University of Rochester College for Women - Croceus Yearbook (Rochester, NY)

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CROCEUS 29 Retirement of Professor Lattimore and Professor Gilmore At the close of the last college year, in June, l908, Professor Sam- uel A. Lattimore and Professor Joseph I-I. Gilmore retired from active work on the university faculty. Both professors had been instructors at the University of Rochester for the past forty-one years. On Friday May 29, at the last chapel service before senior week, Professor Lattimore and Professor Gilmore gave their farewell addresses to the students. A bouquet of forty-one roses was presented to each of them in memory of their forty-one years of distinguished service to the university. It is a matter of satisfaction to all the students that neither professor has quite severed his connections with the college on his retirement, and that they have continued their interest and sympathy in all college enter- prises.

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CROCEU5 3l Professor Mixer As I Knew Him-H. R. C. 1905 It is to be regretted that you girls of 1910 have not the privilege of knowing Professor lVlixer. He was a man whom you could not know without loving, a truly gentle man, and more. I-lis scholarship and char- acter were the product of years of effort and discipline, his manner the expression of an uncommonly sweet nature. If you had been in his classes, you would probably have been impressed, as we were, with the breadth of his knowledge and the fine- ness of his taste. But l venture to say that you would have carried away a far stronger impression of the conscientious thoroughness and kind help- fulness of the teacher. I remember he once told a class that was strug- gling with beginning French, that they H would surely find it better after they got the ice broken, and were successfully in, - a metaphor which is not a fair sample of his discourses, for he seldom missed the point of difhculty. Qccasionally he would set aside lessons and give one of his ' talksf which were full of things that no young person could think out for himself, and which were unconsciously stored away by many students, to be brought out years after, at times of decision or of testing. I have heard many a man of classes graduated fifteen to thirty years ago, quote Dr. Mixer on important questions. And no less did he remember his students, for he could recall nearly every one who had passed through his classes during his long service. and in the cases of many, not only recall, but tell with interest and pride, their history after leaving college. It would delight the heart of many middle aged and old men, to hear themselves spoken of as H the boys, in the tone of part ownership and entire love, which I have often heard. It would scarcely have seemed strange if a conservative elderly man, as he was when women were admitted to our college, attached as he was to the institution and all connected with it, had regarded the new class of students as intruders. Far from that, he welcomed our coming, as repre- senting to this community a great step forward in principles of education. With delightful frankness, he once told me, at a reception given by the women students, that nothing gave him more happiness than to see the girls receiving mental and social training, for, he said, there could be no great progress from one generation to the next, until the potential mothers, as well as fathers, were liberally educated. To express his interest in our presence in the college, as well as to give us inspiration to earnest work, Dr. Mixer gave to us the portrait of Nlary Lyon, which hangs in our rooms. Even after his resignation from active service, Dr. Mixer was often seen taking a walk around the campus block, which, I believe, had been his daily constitutional for years. Nothing is more expressive of his love for U. of R. His thoughts and affections encircled it and dwelt in it. So strong was his desire to die within reach of the university, that, after