Washington and Lee University - Calyx Yearbook (Lexington, VA)

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n vLcnio nam DR. FRANCIS PENDLETON GAINES April 21, 1892 — December 31, 1963

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Dr. Fitzgerald Flournoy Dr. Flournoy dressed as Shakespeare — an artist he lived and loved. Dr. Flournoy displays the blazer of Oxford University where he became one of few Amer- icans to graduate first in his class.

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when Francis Pendleton Gaines accepted the presidency of Wash- ington and Lee in the fall of 1930, he told a Lee Chapel inaugural assem- bly, To think of this university is to believe in an ideal. To think of this ideal is to believe that still it has power. Its power is to deposit in the life of a boy something a little finer than culture, a little rarer than compe- tence, a little nobler than success; to quicken a dream in the young brain ... to furnish young personalities with potency and poise. For the rest of his life, as president of the LJniversity for 29 years and as Chancellor for four years, he served the interests of Washington and Lee, of its faculty and its student body, with a fervor and sense of respon- sibility unparalleled in Southern education. He left an imprint upon his acquaintances and associates, from the most insignificant member of the student body to men of high national importance, difficult to define, im- possible to appreciate adequately. Somehow in his vision of Washington and Lee, of its purposes and objectives, he spanned m his actions and duties the interminable gap between the University ' s remarkable heritage and tradition and its responsibility and position in the contemporary aca- demic world. He moved the LJniversity forward, financially, intellectually, morally and spiritually, creating for Washington and Lee an image of excellence, of integrity and of leadership recognized throughout the LJnited States. Wherever Francis Gaines appears as a statesman for Virginia, wrote Dr. Douglas Southall Freeman, the eminent biographer of Lee, there is new honor for the commonwealth. The same tribute can be applied to Dr. Gaines ' s contribution to Wash- ington and Lee. We are poorer for his passing, but far the richer for his living.