Two perspectives: one faculty, one student.

When he was named president of Haverford in 1946, Gilbert F. White was 35, the youngest college president in America. A geographer from the University of Chicago, he’d recently been released from a German POW camp in Baden-Baden; he’d joined the American Friends Service Committee in lieu of serving in combat, and was captured while trying to aid refugees in France. His view of life was always larger than the contexts he worked in.

When he died at his home in Boulder, Colorado last October 5, at 94, he’d long been associated with the University of Colorado, and was Gustavson Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Geography. Dr. White’s early work focused on flood control, with the seeds of his visionary perspective already apparent in his doctoral thesis for the University of Chicago: “Floods are acts of God,” he wrote, “but flood losses are largely acts of man.”

Instead of building levees, dams and other controls, which encourage development in vulnerable areas, White argued that society should reduce risks by discouraging such development. His ideas led to the creation of the National Flood Insurance Program in the U.S., and similar programs around the world.

He served as Haverford’s president from 1946 to 1955. Then he taught at the University of Chicago from 1956 to 1969, taking a year as visiting professor at Oxford, 1962-63. He joined UC Boulder in 1970, retiring in 1980. Among his numerous honors are the National Medal of Science, the Hubbard Medal, the Association of American Geographers’ Lifetime Achievement Award, and the U.N.’s Sasakawa International Environmental Prize. He served in the Roosevelt administration, as president of the Association of American Geographers, chair of the Bureau of the Budget Task Force on Federal Flood Policy, and chair of the Commission on Natural Resources, National Research Council, to name only a few of his many public service positions.
—J.L.

Gilbert Fowler White Remembered
by Marcel Gutwirth

The Gilbert White I shall never forget is the grave young man who at 36 seemed not so very much older than my 25-year-old self, on the day when, fresh from graduate school, I came up to the College for my initial interview. He was to be for me from that day on the not unsmiling but, in his invariable greys, decidedly austere embodiment of Haverford. I was won over by the school from that first viewing of it, the verdant beauty of the campus matching the quiet friendliness of my reception. The directness with which the President laid out for me the salary range for an instructor (it went, I recall, from $3,000 to $3600), inviting me to set my wished-for figure ($3200!) etc., impressed me as the spirit of the place: plain, but not ungenerous. To put it in a 1948 perspective for the bemused reader of 2007, $2400 was the take-it-or-leave-it offer I’d had from Johns Hopkins just the week before.

I could not be aware on that (for me) fateful day that the man who so radiated quiet authority had not been in place more than two years. A convinced Friend and a man of unusual dedication to what he saw as his duty, he had taken on, at the ripe age of 34, the daunting challenge of hauling into the 20th century what was then not much more than a first-class late 19th century academy for Quaker gentlemen. This, in the space of a half-dozen years, was exactly what he was to achieve. In the year of my appointment he had created three much-overdue departments of instruction: Sociology, with the appointment of Ira de Augustine Reid, brought in as full professor, the first African-American on the faculty – a first that was not to be matched for decades in any comparable institutions; Psychology, hitherto taught as a branch of Philosophy in the department of that name; Political Science, with the senior appointment of Herman “Red” Sommers. Breaking the religious barrier in a largely Quaker and certainly all-Protestant faculty was my own appointment in French and General Humanities, as a member of the Jewish faith. Soon Microbiology was, with the appointment of Ariel Loewy, to take the place of the venerable Natural History, and in the next year, in the 1950s, Aaron Lemonick, who would later be named Provost of Princeton University, brought Physics into the post-Einsteinian stage at the College. A revolution was next brought about in Chemistry, with the arrival as department chair of Russell Williams. A three-year grant from a national foundation then allowed Freshman Composition to be taught on the tutorial system, an innovation at the time, and a program which is still running along the same lines to this day. As director, it brought to the campus a young scholar from the University of Chicago (Gilbert’s alma mater), Wayne Booth, who has since risen to the front rank of teaching and scholarship in his chosen field of rhetoric. To round out this total rejuvenation, upon the retirement of the formidable Professor of British History W.C. Lunt, Wallace MacCaffrey, the future biographer of Queen Elizabeth I, was appointed chair, to replace him. MacCaffrey was to end his brilliant career at Harvard.

The College in those days numbered under 450 students. The administration was made up of a handful: in addition to the President, one Vice-President for Admissions, one Dean, one Registrar. A single secretary made do for the whole faculty. Public Relations was in the capable hands of a single faculty wife, part-time. Resources were so tight that, when Ariel Loewy had netted $100,000 for modern laboratory equipment from the National Institutes of Health, the mere $6,000 the College had to come up with for tables and sinks and the like threatened to unbalance the budget, causing Gilbert to blanch momentarily. What, under such Spartan conditions, was the secret that made it possible that the College successfully modernize, quadrupling its salary structure, and doubling the endowment, if not the considerable talent, the total dedication, the inhuman work hours, of the prominent scholar with international reputation who presided over it?

And yet still found time for the teaching of a course in his chosen field, geography?

It would not be too much to say that we of the faculty generation then in our 30s who owed our appointments to Gilbert stood in awe of that remarkably authoritative figure. Calm, unshowy eloquence, mastery of detail, a memory that allowed him to greet faculty, staff and students, as well as Board and Corporation, all of us by name. Many is the time that, passing Roberts Hall as we made our way back to the campus from an evening outing to the movies, we would glance up guiltily to the lit window that told of a President burning the midnight oil. Truth to tell, we also chafed at an authority exercised pretty much from the top down, often rendering our laborious committee work just plain moot. Such, however, is the almost obligatory counterpart of heightened dutifulness and superior competence. In compensation, it must be said that, after a raft of significant educational decisions had been rendered by the faculty by the narrowest of margins under the Roberts Rules of Order, it was Gilbert who proposed that we put to a trial the Friends’ Order of Business, which relies on decision by consensus. Such a trial proved so eminently successful that the faculty still operates on this model of fully agreed upon decision-making half a century later.

It was to come as a shock to all of us when, after nine years of a leadership style that had led us to believe that the tie between Gilbert and the College was indissoluble, the announcement came that he had chosen to exercise his considerable talents on a more global scale. We sorrowed but we found, somewhat to our surprise, that President Gilbert White had left both the College and ourselves in a condition to carry on the work on the level his wise stewardship had made possible. In a farewell address he commended the College to us in parting words that are still resonant for me: “Keep it excellent, keep it small, keep it Quaker.” Yours to judge how well, under greatly different circumstances, we have managed to heed them.

Professor Marcel Gutwirth taught French and the humanities at Haverford for many years.

Face to Face with Gilbert White
by Scott Kimmich

Back in the late forties and early fifties, Haverford students were compelled to attend Collection on Tuesday and Meeting on the Fifth Day, where, almost invariably, Gilbert White looked out upon us, either from the podium in Roberts Hall or from the facing bench of the Meeting House. What else could we do but study his facial features, from the dazzling blue eyes and the high cheekbones set over appropriately ascetic hollow cheeks, to the brushed back crewcut that would have made a Prussian Junker proud.

Some of those features are explicit in Gilbert’s portrait hanging in McGill Library. His expression is somber or at least pensive in the extreme, emphasizing a capacity for deep and meaningful reflection. He is looking inward, not outward, and I’d like to think he’s wrestling with a problem he’s in the process of solving. This is the face he pulled at Fifth Day Meeting, but rarely elsewhere. Gilbert was a devout Quaker with hands-on experience in reaching out and endeavoring to improve the world materially and spiritually. Like many, I held him in awe and kept my distance, which made him all the more remote. Although he seemed aloof, he was actually remarkably receptive and approachable to those who dared approach. He was a gentle man. Austere, perhaps; stern, never. His iron self-discipline and zeal for work were legendary, and the lights of his office in Roberts burned well after midnight.

The first time I remember laying eyes on Gilbert was during the Faculty show at Class Night in March, 1947 when I was still in high school. Wearing a scarlet beanie and bow tie, one of those big round ID tags, and a vacant stare, he crept falteringly down the aisle in Roberts and up onto the stage, the image of a befuddled and craven Rhinie. The student audience guffawed, whooping, clapping and stamping their feet. From that moment on, Gilbert may not have been exactly one of the boys, but his performance certainly didn’t hurt his popularity within the student body or faculty.
His willingness and ability to poke fun at himself in public spoke a robust self-confidence and an ingrained sense of humor. Was this the real Gilbert White as opposed to the diligent scholar, abstemious Quaker and ardent administrator? Was his rather stiff presidential bearing a role he assumed in order to deal with legendary professors such as Funt, Post, Dunn, Meldrum, and Snyder? At 35, he indeed was very much junior to most of his faculty colleagues, yet he was clearly a natural leader with extensive experience in management, and had absolutely no need to play a role. Gilbert White was the real McCoy, and he enjoyed his job immensely.

The face that he put on in Collection together with the rhetoric he employed in his extemporaneous “chats” with his captive audience seemed to suggest that possibly, just possibly, he might have gotten a kick out of having a beer with us at 10th Entry. As he spoke, his face lit up in a mischievous smile. Perhaps he really was amused by what he saw before him, for some of us were struggling for possession of the arm rest between us while others were plainly the worse for wear. I don’t remember Gilbert as an inveterate punster, but I distinctly remember how we hissed at his sallies of humor, the hisses being in no way pejorative . . .

Gilbert’s striking appearance and strong personality made him an ideal target for satire and caricature, but during my four years, he escaped relatively unscathed. An exception was ’49’s award-winning Class Night skit in 1948, where a squad of salty gobs hectored him about readjustment to civilian life at Haverford. The theme song went “We’re Haverford Johnny GIs, we’re sitting on top of the world,” but the show stopper was:

“Gil-bert Fow-ler Whi-ite, you really think you’re sumthin!
Gil-bert Fow-ler Whi-i-ite, you don’t know from nuthin!”

There was also the lyric, “He always wears a tie of dusty rose,” which was very true, and when he showed up at ’49’s fiftieth reunion, his tie was obligingly a subdued shade of rose. If it was a socialistic statement, its immutable presence connoted a distinctly conservative bent.

Looking back, I believe his most important contribution to the college was the hiring of new faculty members who would raise its intellectual level. I graduated before I could see all the fruits of his labor, but Ariel Loewy, Marcel Gutwirth, Frank Parker, John Roche and Ira Reid contributed mightily to Haverford’s academic reputation. In 1949, he raised $1.25 million—about $30 million in today’s dollars, to help pay for faculty and plants that had been neglected because of war-time exigencies. For postwar Haverford, it was a king’s ransom.

His career was distinguished by innovation and results gained by thinking ‘outside the box’. In 1951, Gilbert obtained a grant to initiate a program—Social and Technical Assistance—that trained graduate students to become leaders in what would become the Peace Corps. About twenty people, including a dozen women, enrolled and earned M.A.’s from Haverford, including “Buzz” Whitall ’50 and his future wife Jean.

Some ex-jock alumni may have viewed Gilbert’s expressions as Grinch-like scowls. Back then, they contended that he didn’t care a fig about varsity sports. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he had undoubtedly engaged in the famous debate that ended in its dropping football, so unlike the fabled Isaac Sharpless, Gilbert probably remained unconvinced that intercollegiate sports contribute to intellectual and spiritual acuity. Therefore, unlike his immediate predecessor, Felix Morley ’13, he did not go out and recruit football players such as the Class of 45’s superstars, Chuck Boteler, Art Jones or Bill Ambler. He was more like Uncle Billy Comfort, who during the course of his presidency from 1917 to 1940, tried to de-emphasize football, even though his own son Howard ’25 had played on a Haverford eleven. Gilbert did not haunt the tennis courts nor own a golf club. He was not a type sportif. Nevetheless, Gilbert attended college athletic events and seemed to enjoy them.

Roy Randall, the Director of Athletics, groused continuously about the College’s parsimony with equipment and uniforms, and he blamed Gilbert. The 1947 football team’s equipment — helmets, pads, pants, even shoes — all dated from 1939, and we played most of our games with white practice jerseys with black numbers stenciled on them. Yet, the next year, we each got two spiffy new jerseys, one scarlet, the other black, and I believe the soccer team also were recipients of such flash. The following year, we got the rigid plastic helmets that everyone wears today. The largesse of wealthy alumni was responsible for much of the new stuff, but the fact is, we were wearing it on Gilbert’s watch. He was also responsible for the big field house that was completed in 1955 and is still the best in the Philadelphia area. The 1955- 56 football teams, whose members were admitted while he was in office, were among Haverford’s best. So when it came to intercollegiate teams, perhaps Gilbert didn’t talk the talk. But he certainly walked the walk.

He did, however, act decisively to stop the progress of the hi-jinks associated with the annual football game against Swarthmore. On the eve of the 1948 game, as many as 150 Haverfordians swarmed across the Swarthmore Campus, and in 1949, we captured 41 Swarthmorons – male and female—invading our campus (there was still no campus security), and locked them in a couple of Chase classrooms. Some were put to work decorating the Great Hall of Founders for the prom the following evening. Not to be outdone, Swarthmorons posing as reporters kidnapped Ted Test ’50, the high-scoring captain of our football team, and triumphantly displayed him in their dining hall. There were some ugly fistfights with rowdies who attended neither college. Concerned the violence would get out of hand, Gilbert threatened to call off THE GAME the following year, if the campus raids continued. They stopped, and my classmate Bud Garrison led Haverford to a 13-7 gridiron victory that year, and Co-Captains Paul Shipley and Vick Jowers, both ’51, helped end a four-year jinx on the soccer field to beat Swarthmore 3-2.

Two years ago when he attended the Class of 1954’s 50th reunion, I had the great privilege of breakfasting with Gilbert in the Dining Center, and found that he had finally learned to relax, an ability beyond his ken while president of Haverford. He was still in full possession of his very considerable faculties, not the least of which was his remarkable memory; he remembered the names of people he hadn’t seen for 50 years. When called upon to speak, he talked fondly about “his boys,” to whom he returned year after year starting in 1999. During an extraordinarily active career, Gilbert may have spent more time at other institutions, but he made it clear that his nine years at Haverford had occupied a very special place in his heart.
Scott Kimmich graduated in 1954.