Tributes to Dean Seymour
IN the closing weeks of the academic year, one group after another sought to honor Dean Thaddeus Seymour before he left Dartmouth to become President of Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind. During Class Day exercises on June 13, the Class of 1969 presented Dean Seymour with the oversized "senior cane" shown in the accompanying photograph. In the best Dartmouth tradition, many members of the senior class had carved their initials on a Rowing Club oar, which made reference to his years as crew coach.
On the same day, the Executive Committee of the Faculty had the following testimonial statement read into the minutes of their meeting:
Thaddeus - you are a loyal colleague about to depart. The issue raised by your departure, however, is not one of loyalty, for a colleague in classroom, on committee or in administrative office can be replaced. The issue is otherwise.
Whereas our student revolutionaries vow simply to unhinge the institution, your departure threatens to unravel the entire Up-per Valley. We put it to you straight that we do not lightly face the loss of a 1929 Packard from the Fourth of July parade, the High Striker from the Norwich Fair, or Batman from Variety Night!
Crawfordsville, U.S.A. will soon awake to a magician's guillotine, a coffee house, Dollars for Scholars, black gang leaders from Indianapolis, a bevy of seven-foot oarsmen in search of a river, and "other fancy notions which came along with that smooth fellah from back East."
Crawfordsville and Wabash will quickly discover that they have inherited more. They are heirs to
- a steady hand which reaches for that which is best in people and institutions; - a purposeful life with deep spiritual roots; — an upper case Republican politically, built on a lower case democrat viscerally; - a close companion of Jonathan Swift who shares his gift for that turn of phrase which dissects sham, hypocrisy and fraud in the human condition; - most importantly, for the future of their community and their institutions, Crawsfordsville and Wabash are heirs to that special brand of courage required of one who has met the test of visible stewardship for widely, and often bitterly divergent, groups of men.
Our acute sense of loss at the departure of our Renaissance colleague is tempered only by our shared joy in the knowledge that when confrontation rhetoric reaches Wabash it will be the tocsin for a different dean!
Good luck and Godspeed.
At its meeting on June 18, the Dartmouth Alumni Council expressed warm tribute and thanks to Dean Seymour in the form of the following resolution:
THADDEUS SEYMOUR
Dean of Dartmouth College, 1959-1969
Dad Thad - those two words express the genuine respect and affection students hold for you. You earned this esteem neither by regarding them as young sons nor by causing them to fear you as a stern father, but rather by listening carefully, taking them seriously, and treating them respectfully. They knew that you joined them in seeking, in your own words, "what Dartmouth always has stood for — to find out what is right and to do it."
Some time before college deans began making headlines, Dartmouth undergraduates put you in the spotlight when they brought you on stage riding a motorcycle or parachuting in Mary Poppins style to take major parts in their campus and traveling extravaganzas. This sort of shared fun, your volunteer coaching of the crew, your turning of the 4th of July and Norwich Fair into the greatest shows on North Country earth, your work as administrator, teacher, and counselor - all these talents well qualified you to deal wisely with the changing American campus. Perhaps your membership in the International Brotherhood of Magicians has contributed to your success. We would also offer modest credit to Princeton and the Universities of California and North Carolina, and much credit to your delightful family which has never, for some reason, considered itself riding the tail of a hurricane though it most certainly has.
For your fifteen years of dedication to the College, a distinguished Deanship practiced in behalf of 10,000 men of Dartmouth, and for your most priceless characteristic of all - a "wonderful gift of optimism" - the Dartmouth Alumni Council votes you its abiding appreciation, warm affection, and its best wishes for success and happiness as President of Wabash College.
Dean Seymour received the framed resolution at the Alumni Council dinner, at which time it was also announced by crew coach Pete Gardner that the Dartmouth Rowing Club had commissioned an oil portrait of the Dean to be painted by John Folinsbee. The portrait will hang in the 1902 Room of Baker Library with paintings of earlier Deans of the College.
Kappa Kappa Kappa also joined in the testimonial chorus and named Dean Seymour an honorary member of the fraternity at a special installation meeting shortly before Commencement.
At the Class Day exercises in the BemaDean Seymour received his own version ofa senior cane a Rowing Club oar embellished with the initials of '69 men.
