USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > Harvard College class of ninety-seven : fiftieth anniversary report, 1897 > Part 12
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October 6, 1897, at Quincy, Illinois. They had two children: Georgann Mary, born December 2, 1898, and Elizabeth Holyoke, born August 31, 1901.
FENNER ALBERT CHACE
C YHACE, the son of George Albert and Sarah Annah (Brownell) Chace, was born January 9, 1875, at Fall River, Massachu- setts. He prepared at the B. M. C. Durfee High School in that city. After four years with our Class, he received his A.B. at our graduation. In 1900 he entered the Medical School, from which he was graduated in 1905. Since leaving college he has been a practicing physician, confining his practice to dermatology.
He married Mary Deane Buffington, February 19, 1907, at Fall River. Their son, Fenner Albert, Jr., was born October 5, 1908. He received his A.B. from Harvard in 1930 and his Ph.D. four years later. He served in World War II as a captain in the Air Forces.
THORNTON CHARD
I STUDIED the fine arts and architecture for a short time at the University of Berlin," writes Chard, "for five years at Harvard, and for two winters in Paris. After practising architecture for thirty years in New York City, I returned to a farm at Cazenovia, New York, to devote myself to outdoor interests, especially those having to do with horses, about which I have been writing ar- ticles, requiring much study and research, for more than twenty years. I have also bred and schooled horses in a small way and have been in the saddle, all told, for sixty-one years.
"While I take a modest pride in a number of interesting build- ings designed by me and completed under my supervision, I take an equal pride in seeing my writings in print.
"To me life's durable satisfactions are to have been the father of worth-while daughters and the grandfather of three thriving grandchildren. In other words, to have had a long and happy domestic life."
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Chard, the son of James F. and Elizabeth (Chester) Chard, was born August 29, 1873, at Buffalo, New York. He prepared at the Westminster School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. His marriage to Ethel Netherclift Barclay took place July 18, 1900, at Caze- novia. Their daughters are: Ethel Barclay (Mrs. Manierre), born December 22, 1901; and Beatrice Barclay (Mrs. Carpenter), born November 18, 1909. Chard's two brothers also attended Har- vard. The late Thomas Chester Chard was a member of the Class of 1890, and Walter Goodman Chard was graduated with the Class of 1904.
During the first World War, Chard was a field director in the American Red Cross in charge of three forts in New York harbor. He is the author of articles on architecture, horse history and horse breeding, and has translated from German and Spanish books on horses. He is a member of the Harvard Club of New York.
JOHN EDWIN CHATMAN
A FTER looking at my twenty-fifth report," writes Chatman, "I find that I am still in the same rut I mentioned then, as to habitats, friends, and business. There seems to be only one reason for my having got stuck in it - I have been very happy in it. The only escapade was back previous to the unpleasantness of '29, when I spent several months in Europe. Among other places, I visited Spain, where I hired a car and driver and saw quite a bit of the less-visited places. I was amazed at how the spending of a few dollars there put me under the suspicion of being one of the Rockefeller clan.
"For a long period I played some golf. I did a lot of sailing until my lovely yawl went down in the hurricane. All boats are lovely.
"My principal interest now is in the activities of my son in New York City, where he has more than held his own. I have three beautiful granddaughters who can't use that adjective about their grandfather.
"For a long time my contact with Harvard has been in the
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ownership of twelve houses down in Nortons Woods. These houses have been largely occupied by Harvard professors and instructors. For several years before he became 'Prexie,' I was landlord to James Conant, and at that time I had made up my mind that he was an extraordinary fellow. I have a particularly choice collec- tion of stories of my dealings with the professors.
"As in my thinking, successful living is measured in happiness gained and contributed. I owe very much to my wife with whom I am rounding out the forty-ninth year of successful living. Much of our time is spent in the homestead at Kennebunkport, Maine, where the family has hung on without a break for more than one hundred and fifty years.
"I shall be very serene at the reunion unless someone addresses us as 'My Friends,' in which case I probably shall see 'red.'"
Chatman, the son of John Wesley and Jane (Littlefield ) Chat- man, was born August 18, 1874, at Kennebunkport, Maine. He prepared for college at the Chauncey Hall School in Boston, and was with our Class for four years, receiving an A.B. at our gradua- tion. He married Sarah Newman Titcomb, June 16, 1898, at Kennebunkport. Their son, Joseph Titcomb Chatman, was born April 17, 1900.
Since graduation Chatman has been an engineer and contractor for heating and ventilating apparatus. He writes that the Har- vard Medical buildings were his first large job.
DAVID CHEEVER
HEEVER, the son of David Williams Cheever, '52, M.D. '58, C LL.D. '94, and Anne Caroline Nichols, was born June 25, 1876, at Boston. He prepared for college at Hopkinson's School in Boston. As an undergraduate he was a member of the Institute of 1770, D.K.E., Hasty Pudding Club, Delta Phi Club, Natural His- tory Society, Harvard Memorial Society, Aupadov, O.K. Society. He married Jane Welles Sargent, June 8, 1907, at Wellesley, Massa- chusetts. She died March 28, 1940, at Boston. Their children are: David, Jr., born May 21, 1908; Francis Sargent, born August 20, 1909; Charles Ezekiel, born May 25, 1911; Daniel Sargent, born
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December 19, 1916; and Jane Hunnewell (Mrs. Charles P. Ly- man), born December 3, 1919. There are thirteen grandchildren. Cheever writes that seven are boys and will go to Harvard with- out doubt.
David Cheever, Jr., was graduated with the Harvard Class of '31 and received his M.B.A. in 1934. Francis Sargent Cheever, '32, M.D. '36, served as a commander in the Medical Corps, U. S. Naval Reserve. Charles Ezekiel Cheever, A.B. 1934, served as Staff Sergeant, Signal Corps, A.U.S. Daniel Sargent Cheever, '39, was a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve. Cheever himself worked on the Medical Advisory Board No. 13, Selective Service System.
Cheever has served as president of the Boston Medical Library and vice-president of the Harvard Alumni Association. He has written articles and monographs which have appeared in current medical publications. He is a member of the American Surgical Association, of which he has been president, Boston Surgical Soci- ety, of which he has been president, New England Surgical So- ciety, of which he has been president, Société Internationale de Chirurgie, Society of Clinical Surgery, Interurban Surgical Soci- ety, Massachusetts Medical Society, American Medical Association, Royal Society of Medicine, London, of which he is an honorary member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts Historical Society, Sigma Xi, and Alpha Omega Alpha. In 1939 he was Bevan Lecturer of the Chicago Surgical Society, and in 1941 was Balfour Lecturer to the University of Toronto, Canada. His clubs are the Somerset of Boston and the Harvard Clubs of Boston and New York.
Cheever writes: "Roger Scaife's questionnaire and exhorta- tions make it clear that each of us has a mandate to submit an apologia pro vita sua, with such flavor of philosophy and wit as he can command, but with Veritas as his chief guide. So be it.
"When I passed my examinations for Harvard I was still sixteen years old and physically by no means precocious. On admission I was barely seventeen while my classmates averaged nineteen, so I was at a considerable disadvantage in the highly competitive life of college. I roomed with one of my oldest friends in a dwell-
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ing house northeast of Memorial Hall, as far as possible from the madding crowds, a plan which was thought by our parents to be conducive to study. Ironically enough, being next door to Me- morial Hall, I ate at a club table on Mt. Auburn Street. My room- mate and I differed radically in our choice of extra-curricular activities and at the end of freshman year we parted amicably and remained the best of friends. Thereafter, I roomed with Henry Endicott at 13 Littles Block, cheek-by-jowl with Scaife and Gannett, Stevenson and Fenno, Monte Boal, Charlie Paine, and 'Inky' Bowditch. Five of us are now living.
"I was shy, sensitive, and ambitious. When the call for candi- dates for our freshman crew appeared in the Crimson, I joined the crowd who passed in review before the great David Vail, varsity captain, who, when I gave my weight as 120 (stretched at that!), glanced up and asked: 'Coxswain?' Thus perished that ambition! I tried to play football, and, as quarterback, sweated through many a game with local schools only to have Billy Garri- son come down from the varsity squad for all class games. I never made my numerals. I urged Scaife to teach me a tune on the mandolin so I could try for the instrumental clubs, but that failed. By all the rules of psychiatry these frustrations should have plunged me into a psychoneurosis, but we did not know much about such luxuries in those days, and I was probably saved by some compensatory successes.
"I had no particular difficulty with studies, and I was appar- ently a welcome partner for debutante young ladies of Boston's Back Bay, with whom I spent many evenings acquiring a very valuable form of education which I recommend warmly to young men. Probably I overdid this a bit, for it was hard to get up for 9 o'clocks, and an egg shake and roll at Herbie Foster's were scarcely an adequate breakfast.
"My choice of studies does not strike me in retrospect as wholly satisfactory. Aiming as I was for the Medical School, I took the necessary pre-medical studies - physics, chemistry, botany and zoology - and continued French and German. Perhaps I enjoyed most history under Channing, zoology under Parker, and philoso- phy with James, Royce, and Palmer. With the wisdom of hind-
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sight I think I ought to have aimed for personalities rather than . courses: Briggs, Wendell and Shaler. On the other hand, I was disappoinetd in Charles Eliot Norton and Fine Arts 4. In my senior year I awoke to the fact that I was getting good grades and developed the laudable ambition to make Phi Beta Kappa, but the rally was too late, though I must have come pretty near as I secured a magna.
"One's appraisal of values changes with the years! For diver- sions besides those mentioned I joined the Hasty Pudding group of revellers. I went gunning with Frank Shaw and Charlie Paine and became something of an ornithologist. I rowed on the river and mastered imperfectly a single scull, and played just enough tennis and golf to convince me that I had little aptitude for either. After freshman year I joined a club table at Memorial and enjoyed the larger group of wider interests. In retrospect: I should have enjoyed college more had I been two years older, but faced as I was by six years more of medical studies, I am thankful that I got an early start. It would be wiser, I am sure, if the average age of admission were seventeen rather than nineteen.
"I found myself in the right pew in the Medical School. I en- joyed both the scientific and humanistic side of the work. Then came a surgical internship at the Boston City Hospital, a trip abroad for study and medical sightseeing, and an appointment on the surgical visiting staff on my return. My marriage took place in 1907. In 1913 I joined the surgical staff of the newly founded Peter Bent Brigham Hospital as junior colleague of Dr. Harvey Cushing and remained until I reached the prescribed retiring age of sixty-three. During all this time I taught surgical anatomy and surgery at the Medical School, retiring finally as associate professor of surgery. More detailed facts of this period may be found in the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report and in Who's Who.
"World Wars I and II both held bitter disappointment for me. In the former a Harvard Surgical Unit headed by me staffed a British Base Hospital in France during the winter of 1915 and 1916. We thus kept the faith with the British and earned their gratitude, but the service was very disappointing for reasons which need not be recorded here. When the United States
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entered the war in April, 1917, it appeared that I could not again be spared from school and hospital so soon, and by the time that obstacle was surmounted, came the armistice. During World War II, when I was too old for service, I was happy to be recalled to act as surgeon-in-chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and professor of surgery during the absence at the front of Dr. Elliott C. Cutler. But eight months of much-prized service ended in a serious illness which put me definitely on the sidelines.
"The touchstone of medical science is research, which usually is conducted in the laboratory. In surgery, such research means almost inevitably experimental investigation on the living animal, usually a mammal and preferably a dog (or a monkey), which afford conditions most like the human. The hope of advancing the confines of surgical knowledge sent me to the laboratory, but I found the work so utterly distasteful to me that I could not con- tinue to wound my sensibilities. I do not profess that animals are more dear to me than to many honored colleagues, but men's souls vary in their vulnerability. I took keen satisfaction in ap- plying the principles of scientific medicine to the cure of disease, and I hope that in the observation and interpretation of conditions and results I was contributing a mite here and there to the sum of human knowledge. This is clinical research, and it is my firm con- viction that it is just as truly research and as much deserving of recognition as any performed in the laboratory. This is not the fact, however.
"What are 'life's durable satisfactions?' This Jovian expression could have been uttered only by President Charles W. Eliot and I am sure that he would place first the exquisite happiness of a perfect marriage, in the setting of a home peopled by normal children. This was my privilege for thirty-three years. Let it be understood that anything hereafter mentioned yields precedence to that.
"Unhesitatingly I should place near the top in a category of satisfactions the gift of perfect health. With health all things may be attained, even character building is easier, though happily ill health and virtue are not incompatible. Next must come suc- cess in one's chosen vocations. Mine have been the practice and
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teaching of surgery. Success in the former is very real and strik- ing, the relief of a patient's misery and the actual saving of his life are near miracles which admit of no doubt as to their authenticity, and each instance is a true high spot for the surgeon. Success in teaching is less self-evident, but pupils have a way, both in the classroom and in later years, of revealing their approval of a teacher's work. I think that no two vocations can afford such satisfactions as these, but, of course, I know that anyone who practises any of the arts and professions has the same conviction. I am a member of the appropriate local and national professional societies and have been president of several, and an honorary member of one in England and another in Argentina. My blue ribbon in this class was my election as president of the American Surgical Association - an office which my father held fifty years previously.
"My intimates know, and others, when I tell them that I have had a hand in teaching forty consecutive classes at the Harvard Medical School, will guess that Harvard has been my best-beloved mistress. Six generations of Cheevers in direct descent have graduated from Harvard College, and for eighty-six years there has always been one on the medical faculty. Were I playing poker, I would raise the ante on the strength of four sons who have received A.B.'s from Harvard. If Frank Kernan (bless his memory ) should have 'called' me, I would lay on the table four sons and a son-in-law and declare that among the six of us we hold ten Harvard degrees (with another just over the horizon). Do I take the jack-pot? Doubtless I shall learn when we meet next June. That brings me to another top high spot - my election by the alumni to the Board of Overseers.
"Co-education in preparatory school, college, and in most pro- fessional schools has seemed to me unwise. Recently, after years of firm resistance by the Faculty, women were admitted to the Medical School. As I was conspicuous in opposing it first in the Faculty and later before the Board of Overseers, perhaps I owe an explanation of what many may regard as an illiberal attitude. I yield to no man in admiration of womankind and in belief in their high destiny. They deserve what they have won in this
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country - complete social, political, and economic equality with men. But I know that, biologically speaking, woman is comple- mentary rather than identical with man. Nature has entrusted to her peculiar functions and highly privileged duties, which man cannot discharge and which are basic to the existence of man- kind. Granting that she is the equal of man in most vocations and the superior in some, I feel that in a few - among them com- batant military service, the ministry, and medicine - she is not. A definite misfortune is that so many women doctors, having re- ceived a long and expensive training costing many times the tui- tion fee, subsequently marry and give up the profession, or if they do not, usually make but a limited success of both medicine and homemaking. A storm of protest greets this assertion. Many women cannot be reconciled to the special provision made by na- ture for their discharge of an incomparably important function. That absurd little man, Kaiser Wilhelm II, when he pontificated about women's realm being 'Küche, Kinder und Kirche, aroused implacable resentment among most women of the western world who were not of the Herrenvolk, and justifiably so, since he spoke with all the scorn of which a lordly German male is capable. If, in order that women should attain their right to a first-rate medical education, it were necessary that they be admitted to the Harvard Medical School, I should not protest, but the fact is, of the seventy-odd Class A schools in the country, only four or five do not admit women, and since there are two of this majority in Boston, there could be no hardship whatever in exclusion by Harvard. Until now the medical faculty has always opposed the admission of women, and the students are almost universally against it. Is it too much to ask that there be at least one school in the country where men may be educated in medicine without the embarrassing and often distracting presence of women? I should be satisfied if Harvard were unique in this respect. Odd, old-fashioned man that I am, with only forty years' experience in teaching medicine, I am glad that I belong to the old regime. But, since 'superior women in limited numbers' (to quote the directive of the governing boards ) are being admitted, I say 'God bless them and may they double our joys and share our burdens!'
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"But back to Scaife's questionnaire. Religious views? How re- luctant men are to discuss this subject! In a recent Fiftieth Re- port where this question was emphasized, but four men did more than to name a denomination. Of these one said he was an atheist, another an agnostic, another spoke of finding inspiration and help in church worship, and only one attempted (in a most interesting way) to describe and rationalize his belief. I do not find much difficulty in discussing the matter, for my views are of the simplest. I have nothing of the mystic about me. But little approaching revelation has been vouchsafed me. Having the view- point of the scientist, mine is the almost inevitable skepticism which accepts as veracious only those things which are perceived by our senses and interpreted by our faculties. Thus I cannot fail to sense the lack of agreement (I prefer not to say 'conflict') be- tween science and religion. I have read a bit in the field of reli- gious metaphysics, especially the words of noted scientists who, with apparent satisfaction to themselves, attempt to show how science and religious belief may be reconciled, but always, I am sorry to say, without completely convincing me. Naturally, I am keenly aware of the reality, though non-material, of abstract con- cepts such as love and hate, truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, courage and cowardice, generosity and selfishness, which are at- tributes, not of the body but of the spirit, and I am unhappily conscious of the extent to which science and technology have out- stripped spiritual values in our daily lives. A liberal, free, tolerant belief, uncontrolled by rigid creed or dogma, is the only one to which I can subscribe. Such a one is Unitarianism as preached by William Ellery Channing, and professed by James Freeman Clarke, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles W. Eliot, and a host of others devoted to liberalism in religion.
"It can be inferred that I am not a religious zealot, but I support organized religion as a personal and as a public obligation. I am made heart-sick by the vicious degradation of our American mores; to be specific, by the appalling increase in crimes of vio- lence, including murder, rape, homicide, robbery, and arson; of dishonesty and corruption in private and political affairs; of the moral decay in so many homes whose half million divorces an-
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nually and the circumstances attending them make a laughing stock of loyalty and chastity, to the confusion and bewilderment of our young people. Six chief educative forces mold the adoles- cent's character: the home, the school, the church, printed matter, the radio, and the cinema. The last two are the new and incred- ibly potent influences, which, like the printed word, are too often prostituted to serve private gain and thus accomplish public decadence. We Americans seem to rebel against measures of control which are unfortunately called 'censorship,' so the only way a private citizen can influence these things is by personal example and by the support of good schools and of organized religion. As to pure faith, my mind is open and eager to receive revelation.
"But back to the questionnaire! I have travelled in this country to most of the great cities on professional quests, and to Arizona, California, and Florida seeking health. I have visited Great Britain and western Europe seven times and have once glimpsed · czarist Russia. These trips have touched many a high spot and on one occasion an abyss. Let me describe one. In the summer of 1938, with my wife and college-age son and daughter, I toured France, so cordial and entrancing in the early harvest season, and spent an unforgettable three weeks in the Swiss Engadine. At the close of World War I, I had sworn a great oath never to enter Germany again, so I had planned to cross France again to reach England. But Germany was almost in sight, the young people were curious, so we drove to Insbrück in the Austrian Tyrol. The 'Anschluss' had been perpetrated, the swastika was burned into the slopes of wooded mountains and flaunted on flags and armbands. Thence over the pass to sullen Munich, disputing the highway with bands of marching Hitler youth, singing, brandish- ing staves, and yielding passage but grudgingly to the American interloper. Thence to Nuremberg, romantic mediaeval relic, where the sight of demolished synagogues over which flew the swastika, and of roadside billboards proclaiming 'Nieder mit der Jüde,' disgusted me so that, late as it was, we pushed on to Rothenburg. Then to Maintz and along the banks of the Rhine, past Cologne, where, on Sunday, in place of a religious service, a
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Nazi official in military uniform, from a pulpit in the nave of the Dom, was bawling 'Heil Hitler' and extolling the German super- man, and through the other Rhenish cities toward the Dutch frontier. The beautiful river of romance and legend had become the gloomy highway of Mars. A pall of smoke hung over it. On each bank, over double-tracked railroads, rolled endless freights of coal and munitions, on its bosom floated long barge-tows of coal and ore. The Lorelei, instead of beckoning the lonely fisher- man to his fate upon her reefs, was luring a great nation to its destruction. To the east, against sooty clouds, could be seen at Essen the baleful glare of Krupp's munition forges.
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