Fifty Years in Higher Education

The early experiences of life play a significant part in the development of one's values, attitudes, goals, and achievements. Hence I begin with a review of the influences on my life of a man with whom I had a close association from age ten. George Nathan Newman was a graduate of Yale University where he studied Hebrew under the precocious linguist, William Rainey Harper, later the illustrious first president of the University of Chicago. Newman was a very unusual person. For years he spent most of his energy and his substantial inheritance in building a library collection on the widest range of subjects. As phonograph records were perfected, he assembled one of the largest collections in the nation. As the years passed, he continued his study of a variety of languages-ancient and modem-and became versed in their classics. My association with Newman originated in a common interest in stamp collecting. This avocation soon served, however, as a point of departure for intellectual trips into various national cultures. Similarily, as we listened to the great operas sung in other tongues, he excited my lifelong interest in the foreign languages in which the lyrics were sung. Gratified that a person of my immature years should be interested in intellectual things, Newman asked me if I would like to begin the study of French and German. It is significant to recall that in the early 1900s, very little modem foreign language was available anywhere in the elementary grades. I seized this opportunity. By the time I was ready to enter high school, I had already acquired a rudimentary reading facility in both

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