President's Charge to Maurice Eldridge '61

Maurice Eldridge — your long and deep commitment to education and the arts have had a lasting impact on every community to which you have devoted yourself. 

You attended Windsor Mountain School, a co-ed boarding school in Lenox, Massachusetts, and then returned there after graduate school to teach English and creative writing before also serving as assistant headmaster. You were born and raised in Washington D.C., where you attended segregated schools. After your time in New England, you returned to your hometown to serve for a decade as principal and director of the acclaimed Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

And then Swarthmore — where you first came as a student in the 1950s, and where you returned in a leadership role, serving students, alumni, and the whole community for more than 30 years — perhaps most notably ensuring the establishment and longevity of the Chester Children’s Chorus. 

Maurice Eldridge, you have modeled with grace and purpose how to serve your communities while helping them become the versions of themselves they aspire to be. Now, upon the recommendation of the faculty, and by the power vested in me by the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I have the honor to bestow upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters.