In Memoriam

Champion of Disadvantaged, Dean Monro Dies at 89

John Usher Monro

John Usher Monro, a former dean of Harvard College whose long career as an administrator and teacher was dedicated to bringing higher education within the reach of poor and minority students, died March 29, 2002, at the age of 89.

Monro's accomplishments at Harvard were numerous, and the impact of many of them has been profound and long-lasting. Shortly after World War II (in which he served as a Navy officer and won the Bronze Star), he helped to admit veterans to Harvard who wanted to study under the GI Bill.

Later, as director of financial aid, he engineered the quantified, need-based system still in use today. He founded Harvard Student Agencies to give needy students the chance to supplement their scholarships, and he spurred Harvard's efforts to identify and recruit talented students from disadvantaged areas.

But it was his decision to leave Harvard in 1967 that in many people's minds remains his most extraordinary and memorable act. At the age of 56, Monro resigned his post as dean of Harvard College to become director of freshman studies at Miles College, a small, unaccredited, predominantly black institution in Birmingham, Alabama.

He remained at Miles until the late 1970s, when he left to teach English and writing at Tougeloo College in Mississippi, another small, predominantly black school.

Monro's move to Miles attracted much attention from the media. The New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker both profiled him in 1970. To many it seemed an act of almost quixotic idealism, but to those who knew Monro best, it was nothing of the kind.

Monro's interest in making college available to more black students had been a longstanding one, and he had taught at Miles for several summers without pay before coming to work there full time.

Other contributing factors to his decision were his support of the Peace Corps, notably his role in having the first summer training program for Peace Corps volunteers to Nigeria be based at Harvard, and his many years of teaching expository writing evenings in the Harvard Extension School.

Dean Michael Shinagel recalls that Dean Monro recruited him to teach a section of Expository English in 1959, and it was in that first class that he had Edgar Grossman, ABE '66, as a student. Shinagel taught with Dean Monro for four years until 1963, and he remembers fondly that first exposure to Extension School students from 40 years ago as well as the dedicated teaching of Dean Monro.

Portions of this obituary used with permission of the Harvard University Gazette.

Alumni(ae)

Noriko Oshima Häggblom, ABE '76, died of lung cancer on June 27, 2001, in Quincy, Massachusetts. The announcement of her death sent by her husband, Stig Häggblom, included the following information (edited by Bulletin staff) about Noriko:

As a member of the first American Field Student group from Japan after World War II, Noriko came to the US and entered school in Chautaqua, New York. As an experienced alpine skier and sports woman, she won in 1958 the women's combined alpine event in Sapporo, and also held two titles in her country in downhill skiing. Later she lived in Finland and became a dedicated friend of Nordic cross-country skiing. Starting in 1966, she worked as a rate agent for Trans World Airlines in Boston. She also published a column (in Japanese) in the Boston Gazette. As a member of the Finnish Sports Writers Association, Noriko was given credit both as a writer and an organizer of countless sports journeys from Finland and the US to Japan and back. She founded the New Horizons Travel Service in the spring of 1978 and remained in business until her passing.

Patricia Sullivan Boylen, AAE '73, ABE '75, died on December 26, 2001. Her last known residence was Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

The death of Mitchell August Bulmann, ALM '99, most recently of Traverse City, Michigan, was reported to the Alumni Office on August 2, 2001.

Finny Christiana, AAE '72, ABE '75, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, died on October 17, 2001.

John H. Curley, CSS '96, of South Boston, Massachusetts, died on November 11, 1999.

Joseph Allen D'Amico, ALM '92, died on October 8, 2001, in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he resided. Mr. D'Amico also received a JD from Harvard Law School in 1987 and last worked at Shumaker Loop & Kendrick, LLP.

Albert Ernest DeSteuben, AAE '75, ALB '81, most recently of Saugus, Massachusetts, died on August 14, 2001.

William Fancy, Jr., CSS '86, of Lowell, Massachusetts, died on December 3, 1999.

Joyce Reardon Lever, ALB '01, most recently from Arlington, Massachusetts, died on January 17, 2002.

Eugene McMahon, ALB '86, of Brighton, Massachusetts, died on October 10, 2001.

Paul F. Schelfhoudt, AAE '82, died in January 2002. He last resided in Quincy, Massachusetts.

The death of Michael Zaharchuk, CSS '85, was recently reported to the Alumni Office. He died on February 10, 1998.

Faculty

Marc N. Pollack, chief financial officer of University Health Services (UHS) and a teacher at the Extension School, died unexpectedly on Feb. 19, 2002, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was 51. For the past few years, Pollack had taught CSS E-325 Financial Management in Healthcare. Carol Shepherd, who co-taught the course with him for about three years while a doctoral candidate at the School of Public Health, said, "He cared passionately about what he did, was incredibly knowledgeable, and liked teaching a lot. He will be missed."