Chapter 25: Hail, Farewell, Hail

Early in the morning of Friday, October 10, 1930, a dense fog hung over Rochester. Rain threatened. Buildings on the River Campus were almost invisible. Luckily, however, the sun pierced through the encircling gloom, ushering in three days of golden autumn weather, and that was well for the period witnessed the dedication of the new home of collegiate learning on Oak Hill--the climax and crown of generous giving, astute planning, hard work.

In point of fact, instruction had actually started a fortnight earlier. Two days before the first classes met--just when Adolf Hitler's brown-shirted Nazi contingent in the German Reichstag jumped from twelve to 107--undergraduates flocked to the River Campus and listened to a message by President Rhees welcoming them to the splendid new opportunities while college melodies played by Professor Slater pealed from the Library chime.

Prior to that, Bausch and Lomb Company employees, newspapermen, and other Rochester groups had inspected the Oak Hill resources. And later came parties of workers employed in the construction, the fund-raisers of 1924 (with George Eastman and George W. Todd present), and indeed anyone and everyone whose gifts had made the River Campus possible were welcomed. "Dad, come and see it," read an invitation to subscribers, who were reminded that "six years ago it was 'Dad, give for me...'"

The formal dedication of the new educational facilities and accompanying conferences were high points, of course. Vastly different in magnitude though the celebration was from the exercises at the opening of the original home of the U. of R., eighty years short of a month before, there was not a little similarity between the two epochal occasions. Months of meticulous planning, Trustee Edward G. Miner in the chair, preceded the 1930 festivity. Extensive publicity in the press, on the silver screen, and over the radio heralded what the New York Times was pleased to describe as "Rochester's New Glory."

By way of prelude, the Times carried a lengthy story on the beginnings and the execution of the River Campus idea. An editorial commented suggestively that many undertakings in the Flower City had a head start of a decade on comparable enterprises in Manhattan. It spoke of the fruitful collaboration of town and gown in creating "buildings of great beauty, of an architecture that historically belongs to the [Genesee] valley and that has classical memories..." As the Times editorial writer read the evidence, Rochester had "again shown what a city whose prevailing ambitions are qualitative rather than quantitative can do in the higher ranges of community life...." "The people generally" had united with wealthy citizens and U. of R. graduates to make possible the gladsome celebration. "Town and gown are one in their rejoicing." 1

Taking part in the dedicatory ceremonies were representatives from 170 academic institutions and learned societies, the Regents of the University of the State of New York, state, county, and city officials, guests who formally participated in the exercises, University trustees and administrative officers, faculties, graduates and undergraduates, and crowds of interested townsfolk. (College classes were suspended.) It was a brilliant academic procession that started the ceremonies off, winding its way from Rhees Library around the Quadrangle and down to the basketball court, or Palestra, in the Gymnasium. An Eastman School student orchestra furnished music. In the absence of ex-President David J. Hill, prevented by illness from presiding, Rhees assumed that role and gave the dedicatory address, dwelling on the reasons for the names attached to the several campus buildings, warmly praising Eastman for his munificence, and reminding the tightly-packed audience of the College for Women on the reconditioned Prince Street Campus.

The principal speaker of the morning, Ray L. Wilbur, Secretary of the Interior and president of Stanford University, took "Man's Advance through Education" as his subject. Peering well into the future, he foresaw a time when college underclassmen would be linked in some fashion to the public school system, while Juniors and Seniors would be absorbed in an authentically university environment.

Friday afternoon was given over to learned conferences in Strong Auditorium on the social studies, the humanities, and the natural sciences, with three distinguished scholars as spokesmen. William F. Ogburn, sociology, University of Chicago, recommended that the teaching of values should occupy a larger place in collegiate education; Irving Babbitt, French literature, Harvard University, pleaded movingly for a balanced intellectualism; and Hugh S. Taylor, chemistry, Princeton University, dwelt upon the shape of things to come in scientific research. At the evening gathering President Livingston Farrand of Cornell University advocated, under the title "The University's Obligation to the Community," that infinitely more attention should be devoted to the education of adults and Roland B. Woodward, Regent of the University of the State of New York, approaching the other side of the shield--"The Community's Obligation to the University," remarked upon the intimate linkage between industry, commerce, and higher learning.

"Adult Education--A Crying Need of Our Common Civilization" served as a guideline from which on Saturday morning Lawrence P. Jacks, principal of Manchester College, Oxford University, delivered one of the most memorable and incisive utterances the Strong Auditorium would hear for decades to come. "As Aristotle pointed out long ago," he reminded the knowing ones, "the good life is a very difficult affair, and will always remain so...The drama of the good life cannot be acted by pressing a scientific button.... You need great actors." With prose of quiet eloquence, Jacks appealed vigorously for the education of the whole individual and the ultimate unity of all mankind. At a more specialized and vocation-oriented afternoon session, Professor Walter F. Dearborn of Harvard addressed himself to the "Relations of Mental and Physical Growth in School Children." Lesser conferences of a technical nature convened in the basement of Strong.

On Saturday the River Campus became a Mecca for Rochester graduates at the first autumn gathering of alumni ever held. Converging on the Alumni Gymnasium, they heard an address dedicating that structure by Trustee Joseph T. Alling, 1876, and lustily applauded six stalwarts who in 1889 had played on the pioneer U. of R. football team. Thence to the Stadium, which was dedicated between the halves, where the football opponent, Wesleyan, inconsiderately repeated its performance at the opening of the Culver Field thirteen years earlier by winning the game. The Connecticut institution could not match, however, a wonderful bibliophilic exhibition in the Rhees Library, which depicted the evolution of bookmaking from gorgeously illuminated medieval manuscripts to the finest productions of contemporary printing craftsmanship. Hard by were choice first editions, autographs of esteemed authors, and original drawings.

On Sunday, the 12th, the great occasion closed with a concert by the Rochester Civic Orchestra, a sermon by the Reverend James G. Gilkey of Springfield, Massachusetts, and a festival of hymns on the Hopeman Memorial Chime with Professor Slater as bellman. To their dying day, few if indeed any who were present would forget the smooth and exhilarating inauguration of "Rochester's New Glory." 2

II

After the poetry came the prose of the every day administrative and academic round. It was the time of the Great Depression, the years of the locusts as everyone was aware from rising in the morning until slumber at night. Buoyant optimism which had reigned while the River Campus construction was underway collapsed into dark despair. United States unemployment statistics increased from around 3,000,000 at the outset of 1930 to above 7,000,000 at the end (and would go up by at least 5,000,000 more), entailing misery and suffering beyond computation. This tragic situation furnished the theme for Rhees' baccalaureate message of 1931 in which he asserted that a civilization worthy of the name must recognize the right of every man to a job and the right to self-respect in his work.

On the academic front, Rhees was able to report that the year of transition and adjustment to separate colleges had been brought off without untoward confusion. It was clearly evident that the elderly leader wished to lay down the onerous burdens of his office; indeed, he formally presented his resignation to the trustees in 1930, but they unanimously requested that he should carry on as long as he was willing and able. He predicated his acquiescence on an assurance that steps would be taken promptly to find a successor, yet nothing in fact was done. Three years more and the resignation was renewed and then reluctantly accepted.

The search for a new president ran on for eighteen months. Edward G. Miner headed a trustee committee charged with screening candidates and making a nomination to the corporation. It was a decidedly novel experience for the trustees, since Joseph T. Alling was the only member who had a seat on the Board when the quest that resulted in the selection of Rhees had taken place. Proposals for consultation on candidates with the University faculties as a group or for a faculty committee were turned aside. Rhees learned that at the Johns Hopkins a candidate for the presidency unanimously recommended by a faculty committee had not proved acceptable to the trustees; he was advised that the proper instrument for choosing a president would be a joint trustee-faculty committee, each member having equal voting power. His correspondent reasoned that whereas trustees were more apt to emphasize public reputation, scholars desired educational leadership, lively appreciation of the importance of research, and personal integrity. Whether Rhees passed this piece of counsel along to the trustee committee is unknown; in any event, the opinions of administrative officers and individual professors were solicited and anyone--faculties, alumni, and Rochester citizens--was welcome to submit suggestions to the nominating group for consideration. 3

For the guidance of the trustee committee, a wide-ranging memorandum, drafted by Rhees, underscored the traits and talents desirable in the next president of the University. Under the heading "native endowment" were cited "practically perfect health and unusual energy, horse sense, strength of character, attractive personality" and in the forty to fifty year age range. Qualities "acquired by education and experience" embraced "outstanding ability as an educator, interest in the culture of spiritual life and the aims and ideals of a small college, a good speaker and with some experience in undergraduate and graduate teaching." Among the essential attributes listed as "presidential potentialities" were "executive ability, progressive (though not the first to try curricular novelties), keenly interested in community and civic affairs;" a man having promise of "a brilliant future" was preferable to one with "an accomplished past."

Then, too, the new chief executive should be "interested in education rather than in training "--though an appreciation of the importance of science was essential. Moreover, he should like young people and be able to communicate effectively with them. He should be an individual known for tactfulness and leadership and, not least, he should have a wife, possessed of "characteristics in keeping with the demands and dignity of her husband's office." Rhees felt it would be a mistake to limit the candidates to graduates of the U. of R. Even so, the bill of particulars that he devised was extremely comprehensive--and formidable. 4

From first to last, approximately one hundred individuals came under scrutiny by the trustee committee at meeting after meeting. Only fragmentary accounts of the discussions are available--evaluations of specific individuals apparently were not set down on paper. Presidents and deans of colleges, a preparatory school headmaster, several professors (two at least on the U. of R. faculty), Raymond N. Ball, an ex-West Point commandant, a professional diplomat, and others passed in review, and quite a few of them came to Rochester for consultations. When Robert A. Millikan, Nobel Prize physicist, gave a lecture at the University, the city press jumped to the erroneous conclusion that he was under consideration for the executive chair.

From the first set of possibilities, the trustee committee recommended Professor Joel H. Hildebrand of the University of California at Berkeley for the presidency, and Rhees "on his own initiative" strongly urged him to accept. A distinguished, fifty-two year old chemist with marginal experience as an academic administrator, Hildebrand visited Rochester, conferred with trustees, and was entertained by relatives. However, he decided "in favor of his chosen lifework as teacher and scientist;" additionally, he much preferred the climate of the Golden State, and he much disliked the prospect of living in the elaborate Eastman House, remote from the students. No manner of persuasion could induce Hildebrand to change his mind. To the unfeigned surprise of the U. of R. authorities the New York Times carried a report about three candidates whom the trustees allegedly had in mind, though none of them is named in the meager University records. 5

III

Over their breakfast coffee on January 3, 1935, Rochesterians read in banner headlines, "Yale Scholar, 33, named U. R. Head." Press accounts of the day and editorial commentary revealed in no little detail the unusual record of Alan Chester Valentine. A Long Islander in origin, Valentine had been reared (as he put it) on "desiccated puritanism," trained at home and at a little private school in "the values of Emerson and Horatio Alger." In 1921 he graduated from Swarthmore College, identified with the Hicksite wing of the Society of Friends, to which the newly-chosen president belonged. The election of a Quaker meant, of course, a radical departure from the Rochester tradition that a Baptist must preside over the University.

Among the small coeducational colleges of America, Swarthmore had no superior. As an undergraduate, Valentine stood out by reason of ability as a student leader, presiding over the student council and editing the newspaper and yearbook, by reason, too, of his scholastic attainments, shown by election to Phi Beta Kappa and by receiving the Ivy Award, the highest honor at Swarthmore, and by reason of his athletic prowess, conspicuously in football, for which he was mentioned in All-American ratings. During his first college summer vacation he had done his bit in the First World War as a shipyard worker and in officer training at Plattsburg; thereafter, he assisted in the S.A.T.C. at Swarthmore. A second undergraduate summer Valentine spent vagabonding around western Europe.

Following a stint of apprentice teaching in industrial geography combined with a year of graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a master's degree, Valentine was picked as a Rhodes Scholar and studied for three years at Balliol College, Oxford. Coming to that venerable seat of learning as "a raw young Quaker rationalist," he acquired an enthusiastic liking for the institution, even though it was "the most class-conscious spot in the British Isles." Prepared at Oxford for an academic career, he left convinced that he would never grow into a first-class scholar and confused about "wisdom and ethics."

Retrospectively, Valentine decided that the most enduring rewards of the Oxford experience were the people he encountered and the opportunities to take part in games; alone among Americans he played Rugby three years for the Oxford varsity, and he was the second American ever to win a Rugby blue. Richly rewarding were holiday "safaris" on the Continent, where he customarily traveled, eyes and ears wide open, as a plebian "loner." During the Paris Olympic games of 1924 Valentine accumulated fresh athletic laurels as coach and player on a victorious American Rugby team. To his academic distinctions Oxford added an honorary B.A. and M.A.

For three years he worked for the Oxford University Press and during that time turned out respectable booklets for private reading courses on the English novel and on biography and autobiography. In 1928 he returned to Swarthmore as dean of men and assistant professor of English. Shortly before, he married Lucia Garrison Norton of a well-to-do New York family, Smith College alumna, and endowed with social graces and cultural tastes that fitted her well for the demanding and sensitive role of a university's first lady.

Yale University lured Valentine on to its staff in 1932 as master of Pierson College, professor in the history, arts, and letters department, and chairman of the board of admissions. While at New Haven he won the esteem of colleagues and undergraduates alike and he was given an honorary M.A. The mere recital of the cold facts discloses that Valentine's progression up the academic ladder had been nothing less than meteoric. Handsome he was, over six feet tall, rugged, green-eyed and brown of hair. In his makeup there was a lode of delightful humor and a streak of toughness that emerged from time to time.

One day Valentine observed that but for Trustee Edward G. Miner he would not have come Rochester. The two men met through acquaintances at North Haven, Maine, where the Valentines customarily spent their summer holidays. At the request of the trustee committee on the presidency, the Valentines visited Rochester, and by the autumn of 1934 negotiations had reached the stage at which the actively-interested Yale master submitted a lengthy and searching questionnaire to Rhees about the U. of R. The President in response furnished him with detailed information on the teaching force--numbers, range of salaries, retirement plans--on undergraduate scholarships and loans, residence hall accommodations, student government and athletic policies, on the condition of University finances, and on library resources. Annual reports of the President for the preceding five years supplemented the other data despatched to New Haven.

While Valentine digested these materials, the trustees seem to have debated at length among themselves on his candidacy, and at a meeting on December 15, 1934, a detailed memorandum on his qualifications was distributed and each trustee who had come to know Valentine offered his personal assessment of the man. In the end, the recommendation of the nominating committee that he should be invited to be the fourth chief executive of the University obtained unanimous approval. Except for his age and some essentially minor points, Valentine satisfied the wide-ranging blueprint for the presidency that Rhees had worked out a year and a half before. Professor Dexter Perkins and Raymond N. Ball hastened to New Haven to clear up any questions that Valentine still entertained and to urge his acceptance. At a final conference in Rochester, December 29, 1934, Valentine formally accepted the bid, and the public announcement of his coming followed shortly. Later, if not then, Valentine felt he had no particular fitness for the presidency, but that he was chosen because it was believed he possessed "sound training and some executive ability." 6

Addressing him as "my dear friend," Rhees expressed "his deep satisfaction and joy" to the President-elect, and presently assured a trustee who had not taken part in the decisive deliberations that Valentine though "young in years has poise and self-possession without a trace of self-consciousness." He "thinks clearly and soundly and expresses himself with simplicity and directness," Rhees went on. "Perhaps at the risk of seeming a bit unbalanced, I may say that my feeling towards him is not only one of admiration but of rather spontaneous affection."

Aware that the music and medical schools of the University were in better shape than the collegiate branch, Valentine wished to raise undergraduate education to the highest level, Rhees observed, in one way by a wider geographical representation in the undergraduate bodies--no novelty of course with him--yet at the same time maintaining a relatively small college. While Valentine supposed that the college faculty inevitably contained "some dead wood...he indicated a fine sense of responsibility to members who have served faithfully, if without distinction, for long years."

It would not have been inappropriate had Rhees quoted to his successor the words of Saint Paul to Timothy, "Let no man despise thy youth;" actually, the age of the President-elect occasioned no little skeptical comment in the Rochester community. On the other hand, the press under captions such as "Youth Served by Youth" and "A Promising Choice" heartily praised the trustee decision; one editor likened Valentine to Robert M. Hutchins, elected president of the University of Chicago at thirty, and to Rhees who took charge at Rochester at thirty-nine.

Echoing a rumor that circulated in New Haven, it was asserted that if Valentine had not accepted the Rochester post he would one day have been called to the headship of "one of the older Eastern Universities." Faculty voices agreed that a wise selection had been made and undergraduate publications enthusiastically applauded what had been done. "A better man could not have been chosen," declared the Tower Times, "a scholar, a charming gentleman, and an athlete," whose wife, "promises to become one of Rochester's most charming and gracious hostesses." Ardent Greeks accounted it a favorable omen that the President-elect belonged to Phi Kappa Psi, though in college he had in fact bothered little about the fraternity. Sports-oriented alumni and newspapers remarked appreciatively on the Valentine achievement in athletics; it was "popularly assumed that the U. of R. would subsidize [intercollegiate] teams."

During a springtime visit to Rochester, the President-elect chatted with male undergraduate leaders, but neglected to talk with representatives of the gentler sex, which annoyed sensitive feminine spirits. Stricken with appendicitis during the visit, Mrs. Valentine underwent an operation in the Strong Memorial Hospital. Having a "singular prejudice" against his middle name, Valentine felt that the Rochester press was "unduly fond" of "Chester," and he begged Rhees to employ his good offices to eliminate its use. 7

IV

The Rochester in which the Alan Valentines, their son and daughter, took up residence in the autumn of 1935 differed considerably from the Flower City that had greeted David Jayne Hill half a century before and more so, of course, from the Flour City in which Martin B. Anderson settled. Rochester, An Emerging Metropolis is the title chosen by the official city historian for his volume covering the second quarter of the twentieth century. Concerning the inner temper of the city, it was written, "Seldom can one find a community more keenly aware of its civic duty or more willing to co-operate in movements to achieve those things which are essential to the progress and prosperity of the city." 8

According to the census of 1930, Rochester ranked twenty-second among cities in the United States with more than 328,000 inhabitants. Whereas in the preceding decade population had increased substantially, the trend in the 'thirties was reversed, the first decline in the history of the city. Motor vehicles encouraged movement to the suburbs and the population of metropolitan Rochester, of "the trading area," approached 700,000. In the municipality itself the so-called "new immigration" was represented by Italians and "Russians," largely of Jewish, Polish, Ukrainian, or Lithuanian traditions, in that numerical order. Included, too, were many newcomers of German, Canadian, or British origin; the colored citizenry hovered near the 3,000 mark.

Rochester, which in 1934 commemorated the centennial of its incorporation as a city, was governed under the city-manager plan; and in 1935 the basic managerial concept was applied to the government of the County of Monroe as well. Benefiting from the ravages of the Great Depression, the Democrats, who for years had wandered in the political wilderness, controlled both the city and county administrations, yet their ascendancy though sweet was short, for at the polls in November, 1935, their Republican rivals recaptured county offices and made deep inroads in the city offices also.

If one species of law breaking, bootlegging, had slacked off with the recent repeal of national Prohibition, other varieties of crime, some of them aggravated by the urban environment, some not, kept guardians of security and wholesome morality busy.

As of 1935, the Rochester press counted four dailies, one morning, two evening, and one in the German language; an Italian and several other foreign language newspapers were published weekly or less frequently along with small, largely advertising sheets for particular sectors of the community. More than 800 industrial establishments existed in the city, Rochester leading the world in the output of photographic film and cameras, optical products and cheque protectors, mail chutes, thermometers, and related devices. It ranked high, too, in the manufacture of clothing, buttons, shoes, telephone apparatus, and railway signal equipment. Thanks to the technically oriented character of so many Rochester firms, the community was unusually free of smoke and allied industrial nuisances.

By 1935 Rochester had recovered from the worst evils of the Great Depression, which had smitten the city less severely than many another American community; in terms of the business index, factory employment and payroll levels stood in 1935 at around seventy percent of the pre-depression figures. Even so, public aid and various work relief projects accounted for about one third of municipal expenditures and almost one fifth of the inhabitants were recipients of welfare assistance. An extensive assortment of public service organizations ranged, alphabetically, from a Council of Social Agencies to the Young Women's Christian Association.

Five railways served the city, 150 passenger trains alone steaming in and out daily. Trolley cars, soon to give way to motorbuses, furnished public transport on streets and were reinforced by a subway, laid in the bed of the abandoned Erie Canal, which hauled freight as well; motorbus lines had started to provide interurban communication in place of defunct electric roads. More than anything else, the automobile, cheap, easy to operate, and affording unprecedented freedom of movement, had revolutionized transportation. It was a matter of civic pride that the rate of traffic accidents was comparatively low.

On the south side of the city, the presence of an airport and landing field with two principal runways foreshadowed another revolutionary change in communication. Transportation by water was available on the Barge Canal, successor of the historic Erie, and, from a harbor on Lake Ontario, twice a day ferries crossed to Canada. A rising proportion of Rochester homes, along with business enterprises, were equipped with telephones and wireless telephones or radios; for weal or woe, television was yet to come.

As before, Rochester took pride in the fact that so many families owned the dwellings in which they resided--better than two out of five. Zoning ordinances and building codes tended to prevent the encroachment of industry, stores, and the like upon residential districts; thousands of trees lining the streets earned Rochester the sobriquet of "A City in the Woods." Sections of the city, however, which in the period of David Jayne Hill were noted for the spacious residences of the affluent had yielded more and more to the invasion of commerce and small apartment blocks.

Religious and educational institutions had increased in keeping with population growth. As of 1935 Rochester contained more than 185 houses of worship, attended by an estimated one half of the citizenry. It had forty-three public elementary schools, ten high schools, and four special schools for the handicapped; parochial schools numbered over thirty at the elementary and four on the secondary level. Three private schools, one for boys, one for girls, and one for both, supplied training through high school. Public school pupils outnumbered children in church-connected and private schools on a ratio of nearly four to one.

On the upper echelon, the historic Rochester Theological Seminary had merged with its Colgate University counterpart to form the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School and was handsomely situated (1931) on a hill-top on the southern side of the city. At the northern extremity St. Bernard's Seminary trained Roman Catholic priests, while Nazareth College, founded in 1924, catered to young women of the Catholic faith. Mechanics Institute, after 1944 known as the Rochester Institute of Technology, met important needs in technical and commercial education.

Cultural opportunities were enlarged by libraries and museums, which were either embryonic or quite unknown half a century earlier. In 1935 a fine central public library structure--the Rundel Library--was nearing completion. The Museum of Arts and Sciences, poorly housed in Edgerton Park, was casting about for a philanthropist to erect a building worthy of its treasures, and the University-connected Memorial Art Gallery nourished the artistic interests of the community.

Among the significant entertainment resources were about forty motion picture houses showing sound films and news reels, eight theatres for stage productions (Corinthian Hall and the Lyceum Theatre, the sites of many U. of R. occasions, had just given way to the march of progress). There were also public dance halls, swimming pools and skating rinks, billiard and bowling establishments, five country clubs in the metropolitan area, an excellent baseball park in which the "Red Wings" of the International League performed, and grounds for circuses and annual horse shows. A liberal array of clubs and fraternal organizations afforded all manner of social outlets for Rochesterians. For recreation, too, there were five extensive parks--one of them the site of yearly Lilac Time Festivals which attracted national attention--and twenty-eight lesser ones; equipment for play, the calendar around, had greatly expanded while the Great Depression raged. On the shores of Lake Ontario two large bathing beaches provided summertime diversion.

On the Rochester front perhaps the most newsworthy occurrences of 1935 were a series of earth tremors, exciting but not damaging, a matter of days before the inauguration of Valentine as U. of R. president. The John Marshall High School and a new bridge over the Genesee at Elmwood Avenue were constructed in 1935, and a native son (and Rochester trustee), Harper Sibley, undertook the presidency of the United States Chamber of Commerce. Two musicians, Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, Jr., perfected natural color film for movie cameras, and the sophomoric antics and parade of the New York State Legion Convention generated more popular interest than the installation of the U. of R. executive.

From the national standpoint, an epochal event of 1935 was the enactment of Social Security legislation under the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt; and a second meaningful measure, the Wagner Labor Relations Act, reaffirmed the principle of collective bargaining through representatives chosen by the wage earners involved. A bold experiment to fight unemployment, the Works Progress Administration, created jobs for some three and a half million idle Americans, skilled and unskilled, cultural workers and pick-and-shovel laborers alike. The Committee for Industrial Organization (C.I.O.) merged unions of unskilled or semi-skilled wage earners into a new and dynamic force in organized labor. On the other side, the Supreme Court struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act as unconstitutional. Optimistically, Washington signed a trade pact with the recently recognized Soviet Union.

Behind the wheel of the "Bluebird" Malcolm Campbell raced along Daytona Beach, Florida, at a speed exceeding 276 miles an hour and Pan-American Airways initiated trans-Pacific service from California. Bomber Joe Lewis flattened out an opponent before a million-dollar gate and Detroit copped the crowns in professional baseball and football.

Looking outward, Martin B. Anderson and David J. Hill, had they returned to earth, would have found global affairs in 1935 in topsy-turvy turmoil. Nazi Germany reclaimed the Saar Valley on the basis of a valid plebiscite, openly repudiated the armament limitation clauses of the Versailles Treaty and restored military conscription, negotiated a favorable naval treaty with Great Britain, adopted the swastika as the official national flag, and accepted the hideous Nuremberg legislation outlawing Jews. Responding to the alarming Hitlerian menace, the Soviet Union entered into somewhat nebulous mutual assistance treaties with France and Czechoslovakia. A flimsy alignment against Germany, embracing Britain, France, and Italy, called the Stresa Front, disintegrated when Benito Mussolini unleashed his Fascist legions against Ethiopia (Abyssinia).

French leftward political groupings formed a Front Populaire and Soviet Russia was wracked by trials and executions of alleged traitors. In the Orient, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek captured the presidency of the Chinese Nationalist party, and the Commonwealth of the Philippines became an independent country.

If the human panorama of 1935 exhibited depressing features, it was not without cheering and praiseworthy elements as well. Scientists made practicable radar equipment, for instance, to locate aircraft and in Germany regular television services were started. T.S. Eliot finished the original version of Murder in the Cathedral and playwright Clifford Odets brought out "Waiting for Lefty." Sidney and Beatrice Webb published Soviet Communism: a New Civilization? and the great Brockhaus Encyclopedia was carried to completion. While George Gershwin produced the folk opera, "Porgy and Bess," Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his "Symphony No. 1." As for the other fine arts, Jacob Epstein carved "Ecce Homo" and Salvador Dali painted "Giraffe on Fire." Silver screen hits of 1935 included "Anna Karenina," starring the glamorous Greta Garbo, "Cyrano de Bergerac," and "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer."

V

When Valentine accepted the U. of R presidency he lacked one bit of academic trapping--a doctorate. But that deficiency, not of the first order of magnitude, was quickly remedied. Although Swarthmore replied negatively to a Rhees' request for a doctor's degree for Valentine, holding that he must first prove himself as a university executive, Syracuse closed the breach in 1935 and so did Amherst and Union. Illustrating the time-worn adage that to him who hath shall be given, Rutgers, Hobart, Alfred, and in 1937 Swarthmore followed suit--recognition which the President felt he hardly merited but enthusiastically accepted. Subsequently Denison, Lake Forest, Alleghany, and Colgate swelled the Valentine wardrobe of multicolored academic hoods.

Meanwhile the President-elect had attained instant and well-nigh universal popularity among Rochester undergraduates. In an initial indication of policy, he stated that his administration would focus on the further improvement of the two colleges--more scholarships, a finer quality of instruction, and wider diffusion of information about the educational assets the U. of R. possessed. Traditional Rochester standards on inter-collegiate sports met with his unqualified approval. A pronouncement at a student convocation repudiating "mediocrity in any form" elicited hearty applause. A Tower Times journalist who interviewed Valentine came away impressed by his boyish smile, twinkling eyes, conservative suit, and friendly and cordial manner. To get fuller first-hand knowledge of the institution and its ways, he turned up at football scrimmages, watched music students practicing at the Eastman School, visited with the teaching personnel of the various departments of learning and with library staffs. All in all, it was an auspicious beginning for a tenure that would endure for fifteen years. 9

Valentine believed strongly--or thus it seemed--that great university occasions should be invested with an aura of grandeur and dignity, so an elaborate inauguration schedule was planned for Thursday and Friday, November 14 and 15, 1935. Before that, the President-elect and his wife were guests at many Rochester receptions and dinner parties, and he had spoken at a fund-raising gathering for the Jewish Young Men's Association. At a spread in his honor at the Chamber of Commerce, he reported that he was deeply touched by "the warmth, hospitality, and friendliness" of the Rochester community. Bonds between town and gown would be more firmly knit, he hoped, than ever before--and he leveled caustic arrows at a New York law requiring teachers to sign a special oath of loyalty.

Preliminary to the induction ceremonial, Professor Slater, spokesman for the University family, and Valentine exchanged the addresses they intended to read at the inauguration. Slater reworked sections of his effort seven times and pared it down to the fifteen minutes Valentine wanted. 10

Inclement weather did not dampen the spirit of the initial episode of the two-day festivity--"a family gathering" in the Eastman Theatre. Trustees, administrative officers, faculties, and Senior students of the three schools paraded in academic costume from the corridor of the Eastman School into the spacious auditorium, where "an atmosphere of Old World academic dignity" prevailed. Only Kendrick and Merrell of the active teachers and Emeritus Professors Fairchild and Lawrence had witnessed the installation of President Rhees. Some 2,000 guests, many of them U. of R. graduates, assembled for the "exercises of welcome," and the presidents of the alumni and alumnae associations shared the presiding responsibilities. The great theatre organ and the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra, Paul White on the podium, heightened the quality of the rites, and two Protestant Episcopalian divines offered the invocation and the benediction.

On this day and the next, addresses were heavily freighted with educational platitudes, which so often expressed everlasting truths. Representing the faculties, Dean William E. Weld reiterated that the goal of the University was to furnish the finest instruction possible and that enrollment would be restricted to the maximum commensurate with teaching of the highest order. He spoke out against narrow specialization and the tendency of departmental barriers to confine branches of learning in straitjackets. Speaking for the students, John H. Brinker, Jr., 1936, president of the Students' Association of the College for Men, anticipated an era of vigorous and progressive leadership, which would make the University "a truly great educational institution...with a reputation for doing well whatever was undertaken."

Valentine responded with a distinctly personal exposition of "Conflicting Aims in Student Life," whose leit motif was intellectual maturity. Holding that "undergraduates are the heart of a university," their education, he declared, must be directed to shaping a mature point of view, to combating shallow thinking, and must be made an effective rival to the allure of organized play. All phases of the university experience required, he asserted, searching reexamination and the elimination of the harmful and the tawdry. On a longer estimate, collegiate training must inculcate "standards of thought and purpose" which graduates would cherish and apply in the workaday world. It was his hope that decisions on educational policies would be arrived at with the cooperation of the teaching staffs. Delivered in a "direct, forthright manner...using simple Anglo-Saxon" language, the address was received with "chuckles of appreciation."

Educational conferences occupied the afternoon hours. At the Cutler Union, Ada Louise Comstock, president of Radcliffe College, handicapped though she was by a severe cold, presented a telling message on "The Civilized Woman." The educated, traveled, self-reliant, and poised woman of 1935, she believed, was entering upon a new era of freedom. Crisp profiles of American women of eminence that she sketched pointed toward a coming generation of "lovely Amazons," equipped with a refreshing type of civilized mind.

President Harold W. Dodds of Princeton University, speaking in the Strong Auditorium on "Education's Responsibilities in Turbulent Times," pleaded for emphasis on the ideals of the colonial colleges, which sent forth men ready and eager for public leadership. No less than in the eighteenth century, liberal education was an urgent necessity, and Dodds felt that colleges were responding well to the challenge. That conviction was nourished by the "greater freedom of choice and more independence of study" accorded the individual learner; he warned, though, that academic "sideshows must not displace the main tent." At the Medical School, Simon Flexner, retiring director of the Rockefeller Institute, chose to concentrate on "The Prevention of Poliomyelitis," a lecture largely technical in content. In the evening, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, talented Jose Iturbi conducting, performed before a distinguished audience in the Eastman Theatre.

The formal induction on Friday the 15th was undoubtedly the most brilliant spectacle the University had ever staged--"a kaleidoscope of brilliant color and an atmosphere of majestic dignity," one guest commented. For the installation, approximately 10,000 invitations had been issued, and about 160 academic guests and delegates from colleges, universities, and learned societies, who had come to pay their respects to the new President, joined U. of R. trustees and faculties--all in academic regalia--in an impressive march into the Eastman Theatre.

At the head of the column, University Marshal Edwin Fauver bore an imposing mace, "of apparently burdensome weight," symbol of executive authority such as European universities had known for centuries. An early proposal to have the mace fashioned out of timber from Anderson Hall was laid aside in favor of a long rod of mahogany ringed with bands of silver wrought with the traditional U. of R. dandelion flower and leaves. On the head of the mace stood the University seal, and the names of the University's chief executives, beginning with Chancellor Ira Harris, were engraved on the silver work. Assistant Marshal George C. Curtiss carried a baton, studded with dandelion flowers and stars. Mace and baton were placed on pillowed benches at the front of the stage during the installation ceremonies; thenceforward, it was customary for the University Marshals to carry these symbols at major University affairs.

A fanfare of trumpets set the academic parade in motion from the Eastman School corridor and sounded again as it started down the aisles of the Theatre. Joseph T. Alling, who presided in his capacity as trustee chairman, had graduated under President Anderson, entered the trustee board during the administration of President Hill, and participated in the selection of President Rhees.

At the conclusion of his investiture address, "Liberal Culture in an Age of Specialization," Slater hailed Valentine as "the chosen inheritor of a great tradition." Glancing backward, he reviewed the inaugural speeches of the three former U. of R. presidents, and he appealed earnestly for "liberal culture, a vague sort of thing..." and "the quality of human greatness...We need not add to the vast horde of Americans," he admonished his hearers, " 'educated beyond their intelligence,' masters of useless knowledge and doctors of futility. There are enough of them already." The speech of the "University augur" was "perfectly phrased and delivered in a fashion to emphasize its metrical prose."

Thereupon, Alling amidst "reverent silence" ceremonially invested Valentine with the insignia of office: a master key to the University buildings, the University seal, and the charter. Valentine's inaugural, given in a "pleasingly informal manner," was interrupted by waves of applause and jaunty touches evoked ripples of laughter. Expanding on the articles of his educational creed set forth the day before, he spoke with uncompromising disdain of sham or tinsel goals. It was his high aspiration that the library and laboratory would prove more appealing than the gymnasium and the fraternity house. Overemphasis on intercollegiate sports, football in particular, amounted to "sophomoric distortion" to which the U. of R. would not yield, and the "fine art of ballyhoo" came in for some rough drubbing. The greatness of a university, he insisted, was measured by "the extent to which it contributes to the progress of thought and character," by the intellectual qualities of its graduates. "We have created a new leisure and a new luxury," he declared to an audience still haunted by the uncertainties of a depressed economy, but until as a nation we can think clearly and dispassionately, we cannot solve the problems our conquest of nature has presented."

Once more, he promised that the University would serve its home community more effectively than ever. "The pen of the scholar, the microscope of the scientist, the baton of the musician, the voice of the administrator," it was eloquently proclaimed, "all are parts of a larger unity and a larger aim." At the close, a prolonged audience ovation ratified the philosophy the President had enunciated so forcefully and so persuasively. An organ prelude and music by the Rochester Civic Orchestra, Guy Fraser Harrison in charge, heightened the splendor of the exercises, which two Baptist clergymen opened and closed with prayer.

Some 700 guests then converged upon the Alumni Gymnasium for luncheon and more speeches. Since ill-health prevented former President Rhees from attending, he dramatically greeted the company by the miracle of radio. His voice came through "as distinct and vigorous as though issuing from the head table," it was reported. To high praise for Valentine, Rhees coupled reminders of university problems that awaited resolution, such as "the menace from the proposals of educational theorists which may make students the subjects of experimental procedure rather than the comrades of older scholars in the pursuit of learning."

Presidents Frank Aydelotte of Swarthmore, Stanley King of Amherst, and James R. Angell of Yale took part in the postprandial oratory. All alike referred affectionately to their newly installed colleague and indulged in snippets of light comment. Aydelotte and King dwelt on the pitfalls, the joys, and the rewards that befell the academic administrator, and the former urged, as of paramount importance, that Valentine's duties should be so arranged "as to allow him to function as an educational leader." An after dinner speaker of surpassing excellence, Angell quoted the hackneyed observation that the university executive was "a pillar of brass by day and a pillar of gas by night." For the burden of his remarks he excoriated special teacher loyalty oaths and well-intentioned though misguided patriotic societies that advocated them. Stifling of freedom of learning and teaching by contemporary European dictators of varied colors carried warning lessons for the United States, he said. 11

That evening Yalemen of the Rochester area entertained Valentine at an informal dinner, which must have been a welcome variant after two days of pomp and pageantry. At the Eastman Theatre, the School Symphony Orchestra, Howard Hanson on the podium, gave a concert that included a suite from the Director's own "Merry Mount." Features of graduate homecoming on Saturday were a dance and a football match with Wesleyan in which the visitors, though they fell below the U. of R. in yards gained in rushing, and in first downs, notched up a statistical margin of victory. Despite animadversions on football in the inaugural speech, the new President attended the contest.

Faculty men, reflecting on the presidential address, enthusiastically applauded the youthful chief executive as "a man of oak." A greatly respected civic voice would presently say, "The future of the U. of R. seems to be one of brilliant promise," partly "because of the aggressive leadership of its young, but remarkably mature, new president." That judgment was echoed in circles of townsmen and in newspaper rooms, though some sports columnists conjectured that the presidential utterances on football, together with a losing season, might mean that the sport, far from being subsidized, would be dropped. Protests, however, added up to no more than a muted rumble. 12

VI

The demands upon the energies and thought of a conscientious twentieth century academic executive are so numerous, his hours are so busy and full that lesser mortals can only marvel as to how he contrives to discharge the host of obligations and responsibilities that devolve upon him. Needless to say, Valentine participated in a bewildering assortment of committees--community, national, and international--of organizations, --Rochester Community Chest, the Civic Music Association, the Y.M.C.A., the Chamber of Commerce, Smith College Trustee Board, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Trustee Board, to recall representative examples--and, undaunted, he accepted directorships in several business firms. Just as Martin Brewer Anderson well personified the old-time college president, so Alan Valentine may be taken as an exemplar of the new era university executive.

Calls from all manner of societies and institutions flowed across the presidential desk, to many of which Valentine responded affirmatively; his private formula for an address was "a judicious mixture of idealism, exhibitionism, and mendicancy." A less than complete compilation lists more than 200 speeches written and delivered--some of them more than once--during his Rochester tenure. While addresses at educational institutions extending from secondary schools through universities comprised the larger part of his public utterances, Valentine likewise shared his ideas and convictions with so-called service and women's clubs, with educational associations, medical and scientific bodies, church, business, religious, alumni, and character-building groups. A Commencement address, he thought, "is usually an ordeal for both audience and speaker...twenty minutes of imported platitudes." He frequently dwelt upon the importance of character, vague, elusive, vital, and he was inclined to be self-deprecatory, with regard to his speeches, writing that he was "appalled by the fact that I do not speak English...and that I am as repetitious and verbose as the chairman of a local woman's club."

With the help of a tutor Valentine picked up a working knowledge of the Spanish language and, on invitation of the Division of Cultural Cooperation of the Department of State, lectured (1945) on the large theme of democracy in higher education at the National University of Mexico. So small was the original audience that Valentine declined to speak, but a collection of government workers was rounded up and supplemented by exchange students from Smith College, who patiently listened to the President lecture in halting Spanish! 13

Quite in harmony with rooted practice, hilarious parodies greeted the President when he appeared before Rochester "service clubs," the Ad Club, for example, bursting forth (1937) with a novel rendition of "Clementine."

To the Campus came a Yale-man,
When the reign of Rhees was done;
This his mission: to fruition
Bring the things by Rush begun.

Here's to Alan; Here's to Alan;
Here's to Alan Valentine!
May the river... send no shiver
Down the spine of Valentine.

Sunday morns, the second-guessers
Holler: "What a lousy line!"
With the pigskin in a tailspin,
They're for scalping Valentine.

Make a touchdown! Make a touchdown!
Block that kick! And hold that line!
You're elected... and expected
To beat Ho-bart, Valentine!

Not wishing to be outshone, a joint luncheon of Cornell and U. of R. alumni served up (1939) a version of "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze."

Once he was happy but now he's forlorn,
The yield on investment is caught in a storm.
Left in this world to weep and to mourn,
Betrayed when just out of his teens.
Now the college he loves she was wealthy,
And he tries all he knows her to please,
But her bonds they won't give him one quarter enough
Her cash is left standing to FRE-EZE?

From one job to the next
With the greatest of ease
Like the daring young man
On the flying trapeze,
His assignment's a tough one?
All people to please-
And not let his cash melt away.

VII

At the request of friends and associates, Valentine issued a selection of the speeches that were written in his first Rochester years. Entitled Dusty Answers, the volume was "offered" to his wife, the source of "any felicities of thought or phrase" it contained. Lucidly contrived, persuasive in content, replete with tentative counsels and arresting aphorisms, this representative collection of addresses made rewarding reading long after delivery; some other speeches were published in newspapers and periodicals. 14

In his sixth decade, Valentine, after stepping aside at the U. of R., completed "a self-analysis," "a public self-evaluation," in which his entire career was interpreted as an unending quest for personal education, formal and otherwise. Avowedly, he intended in this book to carry forward "the story of the education of an American from the point where Henry Adams [one of his favorite authors] left off." As the writing progressed, Valentine considered calling this candid, deeply interesting, and occasionally amusing autobiography Gullible's Travels, but decided instead on Trial Balance, subtitled The Education of an American, imitative of the Henry Adams classic. Choosing to call himself "Angus," Valentine wished to portray this "fictional character as much [like] myself as I can make him, but still a figment of my rationalizations" (p. 10). For many a reader who imagined they knew Valentine well, Trial Balance revealed a man and a mind with which previously they were in fact almost wholly unacquainted.

Certain passages in Trial Balance, it must be noted, are hard to digest or are abstruse to the point of bafflement and evasiveness. Besides tantalizing silences, the sections on the Rochester third of his adult life are exasperatingly thin, and clear overtones of disillusionment concerning education in America tend to chill sensitive spirits engaged in the higher learning. Even so, a chapter on "The Academic Mind" is replete with quotable quotes which suggest the flavor of Valentine's recollections and philosophical speculations, though, of course, selectivity runs the risk of distortion.

University executives, Valentine wrote, "gradually lose their intellectual habits of mind amid the activities of being the top sergeant of an academic platoon" (p. 122). For a university president, "Words are his weapon, omniscience his guise, and indigestion his occupational disease " (p. 122). "Successful leadership in a university...becomes a test of tact and patience, and for Angus to maintain either for a long period was a major effort" (p.125). At times, Angus proved "obtuse, stubborn...and lost his sense of humor under pressure...He charged ideas and people with his head down" (p.9). "His instinct was to keep all but one or two deeply loved people at arm's length; he rarely gave himself completely and without an escape hatch" (p.245). "There were many academic occasions that demanded of Angus a sustained minor hypocrisy, at which he became practiced" (p. 131).

"Humanism meant to Angus a point of view, however derived, a lifetime search for an understanding of means minds and emotions, a perspective on their long struggle upward, and some acquaintance with their ideals and dreams as voiced by their best spokesmen" (p. 140).

Again, "If the American undergraduate college has any purpose beyond the purely intellectual it is to promote ethical principles" (p. 129). ...The colleges need more professors who openly and cheerfully question all values, especially in educational ends and procedures, in social routines and in acceptance of the commonplace" (p.133).

Once more, "No man with sense could undergo thirty years of education and coeducation without a high opinion of the intelligence and competence of American women" (p.252). "To reach agreement on what [educational] quality is, or how to produce it, or toward what goals it should be directed, seemed beyond the power of the collective academic mind" (p.142). Dean George H. Whipple and the professors at the U. of R. Medical School "were willing to add the education of their President to their other charity services, and he found their problems of instruction, patient care, and public relations absorbing." (p. 153).

VIII

Alert to the obligations of citizenship, Valentine took an active part, by word and deed, in national and international affairs. In the late 1930's he frequently and vigorously criticized the domestic and foreign policies of the Roosevelt Administration, opposing, for example, after the Second World War broke over Europe, the revision, of the so-called neutrality legislation and the adoption of the Lend-Lease Act. It seemed to him that the course being pursued by the White House created and encouraged "an atmosphere of, not peace, but preparation for war."

Although not affiliated with any political party--abrasive strictures on the Republican party dot Trial Balance --Valentine accepted the post of executive director of the National Committee of Democrats-for-Willkie in the Roosevelt-Willkie presidential race of 1940. On the eve of the election he predicted that more than twenty percent of the registered Democrats outside of the South would vote for Willkie and that switch would be "a heavy and perhaps the decisive factor" in the balloting. Activity on behalf of Willkie, almost forgotten in Trial Balance, persuaded Valentine that more voters responded to emotional symbols than to logic and taught him that professional politicians regarded an amateur candidate [i. e., Willkie] as an embarrassment. 15

Following the entry of the United States into the Second World War, Valentine shared the chairmanship of an important Rochester Council on Post-War Problems--a further indication of the way in which the University had bearing upon the life of the community at almost every turn. Voted a year's leave of absence in 1948 by the University corporation, the President took command of the Marshall Plan (E.C.A.) mission to the Netherlands, where he proved a conscientious and effective public servant. Not content to work away in an office, he inspected industrial plants and farms and conferred with Dutch business and political leaders. He helped also to prepare the ground for the economic integration of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg in the Benelux combination, and stoutly, though ineffectually, resisted intense State Department pressure upon the Netherlands government to grant full self-government to the colony of Indonesia immediately. On an official trip to Washington, he was upset by the "frustrations, inefficiencies, and pure madnesses...of the Washington scene." He departed with the conviction that "wild horses could not drag me into any permanent affiliation with our present bureaucratic madhouse." His management of affairs in the Netherlands elicited heart-warming plaudits from Dutch authorities, and he returned home--"knowing that his year had been the most rewarding of his life"--as a Grand Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau. 16

IX

The Valentine era at the U. of R. has been labeled, "The Period of National Recognition." The benchmarks of the administration, to be elaborated farther along, include notable appointments and innovations in the science departments, the expansion and enrichment of graduate study, a revised and much strengthened version of the undergraduate honors program, the institution of class advisers, careful management of University resources, abetted by the financial officers, and fruitful cooperation with the government during the Second World War and its aftermath.

For most of their Rochester years the Valentines lived a rather aloof existence in the huge Eastman House (at their request the Eastman hunting trophies were turned over to the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences), and to them in 1937 a second daughter was born. Since upkeep of the estate was indefensibly expensive and because the Valentines did not wish to raise their children in "a museum," the presidential household moved in 1948 to a comfortable residence that had been bequeathed to the University at the southeast corner of East Avenue and Berkeley Street. (The families of Presidents de Kiewiet and Wallis subsequently occupied this home.)

Evidently Mrs. Valentine relished the role of the University's first lady, and she busied herself with cultural and community affairs. She was very much interested, for example, in designing the internal appointments of dormitories for the College for Women. She served, too, as vice-president of a Rochester planning and housing council and pushed hard for the rehabilitation of blighted districts of the city and for a master plan of future development. The President found relaxation in a fast game of squash or tennis and in the three "r's" at a summer rendezvous in North Haven, Maine--reading, writing, and recreation in the form of gardening, felling trees, or sailing.

Under circumstances to be related in another context, Valentine resigned late in 1949, the resignation going into effect at the close of the academic year. At that time, he had no definite plans for his future, though he wished "to keep moving and moving fast," while careful to avoid making a wrong decision. Lucrative suggestions came his way, but he would go into business only if family expenses made that inescapable; he wanted time, he wrote, "quietly to figure out himself, what he is really like, what he ought to do"--which may well have been the germ of Trial Balance. For all his deep interest in international affairs, Valentine was averse to becoming ensnarled in the Washington bureaucracy; a government opening of real significance, however, would appeal to him, preferably in the State Department or Foreign Service overseas..." or an assignment as "roving troubleshooter" for the State Department, holding ambassadorial rank and with direct access to the Secretary of State. 17

For a brief period after the beginning of the Korean War he undertook a second adventure in government, taking "the hottest seat in Washington" as Administrator of the Economic Stability Agency. Not surprisingly, he was soon reviled by hostile critics as "vituperative, bumptious, inflexible, and prejudiced." Four months of furious infighting with tough-textured Washington bureaucrats were quite enough and Valentine handed up his resignation. After a short term of leadership of a Committee for Free Asia to combat communism in the Orient, the former President turned writer and historian. 18

Visits to Rochester were infrequent, but he returned in June of 1966 to witness the dedication of a graduate residence hall to which his name was affixed and to receive an honorary doctorate of laws, "The tribute a grateful University pays in recognition of [his] enduring contributions..."

Footnotes to Chapter 25

Minutes of meetings of the dedication committee, extending from Jan. 15 to Oct. 2, 1930 may be found in the Miner Papers, Box 191. RAR, IX (1930), no. 1, Dedication Number. New York Times, Sept. 28, Oct. 9, 1930. Time, XVI, Oct. 6, 1930, 67. Rhees Library Archives contains a fat scrapbook of newspaper clippings and related materials on the dedication.
"Dedication of Buildings of the College for Men. The U. of R., River Campus. October 10 to 12, 1930." Rhees Library Archives.
New York Times, June 15, 1931. Trustee Records, June 14, 1930. Raymond L. Thompson to Rush Rhees, August 28, 1933. Rhees Papers. Lewis H. Weed to Rhees, October 24, 1933. Ibid.
"Memorandum for Mr. Miner," June 24, 1933. Rhees Papers. "Memorandum for Trustee Committee," October [?] 1933. Ibid. Raymond L. Thompson to Rush Rhees, August 28, 1933. Ibid. Rhees to Thompson, August 31, 1933. Ibid.
The file of confidential correspondence on the presidency and the minutes of the selection committee repose in Rhees Library with the inscription, "Not To Be Opened Until January, 1990..." William S. McCann to Edward G. Miner, June 30, 1932. Miner Papers, Box 197. McCann to Miner, Nov. 12 (apparently), 23, 1932. Ibid., Box 195. Raymond N. Ball to Miner, Dec. 3, 1932. Ibid. Trustee Records, VII, Dec. 16, 1933. Miner to Rush Rhees, March 9, June 27, July 13, 26, August 13, 1934. Rhees Papers. Rhees to Miner, July 22, 1933, May 25, 1934. Ibid. Rhees to Joel H. Hildebrand, June 1, 1934. Ibid. Hildebrand to Miner, June 6, 1934 (copy). Ibid. Hildebrand to Rhees, June 29, 1934. Ibid. R D& C, May 1, 1934. Conversation A. J. May with William A. Sawyer (brother-in-law of Hildebrand), May 22, 1967. New York Times, August 9, 1934.
R D&C, January 3, 1935. New York Times, January 6, 1935. "Answers to Valentine Questions," Fall, 1934. Rhees Papers. Rush Rhees to Alan C. Valentine, Nov. 19, 1934. Ibid. Trustee Records, VII, December 15, 1934. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, H (1952), pp. 88-89. Alan Valentine, Trial Balance, passim. On the Swarthmore years, see, Valentine, Dusty Answers (Rochester, 1941), pp. 63-70. Valentine, The English Novel (New York, 1927). Valentine, Biography (New York, 1927).
Rush Rhees to Alan C. Valentine, January 3, 1935. Rhees Papers. Rhees to Charles A. Brown, January 4, 23, 1935. Ibid. Alan Valentine to Rhees, February 22, 1935. Ibid. Tower Times, X, January 11, 1935. Campus, LX, April 19, 1935.
[Rochester] City Directory, 1935, p. 16. This section has drawn heavily upon Blake McKelvey, Rochester: An Emerging Metropolis, 1925-1961, (Rochester, 1961) (hereafter cited as McKelvey, IV), esp. chapters VI-X.
Campus, LXI, September 27, 1935.
R T-U, November 1, 1935. New York Times, November 16, 1935. Alan Valentine to John R. Slater, October 22, 24, November 4, 1935. Valentine Papers. Slater to Valentine, October 31, 1935. Ibid.
R T-U, November 12, 16, 1935. R D&C, November 12-16, 24, 1935. New York Times, Nov. 15-16, 1935. Time, November 25, 1935. Anon., "All About that Mace," RAR, XIV (1934-35), no. 2, 41. "The Pageantry of Commencement," Ibid., XVIII (May 1957), no. 5, 11. "Proceedings and Addresses at the Inauguration of Alan Valentine...," Bulletin of the U. of R., Special No. 1, April, 1936. Recordings of the speeches are in the Rhees Library Archives.
RHSP, XVII (1939), 359. R D&C, November 23, 1935.
Alan Valentine, Trial Balance, p. 123. Valentine, Dusty Answers, p. 43. Valentine to Richard P. McKeon, February 9, 1945. Valentine Papers. RAR, XXIII (February-March 1945), no. 3, 17.
Alan Valentine, Dusty Answers.
R T-U, September 21, 1939. New York Times, November 4, 1940. Alan Valentine, "The Politician as Housekeeper for the Nation," Saturday Review, XXX (1947), 20 ff.
Valentine, Trial Balance, Chapter VIII. Time, LIII, April 11, 1949, 39. Valentine, "Benelux: Pilot Plant of Economic Union," Yale Review, XLIV (1954-1955), 23-32. Valentine to Edward G. Miner, February 22, 1949. Valentine Papers.
Alan Valentine to Owen D. Young, November 25, 1949. Valentine Papers. Valentine to John R. Slater, November 10, 1949. Ibid. Valentine to Marion B. Folsom, November 22, 1949. Ibid. Valentine to Thomas E. Dewey, June 14, 1950. Ibid. Valentine to William Benton, June 6, 1950. Ibid.
Valentine, Trial Balance, Chapters X, XI. Trustee Records, January 31, 1948. "Trustees Approve Use of Babcock House as President's Home," RAR, XXVI (January-February 1948), no. 3, 9. Time, LVI, October 23, 1950, 21. Apart from Trial Balance, Valentine authored The Age of Conformity (1954); Vigilante Justice (1955); Lord George Germain (1962); 1913: Year of Transition (1962); Fathers to Sons (1963); Lord North (1967).