"Ex-Scholar"

Young college instructors are sometimes timid, but few are so timid as Kenneth C. M. Sills was. In his Latin class at Bowdoin College, he sometimes chewed his handkerchief to shreds. By the time he acquired a nickname--"Casey" (after his initials)--he was over some of his shyness. When old grads gathered at Bowdoin last week to help him celebrate his 30th anniversary as president, they found him a mellowed version of his young self--a fumbling figure with a kindly smile and a comfortable paunch. Casey has been at bat so long that few Bowdoin men could ever imagine their college without him.

At 68, Casey calls himself "an ex-scholar," but he still teaches. Almost every undergraduate takes "Casey's Lit," a course that rambles amiably from Dante to Spenser to whatever pops into Casey's head. At his weekly talk in chapel, students still "wood" him (stamp their feet in applause). And after big games, they still gather about his Colonial house and yell "We want Casey!" until he emerges, beaming and blushing.

Everyone is welcome at the Sills house and Casey remembers everyone's name. Popular Mrs. Sills chatters over her teacups, gives students a homey feeling (to a distinguished visitor who had called himself an s.o.b., she exclaimed: "Oh, you have an S.O.B.?" as if it were an honorary degree). The Sills have never grown used to visiting celebrities. Once Lord Dunsany left his shoes outside his door for a servant to shine. In the morning they had been shined--by Casey himself.

"We Americans," Sills once said, "have put too much emphasis on the log and not enough on Mark Hopkins. Excellent teaching in wooden halls is much better than wooden teaching in marble halls."

Though Bowdoin's endowment has risen from $2,000,000 to $9,000,000 since Casey took office, he has never even considered marble halls. He prefers to keep Bowdoin to its traditions--compact and personal, with a faculty of first-rate teachers rather than scholars.

Casey Sills gets along fine with his trustees. They even forgave him when he ran for Senator on the Democratic ticket ("That's not really being in politics in Maine," he explains). But two years from now, he will give the trustees their first real problem: Casey will be 70, an age when Bowdoin presidents retire.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.