Francis Lane Childs '06, Winkley Professor

Francis Lane Childs '06, Winkley Professor of the Anglo-Saxon and English Language and Literature, Emeritus, celebrated his 88th birthday December 18 in the company of some 100 close friends and colleagues at a party hosted by the William Jewett Tucker Foundation.

The party was held in the Wren Room of Sanborn House, a building and room as intimate to Professor Childs as the associates who attended his birthday celebration.

"This is not a public party, but a gathering of friends, of admirers," said Charles F. Dey '52, Dean of the Foundation. "Those of us in the Tucker Foundation are taking advantage of your 88th birthday, acknowledging our debt to a man who gave shape and substance to the Foundation 20 years ago."

Prior to and immediately following his retirement in 1954 after a 45-year teaching career at Dartmouth, Professor Childs served as chairman of the Faculty Advisory Committee that recommended to the Board of Trustees the creation of the Foundation to further the moral and spiritual work and influence of the College.

"The lives of countless men, both in the Upper Valley and throughout the country, have benefited through the years from the ideas turned loose by Francis Lane Childs," Dean Dey said. "As long as Dartmouth exists, there will be a small voice crying in the wilderness, persisting and insisting that there is spiritual work to be done.''

Dean Dey then unveiled an architectural rendering of the Francis Lane Childs Room now under construction in the Tucker Foundation headquarters in College Hall. When completed in about two months, it will be available to the college community for conferences, lectures, and other activities. The Childs Room is at the north end of what many alumni will remember as the old Freshman Commons in College Hall.

For Professor Childs, his birthday party was like a homecoming. He reminisced with friends about his quarter century in Sanborn House, noting that when the building was finished in 1929, he was already the oldest member of the Department of English, an honor which gave him his choice of offices. He picked an office directly above the Wren Room overlooking the campus green.

After earning a master's degree from Dartmouth in 1907, Professor Childs joined the faculty in 1909 to begin his long teaching career at the College. He received his Ph.D. degree from Harvard in 1914. During his tenure at Dartmouth, he served as chairman of the Department of English (1943-1947) and chairman of the Division of Humanities (1947-1951).

In addition to his work with the Tucker Foundation, Professor Childs was the author of "A History Lesson for Dartmouth Freshmen," a fifty-minute lecture he personally delivered to each entering class from 1957 to 1971. The history lesson covered three of Dartmouth's most famous men: Eleazar Wheelock, founder of the school in 1769; Daniel Webster, whose eloquent plea before the U. S. Supreme Court in the Dartmouth College Case saved the College from extinction as a private institution; and William Jewett Tucker, Dartmouth's ninth president and for whom the Tucker Foundation is named.

Much of Professor Childs' present activity is devoted to the Class of 1906, of which he is treasurer and newsletter editor.

Prof. Francis Lane Childs '06 (right) at his 88th birthday party in Sanborn English Housewith two other emeritus professors, John Barker Stearns 16 and W. Randall Waterman.