University of Virginia - Corks and Curls Yearbook (Charlottesville, VA)

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his own experiences had varied too widely, to limit his effectiveness to any particular social group. Thus, a swift change from Bumpass to Bar Harbor never to him seemed either sudden or singular. Of all his exceptional gifts probably the one that most quickly brought him national fame was his ability as a public speaker. There he was at his best. His impressive appearance, his limpid clearness of thought, his charm and felicity of expression, made him a power before any audience. And few great speakers have ever possessed such a voice. lts resonance, its range and register, its purity of tone, its velvety richness, all made it fall upon the ear of the listener like the sound of water to the traveller in the arid desert. His Memorial Address on Woodrow Wilson, delivered before Congress in Washington, has been declared by many of the most competent critics to have set a new high mark for modern oratory. Yet he could thrill students at an athletic mass meeting with equal ease, or give sage counsel twithout unctuous pietyl to a graduating class, as in his masterly speech, Magnani- mitas.H His six-minute talk in the Chapel, when the Archer Christian Tablet was dedicated, showed his power of compression without the sacrifice of clearness, force or beauty. Though he was an avowed apostle of the New South, seldom has the sentiment of the Old South found such a herald and interpreter as he showed himself in his address, Virginia, delivered at the unveiling of a battle monument at Petersburg. Aptly he has been called nthe refounder of the University of Virginia ; for in the history of that great institution his name will be linked with that of Thomas Jefferson. For more than a quarter of a century he guided aright the destinies of our university. And through this distinction he became the recognized interpreter of Southern education to all the nation. Truly it may be said of him that he has eternally enhanced Virginia's storied fame, as he has forever enriched the spiritual heritage of his country's glory. --ARMISTEAD M. DOBIE. l12J

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he lent both a ready ear and an open mind. Only in the light of the fullest information, only after careful study, were even his earliest decisions of policy made. After critical appraisals, he saw that certain parts of the University must be immediately strengthened, that delay here was even more than danger- ous and that, unless the immediate stitch were taken, many times the nine proverbial stitches could not repair the damage that might result. And so he heard the Macedonian cry for help from the Department of Medicine. Had he faltered, or even procrastinated, irreparable harm might well have been done to a great professional school. Thus began the movement to modernize that school in the light of almost a revolution that had been in progress in medical science and in medical teaching during the two decades before President Alderman here assumed the reins of office. As superb and as varied as were his talents. the new president could never have succeeded had he chosen to play a lone hand. The gigantic tasks facing him could be done effectively only through hearty cooperation and unstinted loyalty on the part of all the elements of the academic body politic. So, by nothing that was cheap but rather by everything that was line, he secured that cooperation and won that loyalty. He thought and acted in social not in individual terms and therein lay one element of his superb capacity for leadership. Many men, with his splendid judgment and his seasoned convictions, might well have demanded instant acceptance of carefully formulated policies merely on the strength of an ipsc dixit. But not he. When opposition was due to unreason, he was both ready and willing to dissolve that unreason through the medium of education. Though firm on essential principles, he could adopt a policy of conciliation to attain a worthy end when his Fine intelligence enabled him to perceive that the strategy of the occasion called for the velvet hand rather than the mailed list. He proved himself that rare combination of the thter and the diplomat. Then, too, I like to think of him as an exceptional student of human nature. He knew how to deal with men and women of varied rank and circumstance; he was equally at home teaching principles of elementary edu- cation to rustic audiences or setting forth with singular force and lucidity to potential donors of great wealth and broad experience the manifold Financial needs of a twentieth century university. His sympathies were far too catholic. llll

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FUNERAL SERVICE FOR DR. ALDERMAN