Ernest Martin Hopkins ‘01 President, Emeritus An interview conducted by Edward Connery Lathem ‘51 Hanover, NH March 28, 1958 – April 4, 1959 Reels 10-22 Rauner Special Collections Library Dartmouth College Hanover, NH Ernest Martin Hopkins Interview Reel #10a Lathem: This afternoon we are recording Mr. Hopkinsʼ reminiscences in Baker Library in the office of the Director of Special Collections. The date is March 28, the time is 2 P.M. Hopkins: Well, Iʼll be very glad. I regret more and more that I wasnʼt a diary keeper. All sorts of personal things come up that I canʼt identify within five or ten years. Lathem: Yes…Yes… I wonder if you…before we get into this if youʼve thought of anything that you particularly want to put on the record. We were talking the other afternoon when we met on the street about one matter that I think very appropriately should get in. Hopkins: Yeah. I think I can…I would like to put in very much indeed the…I think the basis of one of my strong convictions in regard to college administration came to me not from any academic life at all but from my experience with the Western Electric Company where, when I went out there, I found that somewhere between thirty and forty thousand–nearer forty thousand, I think—employees going out at night were met at every entrance by soap-box orators: pretty specious and pretty fallacious in many cases. And yet, this training group that I was in charge of who were all college graduates, were very much impressed by these people. And on inquiry from them I found that the experience Iʼve had at Dartmouth wasnʼt at all the experience that most of them had had, of hearing anything of more than one side. They were vulnerable as they could be; that is, these boys in the training course were vulnerable to these soapbox orations, because nobody had ever presented that point of view, at all, to them—and there was just enough truth in it, so they became intrigued. And as I watched that –and I watched it a good deal, because I would circulate around the different exit gates at night and listen to the things--and I, not knowing that I was ever going to be in college work myself, nevertheless became impressed with the fact that I was going to tell my experience to people up here sometime. And it had…the experience really had a great deal to do with efforts I made which were sometimes not very effective. But nevertheless the effort was made to keep a balance on speakers and departments and all the rest of it. And I also became convinced of what I think would be, by some, thought to be heresy that if you couldnʼt have but one side presented in the College, you would do far more for the boy in giving him the unconventional side which he wouldnʼt get at home or in his home community. So of the two, I definitely leaned toward the heresy side, rather than orthodoxy. Iʼm rather glad to get that in, because I think sometime the question may be raised again, as was raised frequently during my administration as to why we had some of the people up here that we did have. Lathem: I think that is an important observation and background for that. You spoke the other day of having a list of questions from Bob Leavens and he has now sent me a copy of this. Do you want to review those or…? 2 Ernest Martin Hopkins Interview Hopkins: Well, I donʼt know exactly what the… Lathem: The first one is personal reminiscence with the college classmates of Dr. Tucker and the class of 1861 as to their memories of him as an undergraduate. He evidently means for you to comment on this, whether you had ever had any experience with George A. Marden or Henry M. Putney, Major E.D. Reddington. Hopkins: Yeah. I didnʼt know Putney at all. I knew Marden casually, who was the father of Phil Marden, who had been a tremendously strong and helpful alumnus all during my lifetime. He graduated in ʼ99. George Marden was his father and he was an old-time friend of Dr. Tuckerʼs, and I donʼt know very much more about him that I would get in casual opportunities to listen in on conversation, which didnʼt amount to much. But he was editor of, I think…I think he founded the Lowell Courier and was editor-in-chief of it. And anyway he was a newspaper man and…and Dr. Tucker had a small core of men who were really emergency assets to be called on if need be in a crisis for speeches, particularly, and Marden…those were more definitely the days of oratory than today. I mean men took great pride in their speaking ability and their ability to narrate stories, and so forth. And Marden was definitely one of those, and beyond that, I mean he was a … Lathem: Yes. I think maybe what Mr. Leavens is getting at is whether you remember ever hearing from any of these men, their own reminiscences of Dr. Tucker. Hopkins: Well, I can say definitely yes. I donʼt know Putney, but from Reddington and Tuck, both, they were college links of Dr. Tucker, and I think putting it conservatively, the summary of their opinion was that they would never have expected him to be what he was. I think that…Yeah. I got my first suggestion of that…Dr. Tucker was due to speak over at a Congregational assembly at Plymouth where he was brought up as a small boy. And he couldnʼt go and he gave me his speech to read. I donʼt think I was a very welcome guest, but anyway, I went over, and after the thing was over, a grizzled old veteran came up to me and he says, you work with Bill Tucker? With all the reverence and all that I had thought that was pretty familiar, but I said yes. Well, he said, he may have changed, but Iʼd never send a son of mine where Bill Tucker was President. Which was apparently, I heard later from other people, other elderly people in Plymouth that that was his reputation in Plymouth. And actually the facts were, according to both Major Reddington and more particular, I placed much more reliance on Mr. Tuck because he was a roommate of Dr. Tuckerʼs. Lathem: Oh, was he? Hopkins: Yeah. Lathem: I hadnʼt realized that. 3 Ernest Martin Hopkins Interview Hopkins: And Dr. Tuckerʼs first expectation was to go into the law and somewhere along in his junior year he switched and decided to go into the ministry, and apparently whether coincident with that switch or sometime previously why he put some restraint on what had been habits of his undergraduate life and Mr. Tucker was very frank about it. He said that he said there was a period when I was…just wondered if Tucker was going to drink too much, and he says he didnʼt, he said he tapered it off and he says I guess he was a total abstainer when he ended college but he said he did a lot of drinking along the middle of his course. And he…apparently he played a lot of cards, too. And the …but there was one thing to be said about it. Neither in the most intimate talks with Mr. Tuck, and some of them were very intimate or with Major Reddington, there never was anything vicious in what he did at any point, and apparently through external influences he came to the conviction somewhere a little after the middle if his course that he wanted to go into the ministry and switched from the law into the ministry. Iʼve always thought he would have been a wonderful lawyer because he…well, he had a legal mind. He was very specific about things. I…I used to feel in consideration of myself and I compare occasionally myself with what he would do under the circumstances. Iʼve felt definitely inferior because I didnʼt have and I donʼt have the legal mind. If I see some way of doing anything, Iʼm pretty apt to go ahead and do it without too much analysis of whoʼs giving me the authority. And that was one of the sources I think of Dr. Tuckerʼs strong discontent, at least, with his board of trustees during the early years. That he …he wanted to have them take more positive action in approval of things than sometimes they were willing to do even though they were willing to forgo taking negative action. I mean I used to wonder why he was so much troubled about the thing because it seemed to me that if they werenʼt going to oppose it, why he could go ahead on it, but he wanted them specifically to say yes on the thing, and I think it was…I think it was a set of attributes that would probably work out in the law to his great advantage. Lathem: Yes, it seems so. I wonder if his legal mind, if you could call it that, his tendency to have such decisive thinking qualities might not have been one of the aspects of him that endeared him to General Streeter. Hopkins: Yeah. Well, I think it was. Lathem: Do you? Hopkins: Without any question. Yes, I think so, and … Lathem: That would be a kindred factor.