My first eight years of education (Grades 1-8) were spent in District 12 school of Rome, New York, a one-room school house with about twenty children and one teacher. The major audio visual aids were an old piano, a black board, a map of the United States, and a picture of George Washington. I was in the largest class; there were five of us. My brother was in a grade all by himself. Other teachers did come in to introduce us to basic music and art, but the main teacher was Florence Reese who somehow was able to lead each class through its daily lessons. There was no physical education but plenty of time for recess games.
The other half of my childhood education took place in the summer on Uncle Dan’s farm. There I learned about gardening, harvesting crops such as wheat, string beans and peas, and loading trucks with bales of hay and straw. I learned how to herd cows and milk them, how to gather eggs without being pecked too much, and how to operate a milk route. In fact, when I was twelve my uncle contracted the shingles and I literally ran his milk route for the summer. There was a driver, but I delivered the milk, kept the books, and dealt with the customers. In the afternoon I often drove the tractor or the team of horses (Foxy and Ginger) for raking hay. Hours were from about 7:30 in the morning until 9 at night. That meant that I did not do much reading during the summer but I learned many practical skills. I continued to work on the farm all through college until my uncle died in November of my senior year. The following summer I was asked to manage the farm, but after that, in fall, it was sold and my days as a farmer came to an end. What I learned from this long experience was really to enjoy hard work and to respect the knowledge of people who are not academics.
After grade school I attended one year of junior high school and then went on to Rome Free Academy. I had many good teachers and during that period learned, among other things, the rudiments of Latin and a little French. I was manager of the football team, very much involved as stage manager for the class play, and President of the Interchurch Youth Council. I sang in the chorus, the special chorus, and was the high tenor in a barbershop quartet.
Then, it was on to college. My father went to Hamilton, graduating in 1923, and that was good enough for me. It was the only place I applied. Hamilton was a tiny place with only 600 male students. It seemed very preppy to me and after a semester I thought about transferring. Happily I did not for eventually I came to like the place very much. I had a double major in English Literature and Philosophy. My final English paper was on Thomas Traherne,: my philosophy paper was on Alfred North Whitehead. We did not have minors in those days but if we had, I had enough courses for minors in both Music and Psychology. I received honors in both Philosophy and Public Speaking. Most of my extracurricular activities revolved around the Glee Club, the Student Christian Association, and the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity where I served as Prytanis (president) my senior year.
I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but farming and business seemed out-of-the-question. I would have gone into philosophy, but I really did not like very much what was happening in philosophy---A.J. Ayer and Logical Positivism et al---so I thought I would try theology. Perhaps in seminary I would find some answers to nagging questions. I applied only to Union Theological Seminary in New York and happily was accepted.
Union was at the height of its glory and I was able to study with many of the outstanding theological minds of the day. My two most important professors were Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr. The latter became my primary advisor and it was under him that I wrote my senior Master’s thesis on Soren Kierkegaard’s conception of the individual. I was also drawn to the study of the Hebrew Scriptures through the teaching of James Muilenberg and Sam Terrien. I studied Hebrew, Greek, and a little Aramaic and might have gone on in Biblical Studies had Muilenberg not suggested that I would have to learn several more ancient and modern languages if I were to really get into the field. Therefore, after seminary, I decided to continue my education in the field of the Philosophy of Religion.
I applied to the joint program at Columbia University (again my only application) and was accepted. By this time, however, I was married and, after a year of intense work (particularly with John Herman Randall) but before I could even start on my dissertation, I decided that I needed some sort of employment; Columbia gave little financial support to anyone. As chance would have it, I met Warren Ost, the Director of “A Christian Ministry in the National Parks” in which I had participated after my first year at Union and was offered, quite out of the blue, the position of Associate Director. I accepted and for the next two years spent much of my time traveling to theological seminaries to recruit the staff for the program or to the National Parks in the summer to supervise what was going on. It was a fabulous way to see the country, visiting parks from the Everglades to Mt. McKinley, from Isle Royal to Big Bend and Sequoia.
I knew, however, that I needed to get back to my dissertation and finish my degree so after two years I resigned and was going back to Columbia when, again, out of the blue and without application I was offered a position at Hamilton College as a two year replacement. The rest is history. After two years I was offered a half-time position while I finished my dissertation on Benjamin Whichcote and the Cambridge Platonists. Since I did my work away from Columbia and had an advisor (Daniel Day Williams) who really knew very little about the subject, the dissertation was very much of my own making. It was not until my oral defense that I met scholars who really knew something about the subject. They liked what I was about and my dissertation was approved without revision. The degree was awarded in 1964. Then I was offered a full time tenure track position and have been at Hamilton ever since. 2009-2010 is my 50th year of full time teaching at the college. No one has taught full time that long since Edward North did it in the 19th Century.
Actually much of my education took place after I left graduate school. When something interested me I went to work on it until I was knowledgeable enough to teach a course on the subject. I studied Chinese and some Sanskrit. I traveled to the countries I taught about to understand better the culture. I very much dislike today’s emphasis on specialization. All knowledge is inter-related. To know one thing is hardly knowledge unless that knowledge is somehow connected with everything else.