Colby Alumnus Vol. 44 No. 2- January 1955

Colby College Digital Commons @ Colby Colby Alumnus Colby College Archives 1955 Colby Alumnus Vol 44, No 2: January 1955 Colby College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/alumnus Part of the Higher Education Commons Recommended Citation Colby College, "Colby Alumnus Vol 44, No 2: January 1955" (1955) Colby Alumnus 190 https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/alumnus/190 This Other is brought to you for free and open access by the Colby College Archives at Digital Commons @ Colby It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Alumnus by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Colby , I I You can ADD TO YOUR INCOME and to your prestige this coming year ORN,£tJ., offers people with discriminating taste a selection of exclusive Christmas Greetings­ beautifully executed designs in both the modern and traditional manner Van Dorn sales representatives find it both pleasant and rewarding to make worthwhile use of their available time in a season when an additional source of income is particularly welcome W� ,\Ml!N ��AS VAN DORN REPRESENTATIVES IMMl!DIATI! INQIJIBY IS Dl!SIRAllLI! \ For further details, � � _,'="' ,,,,, : Ji in complete confidence, write: "Remembering is the Best of Christmas­ A Van Dorn card is the Best of Remembrance" v�ORN,£t.i., 3931 W DICKENS STREET • CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Colby Alumnus FOUNDED \ OL 44 191 1955 JANUARY No Editor RICHARD NYE DYER Business Manager ELLSWORTH MILLETT, President's Page Talk of the College George G Averill Maine Too Strong? The Bernat Collection Hurrah for Old Chi Phi Alumni Fund Report A College is Big Business Alumni Trustees Sports Class Notes In Memoriam Dr Is '2.5 10 l2 13 22 24 25 26 31 The Colby Alumnus is published four times yearly on the 15th of October, January, April, and July by the Alumni Council of Colby College Sub­ scription rate - $2.50 Single copies $.75 Entered as second-class matter Jan 25, 1912, at the Post Office at Waterville, Me., under Act of March 1879 Photo credits: Cover and pages 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 23, 25, Bill Tobey and the Waterville Morning Sentinel ON T HE C O V ER 1\tf Tl u ayfiower H i l{ i s a y o u n g s ter, but already tradition s are sprout­ ing on the n e w c a m­ pus, for example the warmth and friendli­ ness that is Colby Perhaps it is most evident at Christmas when students have so many pro7ects The D.U.'s decorate Lorimer Chapel The Lambda Chis light Miller Library Everyone plays some part Take this year: the clothing and toys from Chi Ome­ gas for :z little boy at Thayer Hospital (he had no shoes) or the family with eight children and a father too ill to wo1·k who is receiving thirty quarts of milk each week from the Inter­ fraternity Council Christmas does bring out the best in people, but the unification of purpose, which living to­ gether on a new campus has pro­ vided, means that Colby's new morale, and its new spiritual st1·ength, is not just " here for the ho?idays," but with the college all year around J he distance from my home in Montgomery, Alabama, to the Miller Library is approximately ,400 miles, but every so often when things seem to be going from bad to worse, I like to look at my Colby College calendar with the picture of the Miller Library as its illustration, think about the story of the building of Mayflower Hill, and get a new outlook on my problems For of all the things I carried away from four pleasant years at Colby, I think the inspiration of the construction of the new campus in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles will remain with me longest and strongest The epic of the moving of Colby College will always be one of the top stories of our times to my thinking I well recall my freshman week in the fall of 1940, when we were taken on a guided tour of the four shells that made up the new campus on the hill, a dream of the future then real only in the little model that was housed in a wooden building near the side of the Miller Library That was my introduction to Mayflower Hill, that and Joe Smith's breathtaking films of the ten years already spent on the project Ten years! Ten years of planning, struggling through a de­ pression, and finally starting And, what, I thought, lay ahead? The world was half on fire, b ut still the plans went ahead Somehow, the women's union and one women's dormitory were completed and then the wartime freeze on steel stopped everything for over four years With the thaw in 1946 came skyrocketing prices that made the carefully stored funds, so painstakingly gathered, shrink to half­ then one-third of the need But somehow again the challenge was met and at last, as second semester of the 1946-47 year began, all the classes except the science labs were moved to the hill Since then more buildings, landscaping, athletic fields, and other general improvements have been manifold until now the beautiful campus, once a scale model, rises in reality to form a living monument to those who have planned, dreamed and worked I'm glad I was a part of the picture for a few years because it in­ stilled in me the spirit to go forward and build for the future that those to come might have something a little better The move to Mayflower Hill is complete now Oh, there will always be new buildings to be built, new courses to be added, re­ visions changes and improvements The spirit that moved Champlin, Chaplin, Colby, Roberts, Johnson, Bixler, will always take Colby forward, but to its sons goes the inspiration to go forth to every sec­ tion of our great country and help build where it is needed To me that's what makes Colby distinctive among small col­ leges Each one has its good teachers, its good courses, its fine people, and its spirit, but on May­ flower Hill is the living example of that enterprise that makes America great Somewhere a­ long the four year journey, the winds that blow among the new spires are bound to breathe a little of that inspiration into every Colby man and woman Could that have been the idea behind it all? Last bus to the Hill RICHARD S.R EID, '47 Member, Alumnus Advisory Board The President's Page Albert Schweitzer C an you think of anyone you would rather chat with than Albert Schweitzer? Mrs Bixler and I had that wonderful experience this last August We had visited Dr and Mrs Schweitzer twenty-five years ago in their highland home at Ko n igsfeld in the Black Forest This time we saw them at Guns­ bach in Alsace The first remark Dr Schweitzer made as we came in was: "You've j ust come from working with the philosophers at Freiburg." I repl ied that we had been not at Freiburg but at Heidel­ berg Then I realized that I had failed to catch the tense of the verb he had used in Germa n and that he was actually referring to our visit of twenty-five years ago and was ready to take up the conversation from where we had left off! " Are you still a philosopher? " he asked I replied that I had become a business man instead and he laughed and said that was all he had time to he also I told him about our Walcker organ at Colby suggesting that perhaps he would some day use it for a Bach recital and went o n to say that his autobiography had been chosen as our Book of the Year He laughed a l ittle at the idea and said " You're l ucky if you can get through o ne book a year," but I think our choice really pleased him Then he said : " Do you remember that when you went to Colby you sent me some pictures of the new campus? I was d istressed by the blue j eans worn by the girls i n the laboratory and told you I thought prexy ought to fi nd money to buy them some better clothes!" I re· plied that I recalled his saying he wished he were a girl and could come to Colby a nd I wasn't sure whether he realized that Colby has over five hundred men " Oh, you?" he exclaimed " That's a m istake I f I had a college it would be for girls only ! " W hen w e sat down for lunch I told him I had often quoted his remark to m e that h e thought the most important quality in a religious person w as absolute devotion to the truth Th is started him o n a fairly lengthy d iscussion of the hazards of any other loyalty and the difficulties people have run into when they have failed to put the truth first " To n eglect it i s l ike going off the gold standard," he said Over coffee in the living room we reminisced w ith Mrs Schweitzer about her v isit with us in Cam­ bridge some years ago and her lecture there a nd we asked her if she and her husband would not come to us again She replied that at their age it was rd to predict the future Dr Schweitzer would be e ighty in January, she said, and their only definite plans were for a trip to Oslo to receive the Nobel prize and the return to Africa in December S he told us that Dr Schweitzer is working on a new study of certain technical ities in Bach's work and is also t rying to complete the edition of Bach's music that he started in Paris many years ago with his teacher and colleague Professor Widor He is also much occu­ pied with the enlargement of the leper colony he h as established near his hospital ( Continued o n page 21 ) Colleges exist because of what they can for the entire community The intellectual interests they try to encour­ age are continuous with life itself An institution of liberal arts, such as Colby, must not withdraw from life around it, but must be concerned with what its neighbors find important Oui· goal is not only to teach our own students imaginatively, but to encourage those in our neighborhood and wider con­ stituency to see the creative possibilities in their work With this statement President Bixler announced the offering by Colby of six evening courses for adults (The Ken­ nebec /ournal spoke of them editorially as "a substantial contribution to the cultural life of Central Maine.") The program, launched February and headed by William A.Macomber, '27, director of adult education and exten­ sion, presented the following courses taught by members of the faculty: History of the World's Great Relig­ ions (lecturer: President Bixler); The Great Collections at Colby (lecturer: Dr Carl Weber); Public Affairs Forum (lecturers: members of the eco­ nomics, history, business, and sociology departments); Principles of Personal Finance and Investments (lecturer : Ralph S.Williams, '35); Freedom and Authority in the Modern World (lec­ turers: fourteen members of several departments) ; Choral Workshop (lec­ turer: Peter Re) Registration has been primarily from the Waterville, Skowhegan, and Au­ gusta areas, although some folks have come from more distant communities ls:rue of JANUARY 1955 N THE L TEREST of developing a "closer relationship between the college and themselves, " Colby parents have formed an association headed by Frank H Burns of Bronxville, New York, vice president of Forbes Business magazine and president of the Maine Society of New York His daughter, Betsy, is a senior I Objectives of the Colby College Par­ ents Association, as drawn up by an executive committee, are: to keep par­ ents informed of the college's activities, policies, and plans; to assist in bring­ ing facts about Colby to a wider audi­ ence of prospective students and friends; and to establish and develop a fund program Meetings at which representatives of the college will speak are being spon­ sored by the association Mr and Mrs Joseph S Fairchild of the executive committee opened their home in Long­ meadow, Massachusetts January 17 to the first such gathering Dr Bixler was the speaker It was highly success­ ful Similar get-togethers are being planned in Hartford, Providence, Port­ land, New Haven, Boston, New York, and other communities T H E ANNOUNCEMENT by Bates College that freshmen would be eligible to play on all its varsity teams evoked considerable speculation as to whether others in the Maine State Series would follow suit Colby made its position clear early in the fall with this declaration by President Bixler at a luncheon for radio, television, and newspaper sportscasters: " We are united in the belief that Colby College should not use freshmen on varsity teams We shall continue to arrange for both freshman and varsity schedules This should not be inter­ preted in any way to be a criticism of those colleges who are making use of first-year men in varsity games This is their privilege and it is their way of solving particular situations with which they are faced "It is our belief, however, that a boy's freshman year should be free of the pres�ures which varsity encounters might bring and that he shoul