Mount Holyoke College - Llamarada Yearbook (South Hadley, MA)

Page 10 text:

frumine, the Juture The limes through which President Main has guided the college have been years of growth, both practical and theoretical. As if in anticipation of the current crisis in college-going population, he has maintained a policy of gradual expansion in enrollment so that by thisyear Mount Holyoke's under - graduate enrollment has increased by twenty-live percent. The endowment funds have more than doubled in the twenty years; the market value of the endowments has tripled. And up around the increasing numbers of students, with the help of in- creasing funds, have grown new homes and new tools: the physical education building, completed in 1950; the chemistry building, dedicated in 1955; and three new dormi- tories ol which the newest, Buckland, was opened in the fall of 1956. Born and educated in California, the son of a Forty-Niner, President Ham served as a Marine captain in W orld War I, and came here from Yale, where he was an associate professor of English. He brought with him an enduring interest in the ways of the world, local and international; a belief in intercollegiate cooperation, and an enthu- siasm for scholarship which he hopes to in- dulge, with research in the field of seven- teenth-centurv English literature, after re- tirement. Ix ng an advocate of combining college administration and teaching, he has continued to teach a class in English litera- ture; long a believer in the importance of spiritual traditions, he has stood with the Bible and Hymnal at Convocation, Bac- calaureates and Tuesday morning Chapels. He has proved himself a genial host. His administration has seen the establish- ment of the Seven College Conference scholarships offered bv Mount Holvoke in conjunction with six other Eastern colleges lor women, and of the Florence Purington visiting professorship, which has brought to us . 11. Auden, Frank Lloyd Wright, ami Bertrand Russell. The setting up of the Hampshire Inter-Library Center has con- stituted but one furthering of friendships with Amherst, Smith and the University of Massachusetts. On the international level, during World War II. he was host to sum- mer conferences of exiled scholars and artists, and to statesmen gathered for the Mount Holyoke Institute on the United N a t ions.

Page 9 text:

President Roswell Gray Ham leaves Mount Holyoke this June with the class of 1957. 11 is retirement marks the end of forty years of college teaching and administration in New England and the Far West. Mount Holyoke has given us four good years; President Ham has given her twenty. In those years he has endeared himself to his community of women as scholar, friend, and civic ser- vant. He has introduced two decades of freshmen to the Panganaskian ideal of Mary Lyon, and he has done much to make this institution for the whole woman a richer place in which to live and work. As teacher, he has brought alive Shakespeare's Falstaff and Lear. As admin- istrator, he has presided over a continuous development of the college's physical and financial assets. As head of the campus family, he has spent many '’gracious1' Wednesday evenings with dormitory chicken, coffee, and conversation, and, with Mrs. Ham, made the president’s house the goal of student carolers at Christmas, and a pleasant place to visit all year long. He has been a leading man in Faculty Shows, a leader of extra-campus charities, a pioneer and a preserver of tradition. So we know' that we w ill remember him. We think that some ol our memories of Mount Holyoke will be his memories too. And we dedicate this Llamarada to him knowing that in a very real sense he has made much of its message possible. Dr. and Mrs. Gettelh Dr. and Mrs. Ham.

Page 11 text:

Thus in twenty years he has come to repre- sent Mount Holyoke beyond the boundaries ol South Hadley—not only as an adminis- trative contact, but as a spirit and a per- sonality. He was one of the representative Americans who prepared statements for Hum's l airs from Shakespeare hdward R. Morrow's series, This I Be- lieve, and he spoke there in terms which may remind us of him and his college for many years to come: ly journey hitherto has been kindly, neither in a savage environ- ment nor in one protected from the shocks ol life . . . One is hard pressed to formidate a basic belief. To me it stands in terms of symbols: great people that I have partially known, great characters of the imagination that I have read and re-read, beauty that I have seen, and high purpose that 1 have felt ” Sir Galahad