Restoring Shakertown: The Struggle to Save the Historic Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill

XI. “The Instruction of the Public”

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CHAPTER XI “The Instruction of the Public” I n 1965 Earl Wallace received an invitation to join some sixty other American leaders in politics, business, the professions, and the academic world at an American Assembly session titled “The Courts, the Public, and the Law Explosion.” Established at Columbia University in 1950 by Dwight Eisenhower, then the university’s president, the American Assembly was, and remains, a remarkable phenomenon, with its continuing nonpartisan conferences on public issues—usually two a year—at Arden House, the former family home of Averell Harriman on the edge of the Catskills fifty miles northwest of New York City. Though deliberations at Arden House, with their carefully produced reports, have often influenced national thinking about policy, this wellintended 1965 session did little to dampen the spreading American enthusiasm for taking people to court. But that relative powerlessness was not apparent at the time, and in any case Wallace thoroughly enjoyed the meeting , taking part in discussions with the typical Arden House array of luminaries from various fields and coming away with “the feeling of having participated in something memorable and historic.” In saying this, Wallace was expressing the reaction that most participants have to these meetings, which represent the truly top level of national-policy public discussion in the United States; once, a dazzled participant in another Arden House conference simply described himself as “floating.” Wallace returned home with 131 “The Instruction of the Public” the loftiest conceivable goal: he was determined to create a Kentucky version of Arden House at Pleasant Hill. The idea of Pleasant Hill as the site of conferences and discussion of course went back to the beginning days of the restoration, well before Wallace’s involvement with the project. When, guided by Raymond McLain, the members of the Blue Grass Trust’s Shakertown committee had concerned themselves with the question of the “proper usefulness” of a restored Pleasant Hill, they had concluded that only an important contribution to society as a whole could justify the expenditure of time, effort, and money the project would demand. The aim, McLain said, must be “to utilize the property and facilities in such a manner as to improve the quality of contemporary life.” The beauty of the setting, the founders believed, could make perhaps its greatest contribution by enhancing the quality of thought of those who came to study and deliberate. McLain himself spoke of the “simplicity and discipline of the life lived by the Shaker Community” as traits worthy of study and emulation, and, indeed, it was on November 4, 1961—shortly after the creation of the corporation and long before any material change at all had taken place at Pleasant Hill—that Shakertown had made its first venture into the world of conferences: “The Shaker Character: Does It Have Meaning for Today?” The sponsors described the meeting, rather vaguely, as the first in a hopedfor series of conferences on the history and culture of Shakertown as related to the growth of the United States. With such activities in mind, however ill defined, the Shakertown trustees had made the decision to hire Ralph McCallister as the first executive director, only to find that buildings had to come before programs and that the miracle worker who could raise money, design the restoration, develop and preside over conferences and educational activities, and keep the board happy had not yet been born. Meeting in November 1963, the interim education committee, chaired by Dorothy Clay of Bourbon County, one of the hardest workers of all those involved with the project, decided that “any definite recommendations for programs of education and recreation would be premature at this point.” Nevertheless, the group saw the “education project” as having at least three divisions: discussion by experts of problems, issues, and trends of contemporary life; popular-level discus- 132 RESTORING SHAKERTOWN sions, on such topics as gardens, antiques, architecture, and art; and programs for professional groups for which Pleasant Hill would provide only the facilities. These points clearly reflected the distinction between making Pleasant Hill a vehicle for furthering the hopes and aims of the members themselves and using it simply as a hotel that would rent space to groups wanting to have meetings. With reference to the first two discussions, the committee noted that “a director familiar with this type of work should be employed” and added, mordantly, “This, in spite of our previous failure...