CLASS OF 1878
Isaac F. Paul died July 3', 1912, at his home on Westland Avenue, Boston. He had undergone several critical surgical operations within the past year and had suffered intense and continued pain. He realized that the odds were against him, but made a stout fight, and kept about his business until the final operation, from which he was unable to rally. Of great physical vigor, he had never before had occasion to realize what helplessness meant, and he expressed to friends a new appreciation of what a word or other token of friendly remembrance signifies to one withdrawn from active life and dependent upon the ministrations of others. The funeral was at Mt. Auburn Chapel. Rev. H. W. Stebbins, a classmate, officiated.
Mr. Paul was born at Dedham, Mass., November 26, 1856, and resided there all his early life. After graduation he studied few in Boston, was admitted to the Suffolk Bar in 1883, and has since been in active and successful practice of that profession. He was for some years editor of the UnitedStates Digest. He was married in March, 1883, to Miss Ida Louise Batcheller of Fitzwilliam, N. H., who, with two sons and a daughter, survives him. Philip Batcheller ('09) is engaged in insurance in Boston; Richard Farnsworth (11) conducts a school of athletics in Greenfield, Mass.; Katharine is a student at Wellesley College.
Mr. Paul was active in public affairs, serving at one time as chairman of the Boston School Board. He took a lively interest in politics, and while never himself an office seeker, was a recognized power in political councils. His abundant energy, aggressive spirit, and, tenacious loyalty to every cause he espoused and every friend who won his regard or claimed his sympathy made him a conspicuous force in many enterprises of a public or semi-public nature. His warm heart and hearty frank manner attached to him a remarkable circle of friends, and to them he was a most dependable friend in time of need.
To Dartmouth College especially he gave unstinted devotion. To the promotion of her interests as he saw them he devoted no small share of his life's activities, and while some may at times have seen these interests differently, or may in some instances have doubted his method of promoting them, no one who is familiar with the history of the College during its period of expansion can fail to accord to Isaac F. Paul a large place in the great movement which has extended the college consciousness, beyond the mere body of faculty and undergraduates, into and throughout the great body of alumni, and has begun to make it realize itself as a living institution, graduating its students into, rather than out of, real and active membership, and making itself a constructive social force.
In the movement for alumni representation upon the Board of Trustees, and the movement for a larger recognition of and support for, athletics and other student activities, both of which have had and are still to have abundant justification and large significance in the career of the College, Mr. Paul was both a prime mover and an indefatigable promoter.
In organizing and presiding over the Dartmouth Lunch Club of Boston, in establishing more recently the Dartmouth Club in that city, in managing the affairs of the Boston Alumni Association and of the General Alumni Association,—of whose executive committee he has for many years and up to the time of his death been chairman,—Mr. Paul has perhaps been the most active alumnus of the College. The ardor of undergraduate enthusiasm in him knew no diminution with the passing years. He was ever one of "the boys", and others grew boyish in his company, for he was the spirit of youth. When he traveled he looked up every Dartmouth man along his route, and mourned if he passed someone unwittingly.
On every alumni occasion and in every gathering of his classmates he will be missed as scarcely any other could be.
Secretary, William D. Parkinson, Waltham, Mass.
