Gilmore Stott (left) has served under six Swarthmore presidents, most notably his friend Courtney C. Smith, whose portrait hangs in the Parrish Hall parlor.
It was a delirious Swarthmore spring, full of daffodils and dogwoods. I was missing most of the scenery because I had a lot to do before the curtain came down on my senior year: fill out my graduate school applications, sit for eight Honors exams, and pursue at least that number of young women. And to complicate things further, I had persuaded Professor James Freeman, conductor of the college orchestra, to feature me in the spring concert as piano soloist in a piece by Schumann.
I made it through the performance--and also made progress toward other goals, when the most popular girl in my class gave me a big hug afterward. But still I doubted. Was it all right? Was I a real pianist, or just faking it? The answer came from an unexpected place.
A violinist in the orchestra, an administrator at the College whom I had previously known only as the third suit from the left on the stage at Collection, invited me over for dinner with his family. His name was Gilmore Stott.
Many teachers and deans at the College had given generously of their time and energy to help me along on my career there. But this dinner chez Stott was something else. Not only had I just had the pleasure of making symphonic music with the string- playing Stotts---father Gil, mother Mary Roelofs Stott '40, and a daughter (Mary Stott Tyler '71),
all sawing away in the College orchestra---but now I was having the full multisensory experience: Dad's homemade wines, Mom's fragrant breads and cookery, music on the stereo or played in person, and lively and affectionate conversation. Before pitching into the delicious food, the whole family lifted their voices in four-part harmony to thank God for the bounty.
For a college kid far from home, in the lonely and stressful environment of a high-powered academic program, dinner at the Stotts' was a glimpse of another world. It gave the phrase "in loco parentis" a whole new meaning.
Mr. Stott had been generous with compliments right after the concert. I think he even hugged me, although for some reason I don't remember that hug as clearly as the one from Ellen. But he said six simple words at dinner that have stuck with me for these nearly 30 years. Maybe I'd just listened to the tape of the concert (which I still have and is surely by now a pile of dust in a box in my closet). To hear yourself on tape, whether playing music or talking, can be a jarring experience. I remember wondering aloud whether all the practicing had been worth it, whether I had anything to say at the piano, whether there was anything there after all.
Gilmore Stott said quietly, "Yes, there's something there, all right."
These few words were not a candidate for anybody's dictionary of quotations. But Gil Stott spoke with such transparent sincerity and conviction that even self-doubting Thomas had to accept it. Would it be too much to date the beginning of my belief in myself as a pianist from that moment? Well, yes. But darn, I still remember it, and I use it. How many 30-year-old things do you still use?
In talking with my fellow alumni, I've found that many of them had a similar "Stott moment" during their time at Swarthmore. Charles Floto '68, a supporter of Goldwater for president and founder of the Conservative Club (and, therefore, in that liberal era, possibly the loneliest man on campus), took the course in ethics that Mr. Stott taught in addition to his administrative duties. "I expected that we would disagree all semester," recalls Floto, who is now a technician at the Library of Congress. "But he showed me that two people can agree on principles, while disagreeing on practical consequences."
Firm in his convictions, Floto faced an unsympathetic panel of examiners at his senior oral comprehensive exams. It was not a pleasant session, and Floto could see his "distinction in course" going down the drain. As he stood outside the room afterward, glumly contemplating his future prospects, a smiling Gil Stott approached him. "You were very confident in there," said Stott.
A few words, perfectly timed. Charles Floto has never forgotten them.
Gilmore Stott is not always a man of few words. Several of his former students told me about the two pages of single-spaced typed comments that used to come back with their papers. Nancy Noble Holland '72, a flutist, former high school English teacher, and now choral conductor, remembers that ethics course as "formative" and its teacher as "the model of a Swarthmore professor--high academic standards and very caring." Concepts learned in that class, such as "the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive acts," have stuck with her for life.
But even more alumni mention what Mr. Stott did for them when he was not prescribing anything. "When I felt lost, steamrolled by demands, destitute in my psyche," says Douglas Price '55, "he would walk with me for 25 minutes or whatever it took to hear me out. I remember him as an oasis of Quaker kindness in a desert of intellect." Price is now the headmaster of a Quaker school in Silver Spring, Maryland, that specializes in "bright underachievers, like myself." He too teaches one course at his school; the subject is dreams.
Price cites Gil Stott as "one of the reasons I became a Quaker." He was interested to learn, as was I, that Mr. Stott is a lifelong Episcopalian. Well, you have to take your Quakers where you find them.
It's probably no coincidence that many alumni who were close to Gilmore Stott at Swarthmore have become school and college administrators themselves. The most obvious case is Maurice Eldridge '61, who until recently held the post at Swarthmore that Stott once did: assistant to the president. (Eldridge was recently promoted to vice president.) As one of only a handful of African American students at the College in the late 1950s, Eldridge contended with even more than the usual share of undergraduate questioning and self-doubt. "Gil was the dean then," he remembers. "I knew I could go to him when I was troubled, and he'd be straight and direct. His feet were in the real world."
Eldridge recalls wanting to live off campus and being gently but firmly tugged back by Mr. Stott. "He just told me that the contribution went both ways between me and the College. That was enough." Decades before "diversity" became a buzzword in academia, Gilmore Stott was concerned about it at Swarthmore.
That concern was tested during the traumatic events of January 1969, when a group of African American students occupied the College's Admissions Office, demanding more recognition for their culture and concerns. At the height of the crisis, with Gilmore Stott standing by his side, President Courtney Smith collapsed and died of a heart attack. Many people were tempted to blame Smith's death on the student demonstrators; Mr. Stott just went to work on the problem at hand.
It was just like him to think of music as a bridge between groups on campus. Like Nancy Holland, Jackie Edmonds Clark '74 was a flutist who participated in readings of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos at the Stotts' home. With support from Gilmore Stott, Clark founded the Swarthmore College Gospel Choir, which still thrives today. Clark is now an administrator for an adult high school program at a community college in North Carolina.
For many years Mr. Stott played a role in the Upward Bound program that brings disadvantaged, mostly minority high school students to the College each summer. Twin brothers Keith and Kenneth Reeves attended four summers of Upward Bound and then were admitted to Swarthmore, graduating in 1988. Keith Reeves, now a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (and a visiting professor at Swarthmore this year), recalls the warm, welcoming atmosphere in the Stott home. "You could tell he enjoyed getting to know us kids," Reeves says, "and we enjoyed finding out about Plato and Socrates from him."
Reeves also remembers Mr. Stott's love of travel, which he instilled in others by means of stories and photos; the Stotts' Christmas cards always included poetry by Mrs. Stott and pictures of them in faraway places. Reeves' first trip abroad, at age 21, was to Oxford, and he later became a Rhodes Scholarship finalist for the state of Pennsylvania. For Gilmore Stott, a Rhodes Scholar himself and a longtime deputy secretary or board member of Rhodes Scholarships in America, Reeves was one of countless young scholars he had shepherded toward Oxford.
Mr. Stott's nose for young talent has served him well as administrator of the McCabe Scholarships at Swarthmore, a Rhodes-like program to select and nurture students with exceptional leadership potential. Gregory Englund '69, who lived in the room next to mine in Wharton, was a shy, soft-spoken young man from Delaware and (unbeknownst to us) a McCabe Scholar. Englund, who now practices estate law with his own small firm in Boston, recalls how "unconditional acceptance and encouragement" from the Stott family bolstered his confidence, and how much he learned from the "quiet spirit" and "fundamental decency" of Gil Stott, who "led by deed and example." Greg Englund did likewise at Swarthmore, and so he has been stuck with the job of class agent for 1969 ever since.
All the Stott stories lead back to that home, with its bread and concertos and conversation. Although Gilmore Stott has had all the official positions that involved punching in daily at Parrish Hall, Mary Stott was every bit as much of a presence on campus until her death in 1994.
One of their children, William Gilmore Stott '75, is now a member of the College's Board of Managers, which I guess means that he has become his dad's boss. After I interviewed him for this article, Bill Stott telephoned me back to emphasize that the unique quality of Gilmore Stott's relationship to the Swarthmore community had its roots in the love of Gil and Mary Stott for each other, which shaped the lives of their five offspring (in addition to Mary and Bill there are daughters Miriam and Sarah and son John '78) and radiated through the lives of their "extended family," the hundreds of Swarthmore students who passed through the Stott home over the decades. That devotion continues to manifest itself in various ways; for example, throughout her adult life Mary Stott had published volumes of poetry and stories, and Gil Stott is now preparing more of her writings for publication.
Because this article has been about people's memories of Gil Stott, there's one more point we should remember: Mr. Stott is anything but "a memory" on campus in 1998. At age 83 he is seen almost daily in the halls of Parrish, and he devotes much time to the process of interviewing and recommending candidates for fellowships. His knowledge of the history of the College is an invaluable resource.
His decades at Swarthmore would certainly qualify him to play the role of the grumpy guy who always says "things were better when So-and-So was president." Maurice Eldridge just laughs at the thought. "He has such a Protean mind--in no way is Gil Stott the Old Guard hanging on," he says. "He's one of the youngest and most progressive people around here."
Asked to remember something in particular about the Stotts, Jackie Clark says, "I don't know, it was all so wonderful with them. You know what I remember? Fresh-grated nutmeg. You know how a particular smell can make everything come back? I remember that Mrs. Stott always grated the nutmeg fresh for her bread. The whole house smelled like it. I associate all the good things that we did and said with that smell. And I always grate my nutmeg fresh now."
David Wright is a freelance journalist in New York. He still studies piano and is currently working on Schubert's "Impromptu in B Flat Major."