History of the American School 1939-1980- Chapter III

Chapter III: The Chairmanship of Alfred Raymond Bellinger, 1960–1965

Chapter III: The Chairmanship of Alfred Raymond Bellinger, 1960–1965

When Alfred Raymond Bellinger (Pl. 10, d) of Yale University became Chairman of the Managing Committee on July 1, 1960, one of his first acts was to go to Athens to confer with Director Henry Robinson and other officers of the School. This trip began a close and effective teamwork between Bellinger and Robinson for the five years of his Chairmanship; they worked together as congenially as had Morgan and Caskey the previous decade, a pair quite different from the previous one but equally unsparing in their devotion to the School. Most aspects of the School’s activities and problems were discussed by frequent and voluminous correspondence between the Chairman and the Director; rarely in the history of the School have these two officers kept so closely in touch with each other.

Greece

Director Robinson had in his first year as Director (1959-60) instituted a major change in the School trips, taking the students to Delos for the first trip as “an excellent introduction to all aspects of architectural and topographical study.” He continued to begin the School year with the Delos trip through 1962. In 1960 sites in northwestern Greece as far as Mesopotamos (ancient Ephyra) and Dodona were added to the usual central Greece, Argolid and Corinthia, and Peloponnesos itineraries. A further innovation in 1961 substituted Macedonia for the northwest, and thereafter for some years those two trips were made in alternate years. The trips were conducted, some by Director Robinson, others by Professor Vanderpool. In 1963 when both the visiting professors were prehistorians, George Mylonas and Saul Weinberg conducted a very successful trip to Crete in November.

The winter program continued the Topography and Monuments of Athens and the Sites of Attica as the basic and constant courses. These were conducted largely by the Professor of Archaeology Eugene Vanderpool. As always, the seminars offered by the Annual and Visiting Professors covered the wide range of interests of those scholars and were augmented frequently with series of lectures by some of the increasingly large number of senior research fellows resident at the School. Carl Blegen usually gave a series of lectures in the prehistoric rooms of the National Museum. The visiting professors offered in 1960-61: Architecture of the Acropolis (Richard Stillwell), the Pentekontaetia (William P. Wallace), Greek sculpture (Gisela M. A. Richter); 1961-62: Ancient literary sources for the history of Greek art (Raymond V. Schoder), Problems in the history of Alexander the Great (C. Alexander Robinson, Jr:); 1962-63: Problems in Herodotean and Thucydidean topography (W. Kendrick Pritchett), Euripides and Seneca (Norman T. Pratt); 1963-64: Mycenaean and Homeric civilization (George E. Mylonas), Greece before the Greeks (Saul S. Weinberg); 1964-65: Oedipus Tyrannus and relations between Athens and Delphi (William Agard), Lycurgan Athens (Fordyce Mitchel). Kenneth Setton, as Special Research Fellow of the Gennadeion while Peter Topping was on leave in 1960-61, lectured on Mediaeval Athens and on Kaisariani. In some years certain of the senior Fellows talked informally in after-tea sessions about their work. The result of all these offerings was a rich diet covering the literature, history, and archaeology of Greece of all periods from prehistoric through Byzantine and into Turkish times.

In the spring the usual exodus from Athens to excavations was the pattern followed by most of the students, but those with specific literary or historical problems pursued them in individual study and travel. Students from universities which were conducting excavations either in Greece or elsewhere in classical lands usually went to those expeditions, but the majority joined the School’s own dig at Corinth, now vigorously revived (see below, pp. 155-169).

What previous training and other qualifications should be required of the members who were to benefit from the opportunities the School was offering was one of the chief concerns of the staff in these years. Recommendations to the Managing Committee and its Committee on Admissions and Fellowships were frequent and earnest. As in any educational institution, especially in such a small group as roughly 20, the quality was bound to vary each year among the first-year members. Opinions of members of the staff including the visiting professors varied just as much, so that one year the new students were thought ill-prepared for what was expected of them on the fall trips, in the winter courses and in their independent work in the spring; the next year they were considered of excellent quality, too good for the too elementary guidance and instruction offered; another year the offerings were judged ideal for both the younger and the more advanced graduate students. Clearly such differences reflect the natural variation in qualifications of applicants for membership as well as the honest difference of opinion of what such a unique institution as the School should or can offer prospective members. The most significant thing that came of the questioning was the assurance that the School was aware of the different opinions and of the problems (see below, p. 90).

Members of the staff continued to give each year a series of lectures for the American Woman’s Organization of Greece both in Athens and in the Argolid and Corinthia, the audience running as large as 75 (see above, pp. 60, 71). The School was most appreciative of the monetary contributions made by these groups.

For the general archaeological community of Athens the traditional Open Meetings were held at which both general annual reports on the School’s activity and specific detailed subjects were presented, usually with the Royal Family in attendance along with the international group of archaeologists. In 1961 the Director spoke on the current excavations at Corinth and Professor Vanderpool on the Porto Raphti excavations of 1960; in 1962 the Director spoke again on Corinth and Homer Thompson on “The Wandering Temples of Attica”; the 1963 meeting heard the Director on all the American excavations of 1962 and Ronald Stroud on the Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Corinth; in 1964 the Director again spoke on American excavations in general and Eugene Vanderpool on Themistokles’ Sanctuary of Artemis Aristoboule, an excavation by the late John Threpsiades; in 1965 Robinson once more reviewed all the School’s excavations and Charles Williams reported on the Temple of Zeus at Nemea. Other public lectures were given by Miss Richter on Greek Portraiture (1961), by Reverend Raymond V. Schoder on Ravenna and its Art (1962), by George Hanfmann on New Discoveries at Sardis (1963), by Richard Stillwell on Domestic Architecture of the Hellenistic Period (1965).

Further public service of the School, this to fellow Americans, was rendered in the summers of 1963 and 1964 when it played host to the Summer Seminar of the United States Educational Foundation in Greece organized for high-school and junior-college teachers of history. A member of the School’s Managing Committee, Professor Harry Carroll, was the Director, assisted in 1963 by a 1962-63 Fulbright Scholar at the School, Thomas W. Jacobsen. The School provided its seminar room for the lectures, the sitting room of the Main Building for a library to which some volumes from its Library were lent to augment those purchased specifically for the seminar by the Foundation. The $20 per person paid the School for these services were used for the purchase of books for the Library.

Two special festive occasions in these years honored two great men of outstanding devotion to the School. The first, however, was not bestowed by the School at Athens but by the sister institution in Rome. It was an honor for the School on October 26, 1960 to act for the American Academy in Rome in presenting its medal for distinguished service to the Academy to Gorham Phillips Stevens, Director of the Academy from 1911 to 1932 and Director of the School at Athens 1939–1947 (see above, p. 30) and after that Honorary Architect of the School. No other man has served both institutions so long and with such distinction. The second honor was initiated by the Greek Committee for the Agora Park who presented a bronze portrait plaque of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to be placed on the wall of a shop in the Stoa of Attalos. The plaque, designed by Gorham Stevens and modeled by John Notaras, was dedicated on May 31, 1962 by H. E. the Minister to the Prime Minister, Mr. Demetrios Makris, at a ceremony at which the speakers were the Ephor John Threpsiades, representatives of the Greek Committee Ambassador Demetrios Sisilianos and Mr. Rikos Agathokles, and Chairman of the School’s Board of Trustees Ward M. Canaday. All paid tribute to the outstanding generosity of Mr. Rockefeller in supporting the excavation of the Agora, the restoration of the Stoa and the landscaping of the Park. Mr. Stevens played a significant part in the whole affair of the plaque; it was one of the last items of his continuous service to the School, for on March 15, 1963 he died, and the School lost one of its most beloved as well as respected alumni and of its most dedicated staff, one of its “greats”.

A major undertaking in the Library began in 1960 when the Librarian, Mary Zelia Pease Philippides (Pl. 14, c), initiated the complete recataloguing of the School library to give full cataloguing of the older books to match that being given the current accessions. The extensive subject headings worked out after long study and after consultation with the Librarian of the American Academy in Rome added enormously to the usefulness of the Library. This cataloguing with new standard library-size cards was a tremendous undertaking added to the regular work of the Librarian; much of the mechanical work could be delegated to assistants (when they could be found) so that Mrs. Philippides could keep up with the numerous demands of the current work. Assistance was gradually provided, much volunteer, and then from 1962 to 1965 by a part-time paid assistant. Much of this assistance was excellent and some of it trained so that very real help was given, but such help was unpredictable in availability, and Mrs. Philippides from 1963 on stressed the need of a full-time assistant throughout the year. Meanwhile a basic bibliography was drawn up for students of the Summer Session, and the Librarian was increasingly asked for reference material by many organizations. Both the new space and comfort offered by the addition of the Davis Wing and the convenience and academic assistance afforded by the new cataloguing and other aids caused the Library to be ever increasingly used by members of the other foreign archaeological schools, by members of the Greek universities and the Archaeological Service, by scholars passing through Greece, and by certain qualified members of the Athenian community, including American diplomatic and military personnel. Books from the library were lent to the Summer Seminar of the United States Educational Foundation in Greece (see above, p. 85) and to the College Year in Athens. The Library became in these years a major contribution of the School to the community.

In the decade or so after the war as all efforts and financial resources of all departments of the School had properly to be concentrated on reviving the School as an academic institution, the officers did a masterly job of keeping the physical plant in condition for that scholarly activity by constant care and attention and by limiting repairs to absolute essentials; even those were kept to a minimum of expense, for there simply were no funds available in the annual budgets for major repairs. The Trustees, aware that a day of reckoning must come, instructed Director Robinson to present a detailed account and budget of the requisites, and decided in November 1960, in spite of the great need for further funds for academic purposes, that the relatively small surplus should be spent on repairs over a three-year period. Gold pounds which had been held in Athens for emergency were gradually sold to finance the operation. This refurbishing of the buildings of the School was one of the major activities of the summers of 1960–1963. The summer of 1960 saw the new roof on the Main Building completed. The next most urgent matter was the furnace in Loring Hall. In the summer of 1961 remodeling of both Loring Hall West House and Gennadeion West House was carried out, giving more room for the new Librarian of the Gennadeion, Francis R. Walton, in the Gennadeion West House; the iron gates of the Gennadeion were repaired, and new lights were installed on the stairways leading up to the building. The next summer Loring Hall and the Gennadeion East House were refurbished, and in summer and fall 1963 the basement of the Main Building was remodeled to enlarge the storage space and to improve the living conditions for the Greek staff. For some years the Alumni Association had urged consideration of the installation of ventilating fans in Loring Hall and in 1963 voted funds for them. Two were installed in the wing in summer 1964 (the Alumni voted funds for the installation as their 1964 gift), and two authorized by the Trustees were put into the main building of Loring Hall in 1965. Mrs. Philippides had urged that air conditioning be installed in the stacks of the Davis Wing of the Library; it was found that the necessary funds were available in the remainder of the Davis gift and installation was made in summer 1965. A special gift from the President of the Board of Trustees, Frederick Crawford, provided for restuccoing and repainting the badly pockmarked Façade of the Gennadeion in spring 1965.

A most unusual addition to the property of the School for the future was made in the fall of 1963 through the devoted generosity of Elizabeth Pierce Blegen who deeded her beautiful neo-classic 19th-century house at 9 Plutarch Street in Athens to the School with the condition that she and her husband, Carl William Blegen, occupy it during their lifetime. This remarkable gift was one of the greatest single benefactions ever made to the School and was received with deep appreciation and high enthusiasm. The respect and affection of the School community for Mrs. Blegen and her husband were such, however, that all hoped the day of actual transfer of the property to the School would be far distant (see below for the disposition made by the School, pp. 108, 109).

U.S.A.

Chairman Bellinger, like his predecessor Charles Morgan, felt the desirability of a Vice Chairman of the Managing Committee, so in December 1961 Richard Hubbard Howland of the Smithsonian Institution was elected to that post.

The Managing Committee during the years of Alfred Bellinger’s Chairmanship had numerous items of general policy to consider and to act upon. Uppermost among Bellinger’s concerns was the School’s finances. Like his predecessor Morgan, he understood thoroughly the dire need of the School for a larger endowment for general funds. He felt keenly the obligation to increase funds for the School’s main and major purpose, the training of students, before any further special fund raising for excavations was undertaken. In this conviction he was strongly supported by the Director. Bellinger spent many hours, days, weeks searching out all records of the existing endowment to determine just what purpose had been designated for such sums when given; he reorganized the records of the funds, and working with the Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer he saw to it that in each annual budget the Managing Committee could know what was and what was not available for what purposes. He worked tirelessly and with immense clarity of vision to try to persuade the Trustees that general endowment funds must be sought, and before any solicitation of funds for other purposes.

In addition to efforts to gain assistance from numerous funds and individuals, Bellinger and the Executive Committee urged that as many as possible of the Cooperating Institutions increase their annual contributions to $500 from the $250 which had been regular since the first 12 institutions made their original contribution in 1882. A considerable number of institutions responded to the appeal.

The changes in the Greek Archaeological Service in 1960 in which the Service was put under the Ministry to the Prime Minister resulted in a renewed statement of the policy of limiting to three the excavation permits allowed to each foreign School and notice that this policy would be strictly enforced. At the May 1961 meeting the Managing Committee considered at some length proposals from the Director which came with the recommendation of the Executive Committee. It was agreed that it was “altogether fair and sensible” to give the Director a Committee on Excavations to consult with him; Professors Blegen, Broneer and Thompson were named. The outline for a general policy by which the Director and the Committee were to be guided was discussed with divided opinions until the motion from the Executive Committee to approve the policy was tabled to allow all Cooperating Institutions to consider it. After still further discussion at the December 1961 meeting the Managing Committee did approve in principle the general policy by which the Director and the Committee on Excavations were to be guided in their consideration of the many requests coming from university groups. That policy provided that one permit be retained for the School’s own excavation at Corinth, the second for an excavation of major extent probably to continue about ten years, and the third for a smaller dig planned for two or three or at most five years. The Director had succeeded in obtaining Greek approval for the smaller digs to be carried on in alternate years, a concession that would in effect allow another permit. It was also pointed out that the School was prepared to welcome to Corinth teams of excavators from Cooperating Institutions who would conduct exploration with their own funds in an area separate from those worked by the School but under the general supervision of the Director of the Corinth Excavations; there remained also the possibility of taking up the completion of some of the old sites dug by the School but never adequately published. In 1962 the Greek Government asked each foreign School which of its uncompleted excavations could be finished and published by 1967; further supplementary digging would be allowed to complete the study for publication but must be completed in five years. These permits would be in addition to the regular three. The chapter on excavations (pp. 203-220) records the resulting investigations undertaken.

It has been mentioned above (pp. 84-85) that some dissatisfaction with the quality of students accepted for membership in the School led to requests from the Director and the visiting professors in 1962-63 for action by the Managing Committee to require a year of graduate work as the normal prerequisite for admission. A lively discussion of the proposal at the May meeting in 1963 showed two strongly divergent opinions among the members. Some believed it unwise to make too rigid regulations, since the history of the School shows how many students who went to the School immediately after taking the A.B. became some of America’s most distinguished classicists. Some suggested there might be a difference in requirements for literary students and for archaeologists; others deplored any distinction, since it is often the year in Athens which crystallizes the direction within the classical field a student will take. Some believed the opportunities offered by a year in Athens can only be “made the most of” by those with training in graduate methods of study; others noted that some graduate students tend to concentrate on working on their dissertations rather than gaining the wider familiarity with Greece which the School exists to offer. Still others suggested the difficulty might be in the program; perhaps more direction should be given students. This was countered by those who felt the present program satisfactory for a wide variety of interests and previous training and by some who noted that there is too much “directed activity” already. When the proposal to require as normal admission prerequisite a year of graduate study was finally put to a vote, it was defeated by a 2 to 1 majority. A motion, however, that the Committee on Admissions make a study of the character of the membership and possible limitation in numbers was passed unanimously.

This directive was received by a new Chairman on Admissions and Fellowships, Carl A. Roebuck, when in July 1963 he succeeded Gertrude Smith who had filled the post since 1945. As chairman first of the Committee on Fellowships, then with the added responsibility of acting on all admissions from 1950 on and finally in 1961 taking on also admissions to the Summer Session, Gertrude Smith had directed the selection of members of the School since the war. Acting in close council and counsel with the Director through the years of building up the School after the war, with the many intricate and delicate problems of working with the Fulbright selection groups, she kept firmly before her what appeared to be in the best interest of the School, in keeping its academic standing the highest possible and in making its opportunities available to those who would best make them in turn available to classical students throughout the United States. The distinguished record as classicists of the members of the School in those years (her service on the Committee continued through 1966) is ample testimony to the success of her devoted service.

Responsibility for selection of Summer School members was from 1961 vested in a Summer School Committee which was chaired by Gertrude Smith along with her duties as Chairman of the Committee on Admissions, but after 1963 any advantage to be had from that particular close association of the regular and the summer sessions was seen to be outweighed by the excess of heavy demands on the committee members; from 1963 on members of the Summer School Committee were not members of the Committee on Admissions and Fellowships.

The year 1963 was notable too for a new Fellowship at the School. A Gennadeion Fellowship for post-classical studies, for which the Committee on the Gennadius Library under the Chairmanship of Charles Alexander Robinson, Jr. had long been working, was awarded for the first time for 1963-64 to the Reverend Edward J. Bodnar S.J. to continue his work on Cyriacus of Ancona. Selection of this Fellow was to be made by recommendation of the Committee of the Gennadius Library to the Committee on Admissions and Fellowships.

In 1964 another new Fellowship was established by the generous bequest of Gorham Phillips Stevens. Since a preference was to be given to architectural students, it was fitting that the first holder, in 1964-65, should be Charles Kaufman Williams, II, holder of the Corinth Excavation Fellowship and Assistant Field Director of Corinth Excavations in 1963-64. The Stevens Fellowship was to be administered by the Committee on Admissions and Fellowships, accepting a preferential recommendation from the Director if he had one, if not, the Committee to make the selection.

As a result of Chairman Roebuck’s report in May 1964 of the deliberation of the Committee on Admissions on the preferable size of the School membership, a Committee on the Size and Scope of the School was appointed, presented a tentative report in December 1964 and a revised report in May 1965 which was adopted by vote of the Managing Committee. Chief provisions of that report were 1) although 16 is the present limit of new first-year students, the maximum number should be increased, as increase in the staff makes it possible, up to as high as 30 (a limit, not a goal); 2) graduate-school experience is not recommended for every candidate but is generally desirable; criteria should be rather academic record, recommendations, brief entrance examination; 3) residence in Loring Hall should be a privilege rather than a requirement; 4) whenever possible Annual and Visiting Professors should be appointed to complement one another; they should not necessarily offer organized seminars; 5) recommended: a) another member of the administrative and teaching staff (an assistant-associate type of person to assist the Director and Professor of Archaeology) and b) another full-time person in the Library; 6) Associate membership may be granted by the Director or the Committee on Admission; such members have a lower priority on trips and residence in Loring Hall than regular members; they need not have the classical background appropriate for regular members; 7) there would be no tuition fees for either category of members (regular or associate) who are graduates of Cooperating Institutions; no library fees; 8) no changes in size and scope of the Summer School.

In the last year of Bellinger’s chairmanship, the Managing Committee and the whole School sustained a great loss in the death, on February 23, 1965, of Charles Alexander Robinson, Jr. of Brown University who had been Secretary of the Managing Committee since 1945 and Chairman of the Committee on the Gennadius Library since 1949 until his serious illness caused him to resign two months before his death. He had served also as Chairman of the Summer School Committee in 1963-64, had been Director of the Summer Session in 1959 and had twice filled the post of Annual Professor of the School, in 1948 and in 1962. He was also the first chairman of the Alumni Association serving from 1940 to 1945. His was one of those careers of dedication to the School which has made it what it has been in this first century of its history. From his student days in 1923–1925 the School was one of the chief concerns of his life, and from his election to the Managing Committee in 1930 he devoted his time, thought and tireless energy to furthering the interests of the School in many ways; but it was in his careful, judicious recording of the deliberations of the Executive and Managing Committees and his constructive interest in making the Gennadeion an integral and effective part of the School’s program that he will be best remembered by all members of the Managing Committee in his years of service to it. All alumni of the School will continue to be grateful for his warm and friendly enthusiasm which set the Alumni Association on its course and kept it alive and of active service to the School through its early years.

These five years, in which the Trustees had to face seriously the means of providing more funds for the School, saw some notable changes in their organization and personnel. In 1962 the Board suffered severe losses in the deaths of Philip R. Allen, Arthur Vining Davis and William T. Semple. Davis, a member since 1939, among his many other contributions, had been “invaluable in creating a united Board on the issue of the rebuilding of the Stoa of Attalos to which he made the initial and ultimately one of the largest contributions” (Minutes of Trustees) and then had given the desperately needed help to the essential core of the School’s work, the Library, in his donation of the Davis Wing (see above, pp. 64-67). Semple, a distinguished classical scholar and teacher who had been President of the Board 1946–1949 and a member since 1940, had made the “donation which gave the crucial momentum to the Agora drive which Davis had set in motion” (Minutes of Trustees). Allen, a member since 1943 also well grounded in classics, was another champion of the School’s excavations as well as the general cause of Classical Studies.

At the same meeting (December 19, 1962) which mourned these losses the Board amended its Constitution to add “a Chairman of the Board of Trustees who shall preside at all meetings of the corporation.” Ward M. Canaday filled the office of both Chairman and President until November 18, 1963 when Canaday was re-elected Chairman, a position he held until 1971, and Frederick Crawford became President until he succeeded Canaday as Chairman in 1971. The previous year’s meeting on December 11, 1961 brought to the Assistant Treasurership a man who was to give unusually devoted and valuable service in that capacity and as a member of the Board from 1965, and as its Secretary from 1969, until his untimely death in 1973, Harry M. Lyter. In 1963 three new members were elected to the Board, Henry D. Mercer, Arthur K. Watson and William K. Simpson who was later to become President (1971) and then Chairman (1975) of the Board. At the December 1964 meeting a further change in the Constitution increased the number of Board members from 15 to 20.

In facing the financial problems of the School, the Trustees tried to adjust the costs of the regular operation of the School, including both the upkeep of the physical plant (both the actual buildings and the personnel who keep them in order) and the academic salaries, library funds, and student fellowships, against the costs of further excavations and of the Gennadeion, both in need of large special funds. A Committee composed of members of the Managing Committee who were directors of excavations and one a former Director of the School was charged by the Trustees to report on the most desirable use of the limited funds. John L. Caskey and Rodney S. Young reported on December 19, 1962 that those limited funds should go to the operation of the School and the training of students and they called to witness the record of the alumni. The Trustees approved this report in principle. They had already voted in 1960 to use unexpended general income for necessary repairs on the School buildings (see above, p. 87), and in 1961 they voted to add the unexpended fellowship income to the capital of each fellowship fund in turn until the White, Wheeler, Seymour and Capps were each brought up to $50,000, after which to divide any such income equally among the four; this was to assure the larger stipends for the fellowships urgently needed in a land where the costs were rising steadily. Acceptance in 1963 of Mrs. Blegen’s gift of her home promised for the future the additional living space the ever increasing numbers of scholars and students at the School would need. In 1963 also the Trustees acted on some of the Gennadeion problems. Formation of a Friends of the Gennadeion group which would provide extra funds for the purchase of rare books was encouraged, and it was agreed to proceed with an addition to the building when and if necessary funds became available (see below, pp. 231-233). In 1964 the Trustees decided to allocate $2,000 of Unexpended General Income for the final preparation of the Catalogue of the Gennadius Library. It had been recognized in 1962 that the real need was for a $500,000 endowment for the Gennadeion which would free the School of the drain upon its General Funds for the upkeep of the Gennadeion, and it was agreed that efforts should be made to find such an endowment from persons who might support the Gennadeion rather than the general purposes of the School. Actually no greater success was achieved in these five years than in any years since in attaining this goal.

Meanwhile the one need of the School which did attract not only interest but support was the continuation of work in the Athenian Agora. On November 23, 1965 the Chairman of the Board announced to the Trustees the gift of one million dollars from the Ford Foundation for five further years of excavation in the Athenian Agora when the Greek Government would have bought the land and turned it over to the School for excavation (see below, p. 197). It is only accurate recording to note that this triumph of Mr. Canaday in providing the means of carrying on one of the School’s projects closest to his heart met with mingled reaction among members of the Managing Committee and alumni. Although all rejoiced that this most distinguished of the School’s activities in the field, internationally recognized for its excellence and its outstanding contributions to classical studies, should be able to continue, many heads shook at the specter of the future empty cupboard for the very life of the School as a research center for students and scholars.

Alfred Bellinger was foremost among those who with Cassandra-like vision foresaw the result of not building up the General Endowment in those years of his Chairmanship. It was not for want of his constant, urgent pleas and his own untiring efforts of every kind possible to him. Particularly did he lend every effort in a struggle to guard the right of the Managing Committee rather than the Trustees (as provided in the Regulations) to decide upon the activities of the School and the allocation of funds for those activities. He was a dedicated classicist at heart, one for whom the classical and the Christian values and morals were his way of life because he believed in them. He believed in opening the doors of classical thought and expression to all who would enter and all who might live by and with them; he, with the founders, saw that as the goal and the responsibility of the School. He saw it as the responsibility of all who agreed to take a part in the governing bodies of the School to maintain that institution for the passing on of the finest possible understanding of classical values.

Before we leave Alfred Bellinger’s chairmanship a few further points of interest should be noted. Two gifts to the School which have, in the years since, occupied prominent places in the main School building were presented. In April 1962 Mrs. Harold North Fowler sent the bronze relief head of her husband, the first student at the School, which she made in Cambridge in about 1935. It hangs on the wall of the entrance hall where all who enter may be reminded not only of the distinguished career in classical studies and services to the School of its first student in 1882, but also of his many followers who have entered the School and gone out to make outstanding contributions to classical and other scholarly studies. Throughout his long years of teaching classics and archaeology at Western Reserve University, Harold North Fowler was much beloved by the students whom he inspired to share his devotion to things Greek, and, after retirement from teaching, as consultant to the Library of Congress he continued to encourage many in classical pursuits. He served the School unstintingly as member of the Managing Committee from 1901 till his death in 1955, as Chairman of the Committee on Fellowships from 1904 to 1917, as contributor to the Erechtheum volume, as Annual Professor 1924-25 and as Editor of the Corinth publications for a number of years and author of some portions.

The following year (1963) by the terms of his will Gorham Phillips Stevens left to the School his bronze Actaeon by Paul Manship along with his archaeological library and his original architectural drawings of Athenian and Corinthian buildings. Several of the latter hang in the public rooms of the School, and the Actaeon graces the Library mantel, suggesting the inspiration of classical subject and style to one of the leading sculptors of the first half of the 20th century, a fellow of the sister institution, the American Academy in Rome.

Of the many monetary gifts to the School in these five years it is perhaps invidious to single out particular ones for mention. Those specifically for excavations or for the Gennadeion are mentioned elsewhere, but a few others should appear here. One bequest from an alumna who had continued close association with Greece and the School from her student days may be noted. Hazel Hansen who died in December 1962 bequeathed $6,750 to the School of which she had been a member in 1922–1925, 1927-28, 1936-37, 1939. On the faculty of Stanford University since 1928, she had represented it on the Managing Committee since 1938 and had served as Annual Professor in 1956-57. For her work in discovering, in hidden spots on Skyros, vases found long ago and neglected over many years, studying them and providing a small museum for them, she was made an Honorary Citizen of Skyros. Another former student, Stephen Bleecker Luce, 1914-15, who acted as Assistant Director in 1928-29 and who died June 2, 1962, recognized the everyday needs of the School when he left a legacy of $60,000 “the income to be used for the maintenance” of the School; this could not have been more timely and made possible the major repairs and renovations carried out on the School buildings in the later 60’s. Trustee Philip R. Allen also knew well the general needs of the School and left $15,000 “to be invested and the income used for general purposes.”