USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > Harvard College class of ninety-seven : fiftieth anniversary report, 1897 > Part 21
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61
Field is a member of Temple Lodge, A.F. & A.M.
+ TYLOR FIELD
T YLOR FIELD, son of Walter Hunnewell and Abigail Murdock (Tylor) Field, was born September 26, 1875, at Cincinnati, and died there August 12, 1936. He came to Harvard from the Lawrenceville School. For five years after graduation he was sec- retary of the Bullock Electric Manufacturing Company in his native city. He then helped to organize the Ferro Concrete Con- struction Company, of which he was secretary and treasurer until 1924, when he became its president, an office he held until his death. The firm became one of the largest of its kind in the United States.
He was a civic leader in Cincinnati, serving as councilman for four years, as a director of the City Charter Committee, as a member of the Queen City Survey Committee, and as president of the Cincinnati Bureau of Government Research. He was asso- ciated with the Council of Social Agencies and related charities, and was an officer of the Community Chest and American Red Cross. His memberships included the leading clubs of Cincinnati, and he was a director in many corporations. During the first World War, he volunteered his services and was assigned to the ordnance office in Cincinnati, in charge of the ammunition sec- tion. In the fall of 1918 he entered the Army and was training at Camp Taylor when the Armistice was signed.
He was survived by his wife, the former Marion Andrews Harri- son, whom he married October 27, 1906, at Cincinnati, and their
212
HARVARD CLASS OF 1897
three children - Harrison, born July 27, 1909; Joseph Neave, born March 9, 1912; and Carol Marion (Mrs. William G. Kit- tredge), born April 3, 1916.
+ WILLIAM EVARTS FIELD
W WILLIAM EVARTS FIELD died November 18, 1935, at Framing- ham Centre, Massachusetts. He was born in Brookline on January 30, 1876, the son of William Evarts and Louisa Towne (Swan) Field, and came to Harvard from Cutler's School in Newton. From 1897 to 1902 he was in Costa Rica with the United Fruit Company. For the next three years he turned to ranching in Utah, and then spent two more years with the United Fruit Company. In 1908 he started an orange and grapefruit grove in Arizona, but gave up the venture in 1911 and sold the property in 1919. Eventually he became associated with the Prudential In- surance Company of America, ultimately as office manager of the Frederick Willis Fair agency in Boston, a position he held until his death. He was a captain in the Red Cross during the first World War.
On October 15, 1908, at Manchester, Vermont, he married Estelle Jennie Wright, who survived him.
ELMER METCALF FISHER
S
INCE leaving college," reports Elmer Fisher, "my life has been normal and uneventful. I have no war record and no special achievements to report. At the same time, in addition to earning a living, I have had a good deal of happiness and satisfaction as I have gone along. Almost by accident, I was finally thrown into work in a large organization where I could help make many people happy with good working conditions and also, with them, offer helpful service to the general public.
"In April, 1897, before graduation, I took a teaching position in a preparatory school, but while I enjoyed the work and realized its importance, I decided after a year that business might be a better vocation for me.
213
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY REPORT
"Through a classmate I obtained a position with a Boston pub- lishing and printing company. The company published books, a college magazine, theatre programs, and handled a varied line of printing. It happened that my work brought me into contact with two merchants, the Filenes, who were the heads of the depart- ment store on Washington Street. I came to respect highly their business ability and foresight and their ideals in personnel rela- tions. Later, when they decided to bring in several young college men for training (somewhat of an innovation in the retail field at that time ), I was one of the first two to be engaged.
"Thus began almost a lifetime of a happy business association, with many ups and downs, of course, and exacting in its demands on time and energy, but which provided an opportunity of growth with the business as it prospered. It was interesting work.
"After a number of years in various executive positions, I be- came store superintendent of sales and service. I continued until 1941, about forty years, when I was retired under the company's pension plan. It was an absorbing life, as I have said, full of satisfaction in playing even a very minor rôle in the business accomplishment and in making a large force united as one family in loyalty and effort.
"Just after my retirement the war broke over us, so instead of loafing, I had to become interested in defense work. Like every- body else who was free, I filled in on several small jobs made vacant by the draft.
"In October, 1944, through one of the officers of Emerson College, I joined its business staff, which was temporarily de- pleted by the war. I am still there and again I am working with a large group of young people, trying to create and maintain for them the proper conditions for hard study and work. The stu- dents are enthusiastic about the future, serious and ambitious, but they naturally like to have a good time, too. I get a great kick out of working with them and being useful to them, especially when they try to put little things over on me. It keeps me feeling quite young. In fact, all of us are really about the same age.
"This association won't continue long now, and I suppose it is my last business adventure. When I'm through, I think I'll be
214
HARVARD CLASS OF 1897
content for the next twenty years with having good health, hear- ing, and eyesight to read, see plays, visit, and reminisce with my friends, tell my young grandnephew and nieces about the good old times and, of first importance, attend all Class reunions."
Fisher, the son of Walter Merrifield and Alice Isadore (Met- calf) Fisher, was born December 27, 1873, at Boston. He pre- pared at the English High School in Boston. He was with our Class for four years and received his A.B. at our graduation. He is unmarried.
He is a member of the Harvard Club of Boston, Boston City Club, and Shakespeare Club of Boston.
+ WILLIS RICHARDSON FISHER
W ILLIS RICHARDSON FISHER was born February 13, 1875, at Boston, and died there February 21, 1933. He was the son of Theodore Willis and Ella Gertrude ( Richardson) Fisher, and he prepared for college at the English High School in Boston. He was at Harvard from 1893 to 1896, when he left to take a position in a dye and chemical business. He then worked briefly in a leather company and in 1897 returned to Harvard. He took an A.B. in 1899 as of the Class of 1897, having entered the employ of the A. C. Lawrence Leather Company in 1898. He rose to the position of president in this firm. Later he became president and a director of the National Leather Company and its upper leather subsidiaries, the National Calfskin Company and the Winchester Tannery Company. In 1917 and 1918 he was director of the Tanners' Council, head of a trade committee, working in connec- tion with specifications, supply, price control, and so forth, for products of the industry for war purposes.
He was survived by his wife, the former Alice Chester Nichols, whom he married June 19, 1902, at Boston, and his son, Richard, born May 14, 1907.
215
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY REPORT
IRVING LESTER FISK
TRVING FISK, the son of Lester Miles and Alzina (Surdam) Fisk, I
was born September 3, 1873, at Hoosick Falls, New York. He prepared for college at Phillips Exeter Academy. After three years in college with our Class, he received his A.B. magna cum laude, and he entered the Law School in 1896. He was granted an LL.B. three years later.
Fisk married Edith Sara Bradley, June 17, 1903, at Buffalo, New York. Their children are: Bradley, born July 8, 1904; and Edith (Mrs. Malcolm), born June 7, 1908. Bradley is a member of the Harvard Class of 1926. There are three grandchildren, one of whom, Irving Lester Fisk, 2d, entered Harvard last fall.
Fisk is a member of the Buffalo Club, Saturn Club, Country Club of Buffalo, Buffalo Athletic Club, Harvard Club of New York, and American, New York State, and Erie County Bar Associations.
HENRY METCALF FISKE
M Y life has been full of continuous activity," reports Henry Fiske. "I have had forty-three years of teaching, of general supervision and participation in schoolboy outside activities - athletic, dramatic, and cultural - in a boys' church boarding school. I have found plenty of occupation with the trends in edu- cation in general and in my own particular fields, mingled with periods of study and travel abroad during several leaves of ab- sence and frequent summer vacations. Therefore, I expectantly anticipated that retirement in my sixty-sixth year, at the earliest moment available, would offer many opportunities for reading my vast collection of books, especially in the foreign languages, for writing, and enjoying further travel abroad, in my own coun- try, Canada, and Central and South America, none of which I knew as well as I did the European countries. But World War II came along and prevented the realization of those dreams.
"My activities rather than leisure have steadily increased, but I have little regret since they have opened up fresh experiences
216
HARVARD CLASS OF 1897
and new vistas. I have had the opportunity, through frequent changes of residence in six years, to make many entirely new congenial friendships, all of which have tended to increase rather than diminish my enthusiasms and to keep me generally fit. My personal human relations with developing youth, my interest and aid in their strivings and problems, particularly in special tutoring work with many Navy men and returned veterans at Harvard for the last three years, have fortunately continued. They have afforded deep satisfactions, and have helped me to conserve a bright and hopeful outlook on life, youthful feelings, and, above all, a never-ending faith in the desires and ability of our young men to make a better world than the one in which we old fellows lived or are now living.
"I have kept up an interest in and served our Alma Mater in other ways, too. Since October, 1939, I have been appointed annually a member of the Committee to Visit the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures in the University, and to be among the few who have performed their functions in that con- nection is somewhat of a distinction. All these first-hand relations with the University have greatly increased my pride and faith in Harvard as a force for fitting young men for the useful life. That it may continue to go 'from strength to strength' in ever greater service to the welfare of our 'One World' is the prayer of one who counts himself fortunate to have experienced its influence and to be counted, along with a father and a brother, amongst its alumni.
"All of these experiences have left with me many lasting satis- factions. Those of contending with nature in an effort to grow garden products for the last five years have not been quite so satisfying to the palate or helpful for hardening arteries. We are now living in Weston, Massachusetts, where my English ancestor came to this country and settled in 1648. And so, the clock has gone around, but the last hour has not yet struck. May it hold until after our Fiftieth Anniversary, and may a goodly number of us foregather on that occasion in hearty good fellowship in a world made brighter and happier by a certain assurance of peace, unity, and security for all mankind for long years to come."
Fiske, the son of George Alfred Fiske, Jr., '62, and Kate Wash-
217
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY REPORT
burn, was born October 15, 1874, at Boston. He prepared at the Public Latin School in Boston. His brother, the late George Con- verse Fiske, a member of the Harvard Class of 1894, received an A.M. in 1897 and a Ph.D. in 1900.
"Two periods of illness while in college," writes Fiske, "one in the spring of 1893, a second long one of more than a year's duration in 1894 and 1895 sorely interrupted the college course and delayed my graduation until June, 1897. My affiliation with this Class has been most pleasant. I was not engaged in any social, athletic, or literary activities in college, partly because of illnesses, partly be- cause of my life apart from college with my family living in Cam- bridge, and partly because of the necessity of making up work lost, of maintaining a satisfactory standing in order to qualify for scholarship and of providing for financial requirements by sum- mer work. I was graduated magna cum laude and with honor- able mention twice in lingua gallica. Such a collegiate life is not productive of many anecdotes, because of strict attention to the business of education, but was, nevertheless, rich in many great satisfactions.
"I was an instructor in French and German, the latter in the spring of 1898 only, at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hamp- shire, from 1897 to 1905. Then I was made head of the French Department and, in 1928, began giving instruction in Spanish in addition to French. From 1932 until my retirement in 1940, I served as head of the Modern Language Department. I also served for many years as examiner and reader in French with the College Entrance Board.
"I have written a number of articles and reports on secondary- school curricula and the 'Teaching of Modern Languages in Sec- ondary Schools' was published while I was serving on the Church School Curricula Committee. I also wrote articles while I was chairman and a member of the Standing Modern Language Com- mittee of the Secondary Education Board.
"In December, 1933, I was decorated by the French Minister of Public Education with the distinction of Officier d'Académie and received Les Palmes Académiques. In March, 1939, I received from the same source the promotion to Officier de l'Instruction
218
HARVARD CLASS OF 1897
Publique with rosette for actively promoting an understanding of France in our country and for improvements in the teaching of French in our schools.
"I am a member of the Modern Language Association of Amer- ica, New England Modern Language Association, American Asso- ciation of Teachers of French, and American Association of Teach- ers of Spanish. I have served at various intervals on the adminis- trative boards of the two last-named organizations.
"I am a member of the Harvard Club of Boston, the Faculty Club of Harvard University, and governing board of the Alliance Française of Boston. I am honorary president of the Cercle Fran- çais of St. Paul's School, which was founded by students in French classes there in 1928, and honorary president of the Dramatic Club of St. Paul's School. I am affiliated with the Episcopal Church.
"To offset the food shortages during World War II, we raised many vegetable products for our own use, putting them down for winter use and distributing surpluses to friends. While we were resident in North Pembroke, we sold them to the public from a roadside stand, which proved a very pleasant if not highly profit- able occupation."
Fiske married Lydia Raymond Brown, June 28, 1910, at New York City.
THOMAS FRANCIS FITZGERALD
AFTER graduation from college," reports Fitzgerald, "I contin- ued my studies in the Harvard Law School and was graduated in 1899 with the degree of LL.B. In November of that year I was admitted to the Bar of New York State and became associated with Edward E. McCall, then attorney for the New York Life Insurance Company.
"I remained there until 1905, when, at the urgent request of my father, whole health had failed, I returned to Troy, New York, to assume the management of Fitzgerald Brothers' Brewing Com- pany. I remained in this position until prohibition in 1918.
"In 1922 I organized Fitzgerald Brothers' Construction Com- pany, Incorporated, for the purpose of building streets, highway
219
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY REPORT
bridges, and airports. I am still president and treasurer of this corporation and have constructed many miles of city streets and roads in New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont, including the Rutland, Vermont, airport in 1941, and the Schenectady, New York, airport in 1943. We also constructed a bridge over the Hud- son River at Valley Falls, New York, in 1936. At present, we are engaged in constructing a four-lane highway eight miles long between the cities of Albany and Schenectady.
"I am a director of the National City Bank of Troy and a mem- ber of its Executive Committee."
Fitzgerald, the son of Edmund and Anna (Smith) Fitzgerald, was born April 9, 1874, at Troy. He prepared at the La Salle In- stitute in Troy and at the Cambridge Latin School. He married Mary Mccarthy, April 20, 1909, at Troy.
He is a former member of the Island Golf Club, Troy Club, and the Troy Country Club.
* WILLIAM BALDWYN FLETCHER
W ILLIAM BALDWIN FLETCHER died October 25, 1937, at San Leandro, California. He was born August 9, 1873, at Indian- apolis, the son of William Baldwyn and Agnes (O'Brien) Fletcher. He prepared for college at the Indianapolis Classical School and was at Harvard only during 1894-95. After taking an A.B. degree at Leland Stanford University in 1897, he became a reporter on the San Francisco Call. He returned to Indianapolis and became associated with the Fletcher American National Bank.
HENRY WILDER FOOTE
A FTER graduation from the Harvard Divinity School in 1902," writes Foote, "I was ordained to the Christian ministry in King's Chapel, Boston, where I had been brought up. That fall I went to New Orleans, where I served as minister of the First Uni- tarian Church from 1902 to 1906. From 1906 to 1910 I served in the Unitarian Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I returned to Cambridge in 1911 to become secretary of the Department of Education of the American Unitarian Association.
220
HARVARD CLASS OF 1897
"In 1914 I was appointed assistant professor of preaching and parish administration and secretary of the faculty at the Harvard Divinity School, a position I held until 1924. In the latter year I was in Europe with my family for seven months. On my return I became minister of the First Church in Belmont, Massachusetts, which I served until 1940.
"I then felt that the time had come for me to resign, that my church might select a younger man. I soon discovered that I had 'retired' from a professional career to enter active life, for I was immediately drafted into war-time service, mostly for brief pe- riods with churches for which no other minister was available.
"In 1940 I spent two months in Berkeley, California, making a survey of the Unitarian School for the Ministry. The following year I spent some months as 'interim minister' of the May Me- morial Church in Syracuse, New York, and a similar period in 1942 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
"During the winters of 1944 and 1945, I was in Charlottesville, Virginia, organizing the newly established Unitarian Church in that city and conducting evening services in Lynchburg. After that I really retired and moved from Belmont back to the house in Cambridge which my wife and I built in 1912.
"All these varied activities have brought me a rich, full, and busy life, for which I am deeply grateful. I still retain a reasonable degree of health and strength and a wide variety of interests. Aside from professional concerns, my chief hobby has been his- torical research in the field of colonial portraiture, and I have on hand plans for writing sufficient to fill all the years that may re- main to me. In religion, politics, and the field of social reform, I am still an 'unrepentant liberal,' profoundly concerned that we may leave to our children and grandchildren a better world than the torn and distracted one that we have known."
Foote, the son of Henry Wilder Foote, '58, and Frances Anne Eliot, was born February 2, 1875, at Boston. He prepared at the Roxbury Latin School and at a private school. After receiving his Bachelor's degree with our Class, he spent a year at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and was awarded an A.M. in 1900. Two years later he was granted an S.T.B. at the Harvard Divinity
221
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY REPORT
School. In 1929 a D.D. was conferred upon him by the Pacific Unitarian School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California, and in 1941 the Meadville Theological School bestowed on him the same honor.
Foote's marriage to Eleanor Tyson Cope took place June 22, 1903, at Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their children are: Henry Wilder, Jr., born August 30, 1905; Agnes Cope, born March 11, 1907; Arthur, born January 18, 1911; Caleb, born March 26, 1917; and Elizabeth Stewardson, born February 5, 1920. H. Wilder, Jr., is a member of Harvard '27; Arthur was graduated in 1933; and Caleb in 1939. There are seven grandchildren. Foote served for six months with the American Red Cross in Washington in World War I.
"After graduation from college," he writes, "I spent a year trav- elling in Great Britain, Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, and Egypt. Then I studied for one year in the Harvard Graduate School before entering the Divinity School. Under the eligibility rules then in effect I was a member of the first combined Harvard-Yale Track Team to compete against Oxford and Cam- bridge in London in July, 1899, where I ran in the three-mile race. Thirty-two years later my second son ran in the same event against Oxford and Cambridge in London, and in 1933 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"For many years I have been a trustee of the Hampton Institute in Virginia and of the Penn School in South Carolina. I am a mem- ber of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Es- sex Institute. I am also a member of the Union Club, Boston, and of the Harvard Club of New York. I was president of the Hymn Society of America for the year 1941.
"In addition to many printed articles, sermons, and pamphlets I have written three books, The Minister and His Parish, 1924; Robert Feke, Colonial Portrait Painter, 1930; and Three Centuries of American Hymnody, 1940. I collaborated with H. F. Clarke in his life of Jeremiah Dummer. I also collaborated in editing two hymn books, The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914 (as secretary of the Editorial Committee); and Hymns of the Spirit, 1937 (as
222
HARVARD CLASS OF 1897
chairman of the Editorial Committee ); and with A. T. Davison in editing the Concord Anthem Book and the Second Concord An- them Book."
ALLAN FORBES
TT is staggering to think of being out of college half a century," writes Forbes, "but our efficient Secretary has informed us that such is the fact. A class report at this time looms up as a difficult undertaking. If it is too short, it will be considered incomplete and unsatisfactory as a record, and if it is too long, the writer will be set down as a conceited ass. There is always a tendency to post- pone the day, dreading to face the task very much as I used to dread those awful examinations. I took my preliminaries with two others in Charing Cross Hotel in London under a German proctor who drank beer for breakfast and slept during the examination period. We were all honorable and passed. I still remember with horror trying later to pass a laboratory physics test, wishing all the while I could in some way escape. Fortunately, the instructor lost my book, and so, in my senior year, he allowed the condition to drop. Finding great difficulty even in getting C's and D's, it is perhaps no wonder whatever that I have nightmares continually of not being able to answer a single question on an examination paper.
'There are also other nightmare varieties. I run around the Yard trying to find the right room; sometimes I am unable to find the subway to take me out and several times, even recently, I have searched Cambridge (in my dreams) trying to lease a room so as to 'work off' that condition. The last ordeal I went through was to wake up talking Chinese jibberish, to find myself facing a Chinese questionnaire. 'My father and my grandfather lived in China,' I was saying to myself, 'and here you, stupid ass, can't even read Chinese.' I presume I had been working then on China Relief. I would like to check up with the rest of the Class and see if any are similarly afflicted.
"I had the distinction of attending two schools each year; Mil- ton Academy in the autumn and spring, and Noble's when my
223
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY REPORT
parents moved into Boston for the winter. I guess I found the 'going' difficult, for when it became time for college, neither school would recommend me. Somehow or other I was, however, re- corded later as a graduate of both schools!
"I wasn't of much value to the College for I used to rush away to Dedham to play polo on every occasion during my four years. In fact, I was playing in a tournament at Meadowbrook at the time of my Commencement and wasn't sure of my degree until David Cheever later told me he had it saved for me. I played on the Dedham team for nineteen years and we picked up a collection of trophies, but I hate to think of the goals I just missed. Polo taught me a good deal about life in general and I do like to keep in mind the words of Edward S. Martin, an editor of Life and a member of the Dedham Polo Club, which were used as a club motto for us players:
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.