It was a heady time to be at Colorado College!
Louis Benezet was president and Lew Worner was dean.
The time was the late 1950s -- Renaissance years on the campus.
The modern college took form in that extraordinary time.
Louis (pronounced Louee) Benezet (pronounced with the t) arrived as
president in the fall of 1955. He
saw the college as a personal challenge; he came with a vision of what it
might be. The college needed vigorous new leadership.
To be sure, we had a good faculty, but past presidents had been of
uncertain quality, the finances of the college were precarious, there was no
professional administrative staff, the student body was uneven, buildings
needed refurbishing, and the campus had an untended, untidy look.
Shortly after he arrived, Benezet came out of Cutler Hall, where the
president's office was then located, and met a senior faculty member.
"Are you going to inspect the campus?" the professor asked.
"I am going to count the weeds," Benezet replied.
That epitomized the state of the college and the challenge the new
president faced.
Benezet's vision was of a distinguished college that would match the
vitality of the burgeoning West, and fill a vacuum in the national landscape.
From the sterling colleges of the Midwest, like Grinnell and Carleton,
to the established institutions of California and the West Coast, there was no
notable liberal arts college. In
that vast area, he saw an opportunity for a college of quality, rooted in
Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West.
Benezet was an imposing
figure, a tall lean man with hawk-like visage and piercing gaze, always
immaculately attired (often with a bow tie).
He was young, vigorous, ambitious, articulate, a PRESENCE in any group. He transmitted his vision of what Colorado College
might be to businessmen in town, to alumni, to foundations and, above all,
to us, students, faculty and staff in the college
community.
The tangible achievements of the Benezet years are all around us. He raised a million dollars in his first year, big money
then. The flow of nourishing
gifts included a prestigious Ford Foundation matching grant, limited to a
select group of colleges and universities.
New structures sprouted on the campus -- Rastall Student Center (later Worner Center), Taylor Dining Hall,
Tutt Library, Loomis Hall, Honnen Ice Rink, Schlessman Swimming Pool, a new
heating plant and the Olin Hall of Science.
Bricks and mortar were not the really important transformations the
Benezet presidency wrought. More
significant was the boost in morale, purpose and spirit he imparted to the
college. Generating a sense of
community purpose is difficult with faculty members, who tend to be
preoccupied with their disciplines and departments. Benezet was a good speaker
and he spoke often to us about his vision of college greatness.
He had a habit of staring above the audience as if he saw something in
the clouds or in space. The point
was he did see something, the image of a superb future college, and he made us
see it too.
I remember an early talk Benezet gave to a meeting of the campus
chapter of the American Association of University Professors, always
well-attended in those days of subsistence level salaries.
He said he hoped the top faculty salary would be $10,000 in four years.
The faculty members gawked in disbelief; the top salary was then less
than $6,000. He was a
transforming leader, who could impel genuine change by inspiring followers.
Commitment to change became a distinguishing characteristic of the
college that endures today. We
were and still are an discontented college, ever striving after the ever
elusive goal of excellence. The
pace was exhilarating, sometimes exhausting, in those renaissance years, long
ago.
At the very outset, Benezet made a most portentous decision for the
future of the college. Early the
preceding spring semester, before Benezet came, President Gill had told the
incumbent Dean to pack up and get out, and installed Lew Worner in the
Dean's office. But it was not ordained that Lew would continue there.
Any new President might wish to bring in a new dean, as he brought
other new people to fill key administrative positions.
Benezet did not take long to decide; he appointed Lew dean a few months
after arriving. Lew was central
to Benezet's hopes for the college. Louis
and Lew! They were a magnificent
combination. Benezet
dealt with the world outside. He
taught the college trustees, or some of them, the difference between a
business corporation and an educational institution.
He sought, he said later, to let the local community know what a
college of excellence "meant to Colorado Springs beyond winning hockey
games." Lew, who had an
intuitive grasp of the unique essence of liberal education,
presided over changes in the curriculum and college requirements. He recruited a galaxy of bright, young faculty members who could sense
that something important was going on here. Watching Benezet and Worner work together, I sometimes thought of the
two famous running backs on Army's legendary, unbeatable football teams of
the 1940s, fleet Glenn Davis (Mr. Outside) and powerful Doc Blanchard (Mr.
Inside). Lew, who masterfully
straddled the creative fault line between administration and faculty (he was
both of the administration and of the faculty), was Dean Inside. Benezet, who could talk intelligently to anyone about
anything, was President Outside. And
so the foundations of a modern college of national reputation were laid.
Benezet kept Lew as Dean, but he did bring a group of able people to
the campus to fill key positions; those appointments were essential to the
successes of his presidency. He
had been associated with some of them before -- Bill McMillen in Drama and Lew
Pino, professor of
chemistry and assistant dean, had been with him at Allegheny College.
Perhaps his most important new appointment was Bob Brossman, who came
as vice-president for development. Benezet
once said Bross could take the
ball to the five yard line with a prospective donor, whence he could smash
into the end zone. Benezet
brought Bob Broughton, financial officer of the American Council on Education,
to be Vice President for Business and Finance. The college had been running in the red for years, borrowing from its
own endowment. Broughton's
blackboard talks to the faculty on the financial condition of the college at
salary time each year were legendarily inscrutable, but after Bross and
Broughton came, there never was another deficit.
Benezet persuaded Dick Kendrick to be Superintendent of Buildings and
Grounds, replacing the imperious, incompetent and universally detested Colonel
Moore. (It was said that Moore
was discharged after Benezet reserved a college car for a trip to Denver, and
ran out of gas on the highway). With
Kendrick in charge, buildings were refurbished and weeds no longer sprouted on
the campus.
When Benezet left to be president of the Claremont Graduate School, he
was a national figure in higher education, and Colorado College was nationally
recognized. He went on to other
presidencies, but it was said that he looked back at his time here as the best
years of his life. He took the
unprecedented step of recommending his successor, who was, of course, Lew
Worner. Benezet had taken us down
the field, perhaps not quite to the five yard line, when he handed the
presidential ball to Lew. Under
Lew's unique leadership, the fuller dimensions of Benezet's vision came to
pass.
There are not many things we celebrate here now that were not begun in
the Benezet-Worner years. It was
then that Colorado College became one of a select group of nationally
recognized liberal arts colleges. Members
of the college community today are heirs of the pursuit of excellence and the
commitment to change that Louis Benezet and Lew Worner began on this campus,
almost a half century ago.