John U. Monro: Uncommon Educator

9. Going It Alone, 1971–1978

159 9 GOING IT ALONE 1971–1978 The summer of Pitts’s departure, Monro went to Evanston to help Phil, Janet, and the children move to Atlanta, where Phil had accepted a position as assistant professor of psychology and educational studies at Emory (Dreyer, e-mail, 30 Jan. 2008). While Phil drove the U-Haul truck with seven-year-old Scott riding shotgun, Monro drove the tightly packed station wagon most of the way, accompanied by Janet, three-year-old Rebecca, and the family pets (Dreyer, e-mail, 27 May 2008). Everyone, especially Dottie, was happy about the move because Atlanta was an easy drive from Birmingham. In South Freeport, Monro spent time on a task he had promised to complete for the Phillips trustees: a draft resolution honoring his friend Jack Kemper upon his retirement as headmaster. As Monro pointed out in the resolution, Kemper had attracted a stellar faculty and giving them a larger role in determining the fate of the school, updated and improved the physical plant, maintained a balance between crucial detail and overall vision, and advanced equal opportunity in education. Many of the curricular innovations he oversaw—such as Outward Bound, Washington internships, School Year Abroad, and a community service program in nearby Lawrence—nudged students beyond the parameters of their cozy campus (Allis 221). Now the lung cancer for which Kemper had undergone surgery the previous spring had recurred and become terminal. He died a few months after the board’s October meeting. Meanwhile, a very different kind of leader was taking the helm at Miles. * * * There is room no longer for surprise. There is room only for admiration. —honorary degree, Amherst, 1 June 1973 JOHN U. MONRO 160 PRESIDENT WILLIAMS W. Clyde Williams, who fell far short of the “trained educator and administrator” Pitts had envisioned as his successor, was thirty-nine years old when he became president, having spent most of his working life in the church rather than in academe. For the previous two years he had served as general secretary of the Consultation on Church Union in Princeton, and for seven years he had been affiliated with the Interdenominational Theological Center, in Atlanta, where he earned a master of religious education degree in 1961 (Vann, “New”). He was on the Board of Directors of the National Committee of Black Churchmen, the Editorial Board of J. S. Polack Publishing Company, and the Church Commission on Scouting (“W. Clyde Williams”). The first priority in Williams’s five-year plan for the college was a more visible affiliation with the church. In August 1971 Williams replaced acting dean Louis Dale with Alandus C. Johnson, whom he knew from their undergraduate days at Paine. Johnson’s quali fications for the deanship were skimpy, to say the least: although he was chair of the History and Philosophy Departments at Grambling College, in Louisiana, he lacked a graduate degree, and the depth of his scholarship was reflected in a conference paper he had recently presented on “Adding More Soul to Creoles” (“Dr. Alandus Johnson”). Substituting Johnson for Dale, who had years of teaching under his belt, administrative experience as a department chair, and was closing in on his doctorate at UAB, boded ill for Miles’s future and was an early indicator that Williams would treat the presidency as a stepping-stone to his goal of becoming a CME bishop. Williams further telegraphed his ecclesiastical ambitions by making sure that his first official presidential appearance occurred under church auspices. The occasion was the Birmingham Conference of the CME Church in August. Not so coincidentally, the conference leader was Chester A. Kirkendoll, whose dual roles as presiding bishop of Alabama and Florida and chairman of the Miles board of trustees made him a key figure in Williams’s bid for a bishopric (G. Moore). Monro could have responded to the change of command by leaving, but he was too invested in the college to walk away, and he was especially eager to put the finishing touches on the Freshman Studies Program, which he estimated would take two more years (Greenhouse 92). Besides, Williams deserved a chance and might, like Prince Hal, grow into the job. After all, Pitts too longed to be a bishop and had accepted the Paine presidency as a step along that path. In 161 GOING IT ALONE, 1971–1978 what seemed a positive sign of his interest...