The Planning and Beginning of Hampshire College

Bob Stiles wrote The Planning and Beginning of Hampshire College.

For the 1950's and early sixties I supplied Mount Holyoke College with apples and eggs. One day in the Fall of 1958 I heard the Mount Holyoke staff talking about the idea of starting a fifth college. They had heard that a 1918 graduate from Amherst College was successful in making a fortune on the New York Stock Market and Amherst College was looking for his money. As it happened this Amherst College alumnus, Harold Johnson, did not pledge anything to Amherst College, but told them he would give six million dollars to start a new college.

Years passed and I didn't forget how wonderful it would be to have the new college located on this farm. In 1912 the town water line piped water to the farm. By 1963 our galvanized pipes began to leak. My neighbor, Paul Thorpe, told me before I hired anyone I must ask the town fathers who to hire. He had trouble with hiring someone they didn't like. I waited a little less than three months to have the water line repaired. While talking to the people in the town hall I said I have a lot of land and didn't know what to do with it. Also, it would be a good site for the new college. I was told Amherst had too many students in town now and too many colleges too. They would send a developer over to see me but would do nothing for a new college. (One town official must have changed his mind.) In the early sixties someone tried to buy the farm for a golf course, and the Univ. of Mass. was interested in buying it for an apple orchard. They thought the soil was ideal for fruit. Still my mind was thinking about a college. My mother made my dad move to Amherst from a small hill town because she thought her children could have a better education in a college town.

The spring of 1965 was on us. One morning a life-long friend stopped to see my sister and me. He told us that a group of people called the Trustees of Tinker Hill were interested in buying our property. They didn't have much money and were not sure the sale would go through, but they wanted a ninety day option. Before the ninety day option was over the Trustees of Tinker Hill owned our farm. They then bought as much land as they wanted.

The following year our first College president, Dr. Franklin Patterson, arrived on the scene. He and Charles Longsworth in a very short time wrote, with the help of their faithful and skillful secretaries, Virginia Aldrich, Ruth Hammen, and Dorothy Anderson, a book almost five hundred pages long, The Making of a College. In September 1966 about my first job was packaging books to mail all over the country. Mail was most important, with a trip to the Amherst Post Office three times a day, and lunches to pick up each noon. Outside, Andrew Weneczek and I tried to tear down and clean up many of the small buildings no longer wanted around the properties of Hampshire College. There were a few miles of barbed wire fences we had to remove as well. Not thinking about the necessity of a business office, our founders had a thirty year old cow barn removed and later built the business office on the old foundation of the old barn.

As the days passed by in the Spring of 1967 thoughts turned to buildings and where to build those buildings. And the water pipe along with a road to the campus had to be made. Dr. Patterson was in his office day after day--even Sundays--planning what should be done next. Charles Longsworth used the north front room in the house that is the Admission building now. Beside the buildings having to be built, the faculty had to be chosen. Among others Frank Smith was hired and almost immediately became the Dean of Humanities and Arts; Robert Birney, a member of the 1966 Educational Advisory Committee, became Dean of Social Science; Dr. Hafner started as Dean of Natural Science; and Richard Lyon drove up from North Carolina--without stopping--to become the Dean of the College. And I recall John Boettiger, David Matz, and Kenneth Rosenthal were among the first to be hired of the ninety faculty for the first phase enrollment.

By July 1968 Hampshire started to break ground for three buildings--the library, Patterson Hall, and a students' dormitory. With little more than two years until the students arrive, a few people were afraid the buildings would not be ready. About that time the Trustees decided to repair an old house built in 1770, for a family to live in. The carpenters were hired, but the tenant decided the carpenters didn't know how to repair an old house. Our Vice President asked me how to make the tenant behave herself, and my answer was to decide how much the trustees wanted to pay for repairing the house, and let the tenant hire her own carpenters. The Trustees followed my idea.

In 1971 the Hampshire officials began to think about building another cluster of living quarters and offices--Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott. Emily Dickinson was also about to be built. Then the rains came down where Enfield was to be built and there was a lake. And the lake was not in any hurry to leave. A small dam was made and pumps didn't help. An engineer said to me, "You have been living here all your life. How can we get the water out of here?" I told him to use a bulldozer and clean out a ditch and the water will flow out. We have not had a lake since. The soil is like plastic clay, and as the ditch fills up with earth, water stays there. Twenty-five years ago where Prescott now stands with the woods around it, there was a swamp land, wet enough to use boots all year long to walk over it. By making a ditch by the tennis courts, that land seems dry and firm. The original plan was to continue the road by the tennis courts through the woods and connect it with the Greenwich roadway.