…It is significant that in planning this celebration we were ambivalent about whether to mark our tenth or our first year. The decision interestingly enough was to emphasize our first birthday. I do not think that this meant that we were unmindful of the meaning and importance of the years that preceded our independence, but perhaps rather that we were eager to look ahead — that our focus was on the future.

This is as it should be, but past, present and future are inextricably intertwined. We are what we are today partly because of our past and the past and this very present will combine to determine our future. In the light of the monstrous failures of our society which have resulted in a Vietnam War, in the continuance of racial bondage, in the pollution of our waters, in our unsolved problems of poverty, it is no wonder that sensitive and idealistic young people are often too impatient for change to take time for a backward look. And yet, it could well be true as someone has suggested that “he who says, “NO” to history says, “No” to his own future.”

Some of our history is the history of failure, but it needs to be examined for the pitfalls it may help us avoid. Some of our history has been recorded inaccurately and colored by bias. It needs to be rewritten. But some of our history is glorious; it reveals the heights to which man can ascend as well as the depths to which he sometimes drops. As we move toward the changes that are so obviously and desperately demanded if man is to continue his existence upon this globe, we will do well to learn from our past, and to celebrate those portions of it that are worthy of celebration.

I am bold to assert that Dowling College has something to celebrate. Those who founded this college had a vision. They knew the past and they were critical of a good deal of it. They were aware that the intellectual experiences offered by much of higher education had been fragmented and they sought to create an institution that would be marked by a unifying inter-disciplinary approach. They were not persons who believed in change for the sake of change but they knew that institutions as well as individuals could suffer from a hardening of the arteries and they sought to build a college open to innovation. They had a remarkable sense also of the importance of the individual — a regard for his freedom and his dignity.

As we build upon this heritage we will face the heavy demands of this part of the twentieth century. We will be making important choices — crucial decisions. We will find that our commitment to merit and our commitment to equality will seem to be in conflict. Can we find ways to uphold excellence and at the same time bar no one who wants and can use a college experience?

We will sense that the old definition of a liberal arts education is not quite good enough — “the advancement of learning through the transmission and enlargement of knowledge.” We know now that feelings are important — that the good life and the good citizen are part of what we are after — that the good and the beautiful are important — not only the true.

We are faced with the insistence that a man or a woman must be allowed to do “their own thing.” While this is a freedom we cannot ignore, can we not hope that new ideas for curriculum will be responded to not only with emotion, but with intellectual curiosity and scholarly concern. Even with freedom as our pass-word,  should the college experience not also reveal that “doing one’s thing” is ultimately satisfying and rewarding only if it has meaning to one’s fellow men? There are plenty of people in our mental hospitals who are “doing their own thing” but with such irrelevance and so out of touch with reality that we call it sickness.

I see a college composed of persons with many different ideas — often in healthy conflict. To protect the freedom to differ, our consensus, when it exists at all, will have to be very broadly based. But as I look out upon our world and hear the loud cries of hurt, of alarm, of despair, I am convinced that none of us as individuals will dare remain aloof.

Full participation, of course, will be another key to our future, but not only the fact of it and the extent of it but the quality of it will be crucial.

Perhaps as we think today about our past and our future, there is a guiding principle. We must understand and believe that the institution was made for man and not man for the institution. Alexander Meiklejohn has put it very well. “Our final responsibility as scholars and teachers is not to the truth. It is to the people who need the truth.

It is because of insights like that, that we celebrate our history. Let history serve the future. Let us practice now what we praise.

President Allyn Robinson
Convocation Address
Celebrating the First Anniversary of
Dowling College

I recently had the opportunity to speak over the phone with Sarah Robinson Munson, Allyn Robinson’s daughter, herself a retired teacher and former Peace Corps member (and as an aside, Mrs. Munson was married at Dowling, in the foyer between the Hunt Room and the Ballroom). She noted that her father had a knack for bringing people together. He enjoyed a heated conversation as much as he loved his omnipresent pipe.

While Minister of the United Church in Raleigh, North Carolina from 1939-1946, Dr. Robinson founded the Institute of Religion – a forum for bringing together diverse congregations to hear the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt and Norman Thomas speak. Attendees included many black congregations, which integrated not only the lectures but the accompanying sit down meals. This fact, according to Mrs. Munson, raised the ire of Raleigh resident Jesse Helms.

Dr. Robinson was also a world traveler. In addition to trips to Soviet Russia and Israel, he visited Pakistan and India in 1957 where he met with Prime Minister Nehru. In the late 1950s he was involved in helping New York City police develop their community relations skills in the midst of a large influx of Puerto Rican immigrants. And of course as the President of a fledgling liberal arts college nestled in the middle of a residential community, he had his share of town/gown disputes to manage.

“He really was gifted,” Mrs. Munson told me. “He was a creator of relationships.”

Dr. Allyn Robinson retired from Dowling in 1977 at which time a tribute was held in his honor. To highlight some of the relationships he created, the following excerpts are taken from the tribute program.

Being the first President of anything is a high-risk occupation; one might also be the last President, unless one has the talents and abilities of an Allyn Robinson – in which case the enterprise will be passed on to the second President as a strong, healthy, thriving institution.

Theodore M. Black
Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents

There is something about you which makes an association supportive and exciting. There is a way that you have which tends to encourage an individual to bring to crystallization ideas which are hazy and still to be shaped and honed.

Irving Goldaber
Center for the Study of Conflict in School and Community

Your years at Dowling have confirmed Tacitus’ saying “reason and calm judgment are the qualities especially belonging to a leader.

Robert F. Wagner
Dowling College Board of Trustees

Thanks to the staff of the 1969 yearbook

As our year-long project draws to a close, we’d like to echo the editors of the 1969 yearbook and add our thanks to all those who worked on the yearbooks of the 1960s and 70s from which we’ve drawn most of our images. Likewise to those students who gave their time and effort to the New Voice and other campus publications. Without your work, this project would not have been possible.

Kami and I went in search of the Loft Theatre. To tell  you the truth, it was an area of campus I had never ventured into – the vast space above the basketball court in the Curtin Student Center (aka the Carriage House and Astor Hall).

We could have entitled this post “the more things change…” because what we found is probably pretty close to what students found in the late sixties: a large hidden area of campus filled with assorted bric a brac and a lot of potential.

Of course, we’re only talking about the physical loft. The Loft Theatre moved on to the Performing Arts Center in the early 1970s  when the old Vanderbilt power  house was refurbished into a black box space. Theatre is alive at Dowling to this day in the form of the contemporary Loft Theatre headed by Prof. Andrew Karp.

So for now, take a look at the video that Kami shot on our excursion. I added in a few explanatory excerpts from oral history interviews with Ned Bobkoff, Marianne Accardi Giardini, and George Worthmore. The color photos are courtesy of Ned Bobkoff and the rest were taken from Dowling College yearbooks. I’ve added the names of the shows being performed and their authors.

According to Diane and her South Shore History wiki, the building you’re looking at was built in 1882; those beams overhead are therefore over one hundred and twenty years old. I don’t know the date of the small bit of graffiti you’ll see in the last shot but I like to think it was scribbled there in 1969 for us to find forty years later – a message from the past that makes a nice coda for our history of the Loft Theatre.

Mansion after the fire. Click photo to see more images.

New Voice, March 26, 1974

Our staff was able to determine the extent of damage to the Mansion through observation Monday and interviews this past week. The Student Lounge is considered a total loss. The heat was so intense that the fireplace stones chipped. In the Hunt Room the hunting frieze is completely gone.

Although other papers have reported that Diana was greatly damaged, she only lost one finger. Diana is scorched and at this point, it looks as if she may never return to her original color. The circular stairway is completely gone – including the tapestries on the wall. The ceiling in the old library is only destroyed on the north half, also the floor and wood paneling.

All student records are intact – this includes the offices of financial aid, the bursar, and the registrar. Most offices are only smoke and water damaged. The cafeteria is badly water damaged; after the fire the water was almost two feet deep.

“Mansion to be Restored”
The New Voice
March 26, 1974

Firemen in the mansion on March 18, 1974. Photo courtesy of the West Sayville Fire Dept.

Early on a cold, dark Monday flames engulfed the Idle Hour mansion that had been the home of Dowling since 1963.  Starting in the Student Lounge and working it’s way through the Hunt Room and Ballroom , then up the grand staircase and out through the glass Conservatory, the fire left the heart of the mansion in ruins.

Oakdale native Joe Mandanici, now Dowling’s Senior Facilities Administrator, was relatively new to the West Sayville fire department that responded to the call. In this interview he deconstructs the fire for us: 40-mph winds coming off the Connetquot, trucks drawing water straight from the river, men and equipment from all neighboring fire departments converging. 

Joe also tells us more about the life of a volunteer firefighter and the men he served with back in 1974. As he explains, that fire at the mansion was just the beginning of a long day.

Fighting the fire at Dowling College March 18, 1974. Photo courtesy of the West Sayville Fire Dept.

To give a sense of the breadth and depth of the man, as well as of the company he kept, here are some of those tributes:

Many men have left their mark on the City of New York. Some have damaged it by their profligacy or neglect. Others, like Bob Dowling, have endowed and enhanced it through their generosity, their leadership, and their achievement. To speak of the twentieth century development of New York as the continuous growth of a great city is to speak in some measure of the accomplishments and visions of Robert W. Dowling. And that is high praise.

For all of those whose lives he has touched – for all New Yorkers – I express my very real thanks.

John V. Lindsay
[Two-term mayor of New York City, 1966-1973]

We of the New York Theatre are very grateful that Bob Dowling took a liking to us. Where would we be without his enthusiasm and generosity and wisdom and taste. Many happy returns of this fine day.

Helen Hayes

With pleasure and pride I join your other friends in wishing you a most happy seventy-fifth birthday and in congratulating you on a rich and wonderful record of service and concern for your fellow man.

Your concern and your work in behalf of a better life for others has made a difference and America is in your debt.

My best wishes always.

Sincerely,
Lyndon B. Johnson

It is a special pleasure, a uniquely happy one, to join your many friends in saluting you on the occasion of your 75th birthday. To work with you has been one of the happier tasks of our mutual efforts on behalf of Carnegie Hall. And to know you is to know a man of infinite good will, a generous heart unburdened by bias to any human being and angered only by injustice.

May God grant you many years of happy, healthy life.

Most cordially yours,
Isaac Stern

George Foundotos, professor of accounting

George Foundotos was almost an alum of Dowling College. He began by taking night courses in accounting at Adelphi Suffolk College in Sayville in 1962. He was there for the move to Oakdale at the beginning of 1963 but then parted ways with the school, heading back to Adelphi to take upper level accounting courses. He went on to become a CPA and serve as the comptroller of the town of Islip.

He did, however, become Dowling’s first full time business faculty member in 1970. In this interview, excerpted from a longer oral history archived at the Dowling Library, George relates why he came back, what life was like back in those early days, and some of his experiences teaching over 4,000 students. He also tells us why we’ve been documenting the wrong anniversary all along.

The True Birthday of Dowling College?

…CAMILLE …EXTREMELY DANGEROUS…CENTER NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER…BEARING DOWN ON THE MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA COAST…

HURRICANE WARNINGS ARE IN EFFECT FROM NEW ORLEANS AND GRAND ISLE LOUISIANA EASTWARD ACROSS THE MISSISSIPPI…ALABAMA…AND NORTHWEST FLORIDA COAST TO APALACHICOLA. GALE WARNINGS ARE IN EFFECT FROM MORGAN CITY TO GRAND ISLE. PREPARATIONS AGAINST THIS EXTREMELY  DANGEROUS HURRICANE SHOULD BE COMPLETED BEFORE DARK.

National Hurricane Center Advisory No. 17 5PM CDT
The Hurricane Camille Preliminary Report
September, 1969

Hurricane Camille hit land as a category 5 storm. It veered northwest and, after passing over Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virgina and Virginia headed back out to sea. According to the National Weather Service, Camille is the second deadliest hurricane in U.S. history and one of  only three category 5 storms to make landfall.

The Woodstock Music & Art Fair opened in upstate New York. Held on a dairy farm in Bethel, Woodstock was a three-day concert featuring a who’s-who of musical talent: Richie Havens,  Joan Baez, Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, The Who…topped off by Jimi Hendrix who closed out the place with a set on Monday morning.

Billed as “three days of peace and music,” the event drew so much traffic to Sullivan County that the New York State Thruway and Rte 17 were clogged with cars and had to be closed. At its height the crowd reached  300,000 people, according to the New York Times.

Much of the festival was filmed, released the next year as the documentary Woodstock which went on to win an Academy Award in 1971 for Best Documentary.

For more on Woodstock from someone who was there, listen to our interview with alum Mike Jahn who was covering the event as rock critic for the New York Times.