TOWN AND GOWN

LELAND GRIGGS, 1878-1964

As quickly and as silently as the flutter of a bird's wing he left us, quietly in his sleep, sometime during the night of June 28-29. He would have been 86 in August yet he was active and alert to the end and enjoyed his favorite Gibson cocktail that evening before retiring. He was the example par excellence of a happy blending of town and gown - shy yet friendly, retiring and somewhat taci- turn yet usually ready for a short chat, learned in the ways of nature and wildlife and delighted to talk about them with anybody anywhere. In the years since his retirement in 1949, after more than 40 years of teaching at Dartmouth, he was a frequent and welcome sight on Main Street. Usually about four or five times a day he walked from his home on Pleasant Street up to the Hanover business district, starting at 6:45 in the morning for breakfast and concluding his missions with a trip for early supper around 5 in the evening. Unless it was raining hard or snowing hard or the thermometer was around 25 below, in spite of his balding head he never wore a hat and scoffed at suggestions. that he should. In fact, it was only in very inclement weather that he wore anything resembling an outer coat, and it was with some reluctance that he took to carrying a stick in recent years. He was in many respects a typical, old-line Yankee - one of the last, it sometimes seems, of a vanishing race.

Leland was born on a farm in Rutland, Vermont, in the part of the town now known as West Rutland, and lived his later boyhood, after the age of 9 or 10, in rural Massachusetts in Lancaster. He came to Dartmouth in the fall of 1898 from Lancaster High School and after graduation in 1902, as valedictorian of his class, stayed on in Hanover as a laboratory assistant in zoology, working under Professor William Patten. His first real teaching was at a tiny coed school, Doane College in Crete, Nebraska, and he liked to reminisce about his experiences "out west." In addition to teaching Dramatic Expression and Debating, and Geology, and acting as assistant football coach, he got in his real licks as Professor of Biology for in this field he had to fight the battle for evolution which was a tough one in a church school. But as Leland liked to say he didn't "high-hat" the folks in Crete, didn't act like an "eastern intellectual," and though he did have to give up smoking, he won the day for a modern scientific approach.

He returned to Dartmouth, was awarded its Ph.D. in 1908, and stayed put in the country he loved so much, with the exception of a year of advanced study, just before World War I, in Cambridge, England. He taught zoology at first and then developed his famous course in Natural History, which many will remember. Leland had a wonderful poker face, a good sense of humor and a dry wit, and wild life really lived when you were under his spell. Reports in his course were usually made in small groups in his study at home, in a D.O.C. cabin, or in his own little shack at Clark's Pond, with a fire and plenty of good pipe smoke. But best remembered were his steak and strawberry shortcake feeds which made him famous over the years.

Along with these treats many will remember Doc's strange pets. They included a collection of birds, particularly a great horned owl and home-raised partridges. They included such animals as a coyote, a wolf, a fox, several porcupine and raccoons, and most famous of all, Jack Johnson, his boxing bear. He loved to display his animals and at one time was frequently seen on Main Street leading Jack Johnson on a leash. Another attraction at Leland's house was his garden with a large variety of wild plants and flowers, including several rare ferns, tenderly nurtured and apparently appreciative of domestic attention.

For a shy, habitually silent man "Doc" was surprisingly active in Hanover life. He served a brief term as Precinct Commissioner and through his friendship with John Dallas, later Bishop Dallas, he served a long term as warden of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, assisting the clergy in understanding that tight-lipped crowd of Vermonters that formed the congregation at the little mission chapel at Beaver Meadow. He also served on the Dartmouth Athletic Council and, a little out of character, joined Psi U. His real love, naturally, was the Dartmouth Outing Club and here he was most active in counsel and personal participation. He was active also in founding the Ledyard Canoe Club (1920) and Bait and Bullet (1921). The latter organization was started by "Doc" and his friends to perpetuate honest-to-God outdoor experience when they felt the D.O.C. had gone social and become involved in campus politics.

Leland was a fisherman of sorts but his real interest was hunting and he liked to tell of his trips to New Brunswick after moose and to Newfoundland for caribou. In his study he displayed his mounted trophies, including superbly mounted birds, and showed a collection of prize photographs. He was an avid photographer and under the tutelage of Professor Charles Proctor he had learned to develop and print the results of his camera. He had a large and entertaining collection of wild-life slides and showing them was his delight.

Leland was not one to covet a host of friends, though he probably had more than he knew. Among the rare group of old-time friends were John Dallas and Charles Proctor, already mentioned, and those two intriguing characters, Astronomer John Poor, and C. C. Stewart of the medical faculty. His neighbors were friendly and in these later days very solicitous for his welfare. Special mention should be made of George Kalbfleisch who for the past fifteen years shared Leland's house with him. Leland was in low spirits when George moved in, withdrawing into himself, and George by patient but persistent effort brought him back into circulation and to the renewed enjoyment of some of life's pleasantries.

He liked short calls - long calls, he said, made him nervous - and his friends understood and made short ones. He had married Connie Preston in 1925 and always looked forward to the visits of his two sons, Samuel and David Preston Griggs '52 who graduated at Dartmouth exactly fifty years after his father. Both boys married and Leland had six granddaughters and was always betting the next would be a boy who might carry on the tradition at Dartmouth. He had a silver cup waiting for that boy and with each pregnancy he polished it up, but never a grandson arrived.

Leland Griggs was different - the old Yankees perhaps would have called him "just odd" - and he certainly was a character in the best sense of that term. But with all his oddity and shyness we miss very much seeing him on Hanover Main Street as we also miss his lively chuckle and his sharp comments on events both near and far. One more old pine has fallen and left a vacant spot against the sky!