging. Then, Pag’s ingenious mind again went to work, as he concocted a means to purchase the existing hospital through the use of tax-exempt bonding—the first time Dartmouth had contemplated using this form of financing, even though other Ivy League institutions had done so earlier.

In late November 1985, Pag and I presented this funding concept to the hospital and agreed to propose that Dartmouth acquire the hospital for twenty-five million dollars, as well as provide the Lebanon land needed for the new hospital—both of these conditions having been established earlier by the hospital. Suddenly, everyone seemed to see that the move made sense, both logistically and financially, and the hospital board of trustees promptly voted approval of the move to the Lebanon land. I was overjoyed, feeling that the relocation of the entire medical center was close to becoming a certainty. My enthusiasm was premature, however, for the next day, when I placed the matter before the college trustees, after considerable discussion the issue was deferred until the college faculties could consider the relocation plan. The board, understandably, was skittish, due to all the recent controversies, and a further alienation of the faculty was the last thing it wanted to bring about through the surfacing of a new and heated issue. In point of fact, the board really was not sure it agreed with my recommendation about moving the entire medical center out of Hanover; the trustees wanted a break from new initiatives and from projects that had potential major implications. That caution on the board’s part quickly created doubts within the faculty of arts and sciences, and, even more importantly, with Jim Varnum and John Hennessey, who began to question the college’s sincerity in its dealing with the hospital.

I was absolutely convinced that Pag and I had hit on the best solution to a daunting problem, so I took our plans to the executive committee of the college faculty and to the medical school faculty. The college faculty appointed a special committee, chaired by Professor Alan L. Gustman of the economics department, to examine the matter. The committee initially reported that it lacked adequate information on which to base a decision, but subsequently agreed that the plan was, in fact, financially feasible and supported the proposal. The medical school faculty loved the idea, and on a vote of one hundred thirty-six to three—a margin that surprised me—endorsed the total plan. That vote immensely strengthened my position with the college trustees, and I went to work to convince the board members, one by one, that Dartmouth had to bring about the medical-center move. The college president was playing the last high cards he held.

As December began, Pag and I took our case to a meeting of the college’s general faculty. They listened intently, debated the matter, then voted by an overwhelming one hundred fifty-nine to forty-six to approve the move. Subsequently, the faculty of arts and sciences, expressing concern that the move could drain money from existing programs, voted a hundred twenty-two to four to endorse the move, but with the proviso that the cost not affect other college programs. Though exhausted, I was close to ecstatic, knowing the move now had but one major hurdle left to clear. All during that time, to promote my idea, I was holding evening meetings with various doctors from the medical center whom I believed to be especially influential in the hospital’s affairs. The effort paid off just before Christmas, when the hospital withdrew from the state of New Hampshire its application for a certificate of need, pertaining to expansion on its current site. And promptly thereafter, the college’s arts and sciences faculty voted its approval of the overall medical-center move.

Things were definitely looking up, although apprehension was building in the president’s office, concerning a deadline the college faced for approval of the tax-exempt bonding that Pag projected to fund the total transaction. The banks had set January 1, 1986, as the deadline, and it was suddenly two weeks away. Just before the Christmas holiday, the college trustees held a special meeting (December 2, 1985) in Hanover, with the medical center foremost on their agenda—specifically, the question of whether to approve purchase of the hospital buildings. I suspected that the board was lukewarm toward the whole concept, and now it came down to the board’s saying “yes” to spending twenty-five million college dollars to buy the hospital; “yes” to giving the medical center, free of charge, a large chunk of college land; and “yes” to selling thirty-four million dollars of tax-exempt bonds. To my infinite relief, the trustees supported the plan and their president, unanimously. As I recall it, the vote happened without fanfare; the board members showing no particular emotion. Then, we moved right on to other business. Despite the lack of drama, I felt that the most important board decision of my presidency had just occurred—but with “one-handed applause.”

As 1986 began, although I thought the outcome of the whole medical center matter was a fait accompli, one major issue remained unresolved: Would the medical school also move to the new site in Lebanon? The college’s arts and science faculty made clear its belief that at least part of the school should be kept on campus, so that a Dartmouth medical education would continue to be integrated with the undergraduate science curriculum. But the medical faculty wanted to move the school—lock, stock, and barrel—along with the hospital. Now, the college trustees having favored a total move, the college faculty was again in opposition to the board. Eventually, what transpired was that about twenty-five percent of the medical school relocated with the medical center.

The whole matter seemed—at long, long last—about put to rest when, in August, the state of Vermont raised questions about the great cost that was to be involved in the creation of the new medical center and what effect this would, in turn, have on health-care expense in northern New England. Then, six months later, Lebanon officials voiced second thoughts about the move’s impact on their city, and hired a consultant to make an assessment—the cost of which study the college promptly volunteered to pay. By this time, the college had known for three months that its fourteenth president would be stepping down in June. Although at this stage a “lame duck,” I continued to involve myself closely in the ongoing saga. During April, the state of New Hampshire suddenly began to express apprehension about the new hospital’s impact on small hospitals. How, for instance, could little Alice Peck Day Hospital in Lebanon survive in the shadow of a huge new medical facility four miles away? To allay such concerns, which rapidly spread to Vermont, I enlisted the support of both former-Governor Keyser of Vermont and New Hampshire’s incumbent governor, John H. Sununu, the latter being then, of course, ex officio a member of the Dartmouth board of trustees. They stepped right in, and soon the issue cooled—one that proved to be the last medical-center issue with which I dealt during my presidency. However, to my particular gratification, we held a groundbreaking ceremony for the new hospital on the day before my successor was inaugurated. The final chapters in the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center story would be played out under a new president.

The end of my presidency was an emotional, difficult time for me. But throughout those last days, and into my early post-presidential period, I was buoyed by knowledge that I had closed my term on a very positive note. I was certain that as the years passed, the importance of the medical center’s move would increasingly be understood and appreciated. Its impact on the future of Dartmouth would certainly be more lasting than anything since coeducation. The people of northern New England would have a first-rate medical center—a center designed from scratch; a thoroughly modern facility. And that facility had all the land it likely would ever need, to accommodate future growth. Also, the college now had ample land at the north end of the campus for future expansion. The whole thing, I felt, had happily put an exclamation point at the end of my presidency!

Today, looking back a quarter of a century, I know that had I failed to bring about the medical center move, my presidency would have been for me far less satisfying or fulfilling. And today when, for my personal medical care, I visit the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center—even at seven-thirty in the morning—the place is filled with Vermont and New Hampshire people, patients and employees, as well as with persons from far beyond the Twin States, seeking medical attention at “our” nationally known and, indeed, nationally celebrated facility.

The Dartmouth trustees who enabled the center’s creation underestimated, I am sure, the impact of the action they took that day. Their vote, as I have indicated, entailed none of the emotion that attended our adoption, with tears on many faces, of coeducation. However, I believe it to be the case that the establishment of coeducation and the resolution of the medical center’s future are of almost equal importance in Dartmouth’s history. Certainly, they were bookends of my term of service to my alma mater as board member and as president, the first crucial vote that I cast as a member of the board having been to approve coeducation, and the last important decision made during my presidency—and the last vote I cast as a trustee—resulting in giving northern New England a major new medical facility, as well as giving to my college the space it would someday surely need as it grows to become an even better seat of learning. I now celebrate both decisions—together with all of those that occurred between the bookends.

My heart attack was probably a life-saving event, in that it changed certain of my bad lifestyle habits, put me on an exercise routine, and improved my diet. It did not, however, alter the pace of my life. To have “slowed down” would probably have had a life-limiting effect on an individual who liked to go, and who flourished on going, full-out. The coronary also gave me a true appreciation of the need to have a first-rate tertiary-care hospital in northern New England; and, in the long run, it gave me a deeper respect for the special qualities of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

Addressing the medical center’s needs and challenges was not on my or the board’s agenda when I assumed the presidency, and taking it on undoubtedly hastened an already-accelerated end to my term in office. However, the opportunity to design a whole new medical center from scratch, on a blank sheet of paper, was perhaps unprecedented anywhere. And the result was, I believe, the creation of one of the world’s finest health facilities. Without the college’s strong involvement, the crises of space and location that faced the medical center during my presidency would not have produced the wonderful new facility that now stands adjacent to the Lebanon Road, just southeast of Hanover and the college. The college, for its own good, for the good of the medical center, and in the best interests of the people of northern New England must, I believe, always stay strongly involved in the affairs of the center. Dartmouth presidents from Dickey to Kemeny to McLaughlin invested enormous amounts of energy to see that the Dartmouth Medical School and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center were sustained at levels that well served the college and New England. And I am convinced that, given the dynamics and interrelationships of the medical center, and even with strong direction from the hospital and clinic, there must be ongoing, sustained presidential involvement and leadership from the college in providing adequately and properly, within a rapidly changing environment, for the future of the center.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Below the Line

COMMENCEMENT in June of 1986 was a major strain. Tensions were high, with the issue of divestment still alive on campus, and some students, as had been done at the graduation exercises in 1985, tore up their diplomas. Days after commencement, at the urging of the trustees, I accepted the invitation, earlier mentioned, to visit China. The engagements of the trip began in July at Beijing, where Judy and I helped inaugurate a Dartmouth foreign-study program at the University of Beijing. Our hosts were most gracious, and the ceremony was elaborate, one of great warmth. The weather also was one of great warmth throughout our stay; indeed, the summer heat was at times stifling. In 1986, travel within China was also stifling—the trains were crowded; the sleeping accommodations on the Yangtze River boat trip were six deep in a small bunk room. Every Chinese person we met wanted to practice his or her English. China was then still recovering from its cultural revolution, and upon our arrival in each city, we had the disconcerting experience of having our passports seized. However, they were always returned at the airport as we departed to resume our journey.

We traveled in China for three weeks. Always we were greeted with fanfare, and always an interpreter waited at our destination to be of service. We attended banquet after banquet. But because of the healthy nature of the native cuisine, my cholesterol level dropped and I actually lost weight. The trip’s highlight was a visit to the Great Wall, where I was truly amazed—just “blown away.” We walked that massive three-thousand-mile-long barrier for a couple of miles and saw it, in the far-off distance, rising and falling with the mountains. I learned that it was built so that armies could be moved along its top, with six horses being able to pass abreast. The Chinese people, of course, displayed a great pride in their wall, one of the seven wonders of the world.

At Xian, we visited the great tomb of the Emperor Shi Huangdi and saw archaeologists engaged in unearthing six thousand life-sized clay soldiers, guardians for the tomb of an emperor dead two thousand years. Amazingly, each figure possessed its own distinct facial features, and our Chinese hosts said that many thousands more figures might still be found.

As the departure date for our return to Hanover neared, my thoughts turned more and more toward Dartmouth and my presidency. Clearly, the time was fast approaching when I should step down. I recalled, as I have already mentioned, that John Kemeny had said, midway of his presidency, that after the approval of coeducation and the transition period that followed, he really didn’t have another major goal. With the medical center move now becoming a reality, I was disposed to feel that another series of special objectives would require more energy to initiate and complete than I had the capacity or the time to provide. And, actually, before our departure for China, and even well before commencement, it had become clear to me that my term was probably nearing its end. In the spring, Judy and I had accepted an invitation from Trustee Bob Henderson and his wife, Carol, to spend a weekend at the tennis club of one of his partners. After a couple of sets, while we were having drinks, Bob somewhat casually posed the question, “How long do you plan to stay?” From a good deal of management experience, I knew that this was not just idle conversation. I suspected that the board had asked him to sound me out. I told Bob that there were still some things that, as president, I needed to get done. And I left it at that.

We were not long back from China when Trustees Sandy McCulloch and Mike Heyman came to my office for a meeting that Sandy had requested. Mike, appearing very somber, got right to the point by saying, “Dave, we think you need to give some serious consideration to how long you are going to stay.” We talked for a few minutes, and then Sandy, looking uneasy, said, “If the board were to vote on your continuing in the presidency, I’m not sure how it would come out.” Both indicated they believed the time had come when I should consider stepping down. I told them that I had been out in front on a lot of difficult issues that were the board’s issues, issues that had been driven by the trustees. I said the trustees had backed away from several positions, under campus pressure, after committing the administration to a course of action—which was their right to do; but I said that if John Kemeny’s board had acted that way, his term would have ended early on. When the meeting concluded, Sandy and Mike departed without any indication of intent from me. I am sure they were disappointed. Their message certainly was well understood by me, but I had not yet decided just what I should do or about the timing of taking any action. I did remind them that I was still deep in the medical-center issue. And I guess I thanked them for their counsel.

Following my session with McCulloch and Heyman, I talked with Ag Pytte and Mona Chamberlain, my two most trusted associates. (I should add that Paul Paganucci had recently left Dartmouth, upon accepting an executive position with the W. R. Grace company in New York City.) Ag and Mona were both of the opinion that my contribution to the college had been made and that I should now bring my presidency to a close. When I called Pag in New York, he was his usual blunt self. “Get out of there,” he said. “You’ve given enough to the college. It’s not worth it anymore.”

During the next few days I heard other opinions, both sought and volunteered. Fred Berthold, the veteran religion professor, said one day, “You’re getting beat up pretty bad. Why do you go on?” Frank Smallwood, a senior government professor, told me over lunch: “People on campus are tired. You’ve pushed too much through the pipeline—new buildings, the hospital; so much. They need a rest.” And Professor Charles Wood said: “David, you love Dartmouth too much. You just won’t compromise on anything.” (I recalled that he had told me soon after my inauguration that I needed quickly to lose a key vote to the faculty, “so that they know you will work with them.” Good advice, but I had not done that.) By this time, Judy would, I know, have been disposed to have joined the majority opinion and urged retirement, but she kept her counsel to herself.

I recall thinking that if I dug in my heels and told the trustees that I intended to stay another two years, the board probably would have reluctantly gone along, after a split vote. But to do so would not have served the interests of Dartmouth. No, the time had come to go, and I would be going of my own accord, having completed most of the agenda that had been agreed upon with the board six years earlier. Looking back now, I realize that presidents (and trustees) can be judged only from the perspective of time, and by the long-term impact of decisions made and actions taken. From that standpoint, I am not, today, displeased with my term in office.

Minary, among the tall pines, by the choppy waters of lovely Squam Lake—Minary, where my presidency really began with that awkward, but not terminal, interview that resulted ultimately in my being admitted to the Wheelock Succession. Now, on a late-August day in 1986, I had returned to the Minary Center to tell the board of trustees that I intended to leave office. It was a day with many clouds in the New Hampshire sky, and certainly it was not a bright day for David Thomas McLaughlin.

That memorable late-summer day began for me in Boston, with a morning meeting of the trustees’ executive and investment committees. That afternoon, I headed for the wilds of New Hampshire, being driven while I composed remarks for that evening. I arrived at Squam Lake in the cool of late afternoon and found all of the board members and their spouses present. Judy had come over to Minary from Hanover. We had dinner, and then everyone gathered in the large living room, with board members and spouses taking seats in a horseshoe of couches and chairs that faced the fireplace. I seated myself on a bench, at the open end of the horseshoe, by the stone fireplace.

I began the session with, as usual, a brief report on the state of the college, which I assessed as being, in general, good. Then, I said: “My paramount interest has been to serve Dartmouth’s cause. But one uses capital, one’s authority, at a rate proportional to the level of activity and the number of issues one engages. I have concluded that my service to the college can now best be rendered by my announcing sometime this fall my intention to step down from the presidency at a time, after next commencement, when a successor is installed.”

I went on to say that I would schedule the release of the formal announcement of my resignation after consulting with the chair and the vice chair of the board, and I asked that everyone keep the matter confidential until that time. I then discussed the need for careful planning with regard to the college’s future—and, especially, that we must be certain that fund-raising efforts would be carried forward to ensure Dartmouth’s successful entry into the twenty-first century. I concluded: “While I am universally proud of Dartmouth’s accomplishments over what will be six years, I am not prepared to commit more years to the task and, on that basis, feel this to be the proper time, considering the college’s interests. There are a number of matters I want to finalize in the coming year. With the trustees’ concurrence, I intend to pursue actively this priority list and to turn Dartmouth over to my successor in the strongest position in the college’s history.” And to this I added, “I thank you for your efforts on Dartmouth’s behalf and look forward, eagerly, to working with you in the coming months.” After a brief silence, the board members came forward to shake my hand, all saying something appreciative about my service to the college. When things quieted, I went out for walk among the pines, in the deep and chill dusk, already beginning to feel as though a weight had been lifted from me.

College campuses are hotbeds of gossip, and there is probably nothing that could cause greater excitement than word being spread that a controversial president had decided to step down. But, in fact, knowledge that I had informed the trustees of my intention to resign at the end of the academic year never leaked out prior to my official announcement to the faculty. Miracles never cease! The announcement was made on October 6, 1986, a crisp day with Hanover’s glorious autumn foliage at its peak. I assembled my senior staff that morning in the president’s office and told them of my intentions. Some were taken totally by surprise, and it was definitely an emotional moment for me. Then, I crossed the green to Alumni Hall of the Hopkins Center, where the general faculty had assembled for its regular fall meeting, which traditionally includes the president’s state-of-the-college address. After calling the meeting to order, I delivered a brief report saying, in effect, that the college was in a remarkably strong condition. However, I stressed that the next ten years would be a challenging time, going on to say that, within that context, “. . . Dartmouth will be best served by having a continuity of leadership. . . .” And, extending from that, I proceeded to announce that I would end my presidency at the close of the academic year. I said, as I had declared in my remarks to the board at Minary, “I intend to turn Dartmouth over to my successor in the strongest position in the College’s history.”

After a brief murmur, Alumni Hall returned to deep silence as I continued. I stated that during the next decade, the college needed to obtain “significant new funds” for increased financial aid and faculty salaries, as well as “for defining a new perspective for the college.” I said, “There should not be a changing of a guard midway through our efforts to consolidate the impressive gains of recent years, and to assemble the resources that will ensure Dartmouth’s future.” Emphasizing “my intense pride in this institution,” I said: “It is a place much greater than the sum of its parts—and greater than any single voice can describe or define. I love it—and I know you do, too.” The faculty then rose, with sustained applause.

The surprise of the announcement was underscored next morning by the banner headline in The Dartmouth: “MCLAUGHLIN RESIGNS.” And the paper carried an editorial that concluded, “There is no doubt that David McLaughlin loves Dartmouth College and his alma mater should be grateful to this loyal son.” In the accompanying news story, comments by several Dartmouth people were also quoted. Trustee Robert E. Field said, “It’s a measure of the man that he feels it’s in the best interests of the institution that he leave.” Steve Kelley, a stalwart supporter of The Dartmouth Review, said, “This is the best thing for the College.” Dwight Lahr, dean of the faculty, said, “It’s a very sad day for the College.” And Board Chair McCulloch referred to campus politics, saying, “Right or left, they are going to digest this and then unite and recognize what David has done for this institution.” Sandy added that the trustees would be meeting before week’s end “to determine criteria for, and participants in, the search process.”

So, I had formally become a “lame-duck” president, and my life on campus changed dramatically. Suddenly, it seemed that every member of the faculty wanted to talk with me, to tell me how well I had served the college. I had many enjoyable luncheons and meetings with faculty members through the remainder of that, my last, academic year as president. Meanwhile, the board quickly organized a presidential search, and Sandy McCulloch, for some reason, appointed himself to chair the committee. He invited me to meet with the group and to give my views on the choosing of a successor. I told its members that I felt they particularly needed to find someone who would have a definite understanding of the special aspect of, as well as the unique basic character of, Dartmouth and that the search process should not be “reactive to the person leaving.” I urged them to set their sights on the future of the college, not to dwell on its past. “Look at the challenges we face,” I said, “not at history.”

In many ways, my last six months in office were more frustrating than I thought they could be. While my relations with the faculty improved in certain ways, I found it difficult, with my authority essentially gone, to function effectively. To my surprise, at one point, I became briefly involved in the arrangements for bringing on the new president, this when the search committee informed me that its choice, James Freedman, had made it a condition of his acceptance of the presidency that he be accorded tenure. I knew that Presidents Hopkins and Dickey had not been tenured, and certainly I had not. I was also aware that John Kemeny had given up his tenure status when he moved to the presidency, feeling that retaining it was inappropriate. But, at the trustees’ request, I took the matter to the faculty, which would need to recommend any tenure appointment. After considerable discussion relating to the question of with which department such tenure would be associated, it was finally agreed that, because Jim Freedman’s field of academic specialty was law, and Dartmouth had no law school, he could receive “college tenure”—an unusual arrangement.

My presidency was in its final weeks when, in June, commencement season arrived. The ceremony, as I recall it, went smoothly. When I bid farewell to the graduating class, I said, “We now stand together, preparing to take our leave of this special place, you this morning and I to follow in just five weeks.” The five weeks I had cited in my valedictory to the graduating Class of 1987 came to their end on July nineteenth, the day of President Freedman’s inauguration. Judy and I had already moved out of the President’s House to a college-owned house off Lyme Road, next door to where John and Chris Dickey had located when he left office.

On the inaugural day, I was on campus early, taking my morning walk. Along the way, I took a long look at the clearing skies and decided that the day’s ceremony could be held in the out-of-doors. As usual, the men of the buildings-and-grounds crews were at work, and many of them wished me good luck, and talked of other days. When I reached the office, Mona Chamberlain was there to go over my schedule. Later that morning, at the ceremony, which was held on the Baker lawn, I struggled to keep my emotions under control, seeing the occasion as the end of a phase in my relationship with my college, a relationship that went back to 1950. In scanning recently the student newspaper’s report of that day, I found as part of The Dartmouth’s coverage a photograph of me on the platform, seeming to be looking a long way off. Part of my focus that morning was, indeed, on distant times and things—perhaps back even to that day when, as an incoming freshman, I had been dropped off on the Hanover Inn corner, a place visible from where I now stood.

So, James O. Freedman officially became Dartmouth’s fifteenth president. When the college charter had been given over into his keeping, he received from my hands the Governor Wentworth punch bowl; and as I placed the chain bearing the Flude medal around his neck, I was suddenly a president emeritus.

As President Freedman’s first official act, he presented to Judy and me honorary degrees—just as John Kemeny had done for the Dickeys and I had done for the Kemenys. It was particularly gratifying to me to have Judy recognized in this manner, for the role of a college president’s spouse can be both a difficult and a lonely one. In part, the citation that accompanied her degree read: “. . . You are the niece, sister, wife, mother, and mother-in-law of Dartmouth graduates. . . . When . . . you returned to this matchless campus with your Club Officer, Class Officer, Overseer, and Trustee husband, you came as, almost literally, a full-time member of the Dartmouth family. It is, therefore, no wonder that in 1981 you brought to your role as First Lady of the College a uniquely sensitive awareness of the significance of that position—an awareness that has caused you to render, with dedication and great effectiveness, six years of exceptional service to the College. That service has endeared you to all who have come in contact with your grace, your enthusiasm, and your belief in all that Dartmouth stands for.”

One of the things I recall most vividly about that summer morning was a chance encounter I had with Thaddeus Seymour, in the middle of the green. Thad’s service as dean of the college had come to an end during the Vietnam War demonstrations, and he had gone on to the presidencies of, first, Wabash and, then, Rollins College. He shook my hand as we met and said, “David, there is life after Dartmouth.” I remember hoping, on that memorable, somewhat melancholy day, that he was right.

OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS

In the governance of a college, as with other institutions, and as well as with corporations, there are times of arrival and times of departure. And what takes place in between constitutes a legacy. It is not just the personal legacy of any one individual, but also that of the president and trustees who have jointly acted to move the college forward, in achieving defined goals. The nature of the interplay between president and trustees while they are functioning together will be determined in part by the style and abilities of the president—the chief executive officer—and by the chairman of the board. A chief executive officer reluctant to take bold steps that further the institution and fulfill the vision of the board must be held accountable for the consequences by the board. And a chief executive officer prepared to “fall on his spear” to achieve the board’s objectives must either be supported by the board or encouraged to alter his or her style, while being careful not to compromise his or her ability to govern.

With reference to there being a time for arrival and also a time for departure, knowing when to do both is important. As Clark Kerr said on leaving the University of California, “I leave as I came—fired with enthusiasm.” One should come to a presidency when he or she senses that one can achieve certain objectives that exist or have been identified and defined. One leaves when one has either achieved those objectives or has no remaining authority to do so. Continuity is provided by the governing board. If it does not shape the agenda with its new president, then there will be little accountability, and perhaps little advancement.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Life Goes On

WELL, Thaddeus Seymour was right. There is life after Dartmouth, though it took me a time to get “up and running” once again. My first post-presidential months were, I readily admit, difficult. A key mistake was for Judy and me to have remained in the Hanover area, which served to compound a natural period of emotional letdown. I dwelt, somewhat, on the fact that for the first time in my career, I had not left a job for one more challenging or attractive. I had resigned because I felt the board and I had completed our original agenda and more and that, in the process, my presidential authority had been expended. It was inevitable that judgments had been formed in Hanover about my presidency, and toward its end, I was coming in for a good deal of harsh criticism. My remaining in town was not only difficult for me, but also for my friends at the college. Still, during that interval I was not just sitting home and wondering what to do next. I continued to hold directorships of the Chase Manhattan bank, of the Westinghouse corporation, and of Dayton Hudson, which involved not only meetings of the full boards of those companies, but service on various committees, some of which I chaired.

In seeking a new challenge, I first contacted a number of venture-capital and buy-out firms, with the objective of finding a business to manage, one that was not performing up to its potential. While I had precious little accumulated wealth, I wanted to run my own show, and I was looking for a special situation. Several opportunities soon came my way, but each involved engineering a quick turnaround, then selling the business. Since I was not comfortable with “cut-and-run” management, the early options were not attractive, and my search took longer, and was more frustrating, than I had expected.

Several months went by, then one winter day, early in 1988, I received a telephone call from Donald C. McKinlay in Denver, a former Dartmouth trustee, who asked me to consider taking the reins of the Aspen Institute. I had briefly served on the institute’s board during my Dartmouth presidency, although I had lacked then the time to become very deeply involved in its affairs. A leadership-development organization founded in 1949 by Robert Maynard Hutchins and Walter Paepke, the institute had in its early period been presided over intellectually by two formidable individuals, Mortimer J. Adler, the Chicago philosopher, and Peter F. Drucker, the famous business-management consultant, whom I had first met, as mentioned previously, during my time with Champion Paper. Both had considerable egos and at the end of the day, Adler stayed at the institute and Drucker went on to a highly successful career. That outcome shaped the future philosophy and character of the institute.

Over the years, the institute had brought together corporate, governmental, and labor leaders to discuss the great books—Plato, Locke, Hobbs, Rousseau, and the like—and, in so doing, to have dialogues about the great ideas of the past as they might be pertinent to the challenges of the contemporary world. I agreed to meet with Don McKinlay, a trustee of the institute, and Robert O. Anderson, its chairman and the CEO of Atlantic Richfield Company, who had taken over from Paepke, as the principal head and funder of the operation. They told me the institute had fallen on hard times (a situation that had been kept from its board members) and that it needed new leadership. While the organization maintained a fine public image, with a board of high-profile world leaders and an alumni group that included decision-makers from about every sector of society, its financial condition had seriously deteriorated. Among other things, I was told that a contentious and complicated ownership situation existing at its main campus in Aspen, Colorado, constituted the major problem.

Certainly, a considerable undertaking was involved, although in no way did I understand just how difficult a task I was embarking upon when, in the spring of 1988, I agreed to become the institute’s president. (Subsequently, I learned that several other candidates had been offered the position and that each had, indeed, turned it down.) At any rate, I took myself to Aspen in the Rockies, and there it felt good to be challenged once again—professionally and personally. But what I encountered there constituted a daunting challenge, and some immediate structural changes were badly needed. During my first year in charge, Thornton F. Bradshaw, the chairman of the institute (and then CEO of RCA), and I replaced seventy percent of the board members. Tragically, Brad died suddenly in the second year of my presidency, leaving me without, at that critical time, a seasoned partner.

To resolve the Aspen campus difficulties, I initiated a series of meetings with the city council of Aspen, sessions that led, ultimately, after several years of negotiations, to a resolution of the complex property-management situation that had previously existed. Under the agreement that was reached, ownership of the entire main campus was returned to the institute. (This was déjà vu to me, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center situation replayed.) Once the land was secured, I began a fund-raising campaign, which eventually produced twenty million dollars, to finance a rebuilding of the deteriorated Aspen campus. The largest gift came from a part-time resident of Aspen, long Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, who owned, on a mountainside near Aspen, a palatial, fifty-five-thousand-square-foot vacation home, complete with two hundred telephone lines. He gave us nearly half of the needed funds, because, he said, the institute provided him with “intellectual stimulation” and a place to meet with important world leaders. However, he told me privately that, even for a prince, what he had contributed was certainly a lot of money!

Instrumental in the revitalization of the institute were three of my longtime Dartmouth friends and colleagues—Berl Bernhard, Frederick B. Whittemore, and Mona Chamberlain. Berl, a former trustee of the college and a prominent Washington attorney, soon became chair of the institute board. Fred, a top executive of the Morgan Stanley financial firm and one of the most enterprising men I know, had been a generous benefactor of his alma mater, Dartmouth, as well as of the University of New Hampshire, and of many other institutions and causes. Fred managed the endowment of the institute and was instrumental in tripling that fund in a relatively short time—thereby helping to save the organization at a time of real financial stress. Mona, at my request, agreed to disengage from Dartmouth and became the Aspen Institute’s vice president for administration, concurrently serving as my executive assistant. She did a wonderful job, as always—particularly in the early years—as she was the “go to” person and an essential element in the operation’s management.

The institute had established a second campus at Wye, Maryland, after Arthur A. Houghton Jr., of the philanthropic Houghton family, bequeathed to us his twelve-hundred-acre estate there, including a manor house and a magnificent unfinished “second home,” which we completed by raising the necessary funds from corporate sponsors. In addition, the institute maintained an international campus in Berlin, and during my tenure, we expanded the Washington office that had been downsized prior to my presidency. In the course of my years at the institute, we also inaugurated Aspen centers at Lyons in France, as well as in Rome and Tokyo. In addition, we initiated discussions that led, subsequently, to establishing Aspen India.

To address the global challenges facing society, we brought to the round-table at these centers international leaders for in-depth discussions on region-related and global issues, the result of which provided the participants a greater understanding and a value-based perspective of other cultures. This was a major initiative and a new dimension that we created for the institute.

My decade with the Aspen Institute was a fulfilling, challenging time—one the chronicling of which might, itself, be worthy of a book. Certainly, during those years our little organization had a considerable impact. For example, under the extremely capable direction of Christopher Makins, the institute created a family of public programs to complement its executive seminars. One of those, the Aspen Strategy Group, was chaired successively by, among others, former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia; Joseph S. Nye, now director of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; and Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. We held forums, always private and off-the-record, that involved key government officials, during which important national-defense issues were discussed. The Senate’s approval of the Gulf War initiative, by a single vote, I believe can be traced to bipartisan discussion held at the institute. Our Domestic Strategy Group, directed by my former Ivy League colleague, Harvard President Derek Bok, with Senator Bill Bradley and former drug czar William J. Bennett as co-chairs, influenced several major pieces of federal legislation.

The institute had an impact on many influential people. I think, in this regard, of Donald E. Petersen, CEO of Ford, for example. Don attended one of our executive seminars and found himself uncomfortable, both with the questions he was asked and with being challenged to defend his values by participants who were not from the corporate world. Frustrated, he announced that he was going home. Fortunately, however, his wife said that was fine, but she was staying. So, Don settled in, and after the second week, he confided to me, “For one of the few times in my life, I learned to really listen.” And I should note here, with reference to the executive seminars, that although Mortimer Adler was their godfather, James O’Toole was the father. Jim, an enormously talented and wise student of executive leadership, breathed new life into the seminars. The seminars are alive and healthy today because of him.

We held a gala event at the Colorado campus in 1990 to mark the institute’s fortieth anniversary—perhaps not a natural time to celebrate, but we were not sure the institute would get to the fiftieth anniversary! We felt we needed to make a public statement to the effect that the institute was alive and well. Through the invitation of Ambassador Henry E. Catto (one of our trustees) and his wife, Jessica, President George H. W. Bush and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were both scheduled to be the stars of the occasion. Then, on the eve of the president’s arrival, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and, in consequence, it suddenly appeared doubtful that he would be able to make the trip to Colorado. However, learning that the prime minister was already in Aspen, the president arrived—on short notice, with an entourage of eighty. Secret Service agents were soon seen everywhere, including on the rooftops. Mona Chamberlain was busy dealing with security issues and finding rooms for the presidential delegation. Aspen is not a large place, and the prime minister, having arrived earlier with her husband and about fifteen assistants, delegated security to the president’s men.

President Bush seized the opportunity, provided by the two national leaders being together, to hold a “small summit meeting” with Mrs. Thatcher, using the home of the Cattos. The president, as promised, delivered a public address to the Aspen audience before hurriedly returning to the White House. As he departed, Prime Minister Thatcher gave him some stern advice, saying, “Now, George, don’t go wobbly on us.” Margaret Thatcher remained at Aspen for three more days, during which I expressed some concern for her safety. However, she told me that the Irish Republican Army would never attack her in the United States, because, “They raise so much money here.” The prime minister stopped in Washington on her way back to Britain, to make certain that President Bush did not weaken in his resolve to send troops against the invading Iraqi forces. The Aspen Institute was central to all this.

While I was beginning to address the many challenges the Aspen presidency posed, one of the earlier contacts I had made in the course of my inquiries about venture-capital businesses paid off. Robert A. Malin, a 1953 Dartmouth graduate, informed me that an uncle of his was putting his business up for sale, an enterprise that manufactured flares. Bob said the uncle, Robert Waidner, being tired of management and having no offspring, wanted to sell his Standard Fusee Corporation as soon as possible. It all sounded interesting, and after several months of negotiations, we struck a deal. I had relatively little capital at the time, having left most of my appreciated options on the table when I left Toro, and then accepting a substantial pay cut when I moved to Dartmouth. But Chase Manhattan provided a loan, and Bob Waidner also retained some equity, with a buyout timetable. I am proud to say that, in the repurchasing of his equity position two years later, Bob realized a greater gain than he had earned in all the years he owned the business.

So, while still president of the Aspen Institute, I became the owner of Standard Fusee, which manufactured the kinds of flares that are placed on the highway to warn of an accident, as well as those launched from boats to signal distress. At the outset, management of Fusee proved to be decidedly a challenge, but one that I found to be enormously satisfying. In the first years, we reduced the number of manufacturing plants, consolidated the control system, purchased our major competitor, and changed our name to Orion Safety Products. We became the largest maker of flares in the entire world. Since I had a full-time job at the institute, I turned the day-to-day management over to several long-standing officials in the company. Then, when they retired, my son Jay became CEO, and he continues in that position, doing a great job. Orion was a boon to me, for it enabled me to develop, for the first time in my life, financial independence—a goal I had set almost thirty-five years earlier, when I graduated from Tuck School. Better late, I guess, than never.

The combination of running Aspen and Orion and serving on several corporate boards, was a near-perfect arrangement from my standpoint. I had intellectual stimulation deriving from interaction with leaders internationally, in the realms of business, culture, and world affairs. It amounted to a liberal-arts graduate program. Additionally, I had joined the board of Atlas Air and had assumed the non-executive chairmanships of CBS (after Westinghouse had transformed itself into a media company) and of PartnerRe, a New York Stock Exchange reinsurance company based in Bermuda. These experiences were rewarding ones, and I particularly enjoyed the PartnerRe association, because Fred Whittemore, who had introduced me to this opportunity, and I served together on its board. At various critical moments, Fred has played a significant and positive role in my life.

With Orion, I also had a highly profitable business that, for the first time, allowed me to pursue my interests outside the corporate community. Moreover, this involvement made it possible for me to move beyond Dartmouth and to begin putting my college presidential years in perspective. The hard feelings I had harbored toward some who had made that job difficult, faded, and I came more and more to realize the mistakes and missteps that I myself had made. I was busy and happy, and the time passed quickly. As the tenth anniversary of my assuming the Aspen presidency neared, I decided it was again time to move on. The institute was back on its feet; indeed, in the best shape ever. So, I told the board I was retiring, whereupon, as has somehow always happened in my life, another interesting opportunity almost immediately rose.

In 1998, Elizabeth Dole, then president of the American Red Cross, called to inquire if I would consider joining her board of governors. Through my friend Berl Bernhard, I had met her husband, Senator Robert Dole, some years earlier, and I suspect the invitation was traceable to that connection. At any rate, I responded affirmatively to Elizabeth’s inquiry, and thereupon found myself one of fifty governors of an organization having three billion dollars in annual revenues, one-and-a-third million volunteers, and a thousand chapters, and which is the provider of half the nation’s blood supply, as well as of humanitarian services throughout much of the world. The American Red Cross is complex and, without question, the most important health-and-human services provider in the United States—perhaps in the world.

Within a year of joining the Red Cross board, I was asked to chair its biomedical services committee, which oversees Red Cross blood services. Then, in the spring of 2001, the chair of the board of governors, Norman Augustine, asked me if I would consider succeeding him. Norm had been dealing with some tough management issues within the organization and had for some time been trying to step down. I agreed to take on the job, and by appointment of the president of the United States, I became chairman in June of 2001, just in time, as it turned out, to experience that autumn the nation’s September-eleventh crisis.

In the immediate wake of the attack on New York’s World Trade Center, a disaster-aid appeal was launched by the Red Cross, which resulted in an outpouring of almost one billion dollars in donations. However, entirely without consulting the board, our then-president decided that a large portion of the funds received should go to victims, but that the remainder of the money received should constitute a Red Cross national emergency fund, to be tapped in the event of future catastrophes. When news of this got out, a furor ensued, with many of those who had made donations protesting loudly in the media that they wanted all of the money they had contributed to go, as they had expected and intended it would, to the victims of the tragedy. The Red Cross’s trust rating dropped precipitously, causing the board, which was at that time also dealing with other concerns about the president’s leadership, to act swiftly to dismiss her. Then, for the next year, I as chairman worked long hours with Harold J. Decker, the organization’s general counsel, whom we appointed to be interim CEO. Our task was to help restore both public trust in and support of the Red Cross—which turned out to be, for me, a four-day-a-week “volunteer position.”

Amid the furor surrounding the organization’s post-9/11 problem, I sought help from Berl Bernhard to enlist the assistance of former U. S. Senator George Mitchell, a member of Berl’s Washington law firm. The senator was adept at dealing with crises, having recently negotiated a cease-fire in Northern Ireland. With his wise counsel, and Berl’s aid, we clarified nationally our donor-intent policy and announced that all one billion dollars in contributions relating to the New York tragedy would, indeed, go to those affected by the disaster. The Red Cross’s trust rating began to rise, and I shall always be grateful to Senator Mitchell for putting his credibility on the line to assist the American Red Cross at a time of need.

Those who know me understand that I am most fulfilled when I have a challenge—and, fortunately, opportunities seem somehow always to arise to “make my day” and to further my commitment to being an ongoing learner. After stepping down from the Aspen presidency in 1997, I received a call at my Lake Sunapee home from Dr. Harry H. Bird, the former head of the Hitchcock Clinic in Hanover and subsequently commissioner of New Hampshire’s Department of Health and Human Services. Harry alerted me that I would soon be receiving a call from the states governor, Jeanne Shaheen. He said that the quality of education in the Granite State was increasingly of concern to the governor and that currently she felt the need to address a growing crisis pertaining to state funding for public schools. Governor Shaheen’s call informed me she was putting together what she called a “blue-ribbon commission” to study alternative sources for educational funding, and she asked whether I would be willing to consider serving as its chair. I checked the matter out with some wise and knowledgeable leaders within the state, and although a registered independent voter with a conservative view regarding the appropriate scope of governmental authority, I nevertheless decided to accept the proffered chairmanship. I did so despite realizing that the challenge and risks involved would be considerable—particularly in a little state with some quite fixed ideas about taxation. However, I felt that if I could contribute to improving the quality of education, it would be a worthwhile undertaking. Unlike most states, New Hampshire has steadfastly refused to adopt broad-based taxation (except for property taxes), including its having neither income nor sales taxes. And the matter of how to raise adequate revenues to keep the state services functioning is a constant source of debate. The independent streak in the state is clearly captured in its motto, “Live Free or Die.”

Soon after leaving the Aspen Institute, I had opened an office in the village of New London, near my Lake Sunapee home, and I asked Mona Chamberlain to be in charge. Having previously returned to New Hampshire with her husband, Mona was, fortunately, available to assist me when I agreed to head the new commission, working out of my New London office. The commission’s specific charge was to identify alternative sources of revenue for public education, kindergarten through grade twelve; to analyze those potential sources; and to assess what the prospective impact of utilizing each would be. And we were given just nine months to do the job. Very fortunately, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston volunteered its staff to undertake our research. To the state’s benefit, and very much to my own, a wonderful group of individuals agreed to join the commission. They proved to be wise and effective contributors. We moved rapidly, holding public hearings throughout the state (away from Concord’s statehouse, to emphasize our independence), and we met with the governor, key members of the legislature, and representatives of various policy groups. We heard a wide range of opinions and examined at least thirteen potential revenue sources, including a sales tax, an income tax, a value-added tax—even legalized gambling.

Although it became more and more apparent to us that the legislature was not about to approve anything that would eventually entail the imposition of broad-based taxation, we were determined to identify what we believed to be the state’s best potential ways to fund primary education and to make the tax system more equitable. The final report that was handed to the governor did not recommend a specific solution (we had not been charged with doing so), but did state that New Hampshire might consider adopting a combination of taxes, including a nominal sales tax and an income tax, to support its public-school system. Any such combination would create, we felt, a revenue-generating system much fairer to all residents than the one currently in place, which relies on property taxes and business taxes. This would assure for the foreseeable future the availability of adequate revenues to fund educational requirements. Our report went to both houses of the legislature and to the media’s editorial boards throughout the state. As a result, the governor placed before the general court a proposal for levying a two-percent sales tax. But, then, she quickly backed away from it, amid the quite-predictable criticism that arose—some of the most strident coming from the state’s largest newspaper, Manchester’s ultra-conservative Union Leader. While, sadly, at that point the matter was simply dropped, I was satisfied that the commission had done its job well. Nevertheless, I was disappointed at the outcome, for I firmly believe that sooner or later the state of New Hampshire must adopt some form of more equitable taxation or, alternatively, see the quality of the state’s private and public institutions and services diminished.

Through my early post-presidential years, I visited the Dartmouth campus only occasionally, attending a few football games and some events at the Hopkins Center. When in Hanover, I found myself warmly received, especially by faculty members, even including former critics of my administration. A return that was the occasion of great sadness came about as the result of a phone call I received at my Aspen office on a February day in 1991 informing me that a final stroke had ended John Dickey’s long confinement at Dick’s House. I headed north immediately.

Then, on a cold, overcast winter afternoon, I joined the Dickey family when John’s body was interred—according to the promise I had heard made so long ago—in the cemetery plot right next to that of President Hopkins. When spring had returned to the Hanover Plain, a memorial service was held. Following the invocation, we sang one of John Dickey’s favorite hymns, “For the Beauty of the Earth.” John’s son and daughters delivered remembrances; then, the poem “Birches,” written by his friend Robert Frost, was read. I had been invited to deliver one of the two addresses of tribute.

I began my remarks that April afternoon by recalling a fishing trip that I had made to Iceland several years before. “One morning I had occasion to walk along the outskirts of a village,” I said. “In doing so, I passed a cemetery, and I noted something of the history of that community, as conveyed by the gravestones there. The clarity and elegant simplicity of one of the engraved memorial statements I saw on that day has remained with me ever since. ‘JOHN CARLSON,’ the inscription began, ‘1801–1884.’ And below that was but a single word: ‘Student.’ If one were to use a single word to describe or characterize John Dickey’s life pursuit, the word chosen would surely be ‘Educator.’ Mr. Dickey fostered in others the disciplined, relentless (yet joyous) pursuit of truth, as well as a greater awareness of one’s possibilities and potentialities. . . . Those privileged to know him were his students for life.”

I went on to recall the Great Issues Course, the familiar words of John Dickey’s convocation addresses, my working with him during my student days, our tour of Hopkins Center with Ernest Martin Hopkins, and I concluded: “. . . in the words of the College’s alma mater, President Dickey was, indeed, one who ‘set a watch, lest the old traditions fail’; momentous and unrelenting were the deeds he dared ‘for the old mother’; joyously, he greeted ‘the world, from the hills and with a hail’; always and everywhere, he kept for this institution the ‘old chivalric faith’—the ‘old undying faith.’ He had ‘the still North’ in his soul, ‘the hill winds’ in his breath; and ‘the granite of New Hampshire’ was, without question, part of him ‘till death.’ Now, as he often averred, and as he demonstrated by the example of his dedication and doing, ‘the word is so long, because in the Dartmouth fellowship there is no parting.’”

The hymn, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee,” set to the music of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” was sung; then, the Dartmouth glee club sang “Dartmouth Undying.” The music filled the otherwise hushed atmosphere of the chapel, with a bit of New Hampshire sunlight passing through the old stained-glass window that pictures a bright day, in the North Country out-of-doors that John Dickey so loved.

In the winter of 2001, Paul Paganucci died after a long battle with cancer of the throat, surely the result of his longtime fondness for cigars. Pag, upon retiring from his vice presidency at W. R. Grace, had returned to Hanover and founded a bank, the Ledyard National. A trim, refurbished Victorian frame building downtown served as its headquarters, and he set up for himself as chairman a tiny corner office on the third floor, where he could keep a sharp eye on happenings along Main Street. As his cancer progressed, Pag had been in and out of hospitals, and despite several surgeries, he eventually lost his ability to speak. I often visited him during his hospitalizations and told him about events in my life, talked about Dartmouth, and spoke of old times. When unable to speak, he would still always listen intently, his bright eyes showing a lively interest, and if he wanted to communicate a point, he would turn to a pad and pen he kept at his bedside. In the late stages of his illness, he asked to be taken back to his beloved home on Hanover’s Rope Ferry Road. There, his devoted wife, Marilyn, cared for him, assisted by nurses, and there he breathed his last in a large, sunny room that was painted in Dartmouth green.

At Pag’s request, transmitted to me by Marilyn, I delivered the eulogy at Pag’s funeral mass, and I began by recalling my first encounter with him, on the day I first saw Dartmouth and bought from him secondhand furniture for my dormitory room. I recalled how John Dickey had, early on, recognized great promise in Paul, saying, “I suspect that young man may have a great future.” I talked of our working together when I was president and of how we had purchased those two thousand acres in Lebanon. I recalled our afternoon walk around the hospital, which produced the idea for moving the entire medical center.

Going on, I said: “Pag made many contributions to Dartmouth, but his finest legacy will be Dartmouth’s role in the new Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center enterprise, which will shape the College and the region for decades to come.” I talked of Pag’s love for his family, for Italy and Italian food, for the Catholic religion and Dartmouth’s Aquinas House, for Casque and Gauntlet, for his Ledyard National Bank, for Tuck School, and, most particularly, his love for Dartmouth College. I concluded: “On his retirement from the College in 1986, I prepared a Resolution of tribute to Paul, which the trustees presented to him. The first line read: ‘In the Dartmouth Family, there are hundreds of daughters, thousands of sons, and legions of parents—but there is only one Godfather. . . .’ As many of you know—or would suspect—Paul was quite explicit in his written instructions on how this service was to be conducted. As Cary Clark said, ‘He didn’t want to leave it to us, as he was sure we would screw it up.’ You know, I suspect that Paul is looking down on us, with that self-deprecating smile he had, saying, ‘It’s all right, for in this family, there is no parting; it’s “so long” until we meet again.’ And we will meet him every day, for his presence, his goodness, his grace, has been miraculously builded in our hearts.”

Of my returns to campus since leaving office, an especially pleasant one occurred in 1998, after James Wright had become Dartmouth’s sixteenth president. Very thoughtfully and considerately, Jim invited me to march in his first commencement procession. I gratefully accepted the invitation and have marched at commencement every year since. Of late, I have returned to campus more frequently, and particularly while in the process of writing this book. Throughout the year 2003, I occupied a book-lined office on the second floor of Baker Library, a room with a tall window offering a view of the library lawn, the chapel, a bit of Dartmouth Row, and a glimpse of Velvet Rocks. From there, I watched the passing of another Dartmouth year, from winter white to bright spring green, to the fullness of summer, to the colors of autumn, and then to the falling of the leaves. Each day Baker’s bells proclaimed the passing of hours, often chiming some of the old college songs. And one summer day, chainsaws whined just outside my window as two splendid old elms, afflicted by disease, were taken down. Always, there is change.

During the course of my writing, going back over my life, particularly my Dartmouth life, I reflected on how fortunate I have been to have passed this way, on a journey that began in a rather far-distant place, and the course of which could have led me to so many other destinations. Yet, it was Dartmouth that, somehow, called. And although the experience of being here has on occasion been other than pleasant or agreeable, my Dartmouth life as student, alumnus, trustee, and president, constitutes my personal defining experience. Certainly, there has been life after Dartmouth, rich and full, and much of it has taken me far from the Hanover Plain. But always my path has led back to this extraordinary place; and always, on returning, I have the feeling that I have come home. And I have come to cherish the belief that despite my failings, I have indeed been able to render service to this special place that I know has served me most wonderfully well.

In the process of writing, of looking back, my memory brought forth a bright summer afternoon some years after my presidency concluded. I happened to be crossing the green, and at its center point, where the paths cross, I chanced to encounter President-Emeritus John Kemeny, who had on leaving office resumed teaching. He paused and said hello, explaining that he was on his way to conduct a class. Before striding off, however, he told me that he was beginning to write his memoirs. I remember thinking what a remarkable story he had to tell—about fleeing during early childhood in Hungary the threat of Nazi persecution, about settling in as an immigrant in America, about Einstein and Los Alamos, and about his extraordinary Dartmouth career. And here he was now, heading for a class, toting his briefcase, looking as usual somewhat rumpled, walking with head tilted a bit, as he invariably did, probably thinking about something very complex and profound. It was the last time I ever saw John, for a heart attack killed him six months later.

But of late, I have often thought of the thirteenth president and his unique contributions to the college. In doing research associated with the preparation of this book, I have periodically had reason to spend a considerable amount of time in Webster Hall, location of the Rauner Special Collections Library, housing the college’s rare-book, manuscript, and archival holdings. On occasion, I have glanced up toward the building’s south balcony, where portraits of Dartmouth’s more recent presidents are displayed. I never cease to be amazed that my likeness is there with Ernest Martin Hopkins, John Sloan Dickey, and John G. Kemeny. That’s pretty good company, up among those giants. Because of them, and so many others, this place of so very many hearts is still strong and vital, still turning out well-educated men and women for this exciting, if deeply challenged, new millennium. In looking back down the Dartmouth years, in my long remembering, my Dartmouth experience increasingly seems to take on a glow, perhaps as in sunset light. Dartmouth undying, surely, so it has been. Dartmouth forever, I fondly hope, it will be.

One crisp fall morning recently, along a pathway bordering the lawn of Baker Library, I met a bright and smiling young lady—my granddaughter, Kelly McLaughlin. She had a hug for me and excitedly told me how well things were going with her studies. Then she hurried off across the green, toting her books in her backpack, waving happily as she went. This was our first meeting since she had entered college a few weeks before, as a proud freshman member of the Class of 2007. Another generation takes its place on the Hanover Plain.

While this chance encounter was enjoyable and very special, on further reflection, it also affirmed for me that venerable institutions, like Dartmouth, continue to contribute to society because they have the capacity for self-renewal—to adjust to changing environments without changing their values. This is equally true for leaders who are prepared to put themselves at risk to pursue the greater good. It has been my good fortune to be associated with extraordinarily gifted individuals and enterprises that were my “teachers.” They raised the level of my aspirations and gave me the confidence to expand the dimensions of my decision-making. Where I was insufficiently bold in addressing certain challenges, the failings were mine, and often resulted from not properly assessing the significance of the opportunity for the institution or from being too cautious.

I hope that this book may elevate the awareness of those assuming positions of responsibility in colleges, universities, and other institutions, and help provide them with the insights and the courage to fulfill more effectively their obligations to the next generation—and thereby deliver on their own “promises to keep.”

CHRONOLOGY & INDEX

D.T.M. CHRONOLOGY—Compiled by Mona M. Chamberlain

1932

Born, March 16, Grand Rapids, Michigan

1950

Graduated, East Grand Rapids High School

1953

Elected, Phi Beta Kappa

1954

Bachelor of Arts degree, Dartmouth

College Commissioned Second Lieutenant, United States Air Force

1955

Married, March 26, Judith Ann Landauer

Children: William Robert (1956), Wendy Bel (1957), Susan Dean (1959), and Charles Jay (1962)

Master of Business Administration degree, Tuck School, Dartmouth College

Active Duty (1955–57), United States Air Force

1957

Executive Assistant to the President (1957–59), Champion Paper and Fibre Company

1960

President (1960–62), Shield-Ware Incorporated, subsidiary of Champion Papers Incorporated

1962

Vice President (1962–64), Champion Packages Company

1964

Vice President & Division Manager (1964–70), Champion Papers Incorporated (renamed U.S. Plywood-Champion Papers Incorporated, 1967), concurrently President (1964–70), Champion Packages Company

1968

Overseer (1968–74 and 1981–87), Chairman of the Board (1970–72), Tuck School, Dartmouth College

1970

President (1970–73), President and Chief Executive Officer (1973–77), Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (1977–81), Toro Manufacturing Corporation

Trustee (1970–1972), George Williams College

1971

Trustee (1971–87), Chairman of the Board (1977–81), Trustee-Emeritus (1987–2004), Dartmouth College

1972

Trustee (1972–1981), Chairman of the Board (1980–81), Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts

Trustee (1972–76), Blake School

Trustee (1972–79), Dunwoody Institute

1973

President and Chief Executive Officer (1973–77), Toro Manufacturing Corporation

Trustee (1973–81), Chairman of the Board (1980–81), Outdoor Power Equipment Institute

Member (1973–2004), American Society of Corporate Executives

1974

Director (1974–79), Meredith Corporation

1976

Director (1976–91), Dayton Hudson Corporation

Member (1976–82; 1983–89), Stanford Research Advisory Council

1977

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (1977–1981), The Toro Company

Chairman (1977–81), Board of Trustees, Dartmouth College

1978

Trustee (1978–81), United States Chamber of Commerce

Trustee (1978–82), Freshwater Biological Institute Foundation

1979

Director (1979–1997), Westinghouse Electric Corporation.*

Overseer (1979–80 and 1981–87), Thayer School, Dartmouth College

Honorary Doctorate of Laws, Heidelberg College

1980

Director (1980–96), Chase Manhattan Bank

Director (1980–96), Chase Manhattan Corporation

1981

President (1981–87), Dartmouth College

1983

Incorporator (1983–1987), New Hampshire Charitable Foundation

1984

Member (1984–87), Executive Committee (1986–87), Business-Higher Education Forum

Member (1984–2004) Council on Foreign Relations

1985

Trustee (1985–97), Aspen Institute

Trustee (1985–87), Kimball Union Academy

1987

Honorary Doctorate of Educational Administration, Norwich University

President-Emeritus (1987–2004), Dartmouth College

Honorary Doctorate of Laws, Dartmouth College

Chairman (1987–88), Aspen Institute

1988

President and Chief Executive Officer (1988–1994), Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (1994–95), President and Chief Executive Officer (1995–97), Aspen Institute

Acquired Standard Fusee Corporation [Renamed Orion Safety Products Incorporated]

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (1988–2000), Chairman (2001–04), Orion Safety Products Incorporated

Director (1988–93), Horizon Banks Incorporated

Honorary Doctorate of Laws, Washington College

Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Monmouth College

Trustee (1988–90), Washington College

Member (1988–94), Maryland Higher Education Commission

1989

Director (1989–93), ARCO Chemical Company

1990

Member (1990–96), Executive Committee, Will to Excel Campaign, Dartmouth College

1991

Member (1991–93), Federal City Council, Washington, D.C.

1993

Director and Non-Executive Chairman (1993–2000), PartnerRe Limited

Director (1993–2000), Atlantic Richfield Corporation

1994

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (1994–95), Aspen Institute

Director (1994–2001), Atlas Air Incorporated

1995

President and Chief Executive Officer (1995–97), Aspen Institute

1997

Director (1997–2000), Non-Executive Chairman (1999–2000), CBS Corporation*

Trustee (1997–2001), Chairman of the Board (1999–2000), Center for Excellence in Education

Member (1997–2003), Ethics 2000 Commission, American Bar Association

President-Emeritus (1997–2004), Aspen Institute

Honorary Trustee (1997–2004), Aspen Institute

1998

Member (1998–2004), Board of Governors, American Red Cross

1999

Non-Executive Chairman (1999–2000), CBS Corporation*

2000

Trustee (2000–04), Colby-Sawyer College

Director (2000–04), Viacom Incorporated*

Overseer and Chairman of the Board (2000–2004), Henry Crown Fellowship Program, Aspen Institute

Director (2000–01), Infinity Broadcasting Corporation

Chairman (2000–01), New Hampshire Governor’s Commission on Education Funding

2001

Chairman (2001–04), American Red Cross

Chairman (2001–04), Orion Safety Products

2003

Chairman, Board of Directors (2003–04), After-School All-Stars

Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Colby-Sawyer College

2004

Died, August 25, Dillingham, Alaska

NOTES

* Westinghouse Electric Corporation became CBS Corporation in 1997; CBS merged into Viacom in 2000.

INDEX to the names of individuals mentioned in the main text

Acheson, Dean G., 63

Adams, Sherman, 178

Adler, Mortimer J., 209, 212

Anderson, Robert O., 209

Andres, F. William, 10, 81, 88–89, 137, 175

Augustine, Norman R., 214

Baldwin, William L., 162

Bandar bin Sulton, Prince, 210

Beagle, William G. Jr., 34

Belushi, John, 134

Bednarik, Charles P., 35

Bendetsen, Karl R., 50, 52–54

Bennett, William J., 166, 211

Bernhard, Berl I., 96, 210, 214–215

Berry, John W., 124, 170–171

Berthold, Fred Jr., 144–145, 147, 149, 201

Bird, Harry H., 216

Blackman, Robert L., 29, 44–45, 54, 90, 179, 180–181

Blackmun, Harry A., 184

Blackwell, E. James, 174–175

Blaik, Earl H. “Red”, 29

Block, Peter C., 188

Bok, Derek C., 184, 211

Brace, Lloyd D., 10, 137

Brace, Robert D., 137

Braden, Thomas W., 9–10

Bradley, Bill, 211

Bradley, Edward M., 170

Bradshaw, Thornton E., 209–210

Bressett, Lewis J., 30, 185

Brown, Harold, 144

Brown, Edmund G. Jr. “Jerry”, 153

Brown, Edmund G. “Pat”, 153

Brutus, Dennis V., 156, 158

Bucklin, Christine Burnley, 170

Burke, Walter, 103, 105–106, 108–110

Burnett, Joshua B., 187

Bush, George H. W., 211–212

Button, Richard T., 26

Cantu, John J. “Jack”, 81, 105

Carter, Jimmy, 96–97

Carter, Lisle C. Jr., 107, 148

Catto, Henry E., 212

Catto, Jessica Hobby, 212

Chan, Wing-tsit, 31

Chamberlain, Mona M., 121–122, 161, 187, 201, 205, 210, 212, 216

Childs, Marquis W., 40

Clark, Cary P., 220

Claytor, W. Graham Jr., 143–144

Coles, Robert M., 184

Collis, Charles A., 171

Cormier, Paul L., 174

Cox, James M., 170

Crouthamel, John J. “Jake”, 179

Curtis, Thomas B., 9–10

Danforth, Richard S., 22

Dartmouth, Second Earl of, 28

Decker, Harold J., 215

DeWitt, Gordon V., 178

Dey, Charles F. “Doc”, 34

Dickey, Christina M., 55, 75, 177, 205

Dickey, John Sloan, 6–7, 10, 23, 25, 29–30, 36–37, 39, 42, 45, 54–56, 60–70, 73–75, 81–82, 88, 90, 95, 104, 113–116, 119, 121, 129–130, 133, 140–141, 143, 150, 164, 171, 175–177, 182–183, 185, 189, 193, 198, 205–206, 218–219, 221

Dickey, Sylvia A. “Sukie”, 176–177

Dinan, Dennis A., 181–182

Dole, Elizabeth H., 214

Dole, Robert J., 214

Dorris, Michael A., 76–77

Douglas, William O., 63

Douglass, Robert R., 123

Dregge, John W., 20

Drucker, Peter F., 52–53, 209

Dycus, Elizabeth R., 121

Einstein, Albert, 72, 83, 221

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 22, 40, 42, 178

Elizabeth II, Queen, 187

Elliott, Rogers, 163

Epperson, James A., 133

Fanelli, A. Alexander, 121

Field, Robert E., 204

Flude, John, 114

Foley, Allen R., 30–31

Ford, Gerald R., 18–20, 211

Fossedal, Gregory A., 87

Freedman, James O., 61, 74, 167, 204–206

Frost, Robert, 39, 45, 63, 218

Fuentes, Carlos, 183

Gallen, Hugh J., 115

Gardner, John W., 138–139

George III, King, 114

Giamatti, A. Bartlett, 115, 160, 184

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 118

Gustman, Alan L., 194

Hammerstein, Oscar II, 79

Harrison, Wallace K., 55

Hart, Jeffrey P., 87

Hart, Loring E., 142

Henderson, Carol T., 200

Henderson, Robert P., 148, 200

Hennessey, John W. Jr., 193–194

Herzig, Peter L., 145

Heyman, Ira Michael, 148, 200–201

Hicks, Orton H, 103

Hill, Richard D., 88, 100–101, 111, 114, 121, 155

Hinman, George L., 123

Hoekje, John, 16–17

Hood, Barbara C., 171

Hood, Harvey P., 171

Hopkins, Ernest Martin, 55, 73, 95, 133, 171, 205, 218, 221

Hornig, James E., 141

Houghton, Arthur A. Jr., 211

Hovey, Richard, 94, 140

Hull, Cordell, 61

Humphrey, Walter Beach, 94–95

Hutchins, Robert Maynard, 209

Hutchinson, Charles E., 173

Ives, Almon B., 31

Jackson, Jesse L., 158

Johnson, Lady Bird, 170

Johnson, Lyndon B., 153

Johnson, Philip C., 40

Joseph, Richard A., 157

Julian, Alvin E “Doggie”, 23

Kelley, Mary C., 146

Kelley, Stephen G., 204

Kelly, Walt, 40

Kemeny, Jean A., 71, 96–97, 118

Kemeny, John G., 3–4, 6–12, 59, 64, 70–78, 81–88, 90–101, 103, 106, 109–112, 114–118, 120–121; 123–124, 129–130, 133, 141–143, 150, 164, 166, 169, 171, 176, 179, 181–182, 189, 191, 193, 198, 200, 205–206, 221

Kennan, George F., 63

Kennedy, John F., 45, 153

Kenseth, Joy, 147

Kerr, Clark, 207

Keyser, F. Ray, 191, 196

Kilmarx, Robert D., 132

King George III, 114

King, Martin Luther Jr., 108, 160

Kleck, Jan L., 121

Koppel, Edward J. “Ted”, 184

Kurtz, Thomas E., 64

LaBombard, Ruth B., 121

Lahr, C. Dwight, 159, 162, 166, 204

Lamm, Richard D., 183

Lamperti, John W., 144–145, 149

Landauer, Bella C., 44

Landauer, James D., 44–45

Landauer, Judith A., 41, 43–45 (See also: McLaughlin, Judith L.)

Landauer, William I., 44

Lathem, Edward Connery, 122

Lazarus, Ralph, 8, 88–89, 100–101, 109–111, 121

Leede, Edward H., 171

Lehman, John F., 144, 148

Leland, Ted, 179–181

Lilly, David M., 56, 58–59, 81, 99, 108, 111–112

Littlefield, Duncan, 16

Lombard, Richard D., 8

Louis, John J. Jr., 187

Lyman, Richard W., 73

Lyons, Gene M., 149

McCarthy, Joseph R., 40

McCollum, Robert W., 191

McCulloch, Norman E. Jr. “Sandy”, 101, 104, 108, 175, 200–201, 204

McDonald, Joseph L., 38, 42, 133

McDuffee, Franklin, 25–27

McFate, James T., 35

McKenna, Leo C., 34

McKinlay, Donald C., 208–209

McLaughlin, Ann 14

McLaughlin, Arline Sunderlin, 14, 16–17, 41

McLaughlin, Charles Jay, 53, 57, 137, 213

McLaughlin, Judith L., 45–47, 50, 52, 57–58, 81–82, 106, 109, 120, 129, 144, 199–202, 205–206, 208 (See also: Landauer, Judith A.)

McLaughlin, Kelly K., 222

McLaughlin, Robert F., 14, 21, 41

McLaughlin, Susan D., 53, 57, 137

McLaughlin, Wilfred, 14, 16–17

McLaughlin, Wendy B., 47, 57

McLaughlin, William R., 46, 57–58, 137, 161

McLaughry, DeOrmond “Tuss”, 44

McLeish, Archibald, 63

MacLeod, Robert F., 29

McNamara, Robert S., 153–154, 163

McNemar, Donald W., 119

Mackay, Malcolm S. Jr. Bud, 112

Macomber, George, 172

Makins, Christopher J., 211

Malin, Robert A., 213

Mandela, Nelson R., 155

Manuel, Ralph N., 122, 126, 131–132, 142, 159

Marsh, John O. Jr., 148

Marshall, Matthew III, 177–178

Marshall, Thurgood, 40–41, 63

Martin, Mary, 79

Melrose, Kendrick B., 112

Miller, John C. Jr. “Chris”, 134

Minary, John S., 106

Mitchell, George J., 215

Mohammed Ali, 184

Montgomery, Harle G., 123, 183

Montgomery, Kenneth R, 123, 183

Moore, Charles W., 172

Morrison, Toni, 183

Morton, William H., 29, 137–138

Mosbacher, Emil Jr. “Bus”, 124

Motlana, Nthato H., 184

Munroe, George B., 157

Navarro, Marysa, 163

Neidlinger, Lloyd K., 133

Nelson, Jack H., 189

Nunn, Samuel A., 211

Nye, Joseph S., 211

Oberlander, Andrew J. “Swede”, 29

Orozco, Jose Clemente, 95

Orr, Dudley W., 70

O’Toole, James, 212

Paepke, Walter P., 209

Paganucci, Marilyn M., 219

Paganucci, Paul Donnelly, 22, 31–32, 87, 121, 126, 128, 135, 159, 164, 169, 171, 177, 189–191, 193–195, 201, 219–220

Paley, William S., 106

Paterno, Joseph V., 180

Pearson, Lester B., 63

Pease, Donald E., 162

Penner, Hans H., 119, 122, 127–128, 147, 162

Peters, Seaver “Pete”, 90–91, 179

Peterson, Donald E., 211–212

Peterson, Walter R. Jr., 67, 165–166

Phillip, Prince, 187

Pickard, Lennie L., 94

Pihos, Peter L., 35

Prince Phillip, 187

Pytte, Agnar, 121–122, 146, 191, 201

Queen Elizabeth II, 187

Quirk, Alfred T., 174

Radway, Laurence I., 147

Rassias, John A., 125–126, 151

Reagan, Ronald W., 153, 155

Rieser, Leonard M., 70–71, 73, 93, 97, 100, 121

Robertson, Reuben B. Jr., 50

Rockefeller, David, 182

Rockefeller, Margaretta F. “Happy”, 170

Rockefeller, Laurance S., 123

Rockefeller, Nelson A., 122–123

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 61

Rosen, Kevin S., 146

Rudman, Warren B., 173

Scheu, Edward M. Jr., 188

Scowcroft, Brent, 211

Seaver, George Thomas “Tom”, 184

Sendak, Maurice B., 163–164

Seymour, Thaddeus, 172, 206, 208

Shaheen, C. Jeanne, 216–217

Shanahan, Edward J., 132, 135, 159, 166

Shearing, George A., 153

Shribman, David M., 111

Sices, David, 151

Sigler, Andrew C., 50

Silber, John R., 125–126

Sills, Beverly, 184

Simon, William E., 165

Skewes, John D., 178

Smallwood, Franklin W., 201

Smith, David Parkhurst, 8, 153

Smith, Joseph, 86

Smith, Nathan, 86

Sovern, Michael I., 158

Spencer, Edson W., 106

Spiegel, Melvin, 162

Spitzer, Leo, 156

Stagg, Arnos Alonzo, 29

Stamberg, Susan L., 184

Stanley, Justin A., 6–7, 185

Steel, John F., 87, 119

Stillwell, Lewis D., 31

Sullivan, Leon H., 155–157, 159

Sununu, John H., 196

Sunderlin, Fred, 16

Tallchief, Maria, 184

Teevens, Eugene F. III “Buddy”, 181

Teevens, Shaun D., 181

Thatcher, Margaret H., 212

Thomas, Norman, 39

Thayer, Sylvanus, 64

Thielscher, David R., 34

Trillin, Calvin M., 83

Truman, Harry S., 169

Tucker, William Jewett, 64

Tuckman, Barbara W., 183

Turco, John H., 176–177

Tyler, Thomas L., 22

Varnum, James W., 193–194

Volker, Paul A., 184

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr., 183

Waidner, Robert A., 213

Wall, John M., 21

Wallace, George C., 66

Warren, Robert Penn, 183

Waterman, Reid, 17

Weber, David R., 8

Webster, Daniel, 28

Wentworth, Benning, 28

Wheelock, Eleazar, 3, 28–29, 69, 114–115

Whitman, Walt, 44

Whittemore, Frederick B., 210, 214

Whittemore, Laurence F., 20

Winship, Addison L. II, 122, 171

Wood, Charles T., 170, 201

Wright, James, 128, 220

Wyeth, Andrew, 184

Yukica, Joseph M., 179–181

Zimmerman, Charles J., 8–11, 58–59, 79–81, 137

THIS PUBLICATION WAS DESIGNED

BY DEAN BORNSTEIN AT THE PERPETUA PRESS

IN PEACHAM, VERMONT.