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University remembers icons Makechnie, Silber, Bellow
By Brian Fitzgerald and David J. Craig
George Makechnie, dean emeritus of Sargent College, was associated with Boston University for 80 years and advised generations of students, faculty, and administrators as an elder statesman. Kathryn Silber, another venerated longtime ambassador of the University, was its first lady for a quarter of a century. And Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow, the author of a dozen novels, was among BU’s most famous and respected faculty members.
The University now mourns all three figures: Makechnie died at the age of 98 on March 22; Silber passed away on March 26, at 78, after suffering a stroke earlier in the month; Bellow died at his Brookline home on April 5, at age 89.
In a March 28 e-mail to faculty and staff, President ad interim Aram Chobanian described Makechnie and Silber as “two cherished and long-serving members of our community,” and expressed appreciation “for their many years of outstanding service.”
Bellow, Chobanian said in a statement shortly after his passing, “was one of the most distinguished writers in the history of American letters. He illuminated the human condition and grappled with ultimate questions about life through memorable characters in prize-winning books. Boston University was honored by his presence on the faculty. We all mourn his passing.”
George Makechnie: “a dean for all seasons”
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SAR Dean Emeritus George Makechnie: his association with BU went back 80 years. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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Known affectionately as “Dean George” to students, faculty, and staff in his later years, and instantly recognizable in his Brooks Brothers suits, Makechnie (SED’29,’31, Hon.’79) arrived at BU in 1925 as a School of Education freshman. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees and subsequently was an SED administrator and then faculty member and acting dean from 1943 to 1944.
When Sargent College, a division of SED from 1929 to 1945, became a separate college, he was chosen as dean. Over the next 27 years, until his retirement, he transformed the institution from a women’s physical education school to a coeducational college recognized as a leader in the field of health and rehabilitation sciences.
“His influence on the development of Sargent College from its infancy on the campus to its worldwide reputation can only be described as visionary,” says Whitney Powers, a SAR professor emeritus of anatomy, neurobiology, and health sciences. “He had an uncanny ability to see into the future, and he guided the college through a remarkable sea of ever-changing tides. Without his guidance, the college as we know it today would never have attained its continued standard of excellence.”
Makechnie served BU in many other capacities over his long career: as director of Sargent Camp, now the Sargent Center for Outdoor Education, in Peterborough, N.H., and acting dean of CFA from 1959 to 1961. He was instrumental in founding the School of Nursing and was founder and director of the Howard Thurman Center. Thurman (Hon.’67), dean of Marsh Chapel from 1953 to 1965, was Makechnie’s good friend and the first black to hold such a position at a predominantly white U.S. university.
Makechnie also founded BU’s Civil Affairs Training School in 1943, a government-funded initiative to train senior army officers for duty in the postwar occupation of Germany.
After Makechnie’s official “retirement” in 1972, he served as an advisor to University presidents and deans, and to faculty, staff, and students. “He was witty, straightforward, deeply intellectual on national and international issues, and extremely knowledgeable about his University. It was the soul of his life,” says Powers. “I know of no one who has individually so influenced a university for so many years, and I suspect we’ll never see such a tenure again.”
He was the author of three books on BU history: Howard Thurman: His Enduring Dream; 70 Stories about Boston University, 1923–1993: a Memoir; and Optimal Health, the Quest: A History of Boston University’s Sargent College of Allied Health Professions.
In 2001, when President Jon Westling named Makechnie the University historian, “he was simply making official what had been true for decades,” says Natalie McCracken, editor-in-chief for development and alumni publications. “If we had a question about University history for a BU publication, or just because we were curious, we’d ask George. Many of our older faculty are useful sources for the history of their own schools — George was dean of one school, acting dean of two others, and founder of a fourth. Furthermore, he worked closely with every president from Marsh on and with the central administration. And he had perfect recall: for dates, details, faces in old photos, and personalities, and for decades-old gossip — almost always benevolent and always entertaining.”
“George Makechnie’s legacy to Boston University is so rich and varied that he can never be forgotten,” says President Emeritus John Silber. “He was a dean for all seasons.”
Those who wish to honor Makechnie are asked to consider a donation to the George Makechnie Educational Fund or the Howard Thurman Center Fund, One Sherborn St., Boston, MA 02215.
Kathryn Silber: devoted to her family and the University
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More than 400 admirers stand to applaud Kathryn Silber at a dinner in her honor in 2001. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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About 15 years ago, a reporter asked Kathryn Silber (Hon.’01) why on earth a nice woman like her had married a man like John Silber. “Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “He was just the first boy I ever met who was as smart as a girl.”
Silber, a native of Normanna, Tex., arrived in Boston in 1971 when her husband was appointed BU’s seventh president. She hosted or attended more than 150 events a year, earning a reputation as a discreet, gracious, and poised representative of the University as she served as hostess to heads of state, Nobel laureates, renowned scientists, and other luminaries. She was presented with an honorary degree in 2001, cited for her vital role in her husband’s successful leadership of the University for 25 years.
According to those close to Kathryn Silber, behind her gracious and private persona was a witty, intellectual woman who was intensely devoted to her family. “Perhaps the greatest secret to my mother’s success is her ability to redirect attention away from herself,” said daughter Martha Hathaway at an evening honoring Silber in 2001. “She is interested in you: what you are like and what you are about.”
Born to a farming family in 1927, she met fellow philosophy major and debate-team member John Silber at Trinity University in San Antonio, Tex. She was voted most intelligent member of the graduating class of 1946. They married the following year and moved to New Haven, Conn., where John earned his doctorate at Yale while she supported him in a sequence of jobs, including production manager at a local engineering firm. Shortly after her husband was appointed to the Yale faculty in 1952, she quit her job to begin their family. In 1955 John accepted a professorship in philosophy at the University of Texas, and the Silbers returned to Texas. In 1971 he became president of BU, and the couple moved their son and six daughters, along with two wards, to Brookline.
Joseph Mercurio, executive vice president, first met Kathryn Silber in 1973, when he came to work at the University as a budget analyst. “Over the years I came to know Mrs. Silber as a close friend,” he says. “I know what an incredible mother she was through my own observation of the love for her expressed by her children. And I was lucky enough to glimpse the love that her grandchildren felt toward her. On occasions that we traveled together, she was so caring that she made me feel like I was one of her children — always concerned, always looking out for me.”
Elizabeth Shannon, director of BU’s International Visitors Program and Trustee Scholars Program recalls Kathryn Silber’s compassion the day in 1988 that her husband, William Shannon, a COM journalism professor and a former U.S. ambassador to Ireland, died of cancer. “My three sons and I left the hospital a shattered family, and when we came home, there were John and Kathryn in my living room,” she says, “and Kathryn said, ‘We didn’t want you to come back to an empty house.’”
“Kathryn Silber was possessed of an intelligence of an order so high as to be inseparable from graciousness, and she made this extremely rare and precious thing seem as normal as sunlight,” says Brian Jorgensen, a CAS assistant English professor. “This large intelligence, combined with her beauty and charm, sense of humor and natural manners, her perfectly timed wit and her deep and genuine interest in other people, along with her equally genuine disinterest in showing off, made her the most excellent of first ladies. Everyone who met her was warmed and felt respect and admiration, and these feelings, besides being her due, were reflected back on the University.”
A memorial service for Silber will be held at Marsh Chapel at 3:30 p.m. on May 9, followed by a reception at the Metcalf Trustee Center on the ninth floor of the School of Management building. Those wishing to remember her may consider a contribution to the Women’s Council Kathryn Silber Scholarship Fund at BU, One Sherborn St., Boston, MA 02215.
Saul Bellow: the voice of the modern intellectual
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Saul Bellow Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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Saul Bellow (Hon.’04), a UNI professor emeritus and CAS and GRS professor emeritus of English, is considered by many leading critics the 20th century’s greatest English language novelist. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt’s Gift (1975), three National Book Awards, for The Adventures of Augie March (1954), Herzog (1964), and Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970), and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976.
The son of Russian immigrants, born in Lachine, Quebec, and educated at Northwestern University, Bellow published his first novel, Dangling Man, in 1944 and came to prominence in the 1950s for work regarded as representing a major shift in American literature. His darkly comic novels were known for their vigorous and supple language and their existential antiheroic characters struggling — with equal parts humor and pathos — to find their place in the modern world. His stories reflected “human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture . . . entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quick succession . . . exuberant ideas, flashing irony, hilarious comedy and burning compassion,” the Nobel Committee said, in awarding him in 1976.
“Saul Bellow was not only a great writer, he was also a superb teacher and friend — a whole and marvelous man,” says President Emeritus John Silber. “He could lift our spirits, for he reminded us in The Adventures of Augie March that we were not born at the dwarf end of time, but that we too could aspire to greatness.”
A longtime Chicago resident closely associated with that city, Bellow moved to Brookline to join the BU faculty in 1993, although his literary success made teaching unnecessary. He had taught previously at New York University, Princeton, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern, and Stanford; he often said that he treasured his time in the classroom as a way of escaping the isolation of writing.
“As a teacher, he paid students respect by not talking down to them, in part because he was suspicious of fancy ways of looking at literature,” says Christopher Walsh (GRS’95,’00), an instructor in the CAS Writing Program, who studied under Bellow in the mid-90s and served as his assistant from 1996 to 2000. “He encouraged students to read as if the writer were a fellow human being who had something to say to them. He was suspicious of the giant apparatus of critical theory that often came between writers and readers. . . . He was my hero long before I met him, and he remained my hero after meeting him, and I don’t think that’s the usual case. I didn’t discover that his feet were made of clay. He had a great sense of humor and he didn’t put on airs.”
Also the author of plays, essays, translations, several short stories, and a memoir, Bellow was the subject of an acclaimed 2000 biography by James Atlas. His recent works include the 1997 novella The Actual and the 2000 novel Ravelstein, based on the life of his late friend Allan Bloom.
“What pleasure he gave us, what joy!” wrote Leslie Epstein, a CAS and GRS English professor and director of the Creative Writing Program, via e-mail the day after Bellow’s passing. “Even reading his words, hearing that voice, in the newsprint of the New York Times this morning was inspiring, invigorating. It was a voice like no other. And though his death is a loss to our students and our university and the entire world of literature, such a voice — as we see this morning — is never lost forever.”
A memorial service for Bellow is being planned.
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April 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations