Friend of Frost

Dust always blowing about the town, Except when sea fog laid it down, And I was one of the children told Some of the blowing dust was gold.

Lines about a San Francisco childhood at the turn of the century, of course, but who would guess that they were written by the New England poet, Robert Frost? The answer is: anyone who has come in contact with G. WILLIAM GAHAGAN '35, president and executive secretary of the California Friends of Robert Frost. He is quick to point out that the poet was born in San Francisco in 1874 and spent the first eleven years of his life growing up in that city.

Bill Gahagan's first personal contact with Frost did occur in New England, in 1948, when Gahagan was completing the requirements for his A.B. degree at Dartmouth (and incidentally earning his "D" in tennis at age 36). When he stayed on in Hanover an extra year as an instructor in the Great Issues course, he and Frost, who was Visiting Lecturer in the Humanities, became good friends. Gahagan jokingly promised the poet to track down his San Francisco birthplace and see that a plaque was placed there.

Fifteen years later on March 26, 1964, the ninetieth anniversary of the poet's birth, Bill Gahagan organized the California Friends of Robert Frost. Their purpose was to widen the appeal of Frost's poetry in the West by publicizing his California roots through an extensive lecture program. The group also encourages creative writing and poetry reading in the California schools by awarding a special bronze medallion showing Frost's profile. And the Friends are constantly adding to the Frost collection at the San Francisco Main Library. The initial donation of the collection was made in 1965 and consists largely of books personally inscribed to Gahagan by Robert Frost when they were both at Dartmouth.

Gahagan reports that the California Friends' most ambitious project to date has been the production of Once by the Pacific, a documentary film portraying Frost's childhood in San Francisco. Gahagan wrote the script, which immortalizes the poems of Frost relating to California.

At the premiere of the movie this spring on the poet's birthday, Gahagan was able to announce the attainment of another of his organization's goals. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to name the proposed plaza at Market, Drumm, and California Streets, the "Robert Lee Frost Plaza." A plaque honoring Frost, now temporarily housed in the San Francisco Main Library, will be a keystone in the Plaza when it is completed in 1973. But to date Gahagan has been unsuccessful in pinpointing Frost's exact birthplace.

Gahagan brings to the presidency of the California Friends a broad background in education and public relations. After leaving Hanover in 1950, he taught school first in Denver, and then in Monterey and Carmel Valley, Calif. In 1957 he acquired an M.A. from Stanford University.

At that point he and his wife Lorna decided to provide their four children with "a lengthy experience abroad to give them (and incidentally ourselves) perspective on the United States and to enrich our lives with another language, the art treasures, etc." For the first of four years in Rome, Gahagan and his wife taught at the Overseas International School. Then he served as director of the U. S. Embassy Employees Association, managing commissary operations and assisting with special services for the embassy staff including educational consulting.

Upon returning to America in 1961, he held a public relations position in the chancellor's office at the University of California at Santa Barbara. This was followed by a year of further graduate study in education at Stanford, before he undertook organization of the California Friends of Robert Frost.

This ongoing project represents a continuation of his interest in education in the broadest sense, for as he expresses it, "This fundamentally is my purpose and my aim - to introduce Mr. Frost and poetry generally to a 'wider classroom.' "

G. William Gahagan '35 with Robert Frost's daughter, Mrs.Lesley Frost Ballantine, and great-grandson, Prescott FrostWilber, who have roles in his new film about the poet.